Music in fiction (2/2)
If, like me, you always seem to be dancing an intimate pas de deux between music and literature, you probably read some of the (too rare) novels featuring musicians. Among the most memorable ones, Zsolt Harsanyi’s Immortal Franz: The Life and Love Affairs of Franz Liszt (between fiction and biography) and Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven, on the fascinating world of castrati. Here are two more.
Ketil Bornstad, To Music. Oslo, end of the 1960s. Piano student Aksel Vinding falls head over heels in love with Anja Skoog, another pianist who will soon make her debut at the age of seventeen. For Aksel, his relationship with Anja appears to be part of his destiny. However, the enigmatic piano teacher Selma Lynge, has a great amount of influence on the young student, and Aksel feels that a catastrophe is drawing near. In this novel, the Danish pianist, composer, playwright and poet writes about an environment that has been a large part of his own life. The Independent describes it as “an enchanting tale of love and death, desire and loss, about how parents and mentors manipulate and ultimately fail the young people entrusted to them. Above all, it’s a story of music written by a master in the field. Bjornstad’s style is staccato, except when talking about music; then he’s in his element, with beautifully honed long sentences that flow and halt, soar and dip just like the classical pieces he is describing … “
Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing is without a doubt the book that touched me the most in recent memory. A big, absorbing drama about an American family that has to deal with social obstacles – in this cas a biracial marriage in the Civil Rights era. But the family is profondly musical (they play and sing together) and the descriptions of music alone will transport you. “Our parents’ Crazed Quotations game played on the notion that every moment’s tune had all history’s music box for its counterpoint. On any evening in Hamilton Heights, we could jump from organum to atonality without any hint of all the centuries that had died fiery deaths between them.” The central figures of this novel is Jonah, a professional baroque singer, his brother Joey (the narrator, a pianist) and their sister, Ruth, a political activist. Music is woven into the six decades this story spans and permeates every paragraph. An outstanding book that you won’t want to close!
To listen to Liszt’s Sonata as performed by Nareh Arghamanyan…
After reading the Ann Rice’s book, listen to Daniel Taylor’s renditions of Purcell’s music