Dinner would have been extremely formal had it not been for the circumstances. Gerry told me that he had begun the installation that I had been sent over to complete, and had decided to call in on the Vaud sisters and tell them that they were distant relations of his. This was on his second evening in Paris. He told them that he had been intrigued by Katherine Searle's apparent disappearence from the family correspondence after 1827, and after years of research had discovered who she had married. The twins were suspicious at first, but after deciding that Gerry was a decent young man, decided to tell him everything.
"Even after I saw the pianospectrum in action I still thought it was great family history, but nothing more," he said between mouthfulls of food. "Then they showed me the harmonoscribe, and I knew that I had the find of the century, even without the playback machine."
"But what is the harmonoscribe?" I asked for perhaps the tenth time. "You say that it is meant to record music as colour, yet you haven't even described it."
"Rico, you just have to see it for yourself. Ladies, would you please excuse us? It's time we got to work on that setup in the parlor."
"By all means," said Charlotte. "We shall have the coffee sent there."
"And we shall come ourselves," added Claudine.
If I marvelled at the pianospectrum, I stared in disbelief at the harmonoscribe as we entered the palour. Imagine a heavy mahogony spinning wheel with a circular, silvered glass disk clamped to it. Rising directly out of the base was a tracking arm driven by a worm gear mechanism, and mounted on the arm was a diaphragm to drive it. A long sound tube led away from the diaphragm to a metal horn that lay on the floor.
"We have set up a playback device of our own," began Gerry, but I stopped him.
"Wait, just slow down there. How does this thing record in the first place? There are no grooves on the disk."
"Not needed. The tracking mechanism moves the needle at the end of the arm as the disk turns, and it ends up tracing out a spiral path. At the same time sound waves travel down the tube from the funnel and cause the diaphragm to vibrate. This moves the arm, and hence the needle vibrates as it travels, scratching a record of the sound waves in the silvering."
"It is all driven by clockwork," said Charlotte as she entered.
"And she kept it in the next room when she was recording the playing of a musician," said Claudine, who was right behind her.
"A trusted servant set it in motion at the right signal from her. The sound tube went through the wall and was hidden by a curtain."
"But why keep it a secret?" I asked. "It's a great invention."
"She never gave the season in her diaries, but it must be obvious," said Charlotte. "Just imagine her showing the machine to, say, Wagner. He would wonder where she got the idea, and knowledge of science. Soon he would start making enquiries about her past. That would never do."
"No, and if it was Wagner he would blackmail her for money."
"And sex."
"Nonsense. She was too old by the time she met him."
"She met Franz Liszt about the same time, and he tried to seduce her. It is in her diary."
"Liszt tried to seduce every woman he met."
"So did Wagner."
"Please! Ladies, I need to brief Rico on the technical problems we've been having," Gerry broke in.
His experiments had shown that the glass disks could hold a little over three minutes of recorded sound, and Charlotte had kept the mechanism in perfect operating condition. The playback device had been lost at the time of Katherine's death. According to her notes and diaries, she had been experimenting with a device that would reproduce the music as a colour display, something like that of the pianospectrum. Because the layer of silvering on the glass was so thin it could never be expected to drive a playback needle that could generate sound.
Gerry had adapted a modern turntable to hold the glass disks, and was using a laser scanning head to trace the path of the scratches in the silvering. When he had first seen the disks he had realised that anything that was recorded in a systematic and orderly way could be scanned, digitised, and played back through a computer driven sound synthesiser. This is where I came in. The software in the synthesiser's micro had been designed to filter out and enhance faint signals from old grooved disks and cylinders, not a flat trace on silvered glass.
When I asked for a microscope to examine the trace on the glass plate the twins produced a century old brass model that might have been contemporary with Louis Pasteur. I measured and sketched the waveforms, then began to modify the software.
"The problem is in the buffer masks," I explained as I worked. "At present it interprets everything as anomolous waveforms because it thinks it's getting output from a conventional grooved phonograph disk."
Gerry hovered nervously behind me as I began to change the software. While quite at home with re-wiring and modifying even the most expensive hardware, he had a dread of tampering with working computer programs. He had fed the signal from the laser's pickup through a frequency analyser before it reached the micro. The most substantial part of the change was altering several dozen assembly language bit-masks that defined the characteristics of the waveforms being input. It was the sort of tedious work that I hated, so I entrusted it to Gerry -- he was so frightened of software that he would be far more meticulous than myself.
I had been working for over three hours without a break by then, and I sank into one of the large, comfortable armchairs as Charlotte poured my coffee into an eggshell china cup. For a while I stared at the mechanism that Katherine Searle had built so long ago. It was a magnificent achievement for its time, no less so than her father's pianospectrum.
"I wonder where she got the idea," I said aloud.
"Oh, we know that," said Charlotte. "She wrote it in her diary. She always kept a diary."
"The 1829 diary," said Claudine. "I'll fetch it at once."
"And the 1837 diary," Charlotte called after her. "That was the year that she got it working."
Claudine returned with the books and handed me one that was open for March 10, 1829. It was quite a long entry. Katherine had decided to repair the damage to the pianospectrum inflicted by Beethoven two years earlier. The part explaining how she got the idea for her recording machine was very explicit.
'As I removed the lid from the box housing the levers and mirrors, I noticed that one of the levers had been knocked from its mounting, and had fallen against the worm gear of the clockwork regulator. This had caused the point to be dragged across the silvered surface of the large mirror that concentrated the light from the arc-lamp.
'The line was nearly straight for a short distance, then all fine waves and troughs, then straight again until the point reached the mirror's edge and stuck in the brass mounting. As a diaphragm had been attached to the other end of the lever, I concluded that it had been Herr Beethoven's playing that had caused the wavy line to be traced. It was there, on the surface of the mirror: the actual sounds he had produced, even though he was long dead.
'After examining the scratches with an enlarging glass, I spent the afternoon in thought. Could not these scratches be played back through the pianospectrum as colours? The compositions of a great composer are immortal on paper, but the playing of a musician dies with the flesh. Perhaps these little scratches could be used to record performances forever. There may even be a way to change them back into sound, or at least colours. If only father were still alive. He had such a way with these problems.'
"We still have that mirror," said Charlotte. "It is locked in a special case."
"There is a note inside, which reads 'This scratch is the playing of Herr van Beethoven, January 1829'," said Claudine.
"Here is the entry where she perfects the harmonoscribe," said Charlotte as she handed me the second diary. It was open at June 15, 1837.
'I can now record short performances as scratches on a silvered disk,' I read. 'There remains the problem of playing them back as either colours or sound, and sometimes I despair of ever finding a solution. I have tried using fine beams of coloured light, directed in layers, but this provides a representation of the sound's volume alone, not its pitch. One might be able to mount a battery of small coloured mirrors at the edge of a second disk, but I do not think that any watchmaker could fashion clockwork fine enough for this to work, and the image would be minute indeed. On the other hand, I know that my friend has a solution, and that I shall always be able to rely upon him.'
"Who is this friend that she mentions," I asked the twins. "Was he another inventor?"
"We do not know," said Charlotte.
"He is mentioned in the diaries from 1835 until the year that she died, but he is never identified," said Claudine.
"She died in 1875, you know."
"I think he was a secret lover."
"Nonsense. She mentions that it was always platonic in 1873."
"What about after that?"
"She was as old as we are."
"We could have affairs if we wished," Claudine concluded, turning to me. "What do you think, Mr Tosti?"
I said that I had no doubt of it, then retreated to the micro to check the waveform masks that Gerry had completed. He returned to correcting the alignment on the laser head and pickup while I ran the modified program through some tests. I was wearing a pair headphones as I worked so that I could monitor the output port. The A440 tone sounded clearly as I selected it from among the computer's data sets, and likewise that of middle C. Now I tried to test out some chords, but instead I heard a loud, crackling hiss, overlaid by a regular knocking and some softer rattles.
At once I realised that Gerry had managed to accidentally rename an output label, and that I was listening to a live signal from the laser head. I had put my hands up to the headphones to remove them when I heard an unmistakable cough--the heavy, deep-chested cough of a dangerous medical condition. A man's voice said "Scusi, Madame."
As the music began I had the impression that I was listening to a radio transmission from a very distant station--from another planet, even another star. Amid the background noise a violin played a dreamy little piece by Paganini. The player was very good, with a deft bow technique and an excellent sense of timing. The pianist followed the melody with discretion and sensitivity.
The instrument had to be a Stradivarius. I had learned the violin for several years, and had once been permitted to play one of the legendary instruments for a few minutes. I recognised the powerful G string and characteristic tone. The playing was excellent, the very finest that I have ever heard. Fear mingled with my admiration, an unreasoning fear that I did not understand. These people were deities of music, masterful and note-perfect. Even if I practiced for a lifetime I could never play like this: in fact nobody could surpass or even approach such playing.
The melody brightened into the major key as the piece ended. The man said "Merci, Madame," and she replied "Oh Monsieur." The hissing and rattle continued for a while, then stopped with a loud pop.
"I'm sure the tracking mechanism is as well tuned as it can be," said Gerry. I noticed that my hands were still raised to take the headphones off.
"Run it over that disk again," I said, unplugging the jack to the headphones and flicking the switch to the speakers. Gerry and the twins were as absolutely still and silent as I was while the music played again.
"Number three: NP and KV, 1838," read Charlotte. "That will be Nicolo Paganini and Katherine Vaud, of course. He said 'scusi'. He was Italian."
"And he coughed. He was not very well," said Claudine. "He died two years after this was recorded. The theme is from Rossini's Mose. Paganini's variations on it were very popular last century."
"Paganini himself," I whispered in awe.
"It's worth millions!" exclaimed Gerry. "A recording by the greatest violin virtuoso ever, and he's not even around to argue about royalties."

Over the ensuing hours we carried dozens of boxes of the silvered disks up from the basement. It was as if a group of children had dug up a treasure chest at the beach, and were strutting about wearing priceless crowns, tiaras and necklaces before relinquishing it all to the adults. Katherine had secretly been recording the playing of her famous guests and proteges from the perfection of her harmonoscribe in 1837 until her death in 1875. Apart from the famous composers, there was quite a number of disks of famous virtuoso pianists of the early and middle Nineteenth Century. Singers and players of other instruments were on no more than five percent of the disks.
At first we played the disks of the most famous people. Clara Schumann's piano technique was flawlessly precise, yet with a warm grace that I have heard in no modern performer. Franz Liszt, on the other hand, played with such sparkle and excitement that I felt wrung out at the end of each disk. Chopin was a disappointment to me. Although he would hold his own with the top five pianists in the world today, I felt that the brooding melancholy of his style was probably more appealing to the Nineteenth Century taste than ours.
As we played each disk I made a tape recording--just in case someone dropped it later. At 4am Charlotte opened a rare and old bottle of French Brandy, and we drank a toast to Katherine, Hiram, and the great musicians of the last century. We felt very close to them by then, as over the previous five hours we had heard snatches of their conversations, laughter, and occasional curses as well as their music.
"This will have to be marketed very carefully," Gerry told us, "and of course we will have to let scientists look over everything and test it for aunthenticity. I would estimate that your share would be about two hundred million over five years, ladies."
"Is that in francs?" asked Claudine.
"American dollars. The classical music market does not move as fast as that for pop music, but it is very big. Every music lover in the world will want at least one CD or record of selections from Katherine's glass disks."
"It is a lot of money, Gerald, and we are already rich enough," said Charlotte. "You worked out how to play sound from the disks, which we could never have done. You must have a share."
"Well, that's very kind of you, but the company will give me a big bonus."
"Nonsense, you must take the money," said Claudine. "And Mr. Tosti as well. He did . . . whatever he did to repair the computer."
"And he appreciates fine music."
"And he said that we still look seductive."
The twins winked at me in unison and smiled. Gerry gave me a puzzled glance as I blushed and hastily got up to put another glass disk on the turntable.
"I remember that English conductor telling me how seductive I was," continued Charlotte.
"That was in 1937," Claudine elaborated. "He seduced you, too."
"And you."
"Not until his next trip to Paris."
"He probably thought you were me."
"He did not. I was very careful to tell him."
While they continued to argue Gerry left the room to phone our company's New York executives and tell them of our discovery. I had noticed that as we searched through the recordings for famous performers we were weeding a large number of disks by Katherine herself into a separate pile.
It occured to me that I had not yet heard her play alone. When she had been playing the accompaniment on the three Paganini disks, and during the duets with Brahms, she had given a very good account of herself. I selected a disk of her playing a piece from Robert Schumann's Woodland Scenes--The Prophet Bird.
A professional concert pianist once told me that this piece is a nightmare to play properly, with its odd accents, timing, and variations of dynamic and texture. Katherine had either practiced the piece a great deal, or was so good that no effort was evident at all. The twins noticed too, and stopped their bickering to listen.
"That is a new player, and a good one," declared Charlotte.
"No, it was Madame Katherine, I remember some of her style from the duet she played with Brahms," Claudine corrected her.
"We must hear more."
"Yes, put on another disk, if you please."
We played Katherine's disks for the next forty minutes, and slowly discovered that she was at least the equal of Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt. A researcher like Clynes would say that she exploited the sentic forms of each piece to the fullest extent, so that the music was a strong emotional experience, rather than just entertainment. Months later a critic said that listening to her play the Chopin Etudes was like a firm yet gentle hand seizing one's heart while another stroked it.
I also discovered that she had modified the harmonoscribe in 1854, so that it could record for seven minutes continuously: this required me to drag Gerry away from the phone to adjust the tracking head to the double-density recordings.
While he tried to tell us how excited the folk in New York were at the prospect of releasing an album of Chopin playing Chopin, we tried to explain about how good Katherine's playing was. Whether she was outshining Liszt with his own showpiece compositions, or playing her own frothy but pleasant pieces, she had no peer, and we made our way through a selection of her disks until the clock struck 6am, and the maid arrived to take our orders for breakfast.
"Will you be releasing only one album of her pieces?" asked Charlotte. "She has recorded enough for at least a dozen."
"We might get one of her recordings on the album of highlights of the collection, but she's an unknown, no matter how good she is," Gerry explained without concern.
"But she is so very good," insisted Charlotte.
"As good as the best of the great composers," added Claudine.
"And virtuosos."
"You don't understand the recording industry," said Gerry. "Most of the selling potential comes from name and reputation, not talent. And even talented players need expensive promotion campaigns, not to mention concert tours, media interviews, and all that. Katherine has been dead for over a century. We've never had to run a publicity campaign for a new, dead virtuoso before--it would be very expensive to run, and it could be a flop. She can't be there to pose for photographers, sign autographs, and speak for herself."
"But she gave us all these recordings," I protested. "Don't you think we owe her something?"
"We owe her plenty, and she will get it--as the inventor of the first sound recording machine," said Gerry. "That's real recognition, after all. Just think, only people who know anything about classical music will have heard of Clara Schumann, but literally everybody knows that Edison invented the phonograph."
"Except that Katherine was first," said Charlottle frostily.
"Well, let's be fair," I said. "She could only record, not play back."
"She did have a playback machine!" exclaimed Claudine. "She was always writing about the one developed by her friend."
"Whose name we never learned," said Charlotte. "Why, the playback invention may be somewhere in Paris at this very moment. We could run advertisments, asking people to search their attics and offering a reward."
The maid entered and announced breakfast. Charlotte and Claudine stood up at once, but Gerry stayed in his chair, rubbing his bloodshot eyes.
"I need to put a few more disks on tape for Rico to take to New York this morning," he explained, and I gave a silent cheer. "I think I'll pass up breakfast."
"You will do no such thing," said Charlotte. "The maid will bring croissants and coffee to you in here."
I volunteered to stay and help, and we set about taping another half dozen disks that Katherine had made in her later years. The last disk of all was dated only three weeks before her death, and was titled 'To My Friend'.
"Looks like another of her own compositions," said Gerry. "Put it on. We might be able to use it on the 'selections' album as well--you know, start with her accompanying Paganini and finish with her very last recording."
"Yes, the twins would be pleased if she was featured on two of the tracks," I said as I mounted the disk on the turntable.
The hiss, rattles, and knocking began as usual, but instead of playing the piano, the long dead Katherine spoke--and spoke to us personally!
"Monsieur, or Madame, or perhaps there is even a group of you--you are the friend in my diaries, the inventor who has always given me hope, the person who has allowed my music to live again," she began, her voice weak and her breath shallow. She was speaking in English as well, perhaps anticipating that her disks and devices would be given to the American branch of the family one day.
"My friend from the distant future, I hope that most of my glass disks have survived to entertain and enchant you. Although I could never play the music back myself, I have recorded the very best musicians who have visited me over the past four decades for the music lovers of the future. This fragment of my century's music is my gift to you, but I would ask a small favour in return.
"During my lifetime, and for the most cruel of reasons, I was unable to perform on stage or become a celebrity. When misfortune was at its very worst, I chanced upon this method of recording, and realised that I could use it to preserve my playing, as photographic plates preserve a person's likeness. A scandal surrounds my father's death, a scandal that I could never allow to be linked with my dear husband's noble family. By your century, however, that scandal will be either forgotten or unimportant, as time always heals such wounds. It will be safe for me to play in public.
"If you please, my friend, take your playback machine to the concert halls and let me play to audiences after so very long. I shall not disappoint them. My good colleague Frederic Chopin always said that I played with the touch of an angel, and surely his opinion is not to be ignored.
"My doctor tells me that I have less than a month to live. Bless you, my friend, for bringing my hands back to life. Bless you and goodbye, from Countess Vaud, and from Katherine Searle."
She concluded the recording with a Chopin nocturne, number 2 in E-flat Major, and you may blame it on my Mediterranean temperament if you like, but I found myself unable to hold back the tears. Gerry had been sitting on the edge of his chair while the disk played, but he slumped back and buried his face in his hands as the last chord faded into the background of hiss and rattles.
"So the friend was us," I said rather stupidly.
He was silent for some time, then he said "The company's going to have to gear itself up for a very unusual promotion campaign."
"For Katherine? Gerry, it's all very well to convince you and me, but what about the Board? They'll never put up the money."
"They will if we withold the recordings by the famous composers. How about that! She was talking to me--well, us, at any rate. I think I need to make another phone call to New York."
Now, five years later, it seems amazing that we could have worried about people being interested in Katherine. My own share of the recording profits could pay for a 747 airliner, with plenty left over. The twins have founded a university named after her, and she has been praised by everyone from the President to radical feminist groups. Strangely enough, she has been classed as a great virtuoso of the Twentieth Century, because that is when her public career began. The recordings have also produced an explosion of scholarship on Nineteenth Century music, and on how its great composers intended their works to be played.
I could not have known all of that as the cab drove me away from the Vaud mansion later that morning, but I knew that the reel of tape that I held would cause a sensation in New York. The dawn was breaking as we drove down the Avenue Marceau and across the Seine on the way to Orly Airport, and the sky had cleared during the night, leaving the city clean and gleaming. To my surprise the cab driver was Canadian, and spoke English.
"The start of a beautiful day, eh?" he remarked. "Even in winter the Old Lady can be pleasant sometimes. On mornings like this I always think something marvellous will begin."
I agreed, smiling all the more because today what he said was true. Katherine had challenged Time and Death themselves with her silvered glass disks and clockwork machine, and just when it seemed that she was beaten, along came Rico Tosti and Gerry Searle with their laser pickup heads, digital analysers and computer programs. Tired and proud, like some minor hero in a great legend, I fancied that I was holding hands with the newly awakened Katherine.

Copyright © Sean McMullen, 1996. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted with kind permission of the author.