Extracts from the Galactick Almanack: Music Around the Universe, Janifer [book series for 12 year olds TXT] 📗
- Author: Janifer
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(A mechanical device has since replaced the native. This is, of course, due to the terrific expense of importing both natives and plankton to other planets than Wellington V for concerts.)
Thus, a peculiarity of native life led not only to the Symphonic Storm Suite, but to such lovely compositions as Schmaltar's Hum-Drum Sonata.
SEPTEMBER 30: The victimization of the swanlike inhabitants of Harsh XII, perhaps the most pitiful musical scandal of the ages, was begun by Ferd Pill, born on this date in 8181. Pill, who died penitent in a neuterary of the Benedictine Order, is said to have conceived his idea after perusing some early Terran legends about the swan.
He never represented himself as the composer, but always as the agent or representative of a Harsh XII inhabitant. In the short space of three years, he sold over two hundred songs, none of great length but all, as musicians agree to this day, of a startling and almost un-Hnau-like beauty.
When a clerk in the records department of Pill's publishers discovered that Pill, having listed himself as the heir of each of the Harsh XII composers, was in fact collecting their money, an investigation began.
That the composers were in fact dead was easily discovered. That Pill was their murderer was the next matter that came to light.
In an agony of self-abasement, Pill confessed his crime. "The Harshians don't sing at all," he said. "They don't make a sound. But—like the legendary swan of old Terra—they do deliver themselves of one song in dying. I murdered them in order to record these songs, and then sold the recordings."
Pill's subsequent escape from the prison in which he was confined, and his trip to the sanctuary of the neuterary, were said to have been arranged by the grateful widow of one of the murdered Harshians, who had been enabled by her mate's death to remarry with a younger and handsomer Harshian.
DECEMBER 5: Today marks the birthday of Timmis Calk, a science teacher of Lavoris II.
Calk is almost forgotten today, but his magnificent Student Orchestra created a storm both of approval and protest when it was first seen in 9734. Critics on both sides of what rapidly became a Galaxywide controversy were forced, however, to acknowledge the magnificent playing of the Student Orchestra and its great technical attainments.
Its story begins with Calk himself and his sweetheart, a lovely being named Silla.
Though Calk's love for Silla was true and profound, Silla did not return his affectionate feelings. She was an anti-scientist, a musician. The sects were split on Lavoris II to such an extent that marriage between Calk and his beloved would have meant crossing the class lines—something which Silla, a music-lover, was unwilling to contemplate.
Calk therefore determined to prove to her that a scientist could be just as artistic as any musician. Months of hard work followed, until finally he was ready.
He engaged the great Drick Hall for his first concert—and the program consisted entirely of classical works of great difficulty. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony opened the program, and Fenk's Reversed Ode closed it. Calk had no time for the plaudits of critics and audience; he went searching for Silla.
But he was too late. She had heard his concert—and had immediately accepted the marriage proposal of a childhood sweetheart.
Calk nearly committed suicide. But at the last moment, he tossed the spraying-bottle away and went back to Silla.
"Why?" he said. "Why did you reject me, after hearing the marvelous music which I created?"
"You are not a musician, but a scientist," Silla said. "Any musician would have refrained from growing his orchestra from seeds."
Unable to understand her esthetic revulsion, Calk determined there and then to continue his work with the Student Orchestra (it made a great deal more money than science-teaching). Wrapping his rootlets around his branches, he rolled away from her with crackling dignity.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Extracts from the Galactick Almanack, by Larry M. Harris
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