The Muse of Music by Enrico Toro David Carrico

Author:Enrico Toro, David Carrico [Enrico Toro, David Carrico]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eric Flint's Ring of Fire Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Cadence

By Enrico Toro and David Carrico

Grantville

March 1635

The doorbell rang. Elizabeth Jordan looked up from the sink where she was peeling carrots. "One of you get that," she called out.

She heard Leah's feet go running across the floor. For a small girl, she had such a heavy tread that her steps were unmistakable.

The door squeaked on its hinges, and she heard seven-year-old Leah squeal, "Mr. Giacomo!"

Elizabeth's heart first jumped, then sank. Memories unreeled themselves in her mind.

August, 1633

Elizabeth had been sight-reading two of Erik Satie's Tres Gymnopedies at the piano in the high school auditorium. The music had demanded the sound and touch of the grand. And as usual, she had been so focused on the music that she hadn't heard the door at the rear of the auditorium nor the steps down the aisles. Consequently, the applause that sounded when she finished the second piece took her by surprise, and she almost gave herself whiplash when her head whipped around to see who was clapping.

It was Victor Saluzzo, the high school principal, and two men dressed in down-timer clothing of a style she hadn't seen before.

"Gentlemen, may I introduce you to Mrs. Elizabeth Jordan, our music teacher?" Victor had said.

That was her introduction to Girolamo Zenti and Giacomo Carissimi. Zenti was obviously a man's man; bold, strutting a little, and with sufficient charm and charisma to woo the Venus de Milo, missing arms and all. But Carissimi had intrigued her. In both appearance and manner, he had reminded her of Douglas Drake, the Ohio farm boy who had been in most of her college classes: quiet, tongue-tied most of the time, and usually shy, though he had a baritone voice to die for. He had stared at her in every class they were in, and whenever she looked at him, he would blush and look away. But he wasn't creepy; just somehow oddly sweet.

Doug never managed to ask her for a date before she started going with Fred. From time to time, she regretted that.

Somehow, even at the very moment their eyes first met, this Carissimi fellow had the same effect on her as Doug.

That was where it began.

March 1635

"Mom," nine-year-old Daniel appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, "it's Mr. Carissimi."

Fall 1633

Before long, Elizabeth had found herself acting as Giacomo's mentor and teacher in the arts of music as the twentieth century had known them. She was amazed at him. He was like a musical sponge. It didn't seem to matter to him, if it had something to do with music, he wanted to know it. Music theory, music history, form and analysis; lives of composers, it didn't matter. Even the concentrated notes that Marla Linder had made available from her sessions with her band of German musicians didn't slow him down.

But his greatest passion was for the piano, the single instrument that came back from the future that the down-timers would be most affected by. Giacomo certainly was. He would spend hours every day working on it, playing scales and études, building technique and muscle memory.

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