The idea for Symphony in E (the novel) originated with a set of Rules of Time Travel I concocted one day. The overriding rule was that you couldn’t change past events for famous personalities. I went looking for lesser names and found some artists and musicians who’d died in obscurity leaving behind little more than a masterpiece or two. One story worth writing involved the Limbourg Brothers, that trio of Dutch miniature artists from Nijmegen who left us Les Trés Riches Heures du Duc de Berry—one of the glories of late Medieval painting. Then I found the tragedy of young Hans Rott, the 19th Century Viennese composer who was so ignored and abused, he went mad at age 22. His beautiful Symphony in E — not performed for one hundred years — still sparkles with youthful optimism. In my historical fiction, I connect the story of Hans Rott’s life (1850’s – 1880’s Vienna) with the story of his Symphony’s premiere (1989 Cincinnati) using the following rules of time travel:
1. You Don’t Need A Machine
In H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, the Time Traveller uses a machine to physically transport himself to another time period. While this method is expedient, it is difficult to control. Compare it to picking a flower using a backhoe—all the subtlety is lost.
Other forms of time travel do exist—you may have even experienced time travel faintly yourself just using your five senses. If hearing a song learned in childhood makes you swoon for a moment, or smelling something rich and exotic reminds you of an ancient spice market, you have experienced time travel in its most rudimentary form. In order to make the leap to advanced time travel, your senses need to be aided by stronger agencies.
2. Importance Of A Talisman
Talismans are physical objects that, when held in the time traveller’s hand, allow observation of or travel to another time period. While talismans can open the portal to time, the fear of inadvertently setting off an episode of time travel simply by touching a talisman is ill-founded. Talismans work only when possessed by parties in both time periods, and when they are coupled with one or more unique abilities on the part of the time travellers involved.
3. Shared Abilities And Transcendental Knowledge
Sharing unusual abilities and transcendental knowledge such as water divining or déjà vu can help time travellers make the leap. These abilities can be grounded by a strong talisman as they are highly unpredictable. They’re also hard to detect. How would a time traveller know that possession of an ability such as lucid dreaming is a component of time travel?
4. Strong Psychological Experiences
When two persons are imprinted with a similar psychological experience, a resonance is formed that can serve as a conduit for communication across time and space. Strong psychological experiences are often traumatic, so the time traveller is wise to observe carefully before digging into their own painful memories. This type of time travel is the most unstable although once mastered, it can prove to be the most rewarding.
5. Not All The Rules Of Time Travel Are Yet Known
We work with what we know. Maybe in the future we’ll understand more.