Of Daleks & Hammers

Supreme Dalek: I must say, the Master's scales are sounding good.
Pinky: Yes, once I got him past D Major, he's really taking off.  He's mastered A Major, E Major, and he's not even phased by B Major, even though it's got five sharps.
Supreme Dalek: He seems to be getting the hang of Muzio Clementi's Sonatina Op. 36, No. 4 rather quickly, too.
Pinky: Yes, I think it helps that he finds the Rondo section similar to the second part of No. 1.  
Supreme Dalek: You see what a little gentle persuasion can accomplish?  It told you...what was that?
Pinky: I don't know.  It sounded like a terrific impact of some kind.  Say, who's this guy that's coming along?

Supreme Dalek: Excuse me, stranger, but who are you, and are you supposed to be here?
Thor: Well might you call me stranger, for I hail from Asgard, and my father Odin has cast me down to this unknown realm.  
Pinky: Then you're not from around here?
Thor: Aye, sweet pink Dalek, that is correct.  My name is Thor, and I'm certain my half-brother Loki must have something to do with my exile.  If only I could perform some noble deed to reclaim my honor!  Surely then my father--good King Odin--would forget his wrath, and welcome me back to my native realm.
Supreme Dalek: I'm sure we can find a task to which you are best suited.  There's always honor in a job well done.
Thor: Well said, good Dalek, but first I must find what belongs to me.  Have either of you seen my hammer?
Pinky: Well, I haven't seen a hammer per se, but when our Master plays the keys, he's actually using hammers to pound strings.   
Supreme Dalek: He's the source of the music you hear.
Thor: I cannot be hearing aright.  Do you mean to say that your master uses more than one hammer at once?
Pinky: Oh yes.  Through playing his piano, I mean.
Thor: Exactly how many hammers does your great master wield simultaneously?
Pinky: Uh, eighty-eight, I believe.
Thor: I must see this powerful god you serve.  Perhaps he can deliver me from this terrible plight.  Farewell, good Daleks.

Supreme Dalek: Is it just me, or is this place getting weird?
Pinky: I wonder what he's doing Friday night?

Supreme, Pinky & Thor Daleks

Kim Stanley Robinson Set To Music

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