an equal music

Some books are published, i'm almost convinced, to make the rest of us feel better about our writing abilities.

An Equal Music, by Vikram Seth, quite unfortunately falls into this category. i'd picked up this novel before, years before, and at that time i didn't manage to get past the first few chapters. This time, i'm almost through to the end of the book, but more because there are things i want to know, things that, in some way, are almost unrelated to the book itself as a novel.

Some books just work. From the word 'Go', they are tightly constructed, each word an inevitability. These are the books i love. This book, though, meanders in a forest of wasted words. It's loose, and for no apparent reason other than... a lack of discipline? Hurried rush-work? i really don't know.

i get the feeling, reading this, that Seth was more interested in the facts of the musical world - how a quartet operates, how musicians see their craft, the kinds of lives musicians live - than in constructing a novel with characters that live and breathe. Everything seems so stilted, as if written for the sole purpose of exploring the music. In that case, why not just write an essay? A non-fictional exposition. Why bother creating a fictional world if the only purpose seems to be to populate it with cardboard characters who think cardboard thoughts in equally cardboard language?

Harsh criticism, i know. What i am getting out of this, though, is an introduction to music i've never listened to before - Beethoven's piano trios, Schubert's quartets, Bach's Art of Fugue. i think i'll go look for the Bach - the Cello Suites have made me see the old man's work in a different light. In a world awash with Christmassy melodiousness, Bach's austerity has a strangely compelling appeal.

Vikram Seth would be glad to know that some good has come out of his novel. And, perhaps, given the attention he has lavished on the music, this is all he really wanted when he wrote it anyway.

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[Edit]

Ah. So i was right about at least one thing.


From the Author's Note at the end of the novel:

Music to me is dearer than even speech. When I realised that I would be writing about it I was gripped with anxiety. Only slowly did I reconcile myself to the thought of it.

Friends and strangers have helped me in this work: string players, often those in quartets themselves or who, because of their involvement with early music, have had to deal with the problems of variant tuning; pianists, other musicians, both players and composers; makers, repairers and sellers of instruments; those who aid or attempt to aid the creation or dissemination of music - teachers, critics, musicians' agents and managers, executives of record companies, managers of halls and festivals....

(Vikram Seth)
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