From the Daily Telegraph, April 10
The incomprehensible joy of a Bach fugue
Canone Inverso, by Paolo Maurensig
A book of many voices which manages to maintain harmony throughout
PAOLO Maurensig's novel is exactly what it says it is: Canone Inverso,
translated (like this book) from Italian, is a canon turned upside
down. In a normal canon, the first voice you hear will be copied by
a second. This second voice will follow a few steps behind, but will
not jar with the first. The composer's challenge is to find a tune
which will accommodate all its voices, and maintain the harmony
throughout.
Maurensig has attempted something harder still. He has taken the form
which has to accommodate a second, inverted voice, and a third the
right way up . . . by the end of such a piece, the listener will not
know who began or ended with what tune. If that sounds difficult
enough for a musician, imagine trying to bring it off in prose.
Here, it works. A narrator has bought a violin at auction, and
another narrator wants it. Already the melodies are heading in
different directions. Our second narrator tells us about the man
who owned the violin, and, before long, about another man who wants
it. As with a fugue, you can try to listen to each individual part,
or you can enjoy the sound they all make together. The buzzing echo
with which this novel leaves us is even more thrilling than any single
thrill it offers. The control which the author maintains throughout
these 200 sparsely printed pages allows for no ornaments; and the
emotional louds and softs arise from the form - from the music of
the book itself.
If you can tell me what happened at the end, please do; and if you
can follow any of the voices, please show me the diagrams. But if
you want to feel the incomprehensible joy of a Bach fugue, and to
come away with the feeling of having experienced something quite
perfect, without having a clue about how its creator managed it,
then read this book.
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