"The Doomsday Symphony": Introduction & Prelude

Yesterday, I finished a novel, called The Doomsday Symphony, another of my music appreciation thrillers (admittedly, not a very large genre). If nothing else, it's the main reason I haven't been posting much, here, the past several months. After writing 5-8 hours a day (or trying to), it's difficult to say "oh boy, I think I'll spend a few more hours and write something else."

Anyway, it's not the first one I've completed but it's the first one you don't have to read a novel by Dan Brown to understand. For regular readers of this blog, I'm referring to my parodies of The DaVinci Code and The Lost Symbol which I had turned into The Schoenberg Code (a serial novel) and The Lost Chord – for those of you not familiar with this blog, you can follow the links to check them out).

And like those two previous novels, it is a spoof borrowing parodies of scenes or plot-lines or images (even names) from a variety of sources but this time, starting from "creative scratch."

But after I spent four months writing The Lost Chord, I realized two things:
(1.) It wasn't as good a story as The Schoenberg Code where I more generally parodied the plot outline
(2.) It was waaaay too long and rambling (partly the problem of parodying Brown's novel chapter-by-chapter and not paying attention to accumulative length or anything akin to structural proportions)
(3.) I could probably write a story of my own, starting from scratch – not a parody but something "original"

(Okay, three things.)

Initially, this novel grew out of my collection of short stories in Stravinsky's Tavern which takes place in the fictional town of New Coalton located in the Eastern Pennsylvania Coal Region where dead composers go but continue to work and compose.(For instance, you can read an excerpt from the Doomsday Symphony scene where the orchestra is rehearsing a new symphony by Ludwig van Beethoven, his 39th.)

And, like any good thriller, there is not one but two plots.

The first focuses around the evil organization, SHMRG, and their plot to eliminate the Great Composers of Classical Music whose music is all public domain. This way, they can replace them with composers they represent, thus earning the royalties and licensing fees for themselves. They retain Klavdia Klangfarben, a forensic musicologist turned femme-fatale-for-hire, to accomplish this.

The second plot centers around a new symphony by Gustav Mahler which has been dubbed "The Doomsday" Symphony. There are a series of chords through the piece that some believe will set in motion vibrations that will bring about the destruction of the universe. This score is stolen by conductor Rogers Kent-Clarke, a mild unassuming assistant conductor who dreams of kick-starting his career (thus becoming SuperConductor) by premiering a newly discovered Mahler Symphony, unaware of the consequences.

It was my November-Is-National-Novel-Writing-Month Project this year – NaNoWriMo's challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month – and then worked at it less diligently through the next three months until I ended up with a novel that is about 133,280 words total – in its first draft – or, depending on the size of the page and the font used, could be about a 300 page book.

Though I'm not sure I'm ready to post it on the installment plan here on the blog, here is the prologue - or rather the Prelude - by way of sample.

*** ***** ******** ***** ***
THE DOOMSDAY SYMPHONY: PRELUDE

"You want me to kill the Great Composers of the Past..."

The other three sat around the board table as if they were making the most natural request in the world. These were clearly people who meant business and expected others to jump at their every command, regardless how impractical it might sound on first (or even seventh) hearing.

Klavdia Klangfarben's voice registered little surprise considering the assignment they'd offered her. True, she knew her stuff and she'd even done a little research before the meeting, having heard the gist of their admittedly strange idea.

One of her concerns right now was keeping her hand on the arm of the empty chair next to her: it kept swinging back and forth a little, something she was afraid might prove a distraction. She also needed a few moments to think how she would word this without having to give up too much of her plan.

The board room at SHMRG's headquarters was typical of many such corporate offices, richly paneled with exotic woods from the Amazon rain-forest, a non-functional fireplace with an ornate mantel of hand-cut Italian marble, right down to the portrait in faux-Renaissance style of its current CEO with a vast, almost funereal floral arrangement on a pedestal beside it, everything white, gold and blood red, pin-pointed here and there by supposedly subtle track-lighting. These were the trappings of power, reinforcing the necessary impressions though nothing was visible that would actually give anyone the idea what, exactly, SHMRG did.

The board table, massive and elegantly smooth, had been hand-carved out of the single trunk of a monumental tree, one of the last of its kind known to be growing in the wilds of coastal Brazil. The largest, blackest, most luxurious of the leather chairs around this table was occupied by the corporation's CEO, the legendary N. Ron Steele who in a few short years had transformed a simple non-profit arts organization into one of the most powerful music licensing entities in the universe. To say he was feared in the industry was an understatement.

On his left was Manfred Kaye, his Director of Social Media, Office Supplies and Classical Music Division who put the "psycho" in sycophant, even if most of his coworkers weren't sure how it should be pronounced. And while Steele's secretary may look like a middle-aged spinster, colleagues knew that Holly Burton, the woman on his right, was totally ruthless.

"I can do that," Klavdia Klangfarben said with a well-practiced tinge of boredom in her voice.

Obviously, she didn't want to seem too eager or overly confident, just worldly and blasé enough to get the point across they'd found the right person for the job. She could easily snow them with technical jargon, both scientific or musicological, but it was just as likely her full-length black leotard, her platinum blond hair billowing out from under the broad-brimmed floppy black hat, and her regulation black stiletto heels offered sufficient proof she knew what she was doing.

Something she had learned from one of her teachers at Klaxon University, thinking back years ago, now, was how "perception is everything." It didn't matter what the truth actually was as long as it sounded convincing. Whatever the facts really were, her professor had said, right or wrong, as long as people were convinced they were right, they were.

The fact SHMRG was one of the largest conglomerates in the music business was nothing to sneeze at. They owned any performer of any substance in any type of music through a series of well-crafted contracts and nefariously brokered deals, recently buying up most of the remaining recording labels and several of the major performing venues across the country.

The fact they had called her was not lost on her: if she pulled this one off, it would make her career. And what difference did it make, ethically, if her intended targets were already dead?

Doing what research she could manage on the corporation, despite their innate secrecy and highly encrypted web-site, it wasn't difficult to figure out what was in it for SHMRG. Without the leading composers in the traditional classical music pantheon, recording companies and radio stations (those few not already in SHMRG's control), performers and music lovers as well as those annoying classical music aficionados would need to fill the void with living composers – ones already under SHMRG's management. Anyone wanting to play or listen to their music would have to pay a hefty licensing fee. Like most recording companies, historically, this small, select, even elitist group of consumers was underwritten by the profits that came in from the popular music world, the rock stars and rappers who provided the coat-tails for the likes of the jazz, folk and classical niches. The latest flash-in-the-popular-pan made possible new versions of the same old timeless classics.

Klavdia explained how there was a very narrow window of opportunity. Yes, the minutiae of quantum physics made it possible – she waved her hands airily, dismissing the details – and while the technology was still relatively primitive, it nonetheless gave her access to her intended victims. She must, however, begin immediately if she was to overcome the challenges. Not wanting to kill anyone if she didn't have to, being in the right place at the right time was enough to change the course of history so the vagaries of popularity took care of the rest.

"So, we are agreed?" Klavdia carefully arched an eyebrow as she looked intently at the CEO.

After a brief conference, Steele wrote down a figure he passed first to Manfred Kaye, then back to Holly Burton. With a nod, the secretary passed it across the table to Klavdia who looked at it, sneered, and passed it back without comment. It was more money than she'd ever been offered for any gig in her life, but she knew they stood to gain a humongous windfall if she succeeded. She continued to stare coolly at the CEO.

After another conference, another figure slid across the table was reluctantly accepted, with a stipulation for a per-centage-based bonus. Papers were written up, passed around and signed. The chair next to her quietly began to spin.

As she left, closing the doors behind her, the large ornate floral arrangement standing nearly ten feet away crashed inexplicably to the floor.

- (end of the prelude...)

*** ***** ******** ***** ***

Of course, later, we'll discover the spinning chair and the cause of the crashing flower arrangement are Klangfarben's invisible side-kick, a lawyer from "The Other Side" who once represented Mahler and Brahms in Vienna back in the day – his name is Abner Kedaver.

But then we will also meet other characters including the unlikely (and reluctant) hero, something of a cross between Dan Brown's Robert Langdon (the world's foremost symbologist) and my own musical know-it-all persona, Dr. Dick. He was originally named Dr. T.R. Cranleigh but whose name was changed to Dr. T. Richard Kerr (that's all part of the revision process).

Speaking of characters, I should point out one thing about SHMRG takes its name from acronym for an analytical approach for classical music listeners which means "Sonority, Harmony, Melody, Rhythm, Growth" (or Form but perhaps SHMRF sounded too much like those little blue cartoon characters) and which always reminded me of Ian Fleming's SMERSH  in the James Bond novels.

Developed by the theorist Jan LaRue - you can read more about it here - it is a teaching tool I have used in classes since I began teaching in the '70s and have often presented in various formats with introductory classes and pre-concert talks, especially when approaching new or unfamiliar music. But because of the SMERSH connection, it was an automatic "in" when I was looking for a name for my evil music corporation which becomes the underlying nemesis for a series of classical music appreciation thrillers.

While I do not consider LaRue's concepts "evil" in any way, I would recommend the approach - listening to specific parameters of music individually rather than just sitting there thinking "what is this music I'm listening to and do I like it or not" - to anyone who enjoys listening to music and would like to take in more than one usually does on first (or tenth) hearing. Obviously, the more one knows about the technical aspects of music, the more one would hear using such a process: for someone who is unfamiliar with much of the terminology involved, it is a place to begin and anything tallied up on such a list would probably be more than what you might walk away with from hearing a piece of music.

In fact, most of the names in this novel - as will happen in any subsequent sequels - are based on music puns (or literary or historical or pop-cultural). Klavdia Klangfarben's name comes from a German term meaning "sound-color" which was used in the early-20th Century music to describe a process by which a melody (or a harmonic passage) might have different instruments for every note (or chord) or so, as if this musical line were changing orchestral color right before your ears. I chose it simply for its euphony, not because she has any particular chameleon-like qualities.

That said, most of the action in The Doomsday Symphony takes place on the "Other Side," this parallel universe where dead composers go yet continue to compose. Because it seemed weird (or, perhaps, weirder) to call this place New Coalton, I decided to call it Harmonia-IV, just one of many such parallel universes, which is accessed through a Time-Gate outside the abandoned coal-mining town of New Coalton. This device was inspired by such science-fiction films or TV shows as "Stargate: SG-1" as much as the childhood classic, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." I decided that, parallel universes aside, something like "Fringe" was a little too dark, even for me.

Having felt uncomfortable with the massive growth of The Lost Chord which ambled on to some 180,000 words (perhaps a 400-page book) and which I felt became too diffuse in its scene-by-scene parodism, I decided, even before I began working out the plot details, to keep this one to about 130,000 words, hoping to keep more in line.

It was around that time, I found a very intriguing statement about Alexander Scriabin's compositional approach, at least in his later music which we often describe as "weird" by comparison to the late-Romanticism of his earlier style. Since it sounds totally different than "standard" classical music, it surprised me that he didn't just sit down and write in a stream-of-consciousness style, going from one cool sound to another (given his aesthetic and philosophical ideals, in and outside of his music, one gets the image of Scriabin's music being drug-induced and therefor anarchic).

He said to a friend that he viewed the form of a piece as something "perfectly round" and that one of the pieces he was working on at the time "was lacking two measures and therefor wasn't perfectly round" and this annoyed him. Now, I don't know where I saw or heard this (I think it was in a documentary about Scriabin's last years), but it made perfect sense to me.

As a composer, I'm aware that music moves in small structures, measure by measure, to create larger and larger units, whether it's a four minute piano piece or an hour-long symphony. It may seem academic but standard operating procedure is to move in 4- or 8-bar phrases, not 3- or 7-bar units.

Since I'd begun composing again with a piece for violin and orchestra back in 2000, and particularly in the String Quartet, the Symphony, the two song cycles and the five pieces that make up the Violin Sonata (which I've written about in these posts), I first determined how long (or, according to Scriabin, how "round") the piece would be, then subdivided that length into subsegments (movements, sections, phrases) determined by the Golden Section – it's a long story – and so knew in advance, even before I began composing, what the "space" would need as I'd fill it in with sound, converting time into measures of music.

This did two things for me:
(1.) it kept me focused, not going off in directions perhaps not necessary to the piece;
(2.) it placed everything – climaxes and harmonic direction – proportionally to the whole; oh, and also
(3.) it helped me figure out where to begin the next day because I now knew where I was going, rather than picking it up where I'd left off and wondering "now, where was this headed?"

So I decided to see if I could do the same thing with words. I made a line-graph of 130,000 words, divided the line along its various Golden Section points, deciding where to place which climaxes or turning points and where to divide the various chapters to see how many words each chapter, proportionally, would be. This keeps it from becoming a constant 4+4+4+4 pattern like so much classical music but can give me 8+5+5+3 pattern, as an example.

You can see that as the numbers decrease, the "rhythm" and the energy that creates increases. And so, as any good action story would demonstrate, you get more excited as you approach the resolution of that scene.

So I spread my story out across this graph, broke it down into large segments, then smaller segments until, like phrases in music, I could break it down to paragraphs and sentences.

At first, the idea was to keep this as a vague guide-line so, while writing a scene headed in one dramatic direction, I didn't go off and ruin the rhythm, the build-up, by throwing in a scene that was too long and "slow."

But then it occurred to me, why not see if I could write paragraphs and sentences – even phrases of sentences – that still fit this proportional structure of the whole, reflected in even the smallest sub-structures?

Since many of the chapters in The Lost Chord rambled on for 5,000 words or more – fine in a book but too long, I was told by friends with limited reading time or attention spans, to scroll around on-line – it turns out no chapter in The Doomsday Symphony is over 3,000 words. In fact, many of them are around 1700 words.

The prologue, it turns out, is one of the shorter ones, only 1,056 words. But I knew that even before I began writing it (actually, I wrote the prologue after writing about a dozen chapters, just to get the feel of where all this was going).

Yes, it's highly "controlled" but go back and reread those 1,056 words keeping these numbers in mind: 154, 95, 59, 36 and 23. They are the basic proportions that subdivide the chapter into groups of paragraphs and sentences and also, not coincidentally, help organize the amount of material related to the given topic of that sentence or paragraph. (Sometimes, there are slightly different subdivisions which come about, 1 or 2 numbers more or less than usual – but this all works out proportionally if for no other reason than it's very difficult to write half-a-word when dealing with fractions.)

Phi, incidentally, is the Greek letter used to denote the Golden Section of a line. This is the proportional climax of a line – whether it's space or time. So each time you see a + in these numbers, that is the Phi-point that divides the first part of a unit from its complementary part.

*** ***** ******** ***** ***
1,056 words = (653 +phi+ 403) = [(#1=404 + #2=249) + (#3=249 + #4=154)]

#1 = 404 words = (154 + 96) + (95 + 59)

[154 = 95+59] "You want me to kill the Great Composers of the Past..."
The other three sat around the board table as if they were making the most natural request in the world. These were clearly people who meant business and expected others to jump at their every command, regardless how impractical it might sound on first (or even seventh) hearing.
Klavdia Klangfarben's voice registered little surprise considering the assignment they'd offered her. True, she knew her stuff and she'd even done a little research before the meeting, having heard the gist of their admittedly strange idea.

One of her concerns right now was keeping her hand on the arm of the empty chair next to her: it kept swinging back and forth a little, something she was afraid might prove a distraction. She also needed a few moments to think how she would word this without having to give up too much of her plan.

[96] The board room at SHMRG's headquarters was typical of many such corporate offices, richly paneled with exotic woods from the Amazon rain-forest, a non-functional fireplace with an ornate mantel of hand-cut Italian marble, right down to the portrait in faux-Renaissance style of its current CEO with a vast, almost funereal floral arrangement on a pedestal beside it, everything white, gold and blood red, pin-pointed here and there by supposedly subtle track-lighting. These were the trappings of power, reinforcing the necessary impressions though nothing was visible that would actually give anyone the idea what, exactly, SHMRG did.

[95] The board table, massive and elegantly smooth, had been hand-carved out of the single trunk of a monumental tree, one of the last of its kind known to be growing in the wilds of coastal Brazil. The largest, blackest, most luxurious of the leather chairs around this table was occupied by the corporation's CEO, the legendary N. Ron Steele who in a few short years had transformed a simple non-profit arts organization into one of the most powerful music licensing entities in the universe. To say he was feared in the industry was an understatement.

[59] On his left was Manfred Kaye, his Director of Social Media, Office Supplies and Classical Music Division who put the "psycho" in sycophant, even if most of his coworkers weren't sure how it should be pronounced. And while Steele's secretary may look like a middle-aged spinster, colleagues knew that Holly Burton, the woman on his right, was totally ruthless.

#2 = 249 words = (95 + 59) + (59 + 36)

[95] "I can do that," Klavdia Klangfarben said with a well-practiced tinge of boredom in her voice.
Obviously, she didn't want to seem too eager or overly confident, just worldly and blasé enough to get the point across they'd found the right person for the job. She could easily snow them with technical jargon, both scientific or musicological, but it was just as likely her full-length black leotard, her platinum blond hair billowing out from under the broad-brimmed floppy black hat, and her regulation black stiletto heels offered sufficient proof she knew what she was doing.

[59] Something she had learned from one of her teachers at Klaxon University, thinking back years ago, now, was how "perception is everything." It didn't matter what the truth actually was as long as it sounded convincing. Whatever the facts really were, her professor had said, right or wrong, as long as people were convinced they were right, they were.

[59] The fact SHMRG was one of the largest conglomerates in the music business was nothing to sneeze at. They owned any performer of any substance in any type of music through a series of well-crafted contracts and nefariously brokered deals, recently buying up most of the remaining recording labels and several of the major performing venues across the country.

[36] The fact they had called her was not lost on her: if she pulled this one off, it would make her career. And what difference did it make, ethically, if her intended targets were already dead?

#3 = 249 words = (95 + 58) + (59 + 37)

[95] Doing what research she could manage on the corporation, despite their natural secrecy and highly encrypted web-site, it wasn't difficult to figure out what was in it for SHMRG. Without the leading composers in the traditional classical music pantheon, recording companies and radio stations (those few not already in SHMRG's control), performers and music lovers as well as those annoying classical music aficionados would need to fill the void with living composers – ones already under SHMRG's management. Anyone wanting to play or listen to their music would have to pay a hefty licensing fee.

[58] Like most recording companies, historically, this small, select, even elitist group of consumers was underwritten by the profits that came in from the popular music world, the rock stars and rappers who provided the coat-tails for the likes of the jazz, folk and classical niches. The latest flash-in-the-popular-pan made possible new versions of the same old timeless classics.

[59] Klavdia explained how there was a very narrow window of opportunity. Yes, the minutiae of quantum physics made it possible – she waved her hands airily, dismissing the details – and while the technology was still relatively primitive, it nonetheless gave her access to her intended victims. She must, however, begin immediately if she was to overcome the challenges.

[37] Not wanting to kill anyone if she didn't have to, being in the right place at the right time was enough to change the course of history so the vagaries of popularity took care of the rest.

#4 = 154 words = (59 + 36) + (36 + 23)

[59] "So, we are agreed?" Klavdia carefully arched an eyebrow as she looked intently at the CEO.
After a brief conference, Steele wrote down a figure he passed first to Manfred Kaye, then back to Holly Burton. With a nod, the secretary passed it across the table to Klavdia who looked at it, sneered, and passed it back without comment.

[36] It was more money than she'd ever been offered for any gig in her life, but she knew they stood to gain a humongous windfall if she succeeded. She continued to stare coolly at the CEO.

[36] After another conference, another figure slid across the table was reluctantly accepted, with a stipulation for a per-centage-based bonus. Papers were written up, passed around and signed. The chair next to her quietly began to spin.

[23] As she left, closing the doors behind her, the large ornate floral arrangement standing nearly ten feet away crashed inexplicably to the floor.

*** ***** ******** ***** ***

Would you have even noticed how "rigorously applied" this "system" is if I hadn't pointed out?

If you're a regular reader here or know me, you may think "this doesn't sound like the Dr. Dick I'm familiar with..." but then I considered I'm writing a mystery/comedy/thriller which requires a style of its own. This helps me, for one thing, be more concise (after all, I'm not writing like Proust or Henry James, here).

And so, "The Doomsday Symphony" has begun. Now to dig into the first draft and start revising – trying to find the right word – and making sure all this, in the end, makes sense when you read it.

Will I stick rigorously to the numbers? I'm not sure yet. Beethoven would throw in a 7 bar phrase when he felt it needed it.

We'll see.

Oh, and if any of you know a publisher who might be interested...? Hey, let me know! Thanks!

- Dick Strawser