1635: Music and Murder (41 page)

"Calmly, calmly. It seems Latin comes in two flavors . . . "

"You mean Latin has dialects?" Marla demanded. "I have to learn how many versions of this stupid dead language?"

"You only need to learn one. But it can't be the one that the men from Italy know. The pope's Latin, it's sometimes called."

"Aha. Political correctness rears its ugly head." Marla settled back.

"Yep. And the pope's Latin has been very influenced by Italian speech patterns. No, you'll need to learn from one of the northern Germans. Their version is called 'humanist' Latin. It has the advantage that it sounds more or less the way it looks on the written page. You can't say that about the pope's Latin."

"Great. So all I need to do is find my choir materials, find a Latin teacher—for me—and figure out how I'm going to teach seventy kids who may or may not be able to play and sing, but probably don't read much music."

"I'd say you've got it." Lady Beth nodded in affirmation. "Although you can talk to Casey and Staci about the Latin, find out who's been helping them. For that matter, they can probably get you started. You've got a bit of an ear for languages from all your training, you know, and knowing French and a little Italian should help."

Marla stared off into space again for a moment, obviously thinking. Lady Beth clasped her hands and waited for the train of thought to arrive at the station. After a moment, Marla's gaze focused back on her immediate surroundings.

"Do you have class size limits?"

"Well, we're going to try and hold the line at twenty pupils per teacher in the regular classes."

"Will that apply to me?"

"Does it need to?"

"Um, for choir, no." Marla was tapping her lips with her forefinger. "But for the theory classes, yes. I can't have fifty kids in a class. That's at least three, maybe four classes. At an hour a class, that's the max I can take in one day. In fact, that may be more than I can handle. You may need to think about having Casey available to at least help with the younger grades, maybe even teach them."

Lady Beth focused a very direct gaze on Marla.

"Why?"

"Because," Marla sighed. "Lady Beth, I'm a professional musician. I have a reputation. You said yourself that the mention of my name had convinced people to sign up for the school. But being that professional musician places major demands on my time. Just practicing on piano, voice and flute takes at least six hours out of my day."

"Good Lord, woman," Lady Beth exclaimed. "How much sleep do you get?"

"Enough. Fortunately, I've never needed as much as some people. But the thing is, that's my priority. I have a lot of repertoire to learn." Marla looked down for a moment, then directed her gaze to Lady Beth, locking eyes with her. "I almost went crazy when the Ring fell and I lost the chance to do this in our time. God's given me another chance, and I'm grabbing it with both hands. Right now I'm one of the elite in Magdeburg. I may not be in Andrea Abati's league—yet—but I will be. I'm riding the crest, and I need to stay there as long as possible. I want to shape the future for other women in music, which means I've got to be prominent for a long time."

"So what does that mean for the school?" Lady Beth asked. "I can't afford to pay you just for your name."

"I know that. I will give you as much time as I can, but I can't be a full time teacher. There's not enough hours in the day. I've got to have at least one assistant now for the younger kids. And if the enrollment's going to build like you think it will, then there may have to be more than one."

"Maybe, just maybe, I can squeeze a few hours of time a week from Casey's schedule," Lady Beth muttered, looking at the teachers' schedule she had pulled out of a drawer. "Staci's is out of the question." She looked up. "But where am I supposed to find more than that?"

Since it had been something of a rhetorical question, Lady Beth was a bit surprised when Marla responded.

"I really want to use the Kodaly methods here. Send wires to the choir directors of the Grantville churches. Find out who's been leading and helping with the children's choirs in the churches, and what methods they use. That's where I got my training and a lot of my material, when I was doing that in high school. Maybe one of the helpers can be lured to coming to Magdeburg for a job in a prestigious girl's academy."

"Hmm." Lady Beth made another note. "That's actually not a bad idea. Marcus Wendell may know of someone, too."

"If no one is available, then look around locally and find someone who teaches children to sing in churches or schools and hire them away. I can teach the Kodaly methods to other teachers if I have to."

Lady Beth jotted that recommendation down as well.

"You can say that the music program is directed by Marla Linder," Marla offered. "That would be true. If you want my name, reputation and cachet associated with the academy, that's the best I can offer."

Lady Beth set her pencil down again.

"I think we can work with that. So when could you start?"

Marla thought for a moment. "I have to find my Kodaly material and begin refreshing myself on it. Say, next Monday?"

"Could we meet on Friday to talk about scheduling?"

"Sure."

"Deal. I'll see you then."

Marla rose to go, and turned toward the door. Lady Beth dropped the little nugget she had saved for last. "One last thing." Marla looked over her shoulder. "You'll have to wear a dress in the classrooms."

A wry expression crossed Marla's face. "Yeah, I figured that would be the case. I guess I'd better look up that seamstress that Mary hired to make my recital gowns." Her hand ran up and down the seam of her jeans. "I probably wouldn't get much respect as a teacher in these." She gave a lopsided smile to Lady Beth. "But that doesn't mean I'll like it."

Lady Beth started laughing as the door closed.

****

Marla looked up from the letter when Franz walked in the front door and walked over to where she sat to place a kiss on her forehead. She raised her face for a proper kiss.

Some time later, Franz pointed to the letter. "What is that?"

Marla finished settling her hair and picked it up. "A letter."

"I can see that much." Franz's grin took the sting out of his sarcastic tone. "Who is it from?"

"Marcus Wendell."

Franz grew serious. "What does he say?"

"It's a copy of a letter he sent to Masters Carissimi and Schütz, where he talks about the stuff we discussed a few weeks ago.

"The matter of publishing the up-time music?"

"Yep."

Franz moved Marla's feet over on the footstool, and perched on the edge. "What does he say?"

"The gist of it appears to be that they are going to found something called the Grantville Music Trust." Marla flipped through the pages of the letter, looking for a particular section. "The lawyers are still looking into what the best legal form will be, probably some kind of corporation. Everyone who contributes music will be given shares in the trust, but they're still trying to figure out the formulas on how those shares will be calculated. You and I and Masters Carissimi, Schütz and Abati will all have an initial share, plus anything else we can develop. The trust will try to gather as much up-time music as possible, both printed and recorded, in order to publish it on a regular basis."

She looked up from the letter to see a smile growing on Franz's face. "This is good." He took her hand in his. "This is very good. It means that we do not have to feel like it is our responsibility alone to see this work done."

Marla smiled back as she squeezed his fingers. "You're right. And I do feel as if a burden has been lifted."

****

"Come in, friend Patroclus, come in." Franz opened the door wide for the encumbered printer to step through.

"Thank you, Franz. I am here with the first set of the . . . " Patroclus was obviously searching his memory. After a moment, his face brightened. "Ah, yes . . . the 'proof' pages as Frau Marla called them."

"Then you had best come this way, for she is waiting your arrival with great anticipation." Franz led the way to the table where Marla sat. She smiled as the men stepped through the door. Patroclus almost tripped, Franz noted, when she turned her gaze fully on him. It was good to know, he thought to himself with a small smile, that he was not the only man she affected so.

"Ah, Patroclus, you brought the proofs. Gimme, gimme." She held her hands out like a small child begging for a treat.

The printer set the wrapped books carefully on the table, then opened his very large leather folio to take out several pages. They were of the cheapest grade paper, what Marla had called "paper towel brown."

"The music fonts have all been identified and designed." Patroclus had a faint air of pride. "You will receive a bill for the jeweler who did the work. We have cast and finished enough to do three pages of the full score, which I have with me."

"What of the text?" Marla's forehead creased.

"There we were most fortunate, as the font used in your books is very like the fonts my grandfather used to print Latin works when we were in Berlin. My father is unable to dispose of anything from what he thinks of as our family's days of glory, and so I found the type stored in a shed behind our shop."

"Good." The creases smoothed out as Patroclus spread out the proof pages.

"We know that this idea of printing proof sheets for us to review before you do the actual printing is a new thing to you." Franz made sure his voice was warm. "But after hearing the stories from Master Schütz and Master Carissimi about how many times they and others had to manually correct printed books because of serious printing errors, this has to be done. The presentation of these works to, not just the
Hoch-Adel
, but the entire world, is too important for any preventable errors to be allowed."

"I understand," Patroclus sighed. "And in truth, their criticisms were fair. But you must understand that for most printers, music is a very minor part of our business. We do not have literacy in music, like we do words. We must just try to place symbols on the page, and sometimes it is not so easy."

"Musical literacy, huh?" Marla remarked. "Well, I hope you have your best people working this project, because by the time they're done, they will be very musically literate. If you think it would help, however, I can give quick lessons to your typesetters so that they will know enough about the music they're looking at to understand what they are doing." She grinned at Franz. "After all, if I'm going to be teaching basics at the school, I can do it for them as well."

"School?" Patroclus looked interested.

"I'm the new music director at the . . . let me make sure I get this right . . . " Marla took a deep breath. "The Duchess Elisabeth Sofie Secondary School for Girls." The school name all came out in a rush.

"Ah," Patroclus responded. "I have heard of this school. There is much discussion in the city about it. There are those who see women such as yourself," he gave a nod of the head that was almost a short bow to Marla, "and think that perhaps they will avail themselves of this for their daughters. You will be a part of it? You think it will be that good?"

Marla snorted. "It will be that good whether I'm a part of it or not. I know the people who are setting it up and getting it rolling. They're good people. The school will be great."

"Ah." Patroclus absorbed all of that. "My sister, Eurydice, reads and writes well—a printer's child, you see—and she can do some arithmetic, but there is more she should know. She is fourteen, so it is not too late. I will talk to Papa."

"Do that. It will be good for her," Marla said.

They all focused on the pages Patroclus had laid out. "You do understand that when these music books are set in type, you can't take them apart to reuse the type," Franz cautioned. "We expect these to be in demand for years."

"Generations, even," Marla offered.

"That was mentioned in our discussions some time ago." Patroclus was not smiling. "You are paying for the fonts, so that is not an issue. It is the storage that is a problem—that, and the frames. It would take over 200 frames to set and hold all the type for the pages of both the full score and the vocal parts book. We do not have that many. There may not be that many in all of Magdeburg."

"Can you build more frames?" Marla asked.

"Given time and money, of course we can. But even if we had the frames, we have no place to store that many." Franz opened his mouth, only to be overridden by Patroclus. "And you are not paying us enough to move."

"What do you suggest?" Franz got his question in.

"There are two things you need to consider. First, you—we—will not have exclusive editions of whatever works you publish forever."

"What do you mean?" The creases were back in Marla's forehead.

"Once they see the demand for them, other printers will copy your works and produce their own editions. I agree that the music font will be a problem for them, but they will do it. They will not be as good as ours, naturally." Patroclus smiled. "But they will find buyers."

"And this is legal?" The creases were now valleys.

"Yes. Oh, it is not considered ethical by many, but it does happen. Once the war is over and some measure of prosperity returns for both book readers and printers, it will happen more frequently."

"Copyright laws," Marla muttered. "Gotta get ahold of Mike Stearns or Ed Piazza and talk about copyright laws."

"You mentioned two things?" Franz asked

"Yes. The second is to determine now how many copies you wish to print. Printed signatures can be stored easily, particularly if they have not been bound yet. And the more we print, the less expensive the per copy cost becomes as the setup costs are spread across the total number of copies."

Franz looked at Marla. She looked at him. They raised their eyebrows at each other. "We will talk to the others about this," he said after a moment. "Meanwhile, we should finish the proofs, so that you may return to your shop." They all looked to the table again.

"This is the title page, about which I have two questions." The printer looked at them, and Franz motioned him to continue.