Saturday 30 October 2021

Music In Future Histories

 
"...at one point in the following pages [Flandry] is whistling an unnamed waltz tune while piloting a ship in a scene that might be Poul Anderson's sly nod at 2001: A Space Odyssey."
-Hank Davis, ENTER A HERO, SOMEWHAT FLAWED IN Poul Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. vii-xi AT p. viii.

"Magnifying and amplifying, [Kyra] saw vehicles, robots, spacesuited technicians flit motelike through and around, a dance that evoked music in her head, Mozart, Strauss, Nielsen."
-Harvest Of Stars, 52, p. 449.
 
Aycharaych:
 
"'Ah, the orchestra has begun a Strauss waltz. Very good. Though of course Johann is not to be compared to Richard, who will always be the Strauss.'
"'Oh?' Flandry's interest in ancient music was only slightly greater than his interest in committing suicide. 'I wouldn't know.'
"'You should, my friend. Not even excepting Xingu, Strauss is the most misunderstood composer of known galactic history.'"
-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky Cave" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 149-301 AT II, p. 160.
 
(In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, a Klingon quotes a lot of Shakespeare.)

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I recall how Flandry was more interested in literature, as we see in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, where we see him mentioning Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem "A Musical Instrument." With Aycharaych STARTLING him by quoting from it, the stanza beginning with "Yet have a beast is the great god Pan..."

Ad astra! Sean