May 23, 2012

From “Nathan of S’Mad” by Reqima Syrus

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S’Mad had been a fixture of the independent and underground music scene in town for years. The proprietor for many years, Nathan Rostop, simply maintained that after setting the little marquee for the joint’s first act (The Bynched Sea, a jazz trio led by SMU professor Sam Bynch), the S, M, A, D and apostrophe had been the only characters left. The fact that the odd name seemed to draw people in was, according to Rostop, a bonus.

Still, from its humble 1978 beginnings as a drain on Nathan Rostop’s UAW pension and disability fund, S’Mad eventually expanded to include a full cash bar (in 1983) a complete kitchen (in 1986) and eventually its own microbrewery (in 1998). Regional and local acts of every genre and stripe kept the house at least moderately in the green, from The Bynched Sea jazz trio to The Rescinded League folk metal to the Antique Threshers ska group.

When Nathan Rostop died in 2002, reportedly during a performance of The Highest Constable electro-pop group, the books were opened on S’Mad and it was found to be drowning in red ink, with operating costs and gig fees largely paid directly out of the cover fees in cash.

 

September 7, 2011

From “That Lurking Dissonance” by Leonard S. Jonsen

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The music was still there, the bright jazz issuing forth from Cecil’s coronet.

But he found himself remembering less and less of each performance, though the raw spots on his hands were a testament that they’d happened. Between the dressing room–and all the pills, poweders, syringes, and smokes it contained–and the curtain, everything was, well, a blur.

Not only that, though. The music itself seemed to be different. Cecil had spoken with the audience, and they assured him that his playing was the same or better than ever. But what little he could remember of the performances wasn’t dizzying or joyful. No, something harsh and dissonant, straight out of Leo Ornstein, had crept into Cecil’s music.

And he was the only one who could hear it.

 

September 4, 2011

From “Hanna Maurer, Age 109, Tells All” by S. David Toepfer

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“When I played Carnegie Hall in…it must have been 1918 or 1919 or so…the result was a near riot,” Hanna said. She lit a fresh cigarette but didn’t inhale, letting the smoke wreathe her head. “My own composition–very dissonant, very futurist, full of radical tone clusters and other such nonsense. The result was a near riot.”

“They didn’t like it?” Berne asked.

“It was one thing for young turks like Ornstein and Schoenberg and Scriabin to play music like that. But a woman? There was an editorial in the Times the next day saying that I was childishly beating my piano and letting my handlers–my male handlers–transform it into something avant-garde.”

“What did you do?”

“I sent them a copy of one of my sheets with all the music there in full notation. Never did get a response, but I loved the fact that little old me could case such a sensation.”

Bern delicately cleared his throat and swatted away some encroaching smoke. “Why’d you give up performing then?”

“Two things, really,” Hanna sighed. “For one, I grew bored with futurism and dissonance. Experimenting with tonality…now that was enough to get me attacked from all sides. The futurists who’d made me their poster child weren’t happy, and the people I’d irritated in the first place weren’t either.”

“And the second thing?”

“I fell in love.”

 

June 28, 2011

From “Music by Sylvester J. Whitmann” by Harriet K. Dillon

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Not many know that Sly Whitmann harbored aspirations well above and beyond the world in which he became famous, the smoky jazz and blues clubs of Bourbon and Beale. Patrons at the venues where he performed often remember being dazzled as Sly switched instruments mid-set, moving from his signature coronet to the alto sax, the trombone, even the honky-tonk piano. For year rumors swirled about Sly’s personal life as girlfriend after girlfriend left complaining that he didn’t seem to have any time for them. When one of Sly’s relatively few studio albums dropped, people noticed that it included a full symphony orchestra backing up the usual quartet, but hardly anyone read in the microscopic print that Sly had orchestrated the various parts himself.

In fact, Sly Whitmann harbored a desire, long and keen, to write for an orchestra. Those nights away from clubs and girls were spent in classes, or poring over correspondence courses. Sly never earned a degree but over his lifetime he put in enough coursework and practice to qualify for a degree from Juliard. It was his dream to infuse the raw passion and popular sound of the clubs into the whole range of instruments, something akin to Gershwin in scope but far more modern and experimental. But try as he might (behind the scenes, of course) no one was willing to commit the resources to allow him to write, record, or perform anything but club music.

That all changed when Dr. Rutherford Scheer directed the pioneering film “Carnivale et Amour” in 1968. He hired Sly on the spot to record music for his picture, and the posters proclaimed that the film was to feature music by one Sylvester J. Whitmann. But it was not to be. A fickle audience at a preview was all it took for the producers to remove Scheer from creative control, recut the film, and distribute it with no original music at all, only a selection of pop tunes licensed from the Decca back catalog (which completely clashed with the Mississippi River setting). Scheer was able to preserve the acetates of Sly’s music, but never got the chance to present them to his friend; Sly died of a heart attack onstage less than a week after he received the news.

 

January 26, 2011

From “The Chord Heard Round the Multiverse” by T. G. Woodburn

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Tobias rested a boot on the amplifier. “This, my friends, is the Ampbust 262. Only 250 were ever made before federal noise regulations forced the maker out of business.”

A quiet gasp resonated throughout the group. “What are those?” somebody asked, pointing to nearby amp-like shapes under a tarp.

“These are three more of ’em. Barn finds, picked ’em up for a song and restored ’em myself.” Tobias waited for this to sink in for a moment.

“And?”

“On the same circuit, grounded, with a high-quality axe to back them up? We could tear down a wall or tear a hole in the freakin’ fabric of spacetime, man.”

 

January 11, 2011

From “Muriel’s Music” by Kenton Gaines Rowena

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Muriel managed one final twist of the music box’s spring before her strength deserted her.

But it was enough.

The box sprung open on the ground where she lay in a spreading pool and began to plink out its simple melody. According to those that heard it, though, the sound quickly became far warmer and richer, almost like a harp or piano. Its music also spread far beyond what normal acoustics should have allowed–in addition to the Public Safety officers near Muriel, it could be heard by government troops in the base and on the firing line, along with their Revolutionary Guard opponents on the other side. Even riot police moving against a hostage situation twenty miles away, along with the hostage taker, reported hearing something.

The effect on all of them was the same: a feeling of overwhelming peace, safety, and tingling warmth like being held in an unconditionally loving embrace. Weapons clattered to the ground. Helmets were pried off to allow the divine sound to be heard with greater clarity. Many fell to their knees or wept openly.

One of the Public Safety officers approached Muriel and held out his hand. Weakly, she grasped it, and smiled–the last thing she was ever to do.

 

December 27, 2010

From “Her Refrain” by Jody Y. Gallagher

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Melodious music drifts over you as you approach the stairwell, carried by an impossibly rich and pure voice. The words aren’t important–are they ever?–but as you listen you can discern paeans to sunlight, beauty, and rain.

Part of you insists that you climb the stairs without delay, to uncover the source of the beautiful refrain. But another voice–a deeper, more primal part–suggests that you stay in place, rooted, and hear as much of the soaring music as you can. Clambering up the marble steps would add an unhealthy permissiveness to the music, and might startle the song into an early end or even provoke the singer into hurried flight.

The two viewpoints swirling within eventually come to a compromise, and you begin to easy your way up, taking great care that not a single shoe squeak interrupts the sonic glory from on high. It takes far longer to climb in such a manner than simply charging the steps, but it is worthwhile: by the time you reach the top, the song has neither stopped nor faltered. You are able to see the singer, leaning against a marble column and looking up into a skylight.

She isn’t at all what you expected.

 

December 17, 2010

From “The Annabelle Waltz” by Christian C. Denner

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This post is part of the December Blog Chain at Absolute Write. This month’s challenge is to write hint fiction: a story 25 words or less.

“Why do you keep requesting that same waltz?” the bandleader cried.
“Because I wrote it,” the old man said, “and it reminds me of her.”

Check out this month’s other bloggers, all of whom have posted or will post their own hint fiction:
AuburnAssassin (direct link to the relevant post)
jonjon.benjamin (direct link to the relevant post)
rmgil04 (direct link to the relevant post)
CScottMorris (direct link to the relevant post)
Proach (direct link to the relevant post)
Aheila (direct link to the relevant post)
AimeeLaine (direct link to the relevant post)
Regan Leigh (direct link to the relevant post)
HillaryJacques (direct link to the relevant post)
Ad. (direct link to the relevant post)
Regypsy (direct link to the relevant post)
Dolores Haze (direct link to the relevant post)
Semmie (direct link to the relevant post)
ElizaFaith13 (direct link to the relevant post)
ania (direct link to the relevant post)
JHUK (direct link to the relevant post)
Angyl78 (direct link to the relevant post)
GradyHendrix (direct link to the relevant post)

 

December 1, 2010

From “Rejected!” by Calvin Higgins Joachimthal

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The film was rubbish, to be sure, but nevertheless had offered Geraldstein a broad canvas. He’d written several long-lined cues for the battle sequences, basing them on a pair of contrasting themes: an oboe-led five-note phrase for the heroes and snarling brass sixteenth notes for the villains. There was a tacked-on romantic subplot as well, so Geraldstein wrote a string love theme that was interpolated into many of the action sequences, taken up by brass or woodwinds depending on which side possessed the utterly helpless heroine, football-like, at any given time.

Of course, in that era of CGI, Geraldstein had worked mostly from storyboards and a print with green screen where major special effects would still be added. The director and producers demanded daily updates, as well, so the orchestrators converted whatever DAT tapes were finished at the end of each session on the scoring stage to CD and mailed them across the lot to the admin offices. In retrospect, the comments that came back–“scale it back,” “less noise,” “too old-fashioned”–should have been warning signs.

Then, one day, Geraldstein and his orchestrators had arrived for a scoring session to find the orchestra already warming up, with Calvin Zukovsky conducting it. Geraldstein liked Zukovsky; the boy was classically trained and had apprenticed under Konstantin at MGM. But he had a tendency to cave into whatever the producers wanted for a film, musically, and had been typecast in urban thrillers and romantic comedies as a result. He was apologetic to a fault, even offering to take Geraldstein to dinner, but the message was loud and clear.

His music had been rejected from the picture because it didn’t match a focus group’s impression for a movie starring a rapper, and Zukovsky had been brought in to give it a “contemporary” sound.

 

November 27, 2010

From “Varta River Symphony” by Tobias Engelbert

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Imię Nazwisko was obviously not the man’s real name, but the one that had been used to publish and record his music in Wilhelmine Germany. Rave reviews of concerts had appeared in music publications before the war, but the number of surviving works by Nazwisko was vanishingly small due to the tumultuous 20th century history of the region in which he lived and worked. Most of his sheet music was burned during the battles for Poland, leaving just a few player piano rolls, wax cylinders, and gramophone records that had been shipped to audiophiles elsewhere.

Orris had painstakingly tracked down and transcribed–by ear–all Nazwisko’s surviving recordings save one. He’d also digitally reproduced and distributed what recordings he could, on the grounds that Nazwisko had unfairly been denied a place in musical history due to the privations of history. But that last recording…

The Vartafluß Symphonie had been recorded in Posen in October 1918 for distribution on gramophone record. Due to the war, only a handful of master copies were made with an eye toward postwar distribution, but the dismembering of Germany after the war and Nazwisko’s death or disappearance after 1919 meant that this never came to pass. The composer had carried the sheet music with him to an uncertain fate, leaving just a single copy of the work: a master belonging to a reclusive audio antiquarian.

Orris was determined to see it recovered, pirated, and shared with the world. Even if it meant bending the law.

 

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