Publisher's Synopsis
Personal electronic devices, called 'cuticle drives, ' are capable of producing superior art. As a result, the human role in the artistic experience has been relegated to consumption. Live performances are fading away. Boston Thomas, an aging former punk rocker and professor of music history at a beleaguered academic institution, is struggling to accept his obsolescence when he discovers an underground movement of musicians led by a charismatic and nomadic woman. She, and the various musicians Boston then encounters, have something in common: a seemingly coincidental allusion in their music to Handel's Israel in Egypt, which Thomas Edison captured in one of the earliest sound recordings in human history. As their relationship deepens, Boston and the mysterious woman build a movement in the city's forgotten urban center. The Lost Chord asks how artists can evolve in the face of extinction to reclaim their roles as explorers of the progressive and sublime - not to fear change, but to personify it
