One year, 1720, by writer and publisher Risto Mejide (Barcelona, 1974), host of programs such as ‘Travel with Chester’ and ‘Everything is a Lie’. Or rather its absence, because it seems to have been plucked from their biographies this year. johann sebastian bach. What happened that year between the death of the famous German composer’s first wife and his marriage to a soprano sixteen years younger (like the sixteen notes in the title)? The novel tries to fill this void and reconstruct the love story of a young and passionate Bach, far from the image that came to us. At the same time, the book develops two other stories that connect with the musician: the mysterious discovery next to his grave at the end of the 19th century, and the recording of the “Goulberg Varieties” by Glenn Gould in the 1950s. . . All of this is flavored by a wide array of historical characters and events, from Bach himself, to whom Mejide first got references when she started teaching piano at the age of 14, to the witch hunt carried out by the president against the communists. .
When did Bach’s biography interest you enough to write a novel about him?
The beginning of the novel is based on a lack. I wanted to read a novel about Bach but couldn’t find it. There are many biographies of him of all styles and colours, but curiously, there is very little fiction about Bach and, interestingly, a lot about Beethoven and Mozart as well. It also happens that all the biographies that I’ve come across, and I’m not exaggerating if I say there are more than twenty, certainly all lacked a moment that was so important to me. When Bach returns from a trip with Prince Leopold, he learns that his wife, Maria Barbara Bach, has died suddenly and is buried. He couldn’t even say goodbye to her. He remains a widow with four children and has sunk, and “Chaconne”, one of his most famous and most difficult pieces for violin, according to violinists, is proof of that. He married Anna Magdalena, with whom he had 13 children, in July 1720 and December 1721. What happened that year? No biography answers this question, and I thought historical fiction was the ideal mechanism to fill this gap.
Could this lack of fiction about Bach be due to the image we have of him as a serious, almost unsympathetic man?
The image that has come down to us is a portrait of Haussmann, who takes him to the age of 60, in which Bach is seen with a second chin and a very serious grimace. But he was also 35 years old, at that time he fell in love with Anna Magdalena, and he was a passionate man, even a criminal, he loved to party with his friends, who often went to cafes of the time, to authentic slums. He even came to fight and duel with one of his students. In this sense, he has a very literary life.
Bach had to face prejudice because of the age difference between him and Anna Magdalena. Do these prejudices persist?
In general, all couples with an age gap have suffered some form of discrimination or public target. According to the documents and letters that have reached us, Anna Magdalena Bach was an independent, very modern woman, far ahead of her time. His father trained and trained him to never be dependent on a man, and proof of this was that when he met Bach at the age of 19, he was a very recognizable soprano who was drawn into the draw by all Europeans. she courts and got the same salary as him
You have also been criticized for the age difference between you and your partners. Did this affect your decision to write this story?
It is true that I connected with Bach in this sense, but this is not a book about me. If I wanted to disclose what happened to me, I would write a book about my relationships. This is a book about perhaps the greatest musician of all time and about Anna Magdalena; It’s about a love story that encounters obstacles, like all love stories that end up in literature.
What is it like to enter the mind of a genius?
I wish I could answer that because I don’t think it’s possible to get into someone else’s mind. You can try and understand many things in his life. The difference between a genius like Bach and the most common mortal is that it is always an open question, while an ordinary person like yours tries to answer a very small part of this big question and bring the question a little closer. It seems incredible that a genius knows Bach’s work so well and so little about the character.
Talent is a gift, but do you think there is something genetic about it? I say this because Bach’s family tree is full of musicians, some of them very distinguished.
At one point in the family, I don’t remember exactly when now, there were about fifty members who were living musicians. It was a lineage of musicians. Although his great-great-grandfather was not a musician but a baker, he played the guitar in a way and I think he benefited from that musical environment. What’s happening? It is an incomplete legacy as many cantatas have been lost, with Bach standing out among them all and leaving an enormous legacy. It should not be forgotten that he composed a cantata once a week during his stay in Leipzig. A normal musician can spend months.
If Bach could live in Chester, what would you like to hear him say about the novel?
Logically, he wouldn’t be able to learn anything from his life. I guess I’d like to know what amuses you. In no way am I trying to turn this into a scientific review or to show everything I’ve learned in the documentation process. This does not concern me. I care that the reader has a good time and in the meantime learns about the life of a genius and gets to know his music a little better, and above all for me and the reader the most important thing is to have fun, listen to Bach. Whether they buy the book or not, listen because listening to Bach makes you a better person.
The main plot revolves around the love story of Bach and Anna Magdalena, but the novel contains two other stories with their own existence: their discovery during the burial in 1894 and the recording of “Goldberg Variations” in 1955. ” by a very young Glenn Gould.
These two stories, secondary but crucial to the last, are the result of discussion. I discovered these two veins when I started documenting myself. The exhumation of Bach’s bones began to grow on its own because what were the two buried coffins doing with his? What happened to the one whose skull was smashed? And Glenn Gould is our closest reference to the eccentric, morbid genius around Bach. When given the opportunity to record his first album, he chooses the “Goldberg Variations”, which the legend says, though untrue, that Bach composed for Count Keyserlingk to sleep. He had a lot of trouble recording the album because very few people believed in it, and according to experts it became one of the best in classical music history. Gould’s story is a defense of diversity, of different people, that no one is the person to tell them how another person should be. This idea is throughout the novel. I believe talent should be protected from what others want it to be. Here’s a little bit of the lives of Bach, Anna Magdalena, and Glenn Gould, and the message that brought the three of them together: Live your life without harming others.