"So, what can he give them?"
"For right now, I'm not sure." Vlad leaned back on the couch. "But in a few years, relief from having to have serfs might do it."
"Don't count on it, Vlad." Brandy shook her head. "The serfs could end up as factory workers and have even less freedom than they have now. 'I owe my soul to the company store.' If it could happen in America, where we—at least in theory—all had the same rights, think how much easier it could happen in Muscovy where serfs are already restricted in when they can quit."
Vladimir sighed. "I know. Adam Smith and all your economists tell us that free labor is more productive than slaves or serfs. That slavery and serfdom is bad for the economy of the nation. But what they usually neglect to mention is that it's still very profitable for the people who own the slaves." He looked down at his coffee cup.
"Brandy, I've lived here for a long time and have accepted many of your principles, but that doesn't mean my countrymen have. I agree that serfdom must be eliminated but I don't see any way to do it."
* * *
When Brandy got up to light the gas lights against the darkening of the room, Vlad moved just a tad closer to her end of the sofa. Whenever she leaned forward to pour more coffee, or stood to busy herself with something, he moved just a little bit closer. Eventually, Vlad was right where he wanted to be. Close, nearly touching.
Brandy looked a little nervous when she discovered just how close he was. Deciding not to give her, or himself, a chance to bolt, Vladimir took one of her hands in his own. "Branya, I have something I want to speak of, something that is not about Bernie or even about Muscovy."
Brandy's breath caught just a bit before she nodded at him. "You can speak to me about anything, Vladimir. What is it?"
He had been quite confident of her response when he had written the letters asking permission from Czar Mikhail and informing Natasha of his intent. Somehow, that confidence had disappeared when he had been informed that Mikhail had agreed to the marriage—at least conditionally. The condition being that she make a valid conversion. And Natasha had informed him that several ladies of the family would be coming to Grantville to look Brandy over. At that point he had seen the looming disaster of his aunts arriving to inspect her before he even asked for her hand.
But Vladimir was still hesitating and Brandy was looking at him expectantly. "I am not one of your up-time men, Branya. And I may not have the correct words. But I have grown very . . . fond of you. Very fond. And I, I . . ." Vlad paused a moment. "I wish you to be my wife, Branya. I wish it very much."
Brandy's eyes glittered in the candlelight. "Wife? You want to get married?"
"I do," Vlad said. He watched her face closely. What would she answer?
"Yes."
* * *
Half an hour later, after some very pleasant kissing and some not so pleasant explanation. Brandy wasn't quite so sure.
"We don't do that," Vladimir said, sounding a bit desperate. "Abandon thy family, abjure thy name." He shook his head. "It sounds glorious, but Romeo and Juliet ended up dead. When my sister married an English count—with my father's permission but without his converting—it almost ruined the family. Were I to marry without the czar's consent, our family's property could be seized and my sister could end her life in a convent. Forced to take holy orders. Not because Mikhail would want to do it, but because the cabinet would insist."
Brandy knew that was all too likely an outcome. But Vladimir was continuing. "If I asked the czar first and you said no, I would look foolish. But if I asked you first and the czar said no, I didn't know what I would do. I didn't wish to make a promise to you until I was sure I could keep it."
* * *
"All right!" Judy was grinning from ear to ear. "All right, Brandy. So, when's the wedding? What are you going to wear?"
"I don't know to the first question." Brandy took a sip of root beer. "And I don't know to the second one, for that matter."
All the members of the Barbie Consortium who were attending the monthly lunch looked confused. "It's more complicated than I knew." Brandy sighed. "It turns out that Vlad is sort of a prince or something like that. He can't just get married, not to a foreigner, not to anybody, really. He has to get permission."
Vicky Emerson looked outraged. "What, from his father? He's a grown man. Why ask for permission?"
Brandy shook her head. "His parents are dead. Both of them. Two sisters, Natasha in Muscovy and Adelia in England. No, it's not his parents, it's the czar. He had to get permission from the czar. He apparently asked him before he asked me," Brandy added, with some resentment. Vladimir had explained that he had to do it that way but it still pissed her off. "And then there's the religion thing, too."
"Religion thing?" Hayley Fortney paused in the act of sipping tea. "There's a religion thing, too?"
Brandy nodded again, and sort of sighed. "Yeah. It's all going to take a while, it looks like. I'd just as soon go down to City Hall and have a civil ceremony, get all the hoopla over with. But Vlad's church will not recognize a civil ceremony, he says. It's against canonical law. And, it turns out that if he gets married in any church except a Russian Orthodox church, he could be charged with treason. So we figure we better wait."
"That's kind of hard, isn't it?" Judy looked around at the girls. "Your Vlad is a nice looking guy. A nice guy in general, for that matter. I bet you hate waiting."
"Well, one thing about it." Brandy shrugged. "At least we ought to be really sure about it when it does happen. Vlad says he probably ought to have a priest come here, anyway. Natasha is sending a bunch of people from his lands and they're all going to go to school here. And to the oil field. So they need a priest. They wouldn't be comfortable going to St. Mary's. We're probably looking at six or eight months to wait."
"That's just about enough time," Judy muttered.
"Enough time?"
"Yeah," Judy grinned. "Just about enough time to plan a really big, really nice wedding."
* * *
To be continued in Volume 15
The Music of the Spheres . . . er, Ring
Written by David Carrico
A lot has been said in the various 1632 discussion threads on Baen's Bar, as well as in print, about how early modern Europe's populace really weren't too different from people of today. They were technically adept, given the tools that they had, so they would have been able to reproduce a great deal of modern technology. It might have taken them some time, but it would have been possible. The people would have adapted to practical technology quickly.
Early modern Europeans were highly literate, frequently in multiple languages. They were sophisticated in both philosophy and in religion. And they would be very quick studies when it comes to politics.
Even in the arts, for the most part the people of Grantville would have had little to teach them, aside from photography and sound recording. These are technologies that are really relatively straightforward once modern chemicals and tools are available.
There is one area of modern life, however, where the natives of the 1632 era would not embrace the up-time offerings with open arms: music.
Why? Because the 350+ years between their era and ours produced some of the most radical changes in musical thought and practice imaginable. More changes occurred in that time frame, and faster, than had occurred in western European music in the previous thousand years. From 1800 on, every generation produced music rather different from the previous generation; even significantly different.
Music, as much as—perhaps more than—any other art form, is learned and heard and judged by the ears of a cultural context. That's why they wouldn't just swallow the up-time music and musical forms. If you plucked a German from 1631 Mainz and dropped him into New York City today, he would have been as shocked and appalled and bewildered by the music of today as if you had plucked a South Sea islander from a secluded Pacific island in 1920 and done the same thing to him. (Okay, that is perhaps a bit of an exaggeration—but not
much of one.) The down-timer culture and societies were at the bottom of that 350+ year learning curve, and it would take them time to learn to like the music; not 350 years, but more than a year or two.
Music Technology
This article is going to focus on the sound of music, on the forms of it, on how people hear it, and why it will take a while for most of the up-time music to catch on. But there are technologies to music that will now be available to the down-timers, so let's first do a quick review of those.
Strings—Violin family
When you try to research the history of the violin, you quickly discover that in the 1632 time frame there were no standardized instrument forms such as there are today. There were a variety of bewildering names: viol, violon, vihuela, viola, viola d'amore, viola da gamba, and others.
What we would think of as modern violins had by this time been pretty well standardized in overall shape, proportion, and number of strings – 4. The other three instruments of the modern string family—viola, cello, and double bass—were a long way from standardization. The viola d'amore, for example, typically had fourteen strings; seven that were played, and seven more that were pitched an octave higher that were sympathetic resonators. And the viola da gamba, despite its name, was a very large instrument, larger even than a modern cello. Double basses were just beginning to make their appearances. String counts for violas, viola da gambas and double basses varied with the luthiers who made them, or perhaps the patron or artist who commissioned them, but five or six or even seven strings weren't unheard of.
Even though 1632 is pre-Stradivarius, Grantville really has nothing to teach seventeenth-century luthiers about these instruments, other than showing them the latest refinements in proportions and preaching the advantages of standardization. The standardization required longer necks, which required fewer strings to provide the needed notes to play the music. It also required the metal wrapped gut strings that would be forthcoming from Nürnberg in the near future. The strings would hold more tension than other materials to handle the tuning changes that would be coming and which also allowed for longer necks to provide the needed notes to play the music with fewer strings. The standardization will happen quicker in the 1632 universe because of the up-time examples.
However, one big technology advance that can be brought to the down-time instrument crafter and players is the refinement of the bow. The modern bow design was established by Wilhelm Cramer and Francois Tourte in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I won't list the individual modifications, other than red pernambuco wood from Brazil becoming the wood of choice for bows (still true today), but the result was a bow that could be held lightly with the fingertips, rather than having to be grasped with the whole hand. This in turn allowed for much greater flexibility in playing style, which was the necessary development for the rise of the violin as a virtuoso solo instrument.
Strings—Guitars, etc.
The guitar was definitely available in 1632 in various forms. Known by the names gittern, vihuela, guitarra, or vialle, it tended to be smaller than today's instrument, with a body that was narrower in proportion than today's instruments. It had a smaller sound than today's instruments, partly due to the use of gut strings, and partly due to the smaller size. The common pattern had four strings, usually doubled to be four courses of two strings each that were pitched an octave apart. By the late 1600s, luthiers were beginning to add a fifth course.
There were renowned guitar luthiers in Paris, Venice and Spain.
Again, Grantville would have little to teach the luthiers about guitars, other than to show them the larger bodied modern instruments as templates and teach them about using metal strings when desired.
The luthiers and performers will be intrigued by the banjo, however. (Concerto for Banjo and Orchestra by George Telemann? It would be possible.)
Mandolins are available in down-time forms. If any modern versions exist in Grantville, down-time luthiers may identify some refinements. Otherwise, the presence of up-time guitars may also cause some down-time experimentation with changes to mandolins.
For electric guitars, see Electronic Instruments.
Strings—Harp
Harps have been around for thousands of years, and large floor standing harps weren't uncommon in the seventeenth century. The one technological improvement that Grantville could introduce would be the tuning pedals that allow certain sets of strings to be raised or lowered in pitch. This could be done even in the middle of a performance, allowing harps a similar flexibility as pianos. Pictures are surely available in some reference works somewhere in Grantville, either the encyclopedias or some kind of music history book or music dictionary in some music teacher's private library.
Keyboards—Organ
Organs in 1632 came in three main varieties.
First is the pipe organ, where sound is produced by pumping air through what amounts to giant whistles, some with brass reeds in them. These typically were rather large instruments, usually found in cathedrals or very large churches.
They are capable of large volume gradations, and a large organ will have a very large pitch range and a wide variety of timbres available to it. It was often referred to as the "King of Instruments." Grantville has nothing to teach the seventeenth century about how to make these, other than introducing electric blower motors to fill the wind chests instead of requiring manual or mechanical mechanisms to fill them.
Second is something called a regal. It in essence was kind of like a giant keyboard operated harmonica. There would be a case containing a variety of brass reeds, with a small keyboard on one side and a couple of bellows protruding out the back. This was a portable instrument. In some cases, they would fold up to the dimensions of a very large book. Again, Grantville would have nothing to teach the down-timers about this instrument.
Third is the "portative organ," which goes back to medieval times at least.By the seventeenth century, at least some of these had grown to 52-note, foot-bellows-powered instruments about the sizeof a console upright piano. These would be comparable to more modern portable organs with foot powered bellows. There may be one still in a back room in one of the churches, else someone of the older generations will remember them. They used to be a staple of the tent revival evangelism circuits. The down-time craftsmen might pick up some refinements if a modern portable organ is still somewhere in town.
Keyboards—clavichord/harpsichord/clavier
These are all instruments which are very common in 1632. Grantville will have nothing to offer here.
Clavichord—keyboard instrument in which the strings were struck by a thin brass "blade." Strings were apparently single strands of metal, but were paired together. Sound was not large. Volume gradations (soft to loud) were possible. Sustained notes were only possible by continuing to hold down the key after the string was struck. Their range was narrow; typically three to four octaves.
Harpsichord—keyboard instrument in which the strings were plucked by a plectrum. In earliest versions, the plectrum was commonly leather, but over time crow quills became popular. As with the clavichord, strings were apparently single strands of metal. Volume gradations were not possible—the string was plucked one manner regardless of how hard or soft you hit the key. Again, sustained notes were only possible by continuing to hold down the key after the string was struck. Similar range to the clavichord.
Clavier—in French (klah-vee-ay), a term that simply means keyboard. In German (klah-veer) originally a generic term describing any keyboard instrument (including organ), but later it became a synonym for clavichord. Early pianos were sometimes referred to as hammerklaviers.
Keyboards – piano
Here is where the down-time instrument makers hit the mother lode. The piano did not exist in 1632. The first instrument recognized as a piano (pianoforte) is credited to Bartolomeo Christofori of Florence, Italy, in the early 1700s. Four major innovations had to come together in one place for the modern piano to be produc
ed: the use of steel strings; the wrapping of the lower pitched strings in copper (tightly, so they won't buzz) to produce strings that would stand up to a hammering to produce a loud volume; the cast iron harp to reinforce the sound board to hold up to the tension of the strings; and the pedal ensemble of a grand piano, featuring three different pedals that provide variation in how the sound will be sustained or muted.
The piano is truly remarkable in its volume gradations. An eighty-eight key grand has a pitch span of almost eight octaves, putting it on a par with the organ in those categories. There is nothing contained within a piano that will be beyond the capabilities of down-time crafters, and the impact the piano will make in the 1632 musical era cannot be underestimated. It is canon that Grantville had three full-size grand pianos (two of which are spoken for), a few baby grand pianos (one in a church, one or more in schools, one or more in residences), and an unknown quantity of upright pianos of various ages and conditions. Canon does not explicitly state that some of the older uprights are player pianos, but the possibility is there, which would be of interest to both clockwork makers and instrument makers alike.