Chapter 220: It’s a Musical on and off the Stage (K6)

Chapter 218 – It’s a Musical on and off the Stage (4K6)
Arthur turned his head to see Lionel and Mendelssohn standing behind him, and whirled around to greet them with a smile as he picked up the white gloves he had placed beside the piano stand.

“I didn’t realize I was so lucky to see you here, Lionel.”

Lionel joked, “Although I may not be really attached to art collections, but for music, I truly appreciate it. Not to mention the fact that this concert has gathered so many top pianists, if I’m absent from an event of this caliber, then I’m afraid I won’t have the face to declare my love for music to the outside world.”

Speaking of this, Lionel introduced Arthur to Mendelssohn beside him, “This is Mr. Felix Mendelssohn, who is equally young as you, and possesses the same talent that no one else can reach, his overture for Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, I’m sure you’ve heard of it before, haven’t you?”

Arthur dared to audition at the Coburg Theater today, so naturally he had long ago done a background check on the musicians who might be there.

But even if he hadn’t prepared, the name Mendelssohn was familiar enough to him.

The most perfect master of composition since Mozart is well-known both in today’s Britain and in later times.

However, Lionel was actually so close to him, which was somewhat out of Arthur’s expectation. One could only say that Rothschild’s social range was much larger than he expected.

Arthur kindly extended his hand to Mendelssohn, both with the initial intention of expressing his goodwill, but also with a few superstitions of wanting to borrow some musical cells from the piano virtuoso.

However, Mendelssohn’s brows were furrowed, and his eyes were fixed on Arthur’s face as if he was frozen.

“Mr. Mendelssohn?”

It wasn’t until Arthur voiced a reminder that Mendelssohn realized his rudeness, and he hurriedly apologized, “I’m sorry, Mr. Hastings, I have felt as if there is a familiar feeling in your style of playing from just now, but it is indefinable, you and Mr. Clementi are equally in pursuit of difficult techniques, but they are not exactly the same. I …… always feel that you have the shadow of someone …… in your body.”

Speaking here, a light flashed within Mendelssohn’s brain, and he spoke in surprise, “Lister! Right, I said how could it be so familiar? Your crazy energy is simply the same as Liszt’s style.”

Arthur originally thought that he was only quietly chair a piano song, who thought that this can be connoisseurs see out.

However, the good thing is that this song “Bells” was originally adapted by Liszt Paganini’s, to say a big day, he and Liszt belong to the original work of art based on the processing.

If you want to pursue, at least he is still a year earlier than Liszt, Paganini’s European concert tour will only visit Paris next year.

Arthur cheekily opened his mouth: “I didn’t expect that you and Mr. Liszt also have dealings, although I haven’t personally heard Mr. Liszt play, but I still heard that he came to London at the age of fourteen to play, and the result was a sensation in the whole country, and was also received by the late King George IV’s deeds.

My playing is not bad, but it is not bad at all. But compared to you and Mr. Liszt, who were musical prodigies at the age of nine, I was far behind. I didn’t even know what a piano was at that age of nine.”

Hearing this, Mendelssohn thought that he had accidentally touched Arthur’s poor childhood memories, and he hurriedly relieved him.

“Mr. Hastings, a genius is a genius, and it has nothing to do with what age one touches the piano. Have you forgotten Mr. Clementi’s experience? He did not learn the piano until he was fourteen, under the patronage of Sir Beckford, and did not give his first public performance until he was twenty-three, but that did not prevent him from becoming one of the great monuments in the history of the piano.

And as you made your debut at the age of 20, I’m sure the future will go quite well for you as well. To be able to write a piece like “The Bells” and to play it with such passion. Perhaps we really will gain a Paganini of the piano world as well.”

Lionel also opened his mouth at the right time to change the atmosphere as he asked with a smile, “Everyone says that Paganini made a deal with the devil so that he could have such a pair of nimble hands, Arthur, are you too?”

Arthur smiled, “That’s right, at least this piece of ‘The Bells’ is.”

The crowd laughed at this, and the Red Devil on the side of the room pushed his glasses up with a bad smile, “Wow! My dear Arthur, look at these stupid humans! When you tell a lie, they believe it. When you tell the truth, they think it’s false. Tsk, tsk, tsk, it’s been thousands of years and humans are still like that, they only believe what they believe.”

The crowd exchanged pleasantries for a while longer, and soon, Mendelssohn, who felt an itch for technique, suddenly stretched his arms and spoke, “After playing all morning today, it’s about time to practice the piano, and this is just the right time to prep for tomorrow’s performance.”

Who knew that before he could take the stage, he was stopped by Arthur behind him, “Mr. Mendelssohn, I think it would be best if you wait a little while. When I just tried the piano, part of the intonation seemed to feel like there was a problem.”

“Problems?” Mendelssohn was skeptical, “But …… when I just listened to you play, it seemed like everything was perfect. This piano was specially shipped from Mr. Clementi’s piano house, even if the fellows there were careless, the theater staff shouldn’t have been so careless.”

Arthur just snorted when he heard Mendelssohn’s questioning, “You guys came late just now, plus you were standing far away, so you might not have heard it clearly. But it’s no big deal, I’ve already notified the theater’s staff to go change a piano. Counting the time, people should be arriving soon at this moment as well.”

As soon as Arthur’s words fell, he saw the curtain of the theater being lifted up, and several staff members with red faces were gently carrying a heavy piano from the backstage to the front hall.

They couldn’t help but curse as they carried it, “That’s not right, the usual weight of a piano shouldn’t be this heavy, right?”

“Is there something stuffed inside?”

“Fuck, this one feels like it’s almost twice as heavy as most pianos.”

And following behind the staff, there was an embarrassed Wheatstone, who apologized with a face full of embarrassment, “Thanks for your hard work, this piano is an improved model of our Wheatstone Musical Instrument House, and it might be slightly heavier in terms of weight.”

Arthur, realizing that Wheatstone had arrived at the scene, hurriedly said goodbye to Lionel and the others first, and then quickly stepped forward and rushed towards Wheatstone and asked in a lowered voice, “You’re sure you didn’t bring the wrong piano, right? Is this the same piano that I used before, the one that can record songs with a long pole connected to a phonograph?”

Wheatstone’s head was covered in sweat, after all, he wasn’t like Arthur, and it was really the first time the honest Wheatstone had ever done anything like this.

“Arthur, isn’t it a bad idea for us to do this?”

Arthur heard this and just lit his pipe and exhaled smoke, “If you think it’s not good, you can just send the profits from the sales to the pianist who participated in today’s recording after the record goes on sale. Also, you don’t think about it, all of these people are the top streams of the British music scene, and those old school musicians are usually very conservative. If you don’t use this kind of tactic, you probably won’t be able to record them for the rest of your life.”

Wheatstone wanted to say more, but before he could open his mouth, Arthur took a document out of the inner pocket of his tuxedo and threw it into his hand.

Wheatstone looked down at it and became dizzy with excitement.

There were only a few plain words written on the document-The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Patent Authorization Document.

“Whoa! O my God! No, O Mr. Hastings! No, it’s Arthur, O Arthur, my dear friend! You are a great relief to me.”

Arthur looked at Wheatstone with this excited look that practically wanted to punch him twice and just shook his head, “Everyone has a price, but Mr. Wheatstone, please don’t present yourself as too cheap. You claim to be afraid of socializing, but if you keep this up, I’m going to start fearing you.” Wheatstone grinned while running his stomach to calm down, “Yes, Arthur, you are right. I’m supposed to act decent, but I’m just so happy about this. How in the world did you manage to get this done in a week?”

“How did it get done?” Arthur tapped the piano beside him, “It’s just like this, done in a not-so-good way. So, do you still have a problem with burning records now?”

“This ……”

Wheatstone struggled for half a day, but when Arthur put his hand on the patent document, he was jolted as if electrocuted, “No problem, I have no problem at all. And I’ll pay them their share of the profits on time after the record is released, just like you said.”

Hearing this, Arthur couldn’t help but reveal a hint of a smile as he leaned against the piano and wrapped his arms around it, “Moscheles, Mendelssohn, Porter, and so on, all of these top pianists from Britain should all be coming to audition this afternoon and evening. How much do you think so many records from the top masters should be worth?”

“Uh ……”

Wheatstone frowned slightly and did a half-hearted calculation in his heart, and just when he wanted to give a specific figure, Arthur suddenly spoke again.

“This concert gathers so many celebrities and musicians, causing a stir is almost inevitable. If you release a compilation record of the musicians’ performances on this slot, how much revenue will it bring you?”

Wheatstone’s breath practically stopped when he heard this. It was as if he saw God pulling open his pants pockets and stuffing money into them one by one.

Arthur spoke again, “And with so many people buying records, they have to buy a machine that can play it, right? And you’re the only workshop in London that can make a phonograph at the moment, so if others want to copy it, it’s not coincidental that you happen to have the patent papers ……”

Hearing this, Wheatstone gasped sharply and repeatedly as he reached out to interrupt Arthur and spoke, “Arthur, you’re a dear friend of mine, so just tell me exactly what favor you need from me.”

Arthur smiled slightly and spoke, “It’s really no big deal. I just think that a phonograph is certainly good, and it should be enough for unusual leisure and entertainment, but for some more secretive and special jobs, a phonograph is not only bad for radio reception, but this volume is also too eye-catching.

Therefore, I have a relatively preliminary idea, I wonder if you are interested in participating in it? Incidentally, out of our friendship, I can give you a little bit of information that this project comes from some governmental organization that is not very good at mentioning names.”

Wheatstone couldn’t help but light up when he heard this.

The project coming from a government organization, this sentence alone was a fatal attraction to Wheatstone, who came from a businessman’s background.

This was because it often represented a stable large-volume procurement scale, as well as guaranteed payment delivery. Even, if the project can attract enough attention, it can also get a large amount of research funds. Babbage’s differential machine that lost more than 10,000 pounds is a typical case.

With the support of pounds, at this time in the eyes of Wheatstone, even Arthur, who has always made him feel hateful, immediately became handsome.

Wheatstone suppressed his ecstasy and asked in a low voice, “May I have the honor to learn …… no, is it that I can have the honor to be able to participate in this project?”

Arthur saw that he had already been overwhelmed by money, which made him feel comfortable and bold to propose the research project that the LPS, which actually did not have a single penny of office funding, wanted to set up.

“Mr. Wheatstone, you’ve studied acoustics quite a bit, and now we’ve figured out that the principle of sound generation is vibration. So next, perhaps we need to consider linking this to electromagnetism, I’ve heard that you’ve been going to Mr. Faraday a lot lately to discuss electromagnetism, is that true please?”

Wheatstone nodded, “Mr. Faraday has treated me very well, and with his help, I’ve sort of gotten my foot in the door in this area of electromagnetism.”

Arthur smiled and said, “That’s good. Since you have already been initiated, then you must know about Mr. Faraday’s astonishing electromagnetic induction experiment this year, right?”

“Of course. The electromagnetic induction experiment proved that electricity and magnetism can be transformed into each other, which is the most significant scientific discovery this year. But ……”

Wheatstone scratched his head, “But what does that have to do with acoustics?”

Arthur said, “It is well known that when a copper wire is wound around an ordinary sewing needle, and the copper wire is electrified, the needle becomes magnetic. So what interesting changes would occur if a wire was slowly passed through a coil that had a change in current?”

The hairs of sweat stood up on Wheatstone’s body when he heard this, “If we do this, as the strength of the current changes, a number of small magnets of varying strengths will form on this wire. If we can link this change to the change in vibration of sound, we can realize the storage of sound.”

Arthur smiled and nodded, “Thankfully, something like electric current can be much more sensitive than a mechanized phonograph. So it must be good for recording the human voice.”

Wheatstone took a deep breath, “Arthur ……”

“What?”

Wheatstone gulped violently, “How on earth did you come up with all this stuff? To be able to come up with such genius ideas, you could have gone it alone! With this, Gramophone would probably be beaten senseless.”

Arthur gently shook his finger, “No, Mr. Wheatstone, I don’t have the craftsmanship of you or the mind of a proper engineer, all I have is worthless creativity.

And most importantly, this technology can’t be used for profit, it has to be contained to maximize its power. So the phonograph market won’t be hit, you can rest assured of that.

After all, even from a cost point of view, just the fact that it doesn’t need electricity alone makes the wind-up mechanical phonograph already more suitable for the times than the thing I’m talking about.”

Saying this, Arthur suddenly gave a start, and he looked at Wheatstone with a smile, “So, when do you think I’ll be able to get a sample?”

Wheatstone took a deep breath as he patted his chest and assured, “Although this thing sounds like it has a fair amount of difficulty, the direction is clear at the very least. I don’t have any obstacles in acoustics and handcrafting, and as for electromagnetism, I’ll just make a few more trips to the Royal Society to find Mr. Faraday. Once the principles are smoothed out, it will only take a month at the most, two or three weeks at the least, to produce it.”

“Two or three weeks?”

Arthur couldn’t help but be a little disappointed to hear that, it seemed that even if he let Wheatstone work overtime, he did have his limits. At least for the duration of the London conference, he couldn’t count on getting things done through the recorder.

Wheatstone didn’t see Arthur’s disappointment, he said cheerfully, “Arthur, you go back and tell that department that can’t say its name to get the money ready. Sooner or later I’ll be able to get it out of this kind of contraption that has a direction.”

Arthur just pursed his lips in a subtle expression when he heard this, and he nodded, “Okay, next time for sure.”

(End of chapter)