1635: Music and Murder (43 page)

"Herr Franz, Frau Marla," Patroclus began, "we have not been so busy working on your order that we have not heard rumors of new printing machines." He raised an eyebrow.

"So have I," Marla replied. "But those rumors are all I know. I suggest you drop in at the Freedom Arches." Patroclus looked surprised. "Hey, those folks will know everything there is to know about what's happening in and coming out of Grantville. If they don't have one to show you, they'll be able to tell you who to contact."

"Hmmph." Patroclus did not look particularly pleased with that recommendation.

"Is there a problem with that?"

"My younger brother, Telemachus, spends every free moment at the Arches, to the neglect of his work."

"Telemachus," Franz mused. "He is the tall youth who was working the press the last time I was in your shop?"

"The same. And when he does come in from his visits, after turning an unhearing ear to our father's remonstrations he will yammer on about what great work the CoC is doing and how important the new printing devices are, all the while making the most elementary mistakes in setting type. I was almost forced to bar him from working on your commissions altogether." The printer shook his head. "He is my father's despair and our family's burden."

"I would say pray for patience," Marla said, "but scripture says that patience comes from trials. I won't wish that on you."

"Thank you. My poor father reads the wisdom of Solomon daily, but finds little that encourages him."

Marla was about to continue her sympathy when a thought struck her. "Patroclus . . . about the new printing devices . . . " He looked to her with interest. "Your brother is not wrong about those. You might talk to Lady Beth Haygood at the school. She said something about purchasing a mimeograph machine for the school. If that's true, she can tell you who to talk to."

"True." Patroclus nodded with a faraway look in his eye. After a moment, his gaze focused on Marla again. "My father and I, we have decided to print another one thousand full scores and five thousand part books."

"Wow." Marla was impressed. "So you're going to go for it, huh?"

"To quote Caesar, 'The die is cast.' Or it will be as soon as we start printing."

"So, what made you decide to commit to this?" Franz asked.

"The timing." Patroclus pulled at his beard with ink-stained fingers. "The next Leipzig book fair will be Easter of next year. By then, the account of your performance will have swept Europe. I will go. Mappe will bind some copies for us, and we will sell either bound copies or unbound signatures." He grinned suddenly, rubbing his hands together. "We will sell many copies, and many printers will want to become our friends." They returned his smile.

Marla expression changed as a thought crossed her mind. "A moment, please, Patroclus." She turned, dug a book out of her portfolio and thrust it in his hands. "This is the next thing the Grantville Music Trust wants you to publish."

Patroclus stared at a garish lavender binding with an unusual font splayed across the front cover. Marla watched as he deciphered the text and sounded out the words.

"
Elementary Harmony
. Second edition. Robert W. Ottman." He opened the cover and flipped through the pages. "A treatise of some sort, I take it?"

"Exactly," Marla responded. "This is the distillation of musical art from the up-times. I—we—expect this book to be even more influential than
Messiah
. You want to set this up and start printing lots of copies. Take it to your Leipzig fair. You'll sell a
lot
of copies of this one."

"One wonders," the printer closed the book, "since this volume is entitled
Elementary Harmony
, if there is a companion volume devoted to, shall we say, advanced topics?" He looked sidelong at Marla.

"Of course there is," she laughed. "And next year we'll ask you to print it. But we want this one to set the stage and tempt people to buy it. It will make an even bigger splash."

"Indeed." Marla didn't miss the glitter in Patroclus' eye. "We shall endeavor to, ah, splash with fervor." They shared a moment of laughter.

Patroclus stopped smiling. "Umm." He was obviously hesitant about whatever it was he wanted to say, but worked himself up to speaking. "About Eurydice . . . "

"Your sister," Marla prompted.

"Yes." The printer started to pull at his beard again. "Is she . . . you have selected her . . . my father . . . "

Marla started to smile again. "Your father is concerned about the propriety of your sister singing in the community choir for
Messiah
."

"Yes." Patroclus sagged in obvious relief that he hadn't offended one of their best recent customers.

"You tell your father that Gerde Drechsler is also singing in the choir."

The printer's eyes widened. "The daughter of the goldsmith?" A very well-to-do and influential man in Magdeburg, Herr Drechsler was.

"Yep. You think that will make your father a little more accepting?"

"I believe so."

"Of course, I can talk to him, if you think it would help."

"Oh, no, Frau Marla, that will not be necessary," Patroclus hurried to say.

Marla bit back a grin.

****

The fuze was lit the next evening.

Franz followed Marla and Master Andrea into the room where the choir would rehearse, his precious new copy of the full score of Händel's master work under his arm. He took a seat to one side as Andrea called everyone to order.

"Attention, everyone!" Andrea's voice cut through the clamor rather well, Franz noted, without becoming shrill. "Please sort yourselves out . . . sopranos to my left, then altos, tenors and basses."

There was the sound of shuffling feet as places were adjusted. The noise level dropped to whispers after everyone found their group.

"Welcome. As you know, I am Andrea Abati, one of the two vocal leaders for this work. And this, as most of you know, is Frau Marla Linder, the other vocal leader."

Franz watched as Marla stepped forward.

"Right. Call me Marla. We're all here to do the first performance of a masterwork of a great up-time composer. You have been chosen as the best singers available at this time and place. You will work very very hard. All of us will. You will learn notes, you will learn to pronounce English clearly, you will sing and rehearse until you are ready to drop from exhaustion. We all will. But make no mistake about it—we will do our very best." The expressions on some of the faces that Franz could see were mixed. Some were smiling in anticipation. Some were confused. A few were frowning. "And when we are done, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you have participated in something truly historic. In years to come, you will be able to brag to your children and grandchildren that you sang in the first performance of
Messiah.
"

A hand went up in the midst of the group of tenors.

"Frau Marla?"

"Yes?"

"When will we perform this?"

"The week after Christmas."

"Then why are we starting so early? I mean, it is a long work, but even something like this would only get maybe three weeks rehearsal time in the Elector's court."

Franz saw Marla start to respond, but she stopped when Master Andrea looked at her and raised his eyebrows. She nodded, and the Italian master faced the questioner. "And what type of performance was produced from that rehearsal?" His cool soprano voice was straight toned; no sarcasm was to be found, which surprised Franz somewhat. Andrea possessed a tongue that could be razor sharp at times. "Was it perfect? Was it powerful? Or was it only acceptable?"

There was a moment of silence, before the other man was heard to say, "Acceptable."

"This I have observed from watching Herr Sylwester work with the orchestra." Andrea bowed slightly in Franz's direction. "Every performance benefits from as much rehearsal as possible. Our goal is not to make acceptable music. Our goal is to make great music. To make great music requires great commitment. We call you to that now."

"What he said," Marla added when Andrea turned to her. "Now, we are going to hand out the part books. You will be responsible for their care and protection, and for having them here at rehearsals." She looked at them from under lowered eyebrows. "And heaven help you if you lose or mangle your copy. As much as these cost, I will
not
be happy." Although Marla bared her teeth in what appeared to be a grin, Franz didn't see anyone smiling back at her. It appeared the singers had assessed her attitude and were taking her seriously. That was a good thing in this venue . . . conducive to continued good health and longevity of life.

The next few minutes were occupied by numbering books and assigning them to singers. At length Marla placed the assignment sheet in her portfolio, then turned to where the singers were assembled. Franz watched as she scanned them.

The forty-eight singers were arranged in their sections as Master Andrea had directed them initially. Franz smiled a little—the mixture of boys and women in the sopranos and altos would probably generate some little comment. He remembered Andrea saying that he would accept a pig for the chorus if it could sing to his satisfaction. Well, apparently a pig had not tried out, but there were three boys in the upper parts, as well as a woman standing with the tenors, trying to ignore the sidelong glances she was getting from the men.

"Master Abati tells me that you all can read music to some degree. I know that the style of the notes will be somewhat strange to you, but I promise it will not take long for you to get comfortable with them.

"I will be directing the choir rehearsals, and Master Abati will be working with the soloists. Those of you who are interested in singing solos should speak to him after tonight's rehearsal."

Marla looked around again. "Right. Let's get to it, then. Open your books to page 16. We will begin with the chorus
And the Glory of the Lord
."

Franz already had his full score open to that selection—page 19, in his book—and had his pencil and paper ready to take notes. He had already faithfully copied the penciled notes from Marcus' original score to his; all the little instructions about who to cue for an entrance and when, comments about tempo and dynamics, even the circles around some of the printed musical directions. Having done that, he was now ready to begin developing his own additions to those notes from watching Marla work with the choir. Once the singers began working with the orchestra, they would be following him, not her, so they needed to see the same approach.

True to her word, Marla worked them hard, first taking each vocal section through their notes several times with Hermann Katzberg playing their parts on the harpsichord. Toward the end of the evening, she finally had them try it all together at a tempo rather slower than the
Allegro
called for in the music. Even so, Franz could see widened eyes among some of the singers as they began to feel how this chorus should sound with the contrapuntal entries passing back and forth, leading up to moments of true chorale structure, then returning to the counterpoint. The grand
forte
choral entrance of "
And the glory, the glory of the Lord
" in the middle of the piece was so together, so strong, that the hairs on the back of Franz's neck stirred. And no sooner had those hairs settled down than they started standing again as the lower voices thundered "
For the mouth of the Lord, the mouth of the Lord . . .
" and were joined by the higher voices in the
fortissimo
"
Hath spoken it
."

Their eyes were glued to Marla, who held them there with her hands for a long moment. Finally she dropped her hands, to the sound of sighs and breath whooshing out of lungs as the singers released their tension. Franz relaxed along with them

"Good job, folks. That's a good start. We've got a fair amount of work to do on it before it will be ready, but that's not bad at all for one night's rehearsal. We will see you in two night's time." The others began stirring around, only to stand still as Marla spoke one more time. "And remember, you don't own those books. You really don't want to know how upset I can get if you lose one."

Franz watched Marla wave at Patroclus, come to walk his sister home, then turned away as the singers picked up coats and headed for the exit. The four of them—Marla, Franz, Andrea and Hermann—walked around, blowing out lamps and snuffing candles. Franz could see that evening rehearsals could get a bit expensive. When he voiced that thought, Andrea replied with, "Three of our singers are students in Marla's academy."

"Not mine," she interjected. "That's Lady Beth's school."

"Very well, the redoubtable Frau Lady Beth Haygood's academy, then. And several of the men work during the day. Dieter, for example, works as a weaver. So we must accommodate them."

"Dieter?" Franz asked, intrigued by the tone of Andrea's voice.

"Dieter Fischer . . . the man in whom I may have discovered the voice that can do Iago."

Franz and Marla rolled their eyes at each other. Once the ground had been broken several weeks ago for the Royal and Imperial Opera House—more familiarly known as "Mary's Opera House", because Mary Simpson had done the initial planning and raised the commitments for the funding—Andrea's obsession for a staging of Verdi's
Otello
had become, well, obsessive. He had managed to convince those who had a say in the matter that it would be the premiere work for the hall. Now he was searching for voices, and in the process was at times driving his friends to the brink of uncontrollable urges to commit mayhem.

"Dieter Fischer—the big hulking guy on the right?"

"The very one."

"He is that good?" Hermann asked.

Andrea shook his head. "No. He is at the moment very little more than raw talent that has learned to make a note or two. But he could become that good." He gave a slow smile. "And I will see to it that he does so."

Franz looked to Marla and Hermann. They all shrugged in a unanimous show of commiseration for the soon-to-be-harried Dieter.

****

Franz looked up from his conversation with Matthäus Amsel as Isaac Fremdling entered the orchestra rehearsal room. Seeing Isaac brought a smile to Franz's face. Isaac was second only to Matthäus as a violinist, which meant that Franz had included him as part of the orchestra draft for
Messiah.
He opened his mouth to greet his friend, but closed it as Isaac's expression and lack of instrument registered.