The Macauley Circuit

“My life is ended anyway,” he said in a thick, deep, guttural voice. “It ended when your machines took over music.”

He took off his battered cap and revealed a full head of white hair. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and his face was speckled with stiff-looking white stubble.

“My name is Gregor Kolfmann,” he said. “I’m sure you have heard of me.”

“Kolfmann, the pianist?”

He nodded, pleased despite everything. “Yes, Kolf­mann, the former pianist. You and your machine have taken away my life.”

Suddenly all the hate that had been piling up in me since he burst in—the hate any normal man feels for a cyberwrecker—melted, and I felt guilty and very humble before this old man. As he continued to speak, I realized that I—as a musical artist—had a responsibility to old Kolfmann. I still think that what I did was the right thing, whatever you say.

“Even after synthesizing became the dominant method of presenting music,” he said, “I continued my concert career for years. There were always some people who would rather see a man play a piano than a technician feed a tape through a machine. But I couldn’t compete forever.” He sighed. “After a while anyone who went to live concerts was called a reactionary, and I stopped getting bookings. I took up teaching for my living. But no one wanted to learn to play the piano. A few have studied with me for antiquarian reasons, but they are not artists, just curiosity-seekers. They have no artistic drive. You and your machine have killed art!”

I looked at Macauley’s circuit and at Kolfmann, and felt as if everything were dropping on me at once. I put away my graph for the Beethoven, partly because all the excitement would make it impossible for me to get anywhere with it today and partly because it would only make things worse if Kolfmann saw it. Macauley was still standing there, waiting to explain his circuit to me. I knew it was important, but I felt a debt to old Kolfmann, and I decided I’d take care of him before I let Macauley do any more talking.

“Come back later,” I told Macauley. “I’d like to discuss the implications of your circuit, as soon as I’m through talking to Mr. Kolfmann.”

“Yes, sir,” Macauley said, like the obedient puppet a technician turns into when confronted by a superior, and left. I gathered up the papers he had left me and put them neatly at a corner of my desk. I didn’t want Kolfmann to see them, either, though I knew they wouldn’t mean anything to him except as symbols of the machine he hated.

When Macauley had gone I gestured Kolfmann to a plush pneumochair, into which he settled with the distaste for excess comfort that is characteristic of his generation. I saw my duty plainly—to make things better for the old man.

“We’d be glad to have you come to work for us, Mr. Kolfmann,” I began, smiling. “A man of your great gift—”

He was up out of that chair in a second, eyes blazing. “Work for you? I’d sooner see you and your machines dead and crumbling! You, you scientists—you’ve killed art, and now you’re trying to bribe me!”

“I was just trying to help you,” I said. “Since, in a manner of speaking, we’ve affected your livelihood, I thought I’d make things up to you.”

He said nothing, but stared at me coldly, with the anger of half a century burning in him.

“Look,” I said. “Let me show you what a great musical instrument the synthesizer itself is.” I rummaged in my cabinet and withdrew the tape of the Hohenstein Viola Concerto which we had performed in ’69—a rigorous twelve-tone work which is probably the most demanding, unplayable bit of music ever written. It was no harder for the synthesizer to counterfeit its notes than those of a Strauss waltz, of course, but a human violist would have needed three hands and a prehensile nose to convey any measure of Hohenstein’s musical thought. I activated the playback of the synthesizer and fed the tape in.

The music burst forth. Kolfmann watched the machine suspiciously. The pseudo-viola danced up and down the tone row while the old pianist struggled to place the work.

“Hohenstein?” he finally asked, timidly. I nodded.

I saw a conflict going on within him. For more years than he could remember he had hated us because we had made his art obsolete. But here I was showing him a use for the synthesizer that gave it a valid existence—it was synthesizing a work impossible for a human to play. He was unable to reconcile all the factors in his mind, and the struggle hurt. He got up uneasily and started for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Away from here,” he said. “You are a devil.”

He tottered weakly through the door, and I let him go. The old man was badly confused, but I had a trick or two up my cybernetic sleeve to settle some of his problems and perhaps salvage him for the world of music. For, whatev­er else you say about me, particularly after this Macauley business, you can’t deny that my deepest allegiance is to music.