Kaden Dave Oshima is a musicologist and \u201cold crackpot musician\u201d (he\u2019s in his mid-60s) living in Honolulu. In his own words, he leads an \u201cuncertain existence of contemplation\u201d in which he ponders \u201cmorality, truth, ecstasy, and clear understanding from this world.\u201d He is a devotee of Bach\u2019s incomparable music and believes that in addition to the composer\u2019s six partitas, all published in 1731, there must be a seventh, unpublished one\u2014Kaden reasons that the structure of the six known partitas indicates a concluding seventh in F major. Unsurprisingly, his attention is gripped when he is contacted by a man named James Zhao, who explains that his younger sister Susan, an accomplished violinist, has vanished\u2014and that he has reason to believe that she possessed Bach\u2019s missing piece of music. In this mesmerizing work, Kaden is given a chance to find the composition he passionately imagines and whose absence he grieves like a lost lover. (\u201cFortunately, he is called master because he was so prolific, and what survives serves to make us mourn what is lost.\u201d) The author\u2019s knowledge of the relevant music is simply magisterial, and Kaden\u2019s passion is infectious\u2014one could not read this book without wanting to listen to Bach\u2019s work. At the heart of this arresting narrative is the question of what it means to properly preserve the works of artistic masters (modern interpretations of Bach \u201cdo not preserve Bach for humanity, they destroy it\u201d). Matsuoka\u2019s writing is eccentrically absorbing; readers are pulled into a world where art reigns supreme and its passionate adoration is the prime mover.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kaden Dave Oshima is a musicologist and \u201cold crackpot musician\u201d (he\u2019s in his mid-60s) living in Honolulu. In his own words, he leads an \u201cuncertain existence of contemplation\u201d in which he ponders \u201cmorality, truth, ecstasy, and clear understanding from this world.\u201d He is a devotee of Bach\u2019s incomparable music and believes that in addition to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1808,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}