Alexander Lupian

Chief Organist of St. George's Cathedral, Mandarkeel

When I wrote "The Wolf and the Well-Tempered Clavier," in the spring of 1999, I wasn't intending to create an ongoing character. I just wanted to write a story that Marion Zimmer Bradly might actually buy for her annual Sword and Sorceress anthology.

I knew that MZB loved music, so a story dealing with music seemed like a good bet. Johann Sebastian Bach's "The Well-Tempered Clavier" was sticking in the back of my mind, and I did a little reading on Bach and the theory and practice of musical temperament. I had heard the story that Bach went blind near the end of his life, and that mutated into the image of a cathedral organist struck blind by malignant magic in a pipe organ. Since I had visited the National Cathedral in Washington, DC I decided to base the fictional Cathedral Church of St. George the Dragonslayer upon its architecture, although I set it in Mandarkeel, capital of New Albion, which is located where Boston stands in our world.

Suddenly everything came together and I was madly pounding out the story of the organist's young female protege asking him to demonstrate the wolf chord, only to watch him be struck down by magic. With the coronation only days away, she had to get rid of the mysterious "wolf" and make the organ safe to play.

Unfortunately MZB didn't buy "The Wolf and the Well-Tempered Clavier," and I am still looking for a home for it. But Alexander Lupian and Anne Teesdale have let me know that they are related to major characters in some of my other Ixilon stories, and they will be appearing again.

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This page last updated March 15, 2000