Axiom of Choice (Music)

When Prigenitia tries to explain Russell's paradox to young Kimrock as he is being shaved by the local barber, he suffers a severe migraine, and she has to take him home to rest. Her mother, Grapella Colswain, is uncertain about allowing the boy to remain unchaperoned in the house with Prigentia, as she has a date with the ox-like electrician Ruham Alif, who is taking her out for a romantic meal followed by an informal talk on the need for Zemelo's Axiom of Choice in Tychonoff's theorem. The soundtrack at the restaurant that evening proves to be a southern Californian world music group of Iranian émigrés who perform a fusion style incorporating Persian classical music and modern Western musical concepts.

Quinta Ruban and Games Theory

This week's opinion column in the Nordic cultural newsletter has been penned by the editor, Jorvik Stilten, and looks at Games Theory, and the well-established problem of how to divide up an estate amongst various creditors.  Two thousand years ago, the sages of the Babylonian Talmud addressed this question in a mysterious way by offering a series of numerical examples with no hint of the general underlying principle. Their answer was so obscure that people assumed that the rabbis were mistaken. Recently however modern economic theory has confirmed the original elegant solution.  Today over a glass of Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban, Rabbi Oud Ramonides offers Stilten a complex solution for using the discarded branches of the Great Elm at Seven Dials. 

Canine Spatialisation

Leporello Swinson is the son of Wolfram Bettel's sister Agnieszka. Leppo (whose brother Antonin is a helicopter pilot) is currently in Dubrovnik studying "spatial music", music in which the location and movement of sound sources is a primary compositional parameter and a central feature for the listener. It may involve a single, mobile sound source, or multiple, simultaneous, stationary or mobile sound events in different locations. Leppo is collecting a range of everyday objects which when treated with either ultra-heat or acid-etching processing will produce sounds within a specific tonal range. The recently recycled dog waste disposal bins of Niova Mokošica have proved excellent for this. Leppo has written to Cortally Bakewell asking for a list of possible pen friends. 

The Brass Buddha

According to Jan Łukasiewicz the introduction of variables was one of Aristotle's greatest inventions (he used variable letters to represent valid inferences in Prior Analytics). According to Sister Veracitude the weather and the Scottish Independence Debate are variables (by which she means that they will affect her pension and her insurance premiums). According to Prigentia, Doctor Bakewell's attitude and ethics are variables, in that he changes his mind when he realises that the young Kimrock really does wish to purchase a present for his grandmother. The music box is out of his range, but he does see a beautiful brass smiling Buddha. Sadly he is unaware that Smiling Buddha was the codename of India's first nuclear weapon explosion in 1974.

A Few Notes

Wolfram Bettel writes to Cortally Bakewell to commend his nephew Leporello Swinson who is hoping to visit Seven Dials in the Spring. Leporello is a fan of 20th century music, in particular Karlheinz Stockhausen whose final piece of work was commisioned by the Mozart Orchestra of Bologna.  As he is penning his reply, Bakewell spots Prigientia and the young Kimrock browsing around the dusty alcoves at the rear of Zangwill’s Bazaar of Curiosities. They are examining a 19th Century Etouffoirs En Acier Swiss Music Box. It is priced at three hundred pounds. Prigentia urges the young Kimrock to put in an offer for two hundred. He nervously approaches Bakewell who actually suspects that the two youngsters are intent on shoplifting.

Before the massacre of the Vandals

When he was last in Rome, Malvolio Claxendell bought a clay pitcher that contained the holy relics of the Bishop of Terni (a city in Umbria) who had been beheaded for trying to convert the Emperor Claudius Gothicus. He had them ground into an exotic spice which he then sprinkled in special bars of chocolate, which he sold to Moudi who now serves them with Ahmed’s Tantric Iftar (a tisane of exotic herbs) to special customers.  Claxendell stores his supplies of what he calls ‘interesting spices’ in a bottle with a very narrow neck that he was given by a friend called John van Neumann. Claudius Gothicus died of the plague whilst preparing to do battle with the vandals.

Finest anchovies

Konstantin Pobedonostsev (Константи́н Петро́вич Победоно́сцев) was the "éminence grise" of imperial politics during the reign of Tsar Alexander III. He was the force behind the Manifesto on Unshakeable Autocracy that  proclaimed the absolute power of the Tsar in Russia, and like Julius Caesar he had the irritating habit  of trividing the world into three parts. Whilst writing a sardonic sonnet (for the Seven Dials Festival), claiming to praise Pobedonostsev, Rabbi Oud Ramonides discovers that the Tsar's old advisor had a penchant for Portuguese intense anchovies, and had, just before his death in 1907, sent a recipe for Gentlemen's Relish and anchovies with garlic bread to Lytton Strachey. The process involved heating the combination on a solid fuel heater. Quelle finesse.