Let's take Marion Zimmer Bradley first. Music sneaks into her stories in minor ways not infrequently, but with Exile's Song, she introduces a female character who takes music very seriously indeed. In the distant future, Marion Zimmer Bradley (or MZB, as she is called by her fans) envisions a cosmos where mankind has spread widely among the stars, and over the millennia has given rise to numerous unique civilizations on hundreds of planets, each with its unique culture. There is one entire planet, called University, which is the entire galactic center for higher learning.
MZB's Darkover series centers on the planet Darkover, a planet in the system of a red giant, and the main conceit is that, over time, the inhabitants of Darkover boast an extroardinarily large proportion of people with psy powers. The psy powers are carefully classified, and satify their own rules, sort of, and the families of psy powered individuals essentially rule the society. After a particularly traumatic political upheaval, one head of such a family gives up his rights to his domain, (as the properties and lands of these families are called,) and goes off-world, to represent it as its senator in the interplanetary government. He takes with him his daughter, and his second wife, his first wife having been a casualty of the political upheaval (the so-called Sharrah Rebellion). The story centers around the little girl, who grows up in an entirely different planets, and then goes off to University (the planet, remember), and becomes a capable musician, with an advanced degree in ethnomusicology, that is the comparative musicology of various cultures. (Actually, it should be called xenomusicology, because ethnomusicology is, to the best of my knowledge, the musicology of the musical arts of primitive peoples.)
The three books in which this character is the central one are among the last few that MZB wrote. (Others have been written by MZB collaborating with other co-authors, but these three see the hand of MZB still prominent; in subsequent books, she permits her co-authors to fill out gaps in the stories presented in other books.) I wondered why MZB left it so late to write a book with a protagonist who was a musician, and I had several theories. One was that being a musician was merely incidental to the character; she may as well have been a poet, or an artist, or a biologist, but for obvious reasons she (MZB) wanted a discipline that was conducive to interplanetary travel (the musician travels into various planets, recording indigenous music, to be studied back in University), and appropriate for an innocent scholar; as you can imagine, an economist or a political scientist or a historian would make for far too canny a character for the interaction of the character with a particular society to be interesting. A second theory is that MZB was, herself, a musical person, but did not initially have the expertise she needed to write a book centered around a musicologist, until she happened to discover someone who could help her out. A third theory is that MZB actually met someone who became the prototype for the character.
The story begins really with this girl, Margaret Alton, accidentally having to revisit her native planet of Darkover, and discovering that she had very strong psy powers, which have to be schooled in order to prevent dangerous situations. (Many of the Darkover stories take this route, of a character discovering psy powers, and having to go through the routine of how to deal with them, but this story really does a good job with it.) Unlike other strong Darkover series characters, Margaret Alton has a lot of depth, because having her main interest being music, she is impatient with having to deal with this wholly (to her) unwanted talent for, well, mind-reading, and so forth.
Interestingly enough, MZB actually gives credit to another person for inventing the character of Margaret Alton. I haven't tried to understand what exactly that means; it could be any number of things.
How successful is the story, and the character? I would say that Margaret Alton is almost the most successful character this author invented. She is innocent, but sophisticated, repressed, but MZB arranges for her repression to have been artificial, and it is removed, with interesting consequences. Even when the repression is removed, and Margaret is able to express herself sexually, there is still great discipline, together with passion, which makes for a very attractive character indeed. The story takes two volumes to unfold, and, I have to say, story wise it is a little too fantastic. But you never notice the weakness of the plot; the character of Margaret (or Marguerida, as she is called on Darkover) is fascinating, and carries us with her.
The second author is Anne McCaffrey, who had created several SF series, two of which are the Dragons of PERN series, and the Crystal Singer series. The latter series centers round the mining of a certain sort of crystal, which has to be sung to; the crystal sings back, and it is harvested. Seems a little far-fetched to me, but though there is singing, there is really no music in the story.
The PERN series is about a human colony on an Earth-like planet (called PERN), and the settlers find an intriguing native life-form that resembles a miniature version of the dragons of ancient Earth mythology. They genetically engineer a giant version of these little creatures, supposedly to help deal with a certain biological menace, and over the centuries, a symbiotic relationship develops between the humans and the dragons, even when the society regresses to a medieval level.
One of the most charming stories is that of Menolly, a girl who likes to
sing. In PERN, in the centuries after it has regressed to a
Medieval culture, there are harpers, people who provide both
music and history, and a sort of education based on an oral
tradition. But the harpers are all men, and though Menolly would dearly
love to be a harper, it is against the rules. Menolly, furious at being denied this opportunity, goes off to live in the sea-caves, where she is stunned to rediscover the original little miniature dragons (from which, we know, the giant dragons were actually bred. That all comes out in other stories).
It is interesting to contrast the character of Menolly with that of Margaret, and the two stories, and even the two series. The PERN series, most of which is set in the medieval society, reflects the pleasure that McCaffrey has in writing stories within that background. In contrast, MZB's stories get their energy from the interaction between the culture of Darkover (which is also creeping from a feudal one towards a sort of Renaissance culture) and the interplanetary space culture. Darkover is a protected planet, which is a special status that forbids contamination of its technology with modern scientific technology and culture, something that the Darkovan leadership thinks is essential for the survival of Darkover.
McCaffrey, too, clearly identifies with the character of Menolly, but she has a much easier time of it, since most of what Menolly does is sing, and play a guitar or a little hand-drum. In contrast, MZB's heroine Margaret can play almost any instrument, and arrives on Darkover already an expert. Both women are musical through and through, and love music in all its forms (though Menolly obviously never encounters any music except that of the harpers among whom she lives). Part of the tragedy of the professional musician in today's world is that they need to work with music so much that eventually they find it almost impossible to get enthusiastic about any music after a few decades of practicing the art. This is just my observation, and I'm sure musicians will dispute this theory vigorously.
Menolly appears in a handful of the PERN books, and it is difficult to decide whether Menolly was merely an invention for the generation of a book or two, or whether she was the expression of a special interest of the author, Anne McCaffrey. I'd like to think that both characters were the flowering of ideas the respective authors had been nursing along, until something enabled them to create the two characters; perhaps an expert who could give background, or an encounter with a musician with a particularly striking personality! Anyway, these several music-related books, and these two musical characters are among the most delightful things in my bookshelf.
Kay, musician wannabe
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