1636- the Flight of the Nightingale

by David Carrico

  “And I am not mentioned in this Encyclopedia Britannica?”

  The monk shrugged. “There are five articles about Bach musicians in the encyclopedia: this one, and articles about four of his sons. Nothing about those who came before.”

  Johann drummed his fingers on the table. He looked up at his namesake. “There are those who know the library, who do research?”

  “Aye.”

  “I want to know everything there is to know about this man and his ancestors and his music. How long to produce it?”

  The monk thought for a moment. “Perhaps a week to do the initial search and indexing. Perhaps two, maybe three weeks after that to gather all the material. Another week or two to put it in final form.”

  Johann frowned. “I will be back in Magdeburg before then.”

  “No problem,” Brother Johann smiled as he used the up-timer phrase. “The bank offers a service. You deposit the fee into an escrow account. When we are done preparing the research, we take it to the bank, the escrow officer reviews it, and if it looks good, she releases the money to us and sends the results to you.”

  “Hmm. That might work.” Johann fingered his beard.

  “Oh, we do this kind of thing all the time.”

  “Indeed.” Johann thought about a world where knowledge was a commodity to be bought and sold. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea.

  * * *

  The more he stared at the picture, the more disquieted Johann became. It didn’t matter if he looked from left to right or top to bottom, every time his eyes got near the center of the picture everything twisted and suddenly his perspective would change. He tried again, and it resulted in a frown. He turned to his host. “Master Wendell, please, what is the purpose for this picture?”

  “Call me Marcus. It’s called Convex and Concave, and it’s by a Dutch artist named M. C. Escher who died in the 1970s.”

  “An up-timer, then.” Just as he finished his response, Johann realized that it was a silly observation. Of course the artist was an up-timer. No down-timer would think of drawing such a mind-twisting picture.

  “Oh, yes,” Marcus continued. “He was well known for making drawings like this, representations of things that would be impossible in real life. Sort of like jokes on those who look at them. I keep that there to remind me that things are not always as they seem.”

  “Indeed.” Johann looked at it one more time, then turned away. “I think it is a good thing the Inquisition holds no sway here. That picture might bring them visiting.” Marcus laughed, but Johann wasn’t sure he was joking.

  “So, Herr Bach,” Marcus said as he led his guest to the chairs, “you are interested in old Johann Sebastian Bach.”

  “Please, call me Johann.” Johann took a seat. “Of course I am. As soon as Frau Marla and Herr Franz and their friends told me of him, I knew I had to come to Grantville and learn as much as I could about him.”

  “So, what do you know so far?”

  “Only what the encyclopedia could tell me. He was apparently fairly well known in his later career, fell out of public favor for about a hundred years or so, then was restored to prominence.”

  “Are you related to him?”

  “Probably, but the encyclopedia did not have that knowledge. I have asked Brother Johann at the library to find everything they can about him and his family.”

  “That’s good,” Marcus nodded. “Either he or Father Nick will dig out everything there is to be found.”

  “But that is still only words. Still only dry and dusty knowledge. I need to hear the man, feel him, feel his art and his passion. From the article I know that he wrote much music of different kinds, and I want to hear it all. But most of all I want to hear what he wrote for the King of Instruments.”

  “The organ.” A slow smile crossed Marcus’ face. “Oh, Johann. I envy you hearing him for the first time.”

  “That is what Marla said.” Johann sat forward. “Is there someone who can play for me?”

  “I don’t think so,” Marcus replied, “not as the music deserves. However,” he held up a finger as disappointment crossed Johann’s face, “I do have some recordings.”

  Johann’s breath came a little quicker. “Ah, yes. Fräulein Linder and the others mentioned these ‘recordings.’ I look forward to seeing and hearing them.”

  Marcus levered himself to his feet. “Then come with me. No time like the present.” He pulled a few flat parcels off of a shelf, then led Johann out of the office and into the band room. “Take a seat over there while I get ready.” Johann walked to the area of chairs that Marcus’ hand had generally waved at and sat down.

  “Are you ready?” Marcus looked to him from beside a cabinet loaded with up-time devices. Johann nodded, although he wasn’t sure what to expect. So far he hadn’t heard a single note. Marcus pushed on something, then lifted a thin arm and carefully positioned it over the edge of a black disk. A faint hissing sound came from a couple of large wooden boxes that flanked the cabinet. Ah…this is something like the Trommler player, then. But where is the horn? He was proud for a moment that he had made that deduction based on seeing a Trommler player once at a burgher’s home in Erfurt.

  Music came out of the air. Marcus grinned at him, so he relaxed and listened.

  The opening motif was a simple tremolo, followed by a downward run of notes. It was repeated twice, an octave lower each time.

  Hmm. The registration is different each time—so the figure was played on three different manuals. Probably a three-manual organ, then: Schwellwerke, Hauptwerke, Brustwerke.

  Johann’s eyes widened as a pedal tone was played to lay the foundation for a chord that was rapidly built. It was a large chord, very full of resonant timbre, very loud. That the instrument in the “recording” didn’t lose wind in playing that chord meant it was a good organ, well designed and well built.

  The chord moved and changed and resolved into a D minor tonic chord. Johann wasn’t sure yet if this piece would be a Dorian mode work in the D tonality, or if it would actually be in D minor. Either way, he expected to be pleased with it.

  The chord ended. The recording reproduced echoes and reverberations, as if the work was being played in a great cathedral. How odd to hear that in this square room.

  The organist in the recording was a man of great skill. The next passage was a bravura passage of fingers moving in patterns up the keys, followed by several chords. This figure was repeated on a different manual. But to break pattern, the figure went down the keyboard next, played in octaves on two manuals, then melded into another of the thunderous loud chords, followed by a ripple of single notes and ended in yet another massive chord.

  A new motif began, rapid runs of notes on the Brustwerke, leading into chords first on the Brustwerke, then on the Hauptwerke, finally leading into a slow run on the Pedal which culminated in a slow series of heavy resonant chords on the Hauptwerke and Pedal. The toccata had come to its conclusion.

  Johan took a slow breath in the moment of silence. Master Marcus said nothing, waiting.

  The fugue began. It was a light rapid figure begun on the Schwellwerke. It began passing back and forth between the manuals, still at that rapid tempo. Johann abandoned trying to analyze the music as it was played. He sat back, closed his eyes, and let it pour into him.

  It was like listening to the springtime flood of a river—ironic, since Bach meant brook. Figure followed figure, seemingly tumbling along. The voicing jumped from manual to manual to manual. The music flowed, almost bubbling. The pedals came in, like large rocks the music had to flow around.

  Still it poured along, rapid, even joyous in nature. The sound invaded Johann’s mind, his heart, his soul. His fingers and feet began to twitch involuntarily, reaching for keys as he listened to this…this masterpiece. He had no other word for it.

  The pedals came back in, rumbling along below the work of the manuals. Soon enough—or an eternity later, Johann wasn’t sure—the flow poured into a series of heavy chords
. The pedals sounded again, with the Hauptwerke coming in on top of them. One more rapid figure, then chords, many chords with little ripples between them. It was as if the river had reached the sea.

  A final series of massive chords sounded. Johann felt the gravitas of them as they slowly moved from one to another. The player in the recording let up on the keys, and once again Johann heard the reverberation of a great space.

  Marcus had arisen toward the end and stepped to the cabinet. Now he lifted the thin arm from the disk. The hissing sound disappeared from the cabinets. He turned to Johann.

  “Before the Ring of Fire, this was the single most widely known piece of organ music; not in America, not in Germany, but in the entire world. Six billion people in our world, and if they knew any organ work at all, this was it.”

  Johann struggled for words. “I… It…” He swallowed. “Magnificent. It is truly a masterwork. A bravura piece that tests the organist as much as the organ.”

  Marcus chuckled. “Yeah, it does. I play at the piano, but I’ve never had the finger control to attempt this one, never mind the feet. There is some question as to whether Bach actually wrote that, but most people believe—believed—that he did. Oddly enough, there are—were—some music historians who think that old Johann wrote that specifically to test organs, to test their registrations and in particular their wind-delivery capabilities.”

  “Indeed.” Johann nodded thoughtfully. “It definitely has me thinking about the design for the new opera house organ.”

  “That’s right, you’re doing that, aren’t you? How’s it going?”

  “Ideas only at this point. A few doodles on paper. I will not begin the serious work until I get back to Magdeburg.”

  “Cool. Keep me posted on how it goes. I’d really like to hear it when you’re done.

  “Now, what do you want to hear next by old Johann: instrumental music, choral music or more organ work?”

  “Oh, organ, by all means.”

  As Marcus turned back to the cabinet, Johann had a thought occur to him. “Master Marcus?”

  “Yes?”

  “You keep referring to ‘old’ Johann? How old was he when he wrote what we just heard?”

  Marcus looked over his shoulder with a grin. “Music historians think he was twenty-two, maybe a little older, when he wrote that.”

  * * *

  It was night out. Johann wandered down the streets of Grantville with his hands in his pockets. He had been hit in the head once, hard. He remembered how he felt then: woozy, disoriented, not certain what was real and concrete.

  He felt that same way now. That a Bach, a member of his family, possibly a descendant of his own loins, could write that music… He shook his head, trying to clear his thinking.

  Marcus had explained the Butterfly Effect to him. This Bach—this Johann Sebastian—would never exist in his future. He had been stolen from them by the Ring of Fire. Marcus had explained how little of his music had come back with Grantville. Johann could weep at the knowledge of what had been lost.

  But what had come back—ah, what greatness. The world of music would be changed by this.

  Johann stopped at the edge of town in a place where there were no nearby houses and no bright lights. He looked up at the sky. The moon hadn’t risen yet, and the stars were shining brightly in the velvet black of the night.

  “God,” he said. “All the great men say that Grantville is your doing. That the Ring of Fire is a divine work, a miracle either of blessing or of judgment. But what if it is a test?”

  He lowered his head and brooded on that. After a while, he looked back up at the sky. “Are you an Escher, God? Is Grantville like that picture in Marcus’ office? We cannot see it straight on, we cannot look at it from the side, everything is different and twisted and not what we expect?”

  Johann took his hands out of his pocket and pounded a fist into the opposite palm, then looked up once more.

  “Escher or not, God, the music is real. You cannot play with our ears like Escher does with our eyes. I have heard the music. I have heard the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. I claim him as ours. He will not languish in our time. His renown will be as great now as it was in Grantville’s world before the fall of the Ring.”

  He gave a definite nod. “He is ours.” He turned and began striding back toward Grantville, toward his room. He had work to do. And a picture to buy.

  Adagio

  Magdeburg

  August 1634

  Johann Bach left his rooming house in the sprawling exurb to the west of the Magdeburg city walls. He nodded to old Pieter the porter as he hurried down the wooden steps and stepped onto the graveled road that ran through the built-up area that by now was several times larger than the city proper. Magdeburg itself, the area within the walls, covered only about a square mile. The arc of land around the walls, beginning with the Navy Yard to the north of the city and ending with the refinery and chemical complex to the south, was full of new construction, much of it in raw lumber.

  The rebuilding of Magdeburg after the almost total destruction of the city by Tilly’s troops and the subsequent withdrawal of Pappenheim’s occupation forces had drawn workers and their families from all over the Protestant territories. The eruption of manufacturing concerns that sprouted from the intersection of up-time knowledge, down-time skills and interests, and the support of Emperor Gustavus Adolphus turned a stream of workers into a flood, and much of their initial labor went into raising the buildings they now lived in outside the city.

  He stopped at a bakery on the corner and purchased a roll for breakfast. Fresh and crusty it was, and he devoured it with gusto as he walked toward the city walls in the early morning light.

  The bridge over the moat was busy with traffic today, as it was most days. Johann joined the stream of men heading into the city. He looked down from the peak of the bridge and watched the water boil around the columns that supported the span. The gates into the city were open, as they were most of the time these days. Magdeburg was a city that was beginning to never sleep.

  Johann stepped through the gates, and immediately felt closed in by the walls. It was funny; he never would have felt that way even six months ago. Walled cities and towns was the way things were everywhere; it was the way things were done. But having lived in the “Boomtown,” as the up-timers called the exurb outside the walls, now for several weeks, and mixing with the up-timers on a frequent basis and hearing them complain about how crowded and cramped the old city was, he had started to absorb some of their attitudes. He shrugged his shoulders, and hurried on down the street. He had finally found a whitesmith who was rumored to have the knowledge he needed, and he wanted to speak with the man soon.

  “Johann!”

  He stopped and looked around. He was one of several men doing so, and he wasn’t surprised at that. His name was one of the more common men’s names among Germans. Sometimes he wished his parents had used a little more originality in selecting his name. They did so with his brothers, Christoph and Heinrich, after all.

  “Johann!” the voice called again, and he saw Marla Linder waving at him, two other women at her side. He waved back and walked to meet them.

  “When did you get back from Grantville?” Marla asked.

  “Wednesday.”

  “And today’s Friday, so you’ve been back for two days and you didn’t let us know.” Marla shook her head. “What are we going to do with you?”

  Johann grinned and shrugged.

  “So, what did you find out?” Marla lifted an eyebrow.

  Johann sobered. “I heard many of the recordings, and you are right. Johann Sebastian Bach is truly a great composer and musician, whatever his relationship to my family might be.”

  “And?” Marla looked at him expectantly. “Did you listen to the one I told you to?”

  A slow smile crossed Johann’s face. “The Toccata and Fugue in D Minor? Oh, yes,” he said with reverence. “Many times. One of the reasons I was so long in return
ing was I was copying it out from the printed copy in the library of your Methodist church.”

  “Hah. I forgot they had one,” Marla replied. “Gonna learn to play it, are you?”

  “A silly question, Frau Marla. It may take a while, of course. I share a name with the man, but I am not at all sure I share his talent.” Johann grimaced a bit.

  “So what’s next for you?”

  “Organ design and building. In fact, I am on my way to meet with a whitesmith. There is one in Grantville, but I would rather work with one here in Magdeburg. It will make testing and tuning easier. We have a lot of pipes to build.”

  “How many pipes in a pipe organ?” one of the other women asked.

  “I’m sorry,” Marla interjected, “I haven’t introduced you. Anastasia Matowski,” she pointed to the woman who had spoken. She was very short, petite, slender, with a long neck that lifted her head above her collar. “And this is Casey Stevenson,” Marla pointed to the other woman. “Meet Johann Bach.”

  “Really?” Casey looked to Marla.

  “No, he’s not that Bach,” Marla said.

  Johann gave a slight bow. He knew his smile was a bit twisted, but he was getting so tired of that reaction from the up-timers. The two women nodded back. “So how many pipes in a pipe organ?” the question was repeated by Fräulein Matowski.

  “That depends on the organ,” Johann smiled. “I do not yet know how many will be in my organ, but…” He thought for a moment about the space he had to work in. “If I realize my dreams it would not surprise me to see three thousand pipes, perhaps as much as two hundred more.”

  “Wow.” Fräulein Matowski blinked. Johann noticed that her eyes were large, golden hazel, and gleaming in a heart-shaped face framed by shoulder-length walnut-hued hair stirred by a breeze. “Sounds like a good job for a Bach.”

  “Thank you, Fräulein Matowski.” Johann bowed to her. With what he knew now, she had delivered him quite a compliment whether she meant to or not.