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Initially published by La Chevardière in 1774, Op. 20 acquired the name “Sun” from a sunburst image on the title page of Hummel's 1779 edition. Despite resemblances to Opp. 9 and 17, the new quartets break fresh ground in matters of cyclic profile, opus design, and sonority, and they exceed their predecessors in musical wit, technical sophistication, expressive range, and formal variety. Memorable novelties include instances of metrical dissonance, tonal derailment, and dense chromaticism as well as passages that feature the cello as a tenor-range soloist. With two quartets cast in minor keys, there are new perspectives on minor-key discourse; and the incorporation of three technically exacting fugal finales points to a new concept of cyclic profile, with the finale now a focus of cyclic culmination.

This chapter narrates how the New York Express derailed as it neared the Big Sister Creek bridge just east of Angola at 3:11 P.M. The train ran over the frog connected to the main line, and passengers in the coach cars did not see the plume of grit rise into the air behind the rear wheels. James Mahar rushed down the track bed, running as fast as he could in the wake of the train, and witnessed the rear car rise and then drop, followed by a plume of gravel and ice. Mahar knew that a derailment was about to happen as he watched the back of the train, which seemed to increase speed as it pulled away. The rear truck of the last car was certainly off the rail, but the train was still moving.

This book revisits what came to be known as the Angola Horror, when the New York Express derailed in an upstate New York village on December 18, 1867, claiming the lives of approximately fifty people. It recounts what happened that day, and the days that followed, at Angola. It also examines why the New York Express derailment, ranked as one of the worst railroad accidents in American history, continues to occupy a powerful place in the American mind. This prologue discusses the role played by the day's newspapers and the oft-sensationalistic journalists in turning the scenes at Angola into indelible images and phrases. It also considers why the Angola Horror commanded enormous public attention; the wreck, for example, spoke directly to the ways in which Americans of the period viewed the railroads.

This chapter recounts how the New York Express's last two cars fell into the icy gorge below the Big Sister Creek bridge. Running after the train, James Mahar did not stop to look at what had occurred at the site of the derailment. The frog's curved iron pieces had struck a wheel on the left-hand side of the back truck, throwing the truck off kilter. Passengers on the train could not see what was happening on the rails. How strongly they felt the concussion of the derailment depended on where they sat. The cars of the express then began to shudder as they rolled along the track. Robert J. Dickson, an engineer working for the Buffalo and Erie Railroad, decided to jump from the moving train, which had already traveled 1,230 feet with derailed back wheels.

This chapter recounts how the New York Express's derailment, which caused its last two cars to fall into the icy gorge below the Big Sister Creek bridge, turned into a horrific disaster. The Toledo car, crushed into three feet of wood and metal, landed nearly upright against the embankment on the bridge's northern side. The live coals dumped around the car's interior turned some parts of the wreckage into flames, which began to spread, moving over bodies, bags, and debris. As the victims' bodies contorted in the fiery car, they also charred. As the fire crackled, sounds of human suffering emanated from the car. It was a scene of “horrors…piled upon horrors.” This chapter describes the rescue efforts initiated by residents of Angola, including Henry Bundy and Josiah Southwick, to help the injured passengers of the train wreck.

This chapter discusses the first reports of the New York Express disaster at Angola that were carried by different newspapers on December 19 and 20, 1867. Men and women learned about the facts of the accident that had happened the previous afternoon from the morning dailies. Newspaper headlines trumpeted the derailment with exclamations and adjectives. News accounts were filled with descriptions of the scenes in the Big Sister Creek bridge, focusing on the inferno in the last car, the search for survivors, and the efforts of Angolan villagers to aid the injured. Journalists played a leading role in painting the disaster as the Angola Horror. This chapter considers the inaccuracies in the news reports about the Angola wreck as well as the challenges faced by Buffalo's daily newspapers in describing its aftermath.

This chapter focuses on the coroners' inquests held from late December 1867 to early January 1868 to determine the cause of the New York Express derailment. Coroner J. I. Richards appointed an inquest jury to investigate the circumstances of the wreck, which included taking testimony from eyewitnesses to the disaster and others involved with the New York Express and Buffalo and Erie Railroad. Basing its evidence mainly on the testimony of expert witnesses who were also Buffalo and Erie's employees, the jury exonerated the company in total. This chapter discusses the inquest proceedings and the public's reaction to the jury's verdict.

Mythology was of great interest to Mann and allusions to well-known myths appear in many guises across his works. It is also of interest in terms of narrative time. This chapter takes a selection of works in which Mann toys—to varying degrees of subtlety—with mythic tales, and explores the way in which nods to well-known mythological tales affect the subjective flow of time. I explore the different models presented in Felix Krull, Blood of the Walsungs, and Doctor Faustus, and compare these to Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum, a work that engages closely with Mann’s writing. This analysis illustrates the temporally stagnating effect of mythological repetition—at the level of both plot and story—as well as the instability caused by divergence from expectation.