"Sean McMullen - The Colours of the Masters" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

I turned to the door, only to be confronted by a pair of elderly identical twins. The women would have
been in their early seventies, and were dressed in smart grey suits and frilly white blouses.
"We have mechanical recordings of Frederic Chopin playing his own piano works," said the one on
the right in confident English.
"We are not, ah, whackos," said the other, her voice and accent identical. "I am Claudine Vaud, and
this is my sister Charlotte."
"We are very respectable. We do not even know to hold a seance," Charlotte stated indignantly.
I was taken aback. "Edison got the prototype of his phonograph working in 1877," I replied. "Chopin
died thirty years before that."
"Twenty-eight years," Charlotte smugly corrected me.
"But an ancestor of ours invented a way to record sound-- except that she could not play it back,"
continued Claudette.
"But she could play it back as colours-- we think."
"But Gerald has a way to change light back into sound, except that he is having trouble analysing his
digital signal."
"No, no, he was digitising his analog signal."
"You don't even know what an analog signal is-- "
"Ladies, please!" Gerry interrupted them. "Mr. Tosti is very tired, and has probably not had dinner.
Could you tell the maid to prepare another place at the table, and we can explain the problem to him as
we eat."
"All right, but you were not explaining it very well just now," said Charlotte as they left.
Gerry took me to the living room, where a coal fire was burning. The place was filled with Eighteenth
and Nineteenth Century furniture, all tasteful, expensive and well maintained.
"Tang Dynasty," said Gerry as I examined a vase on the mantelpiece. "Everything in this house is
genuine, Rico, including the music. The family goes back to the old aristocracy."
"So you have a bit of blue blood yourself?"
"Oh no. The family connection comes from Katherine Searle, who arrived from the U.S. in the 1820's
and later married the heir. My own branch of the family is descended from her brother, who stayed in
Boston and ran a factory."
He pointed to a row of portraits on the wall to my left.
"That one on the end is Hiram Searle. He was born in Boston in 1765, and is responsible for the basic
principle of the sound recording machine that you are about to see."
The artist had obviously taken some trouble to clean up his subject, but the dreamy, slightly scruffy
appearance of the inventor showed through nevertheless.
"He was a great inventor, but had little business sense. Fortunately his wife was as sharp as a tack
where money was concerned, and the family business did very well. When Katherine, the eldest
daughter, showed musical talent she was sent to Europe to get a better education. That's her, in the next
painting."
Katherine Searle was a stunner, with black curly hair cascading down past her shoulders, a pale, thin
face, and big dark eyes. She was seated at the keyboard of a forte-piano, and was half turned to face the
artist.
"She used to write long letters home, and sent a lot of the latest sheet music. That was probably where
the big family scandal started, because apart from being a good engineer, Hiram fancied himself as a
musician too. Our old family diaries describe how he would play the latest keyboard music that Katherine
had enclosed while his wife read the letters aloud to the rest of the family.
"In 1825 his wife died. His son was old enough to run the factory by then, but he could not control
Hiram's obsession with Beethoven. He practically worshiped the man and his music, said that he
embodied the spirit of the new century."
"In a way he did."
"Maybe, but anyway Katherine had a lot of contacts in the musical world by then, and wrote home