The Prague Sonata
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4.2 • 48 Ratings
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
"Twining music history with the political tumults of the 20th century, The Prague Sonata is a sophisticated, engrossing intellectual mystery."—The Wall Street Journal
Music and war, war and music—these are the twin motifs around which Bradford Morrow, recipient of the Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, has composed his magnum opus, a novel more than a dozen years in the making.
In the early days of the new millennium, pages of a worn and weathered original sonata manuscript—the gift of a Czech immigrant living out her final days in Queens—come into the hands of Meta Taverner, a young musicologist whose concert piano career was cut short by an injury. To Meta's eye, it appears to be an authentic eighteenth-century work; to her discerning ear, the music rendered there is commanding, hauntingly beautiful, clearly the undiscovered composition of a master. But there is no indication of who the composer might be. The gift comes with the request that Meta attempt to find the manuscript's true owner—a Prague friend the old woman has not heard from since they were forced apart by the Second World War—and to make the three-part sonata whole again. Leaving New York behind for the land of Dvorák and Kafka, Meta sets out on an unforgettable search to locate the remaining movements of the sonata and uncover a story that has influenced the course of many lives, even as it becomes clear that she isn't the only one after the music's secrets.
Magisterially evoking decades of Prague's tragic and triumphant history, from the First World War through the soaring days of the Velvet Revolution, and moving from postwar London to the heartland of immigrant America, The Prague Sonata is both epic and intimate, evoking the ways in which individual notes of love and sacrifice become part of the celebratory symphony of life.
"An astonishing writer."—Joyce Carol Oates
"A treasure of a novel, a deliciously enveloping musical mystery."—Diane Ackerman
"An enthralling epic quest of a novel…Regular doses of surprise and suspense keep us immersed and involved…Compulsively enjoyable."?Minneapolis StarTribune
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Morrow's first novel since The Forgers, a former concert pianist fascinated by a mysterious musical text tries to track down the composer's identity, the missing passages, and the woman who saved it for posterity by tearing it apart. An old Czech immigrant living in Queens gives pianist-turned-musicologist Meta Taverner the torn-out middle section of an unsigned musical work probably from the late 18th or early 19th century. Little is known about the original manuscript except that, 60 years before, in Nazi-occupied Prague, the manuscript's owner, Otylie Barto ov , divided it into three pieces (each piece a complete movement) to hide it from the Nazis. The music's passion and genius inspire Meta to leave her lawyer boyfriend and East Village apartment for research in Czechoslovakia. She arrives in Prague with a list of contacts: some prove helpful, others work against her. When she runs out of contacts, she goes door to door, assisted by an attractive Czech-American journalist. They locate a friend of Otylie's husband, and then head to London, where Otylie had escaped without her husband but with her part of the manuscript. Music infuses Morrow's descriptions of war, revolution, peace, love, friendship, and betrayal. Finely crafted storytelling ensures the multigenerational, transcontinental plot told through various points of view never becomes confusing. The reading pleasure comes from both Meta's pursuit and the prose, which brims with musical, historical, and cultural detail.
Customer Reviews
Numerous use of musical terms
It’s as if the writer researched a list of mildly obscure musical terms and then tried to write a narrative around them. I’m a 67-year-old musician that started when I was five (concert pianist/composer) and been around musicians constantly my whole life. We don’t talk the way this book writes musicians talk. I find it very humorous.