Record Four explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Art and Censorship

  The lecture denigrates ancient music as 'epileptic' and promotes the State's regulated, mathematical compositions, illustrating the suppression of free artistic expression.

• Technology and Dehumanization

  The musicometer, which can produce sonatas by turning a handle, exemplifies the replacement of human creativity with mechanical production.

Characters to notice

• D-503

  Narrator; attends lecture and feels disturbed by I-330's music; later meets with O-90.

• I-330

  Appears on stage in ancient dress and plays the piano, provoking a strong reaction in D-503.

• O-90

  Visits D-503 for their sexual day; becomes tearful when he discusses his diary.

Key passages

• “The Wild Man noticed that every time the barometer’s hand stopped on the word ‘rain,’ it actually rained. And as the Wild Man craved rain, he let out as much mercury as was necessary to put it at the level of the word ‘rain’”

  The lecturer tells a story about a primitive man who tried to make it rain by adjusting a barometer to the 'rain' setting.

  This anecdote is used to mock the irrationality of ancient people who tried to control nature through superstition rather than science.

• “By merely rotating this handle anyone is enabled to produce about three sonatas per hour. What difficulties our predecessors had in making music! They were able to compose only by bringing themselves to strokes of inspiration—an extinct form of epilepsy.”

  The lecturer boasts that the new musicometer can generate sonatas mechanically, contrasting it with the 'epileptic' inspiration of ancient composers.

  This highlights the State's preference for predictable, machine-made art over human creativity.