For many of us, Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy was a
revelation. In the novels, he laid down
a path along which Humanity might settle the red planet using existing or
readily conceivable technology. In the
process, we learn more about ourselves, and how we might change as we move out
to inhabit more of our solar system. In his latest
novel, 2312, he returns to this vision of the future, and we meet two people at
once familiar, and yet different from ourselves: Swan and Wahram. They meet on the planet Mercury, where they
journey from the traveling city of Terminator to a museum in the Beethoven
Crater. There, they attend a classical
music concert.
First, a wind ensemble plays the Appassionata piano
sonata. The ensemble “rollicked its way
through the finale…fast to the point of effervescence.” Then two pianists play Beethoven’s opus 134,
his transcription of his own Grosse Fugue for string quartet, opus 133. “They had to pound away like percussionists,
simply hammering the keys. More clearly
than ever Wahram heard the intricate weave of the big fugue, also the crazy
energy of the thing, the maniacal vision of a crushing clockwork.” After that, a string quartet play their own
transcription of the Hammerklavier sonata, which Beethoven wrote for the
piano. “Broken out among two violins,
viola, and cello, it all unpacked beautifully: the magnicient anger of the
first movement, the aching beauty of the slow movement…and then the finale,
another big fugue.”
During the concert, Wahram looks back at the audience. He sees the other musicians “on their feet,
bouncing, swaying, faces uplifted and eyes closed, as if in prayer; hands
sometimes spastically waving before them.
Swan too was back there dancing, looking transported. Wahram was pleased to see that; he was out
there himself in the space of Beethoven, a very great space indeed. It would have been shocking to see someone
immune to it; it would have put her outside his zone of sympathy or
comprehension.”
When I was young, my parents, both music lovers, forced me
to practice classical music on the piano. In
time, I became proficient. After my
father’s death, I forsook lessons, and played sporadically. In the following decades, I would return again and again to piano
playing. Each time, I would enjoy it for a time, only to later give it up. For several years, I’ve felt a yearning to
return to it: I have a piano, after all, in my living room. Wahram’s love of classical music, the way it
forms a part of his soul, encouraged me to sit down and dust off the
keyboard. At first, the fingers proved unwilling
to move with their former alacrity, but through daily practice, I feel as if I
am, in many ways, picking up the pieces of a broken life, and even returning to a
path that can fill some gaps in my soul.
Despite their differences, Swan and Wahram will cultivate a
friendship that grows throughout the novel. They will share great experiences, and
together, they will do wonderful things for Humanity. Music will play a part in that relationship:
it will unite them, and tie them together, even when their differences, and
trying circumstances, might otherwise tear them apart. Thanks to Kim Stanley Robinson, I’m wondering
if piano playing will prove a continuing part of my life, and if so, where it
may take me. I’m also wondering what I
may discover along the way, and how that journey may ultimately transform me.
Dragon Dave
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