18 February 2011

No Ives

For all his mathematical savvy Hans’s abiding interest was in music, for which he displayed prodigious and phenomenal talent. At four years old he could identify the Doppler effect as a quarter-tone drop in pitch of a passing siren; at five, he flung himself to the ground in tears crying “Wrong! Wrong!” as two brass bands at opposite ends of a long carnival procession played, simultaneously, two marches in different keys.
— Alexander Waugh,
The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War
pp. 24-25

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