The Macauley Circuit

I stopped work on my Beethoven’s Seventh, and also put away Macauley’s diagram, and called in a couple of technicians. I told them what I was planning. The first line of inquiry, I decided, was to find out who Kolfmann’s piano teacher had been. They had the reference books out in a flash and we found out who—Gotthard Kellerman, who had died nearly sixty years ago. Here luck was with us. Central was able to locate and supply us with an old tape of the International Music Congress held at Stockholm in 2187, at which Kellerman had spoken briefly on The Development of the Pedal Technique: nothing very exciting, but it wasn’t what he was saying that interested us. We split his speech up into phonemes, analyzed, rearranged, evaluated, and finally went to the synthesizer and began feeding in tapes.

What we got back was a new speech in Kellerman’s voice, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Certainly it would be good enough to fool Kolfmann, who hadn’t heard his old teacher’s voice in more than half a century. When we had everything ready I sent for Kolfmann, and a couple hours later they brought him in, looking even older and more worn.

“Why do you bother me?” he asked. “Why do you not let me die in peace?”

I ignored his questions. “Listen to this, Mr. Kolfmann.” I flipped on the playback, and the voice of Kellerman came out of the speaker.

“Hello, Gregor,” it said. Kolfmann was visibly startled. I took advantage of the prearranged pause in the recording to ask him if he recognized the voice. He nodded. I could see that he was frightened and suspicious, and I hoped the whole thing wouldn’t backfire.

“Gregor, one of the things I tried most earnestly to teach you—and you were my most attentive pupil—was that you must always be flexible. Techniques must con­stantly change, though art itself remains changeless. But have you listened to me? No.”

Kolfmann was starting to realize what we had done, I saw. His pallor was ghastly now.

“Gregor, the piano is an outmoded instrument. But there is a newer, a greater instrument available for you, and you deny its greatness. This wonderful new synthesizer can do all that the piano could do, and much more. It is a tremendous step forward.”

“All right,” Kolfmann said. His eyes were gleaming strangely. “Turn that machine off.”

I reached over and flipped off the playback.

“You are very clever,” he told me. “I take it you used your synthesizer to prepare this little speech for me.” I nodded.

He was silent an endless moment. A muscle flickered in his cheek. I watched him, not daring to speak.

At length he said, “Well, you have been successful, in your silly, theatrical way. You’ve shaken me.”

“I don’t understand.”

Again he was silent, communing with who knew what internal force. I sensed a powerful conflict raging within him. He scarcely seemed to see me at all as he stared into nothingness. I heard him mutter something in another language; I saw him pause and shake his great old head. And in the end he looked down at me and said, “Perhaps it is worth trying. Perhaps the words you put in Kellerman’s mouth were true. Perhaps. You are foolish, but I have been even more foolish than you. I have stubbornly resisted, when I should have joined forces with you. Instead of denouncing you, I should have been the first to learn how to create music with this strange new instru­ment. Idiot! Moron!”

I think he was speaking of himself in those last two words, but I am not sure. In any case, I had seen a demonstration of the measure of his greatness—the willingness to admit error and begin all over. I had not expected his cooperation; all I had wanted was an end to his hostility. But he had yielded. He had admitted error and was ready to rechart his entire career.

“It’s not too late to learn,” I said. “We could teach you.”

Kolfmann looked at me fiercely for a moment, and I felt a shiver go through me. But my elation knew no bounds. I had won a great battle for music, and I had won it with ridiculous ease.

He went away for a while to master the technique of the synthesizer. I gave him my best man, one whom I had been grooming to take over my place someday. In the meantime I finished my Beethoven, and the performance was a great success. And then I got back to Macauley and his circuit.

Once again things conspired to keep me from full reali­zation of the threat represented by the Macauley circuit. I did manage to grasp that it could easily be refined to eliminate almost completely the human element in musical interpretation. But it’s many years since I worked in the labs, and I had fallen out of my old habit of studying any sort of diagram and mentally tinkering with it and juggling it to see what greater use could be made of it.