Professor Maxwell Silbernhammer, Musicologist
Historical Background
After the discovery of a number of suitcases belonging to ex-patients of the Willard Psychiatric Center in the Finger Lakes district of New York (1), the “reality” television show, Restless Spirits, received permission to do an episode at the abandoned facility.
They had just finished setting up their gear, both for videotaping and paranormalizing, in the basement of the main hospital building when, with a tremendous roar, the entire cast, crew and aforementioned equipment were plunged some twenty feet down into a cavernous (and heretofore unknown) subbasement.
This vast space, it was later ascertained, held the voluminous archives of Maxwell Silbernhammer, a self-styled musicologist and on-again-off-again patient at the asylum. The edges of the huge room were lost in darkness but it could be seen that it was piled floor to ceiling with moldering stacks of musical scores, piano rolls, brass disks, wax cylinders, vinyl records, tape recordings, cassettes, 8-tracks, compact disks and all manner of musical instruments, recording devices and players (2). Layered throughout were thousands upon thousands of notebooks in a veriety of languages, some coded in arcane runes, others filled with delusional ravings; a lifetime of Silbernhammer’s work and his only legacy.
Little is know of Silbernhammer’s life before his emigration to America from some remote Balkan country and the records of his many commitments to the asylum are likewise incomplete. Apparently he had a very special relationship with the directors of the asylum and would be allowed to embark at will on investigations into the recovery of lost or otherwise mysterious musical works. These “investigations” would inevitably result in Silbernhammer falling prey to aural hallucinations and screaming fits whereupon he was returned to the hospital and locked in a specially designed anechoic chamber. After a few months of absolute silence, Silbernhammer would recover enough to continue his studies.
Of course the discovery of this trove of musical history raised a multitude of questions and the search was on for Silbernhammer or any relatives or descendants as well as those of the former Asylum directors or medical staff. These efforts proved fruitless. As scholars, historians and reserachers began sorting through the debris it soon became evident that there was an even greater mystery at the center of Silbernhammer’s collection. None of the composers, performers, artists, ensembles, bands, publishing and recording companies found on the labels of the various works bore any correspondence with those known in our current culture or throughout history, or in any other corner of the world.
Shortly after this realization became common knowledge, the entire Silbernhammer archives were removed to an unknown location by person or persons unknown and anu and all references to their existence were scrubbed from public records, the media and the internet.
Here are the remaining fragments of Silbernhammer's musical archives. Attend to them quickly for we don’t expe [transcript ends abruptly]
(1) Link to The Willard Suitcases
(2) One of the more interesting of these recording and playback devices was the "Tesla HarmonElektrik" a device that used a magnetized cone and a small electric spark to record and playback sound with a fidelity rivaling the best of today's digital recording. A brass plaque on the device credited its invention to Nikola Tesla in 1906.