1635: Music and Murder (40 page)

"And we will have very strict standards about accuracy."

"Bah!"

Franz was starting to chuckle, watching the bombastic printer wave away the remaining obstructions as if they were nothing but the paper he printed upon.

Patroclus closed the books and set the vocal part volume on top of the full score.

"Can you leave these with us? The full score is about a quarto size, and the parts book is about an octavo size, but we must count pages and plan how they would be printed to tell you how much they would cost to print."

Andrea looked to Franz.

"Take great care," Franz conceded. "The full score is irreplaceable."

"As if it is a royal treasure," Patroclus affirmed, "for that is what it is."

The four men shook hands.

****

"Come in, come in." Franz opened the door to admit Patroclus Zopff. "Come, meet the others." He led him to the table. "You have already been introduced to Master Abati. Now meet Master Giacomo Carissimi, master of the Royal and Imperial Academy of Music; Master Heinrich Schütz,
Kappellmeister
to the Vasa court in Magdeburg; and my wife, Marla Linder." Heads nodded around the table as names were called. Zopff had sufficient presence of mind to return the nods, but his eyes were a bit wide as Franz concluded with, "Everyone, this is Herr Patroclus Zopff from the printer's establishment that we approached." Franz gestured Patroclus to a seat, and took his own.

Marla giggled. Everyone looked at her. "I'm sorry, but . . . Patroclus?" She giggled again

Patroclus' face twisted into a wry expression. "Yes, well, you have to understand that my family is from Berlin." He sighed. "My grandfather, Conrad Zopff, was a leading printer in Berlin, often printing works by or for the Elector's family. The Hohenzollerns would often name their children with classical names, sometimes from Latin, but just as often from Greek. Grandfather, I suppose thinking to imitate or flatter those whose coat skirts he rode, named his children Agamemnon, Ajax and Penelope. And likewise, my father named me Patroclus, my brother Telemachus, and my sister Eurydice."

"Oh, the poor girl," Marla gasped, trying to suppress yet another giggle.

"Indeed." Patroclus smiled. "
My
son, however, is named Conrad." There was a general laugh at that statement.

After a moment, Franz said, "Well enough. What is your response to our proposal?"

Patroclus laid the original scores on the table, then consulted a small notebook he pulled from his pocket.

"The large book, the . . . full score, you called it: it has 421 pages of music, plus another six pages of associated introductory material, for 427 pages total. It is a quarto size, so that would require 54 sheets to print."

Marla looked confused. "Sheets?"

"Paper is made in a large sheet," Heinrich explained from his end of the table. "The size of a book is determined by how many pages are printed on the sheet and how many times the sheet is folded." He pantomimed in the air. "A quarto page is folded twice, so that the pages are one-fourth the size of the sheet . . . hence quarto."

Light dawned in Marla's eyes. "And an octavo . . . "

"Would be folded one more time." Heinrich smiled.

Patroclus held up the vocal parts book. "This is about the size of an octavo." He laid it sideways on top of the full score book. "And you can see that it is about half the size of the quarto."

"So a quarto sheet will have four pages on it," Marla concluded triumphantly.

"Um, no," Patroclus said. Marla looked confused again. "It will have eight pages printed."

Light dawned again. "Oh, front and back." Marla thought for a moment. "How do the pages line up next to each other, then? I mean, the folding . . . "

Patroclus laughed. "That is my job, to make sure the pages are arranged in such a way on the sheet that when they are folded and combined with other sheets they are in the right place." He looked back to his notebook. "So, as to the paper . . . " he pulled samples out of his pocket and passed them around, "the price varies with the quality, of course."

Marla looked at a brownish piece, and shook her head. "This almost reminds me of the old paper towels the school used to use, the kind that would take all the skin off your nose if you tried to blow into them."

Patroclus looked mystified at her comments. "Ah, that is the cheapest. It runs around 4 florins per bale."

"Bale?"

"That is our standard measurement of paper. I would expect your proposal to use at least this paper." He pointed to a cream colored sample in Heinrich Schütz's hand. "That one will run 5 ¼ florins per bale. And this grade," he pointed to the sample held by Giacomo Carissimi, "this is 6 florins per bale. This I would recommend for your presentation copies."

"Presentation copies?" Once again Marla looked confused.

"The special copies a musician gives a patron, or a prospective patron," Heinrich responded.

"They are usually printed and bound to the highest degree of quality and presentation," Giacomo added.

Marla sat back and tapped her lips with her forefinger. Franz remembered seeing Mary Simpson doing the same thing. He smiled a little at the thought of Mary, wondering where she was and if she was safe. He prayed so, as she had meant so much to both himself and to Marla.

"We'll do presentation copies," Marla announced, then grinned. "But we'll do them with a twist. We'll do a superb one for the king and princess, then we'll do a few that are just a little less superb for the patrons. Then we'll tell them that the first ten or so who contribute so much to the support of this performance, including our printing costs, will receive one of these presentation copies, complete with autographs by the soloists and the conductor." She pointed to Franz. "That ought to interest them, bring out the excitement."

The discussion from there descended into the depths of printing operations and costs. Schütz proved to be very knowledgeable about the business of printing. But then, Franz reminded himself, the master had managed the printing of several of his own works and collections over the years. Printing costs per sheet or per bale; how many pages to the sheet; how many sheets to the signature; how many signatures to the book; the question of whether engraving should be done instead of typesetting; the costs of creating the special fonts for music and text for both books; all were discussed at length. Franz choked back more than one yawn before the final agreements were reached. Both Schütz and Carissimi were satisfied, so Franz was certainly not in a mind to object.

Hands were shaken all around. Patroclus leaned back in his chair, almost as if in relief. He looked around at the others. "Who will do your binding?"

Once again Marla looked surprised. Poor Marla, Franz thought to himself. She was certainly receiving an education in the down-time printer's world. Nothing was as simple as she thought it would be.

"Ah, I forgot to ask if you handled the binding as well." Schütz shook his head.

Patroclus sighed. "If you ask my father, he will say that we do. He looks to the past, still. When the family was in Berlin, we were indeed publishers. We would print and bind and sell, both our own work and that of others. But today, here, now, we are printers only, with but enough work to keep two of our three presses busy. The war, you know, has been very hard on printers." There were murmurs of agreement around the table. "So, no, we do not bind. I can recommend to you Friederich Mappe. His work is very good."

After another round of polite conversation, Franz escorted Patroclus to the door. When he returned to the table, they all looked at each other.

"So," Marla broke the silence, "we are on our way."

"Indeed." Schütz agreed. "But as I sat here this afternoon, it occurs to me that the dissemination of the uptime music, if you want it to be in your hands, you must take steps to acquire it."

The resulting discussion lasted until late in the evening, and Franz didn't yawn once.

****

Lady Beth Haygood looked up at the knock on the door.

"Oh, hey, Marla. Come on in." She reached over and moved a stack of papers off the nearest chair. "Have a sit."

"Thanks, Lady Beth." Marla took a seat. Lady Beth observed to herself that married life really seemed to agree with Marla. She looked more . . . settled, somehow, than she had since any time after the Ring fell. But she was still wearing her favorite jeans, so she hadn't changed all that much. "So," Marla asked, "what did you need to see me for?"

"You remember that conversation we had a few weeks ago?"

"The one about the girls' school?"

"Yeah. You remember you said if we needed a music teacher to call you?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, if you meant that, the job's yours."

Marla's face lit up. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Cool! Wait until I tell Franz!" Marla stared off into space for a minute or so. Lady Beth waited until she came back into focus. "So, what will my responsibilities be?"

Lady Beth searched in front of her for a particular piece of paper. "Where is it . . . ah, here it is." She looked over the top of her glasses at Marla. "We don't know how many students we'll have this first year. There's been a lot of interest shown, and we have over thirty girls enrolled now. We think the enrollment will top out at around seventy, maybe a little more."

"Wow." Marla looked impressed. "That many, huh? Great. And how many of them will be involved in music?"

"All of them." Lady Beth smiled in response to Marla's surprise. "It's going to be a required part of the curriculum. In this day and time, music is looked on with almost the same favor as sports was in our time. Every parent who enrolled or is thinking about enrolling a student has asked questions about music, and about who would be teaching it. In fact, your name actually convinced some people to go ahead and enroll now, when I told them we were going to ask you to teach the music."

Marla now looked a bit taken aback. "Umm . . . seventy girls, huh? I know that people here and now take their music seriously, but I still wasn't expecting quite so many." She shook her head, then straightened up. "But that's great. Nice big choirs I'll have. Do you have an age breakdown yet?"

"We're going to run the equivalents of fifth through twelfth grades. Today, our guess is forty to fifty in fifth and sixth grades, with the rest spread across the higher grades. That balance will even out in a year or so, I expect."

"Okay, that's two, maybe three classes. I'll dig out some of my children's choir material from church."

Lady Beth chuckled. "Marla, dear, you're going to find that a lot of these girls are already pretty musically proficient. They all participate in their church liturgies in the congregations, so they all can sing—some of them rather well. And most of them, the older ones anyway, can play an instrument to one degree or another."

Marla shook her head. "There I go again, assuming that because I'm the up-timer I know everything and I'll have to start at square one."

"Well, you might have to in one respect," Lady Beth said. "I doubt that most of the girls, even the ones who play an instrument, are musically literate to any great extent. Most of them learn by rote, from what I can find out."

"So, I'll have to teach them at least some theory in the first few weeks," Marla concluded. She smiled in relief. "Good. I have some Kodaly materials I can use with the younger kids, and I'll just work the older kids through one of the basic theory sections of my theory book. By the time we get through those, I should know everyone and their abilities."

"Good." Lady Beth picked up another piece of paper. "I've been to the town house we're using until the school buildings are finished, and there's a harpsichord there. For other instruments, the girls will have to provide their own. So, what else do you need?"

"Blank staff paper, from one of the printers. Check with the Zopffs. Pencils . . . preferably some of those imitation #2 yellows that showed up in Magdeburg this year. Something to use for erasers. Books, when I can get them printed." Marla thought some more. "And a piano." Her gaze at Lady Beth was most direct. "It doesn't have to be a grand. In fact, it probably shouldn't be. But I need a piano."

Lady Beth smiled. "I already thought of that. Casey Stevenson is teaching here now. In fact, she and Staci Matowski are working with the girls we've already enrolled. Anyway, Casey's mom had a piano."

"Sure," Marla interjected. "A pretty good Baldwin console, if I remember right."

"Well, Casey said we could 'borrow' it, since there's nobody at home to play it anymore."

"Great." Marla smiled. "You and Casey send a wire to Ingram Bledsoe and tell him to get it shipped up here. Tell him it's for me, and he'll make sure you get it as soon as possible and in the best shape."

"I didn't think of Ingram." Lady Beth jotted a note.

"I was going to recommend that you wire him to buy one, but if you've got one for free, that's great."

Lady Beth finished her note, then looked up with a smile that could only be called sinister. "Another thing—how's your Latin?"

"Latin?" Marla looked perplexed. "You know me, Lady Beth. I took French in high school, and learned a bit of Italian and modern German from all the art songs I sang in my voice lessons. Since the Ring fell, I've spent most of my time trying to learn the various dialects of the nearby Germans. When have I had time to learn Latin?"

"Well, you'll have to learn it. Abbess Dorothea, who's the closest thing to a certifying agency here and now, says that all instructors must be fluent in German, Latin and at least one other language. French, now," Lady Beth dived for another paper, "yes, we're covered. Madame de Farge, one of the Huguenot French, has agreed to teach. So you're off the hook." Another evil smile at Marla.

"You're not serious . . . are you?"

"On the Latin, absolutely."

Marla heaved a sigh. "Well, I learned German in two years; I suppose I can learn Latin as well. Master Giacomo and Master Andrea can probably help me."

"I'm afraid not." Lady Beth turned serious.

"
What?
Why not?" Marla was starting to get peeved, Lady Beth realized, so she held up her hands.