John Hartig

2 Short Stories for Your Coffee Break John Hartig

Jean-Marie Leclair was an unsolved murder mystery of the 18th century. He should not have been known for that. He founded the French school of violin. But he was stabbed in the back and neck 3 times, killed in the vestibule of his own home in 1764. He was a great violinist and composer for King Louis XV of France. No one was ever arrested, not Louise Roussel, his ex-wife, who did the engraving of his compositions for him, and not the envious nephew, Guillaume-François Vial, who wanted his uncle to promote him to the KIng. Nobody was ever brought to justice. In the meantime, fast forward to the year 2328, and the task which Captain James T. Kirk has been assigned to bring back to the future 6 of the best violinists of all time to have a fiddle contest at the Hollywood Bowl. The slight hitch is that the Captain with Montgomery Scott's help needs to go back to 1901 and borrow H. G. Wells' Time Machine. One of the contenders in the Battle of the Violins is, of course, Jean-Marie Leclair!