![]() He drums his fingers on the belly, tracing the hiding harmonies, the matching rhythms of water, wind and trees. ![]() Seeking a motion to bind the drip, drip, drip of melting snow, to catch the fractured melodies that run through the chill boughs above. Chasing the rhythm, not quite yet a rhythm. He listens closely, blending his music with all he hears around him. Not a music to be played indoors, to be played within his father’s hearing. ![]() The first sounds moan and clash, as though in sorrow, but then reach out, testing the silver spaces of the frozen river, the keening of the breeze that troubles the highest branches, the muffled sound of the waters that move deep below the ice. He draws the viol from the canvas and opens its music to the air. He steals down to a clearing by the bank, to a seat on a toppled sycamore. Of how he steps through the drifts that lead down to the river, his footsteps first to break the newest fall of snow. … I can tell of how the boy creeps from the house in the first light of dawn, his viol swathed in thick canvas. I invite you to look at, listen to and enjoy this extract from the first chapter of this book, written by Charlotte-Elisabeth, purportedly Jean-Baptiste’s younger sister: By which I mean that it works contrapuntally, careering ahead but also looking back and catching itself up, complicating and enhancing itself via reversals and repetitions and new motifs, never short of a theme to be introduced and played on. The same words could be applied to this novel, a brilliant read inventively devised by Adelaide’s Michael Meehan, but somewhat devilish to review.Īn Ungrateful Instrument – Michael Meehan (Transit Lounge)īecause, although music often tells stories, this story tells music. This is how 15-year old Jean-Baptiste Forqueray (1699-1742) describes the music that his father Antoine (1672-1745) draws from the viol, aka viola da gamba.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |