SHORT STORIES FROM: 50,000 A.D. The Awakening - Henry Matthews from the 21st century wakes up 50,000 years later.
AN INTERVIEW WITH MARANIA DUTRES
“Today we
have a special interview with Marania Dutres, a former translator for Henry
Matthews, who is currently a touring pianist playing ancient music from Mr.
Matthews' past. I understand you will be playing later this evening at the
Embrias concert hall with a special symphony orchestra that resembles the types
Mr. Matthews would have heard back in his ancient time.”
“Yes that’s
right. I am especially grateful to be playing this music for the first time in
Tulosama. We are all looking forward to this evening.”
“Could you
please tell us how you got started playing the piano, and what led you to this
change in your career?”
“I first met
Henry back at the Manjorian Station about five years ago, just after he was
awakened. It was in the lab area when Leo, one of the engineers who was on the
restoration board, was showing him around. Later Henry spotted a piacha and
starting telling Leo about the ancient piano. Later, they agreed to build one
as an extract project for Nervi the Lab engineer. I was already playing the
piacha for years and years by then and when I saw this piano, I was totally
captivated by it. Eventually, I built up the courage to ask to play it and
after I got used to it, there were many advantages over the piacha. Everything
was a lot easier when you had to play difficult music. The reason for this is
that the keys are half the distance of the piacha and all octaves have the same
color key. But it was only easy to a point. The ancient music written for the
piano takes its technicalities into account and is extremely difficult to
play.”
“The thing
that startled me was when I first heard Henry play it; it sent shivers down my
spine. The music he played was absolutely beautiful, and I was intrigued by his
incredible virtuosity. Most of that music would be difficult or impossible to
play on the piacha.”
“As I learned
the piano, with help from Henry himself, I was able to confirm that playing
ancient Earth music was much more difficult than I had thought it would be.
They had proceeded to develop such an incredible music and piano culture in
their world that great composers evolved who could compose music that was both
extremely difficult and absolutely beautiful.”
“When I first
started playing, I thought I could master this instrument in a few weeks, but
Henry kept reminding me that if I wanted to go the highest level, it would take
years of practice. At first, I thought maybe he doesn’t understand that I’m a
C1 clone, and I can achieve objectives a
little faster than average. Henry’s world didn’t have our cloning ‘traditions’,
and I thought he didn’t understand this. But as the piano lessons continued it
became clear he was right. Henry is a piano virtuoso as well, and it took about
five years or so before I got up to his level.”
“What music
did he play when you first heard him?”
“The first
piece of music he played was when Nervi, the engineer who was also a good
piacha musician himself, turned out the first iteration of the ancient piano.
It had no pedals, so Henry played music from a period of time called the
baroque era when they didn’t have these pedals. It was the Italian concerto by
Johann Sebastian Bach. It was a fascinating piece. I didn’t know Henry very
well then, so I was off to the side in the lab doing some work when he played
this for Nervi. At that point, I was totally smitten. I wanted to learn to play
this instrument.”
“Next time I
heard him play was when I was an employee for his company, and on the first day
we all showed up for work at his office. Nervi delivered the final version of
what they call a grand piano. The only difference between this one and the
ancient ones, is that the best pianos in his time were purely mechanical, and
the one Nervi had designed had android technology. It wasn’t practical at the
time for Nervi to come up with a mechanical version since they were usually
hand-built and that technology wasn’t in our possession. Princess Pamalia
showed up to hear him play, so Henry sat at the piano and played for everybody
there. He started out with the same Bach piece and went into a brief explanation
of the evolution of music over a few hundred years before his birth. The next
piece was one by Chopin. It was an incredibly passionate piece set at a fast
tempo called the Fantasy Impromptu.”
“He played
more pieces by Chopin, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Liszt and Beethoven. He also played
some ragtime and jazz. I just sat there off to the side and enjoyed the whole
experience immensely. Later on, I got the courage to ask him to show me how to
play the instrument, and he gave me permission to play it during off hours. The
rest is history.”
