T. C. Vilabier’s 26th String-Specific Sonata For An Instrument Yet To Be Invented, MW 1211 – The Hydrogen Sonata – started with a single sustained note, right at the top of the range of the instrument which had had to be invented to play it properly, the bodily acoustic Antagonistic Undecagonstring for four hands. That single note was then joined by a faint, uncertain chord of slowly shifting harmonics, which was another way of saying that it started to sound out of tune after it got more than one note in. Fans and detractors alike agreed that this was a remarkable achievement, and also that the work as a whole was something of an acquired taste.

The single high note at the start of the work was meant to signify a solitary proton, specifically a hydrogen nucleus, while the following wavering pseudo-chord was supposed to embody the concept of a sole electron’s probability cloud, so that together the first note and the first chord represented the element hydrogen.

Vilabier was thought to have been joking when he had claimed that the work was itself merely the first note in a vast and incrementally more complicated cycle that would grow to encompass the entirety of the periodic table.

Regardless; after this simple beginning the work became furiously complicated and – initially at least, until playing techniques and prosthetic technology had sufficiently improved – almost unplayable. Initially, in this case, meant for several centuries. Many held that whether it was unplayable or not didn’t particularly matter; what did was that it was completely unlistenable.

But that was, arguably, to take a somewhat doctrinaire attitude to what the word “listenable” meant.

“I like it,” the ship said, through Berdle.

“Really?” Cossont said, standing and shaking herself, loosening all the over-tensed muscles that tended to result when one played the elevenstring with any gusto. She’d only tackled the first movement, and then purely because the ship had asked her to, and because she was feeling guilty about not having played the instrument for days. The ship had altered the acoustics of the big central lounge area of the module to make it sound sweeter. They were a day out from their destination, the cloud of Centralised Dataversities and associated other habitats, institutions and auxiliary resources in the Ospin system.

“Yes,” Pyan said, “really?”

Pyan had been perfectly indifferent to the Hydrogen Sonata – as it was to all music – until it had realised that most people hated the piece, when it had decided to join in the chorus of disdain.

“I can see what it’s trying to do, and it has a mathematical elegance to it that I appreciate,” Berdle said. “Also, I’ve invented a form of musical notation that I think enhances its appreciation in the abstract, as a visual and intellectual internalised experience, without one actually having to listen to it.”