Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "grace-notes"

Sure, writing about music is like dancing about architecture...except when it's this writing. I was scouring my shelves last week, looking for something gorgeous and sad and suffused with color, just to remind me that such sensations existed while I hunched in what has become my personal no-shadows corner of the Jury Assembly Room, and I found this book. Which my dad apparently found for me, in 1998--there's one of his loving little inscriptions in the front--and which got forgotten about in the to-read piles during one of our moves.
Grace Notes by Bernard MacLaverty.
It's about an Irish woman composer dealing with being an Irish woman composer, and also a single mom, and island resident, a lapsed Catholic. Not much happens, except living. Hard relating, sweet and fleeting surprise moments of grace. And then the music comes. This is just a snippet of the description of the first performance of the piece our protagonist spends most of this hushed, beautiful novel dragging out of herself:
"It began with a wisp of music, barely there--a whispered five-note phrase on the violins and she was right back on that beach with her baby. If the audience thought themselves mistaken she would be well pleased. Did I hear that correctly? Like the artist's hand which moves to begin a drawing but makes no mark. Preliminary footering--throat clearing. Then the phrase repeated an eyelash louder. I did hear something...But the pause is longer, seems interminable before the music begins again. Is it over? they should be saying. Or have they not started yet. The phrase repeats a third time on the violas. They sound like violins with a cold. Yes, it has started, that there is something there is undeniable...starting friction has been overcome and now the phrase unravels..."
You can get it at Powells.