"Blish, James - A Work of Art" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

"In Weimar."
"Who was the leading lady?"
"Pauline de Ahna."
"What happened to her afterward?'"
"I married her. Is she . . ." Strauss began anxiously.
"No," Dr. Kris said. "I'm sorry, but we lack the data to
reconstruct more or less ordinary people."
The composer sighed. He did not know whether to be
worried or not. He had loved Pauline, to be sure; on the
other hand, it would be pleasant to be able to live the new
life without being forced to take off one's shoes every time
one entered the house, so as not to scratch the polished
hardwood floors. And also pleasant, perhaps, to have two
o'clock in the afternoon come by without hearing Pauline's
everlasting, "Richardjetzt komponiertl"
"Next question," he said.
For reasons which Strauss did not understand, but was
content to take for granted, he was separated from Drs.
Kris and Seirds as soon as both were satisfied that the
composer's memory was reliable and his health stable. His
estate, he was given to understand, had long since been
broken upa sorry end for what had been one of the
principal fortunes of Europebut he was given sufficient
money to set up lodgings and resume an active life. He was
provided, too, with introductions which proved valuable.
It took longer than he had expected to adjust to the changes
that had taken place in music alone. Music was, he quickly
began to suspect, a dying art, which would soon have a status
not much above that held by flower arranging back in what
he thought of as his own century. Certainly it couldn't be
denied that the trend toward fragmentation, already visible
back in his own time, had proceeded almost to completion
in 2161.
He paid no more attention to American popular tunes
than he had bothered to pay in his previous life. Yet it
was evident that their assembly-line production methods
all the ballad composers openly used a slide-rule-like device
called a Hit Machinenow had their counterparts almost
throughout serious music.
The conservatives these days, for instance, were the twelve-
tone composersalways, in Strauss's opinions, a dryly me-
chanical lot, but never more so than now. Their gods
Berg, Schoenberg, von Webernwere looked upon by the
concert-going public as great masters, on the abstruse side
perhaps, but as worthy of reverence as any of the Three B's.
There was one wing of the conservatives, however, which
had gone the twelve-tone procedure one better. These men
composed what was called "stochastic music," put together
by choosing each individual note by consultation with tables
of random numbers. Their bible, their basic text, was a vol-