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Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto
Fiction. This brilliant first novel is a portrait of an artist at the end of an art form. The elderly Jewish-Hungarian composer Schneidermann, who survived a musical education, survived the war, survived Europe, survived the neglect of all his music, finally and suddenly vanishes during a movie matinee on the Upper West Side of New York. The novel begins with Schneidermann's friend--his last friend, his only friend--the violin virtuoso Laster, onstage at Carnegie Hall. He has finished playing the first movement of Schneidermann's last composition, his Violin Concerto. At this point he is supposed tobegin his cadenza...his solo. Instead, he drops his instrument and lifts his voice, delivering the text of this novel unto the audience, held captive through night into morning only by the spiel.
380 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2006
About the author
Joshua Cohen
97 books606 followersJoshua Aaron Cohen (born September 6, 1980 in New Jersey) is an American novelist and writer of stories.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 13, 2013
This was originally published in the debut issue University of New Hampshire's online journal Barnstorm. The original link is kaput, so I'm copying the review here, as it is one of my favorite works by Cohen.
It’s no accident that Joshua Cohen’s debut novel, Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, comes packaged in a guise of Schirmer sheet music so exact that it will cause musicians to do double-takes, wondering why they’ve never heard of this Schneidermann fellow. Cohen himself delivers the performance within, a sprawling 380-page verbal onslaught, all of which purports to be occurring on-stage at Carnegie Hall over a single night. Readers who insist on what John Gardner called fiction’s “continuous waking dream” will squirm in their seats and concoct excuses to slip out during intermission, never to return. But those who stick around to take in Cohen’s bravura production in its entirety will find themselves amply rewarded--dazzled by Cohen’s language, his knowledge of music and history, and most of all the sheer chutzpah of his prose.
In lieu of an unbroken dream, what we get is akin to the restless, late-night perambulations of an insomniac sifting through his life, the back-and-forth motion of text across the page recalling a violinist’s bowing. The source of this soliloquy is a man named Laster, himself a violinist and Schneidermann’s protégé. Laster pays homage to his teacher and father-figure, who has utterly vanished after walking out of a matinee of Schindler’s List three weeks prior. The character of Schneidermann is inherently fascinating, worthy of this epic treatment: steeped in the knowledge of music and philosophy, he opines, for instance, that Mozart is “an inferior imitation of God,” and deems Late Van Beethoven an entity distinct from and decidedly lesser than the better-known Ludwig.
Through these mouthpieces, Cohen, a sort of one-man improvisational showman whose riffs veer from the Talmudic to scatological scat, holds forth on history, music, philosophy, theology, art, Jewishness, and the Holocaust. The book consists largely of a sustained, erudite set of free-associations on, for instance, the difficulty of writing about music, what it means to be Jewish, what makes some art transcendent versus mediocre, and the role of the individual in directing the arrow of history. The characters’ intellectual acumen overshadows the traces of their bigotry, especially directed against Asians, and the misogynistic streak each harbors. Cohen’s characters are anything but politically correct; Jews aren’t spared either, and all is subsumed under a general misanthropy, humans faring rather poorly when compared to music. These prejudices are inflected with a profound irony, given that Schneidermann is himself a Holocaust survivor. Cohen baldly exposes warts, rendering characters who are sympathetic yet flawed. Both main characters have a tragic dimension, but it is Laster who ultimately cuts the most tragic figure: six-times over a failure as a husband, estranged from each of his children, and left in the end without even his erstwhile companion.
Cohen’s book sometimes reminds one of Beckett’s trilogy in its comic sensibility, its embracing of the lowly and bodily, and the implication that speaking is fundamentally a way of holding the abyss at bay. What sets Cohen’s book apart from such forebearers is how wonderfully, deliriously steeped it is in the world of music. The book teems with musical allusions and puns, with its descriptions of “flat daughters [and] a sharp mother,” its reflections on Beethoven’s “mania for motivic expansion,” and even a device as simple as replacing “shhhhh” with “pppppppppp.” It’s not all puns, though. Cohen’s own writing is best characterized as musical, such as when he renders “a Russian girl…a prodigy, much fire, lacking technique, unpolished and hot as wild, body boyish up top but bulging below, 19th century thighs…gorgeous in that frumpy concert dress of hers when the straps they fall in the midst of a fast passage to expose her sweaty nibs.” In another instance, he describes film as our “covenant with colors, the flood of all those typhus-yellows and neckbound reds.” Cohen prefaces all this by explaining that a cadenza is a passage designed for musicians to show off. The author, who according to an interview, “probably read a hundred books” in writing this one, shows off unabashedly, fortunately with the chops to pull it off. Having eschewed straightforward narrative, Cohen reels off instead a string of subplots, many of which are engaging. There are the two cutthroat Asian female students who share a practice piano, until one slips razor blades between the keys. There’s the neighbor who hires Schneidermann to feign giving him piano lessons so he can discreetly orchestrate an affair. And there’s the central event, wherein Schneidermann abruptly exits in the middle of a screening of Schindler’s List. Laster files a Missing-Persons report, but Schneidermann is missing in a more metaphysical sense; a composer doomed to obscurity apart from Laster’s cadenza, he remains a mystery even to his closest confidant.
Throughout, the specter of the Holocaust looms over the characters and the novel. Unlike Laster, Schneidermann is a survivor of the camps, and this dichotomy is one we, like Laster, aren’t ever allowed to forget. Laster bears a sort of non-survivor’s guilt, recognizing that while he was able to escape to America to live out his “prodigyhood,” Schneidermann, subject to the immediate threat of extermination, was forced to “train for [both] music and survival.” Understandably, then, out of the thousands of movies he’s attended, it is Spielberg’s attempt to represent the Holocaust on film which becomes the object of Schneidermann’s obsession; he finds it utterly wanting, riddled with discontinuities, inaccuracies, and even outright gaffes, such as Spielberg’s hat reflected in glass. Cohen himself commits few missteps of his own in this formidable first novel, grappling with its weighty themes in language that soars with a virtuoso’s touch and intensity.
It’s no accident that Joshua Cohen’s debut novel, Cadenza for the Schneidermann Violin Concerto, comes packaged in a guise of Schirmer sheet music so exact that it will cause musicians to do double-takes, wondering why they’ve never heard of this Schneidermann fellow. Cohen himself delivers the performance within, a sprawling 380-page verbal onslaught, all of which purports to be occurring on-stage at Carnegie Hall over a single night. Readers who insist on what John Gardner called fiction’s “continuous waking dream” will squirm in their seats and concoct excuses to slip out during intermission, never to return. But those who stick around to take in Cohen’s bravura production in its entirety will find themselves amply rewarded--dazzled by Cohen’s language, his knowledge of music and history, and most of all the sheer chutzpah of his prose.
In lieu of an unbroken dream, what we get is akin to the restless, late-night perambulations of an insomniac sifting through his life, the back-and-forth motion of text across the page recalling a violinist’s bowing. The source of this soliloquy is a man named Laster, himself a violinist and Schneidermann’s protégé. Laster pays homage to his teacher and father-figure, who has utterly vanished after walking out of a matinee of Schindler’s List three weeks prior. The character of Schneidermann is inherently fascinating, worthy of this epic treatment: steeped in the knowledge of music and philosophy, he opines, for instance, that Mozart is “an inferior imitation of God,” and deems Late Van Beethoven an entity distinct from and decidedly lesser than the better-known Ludwig.
Through these mouthpieces, Cohen, a sort of one-man improvisational showman whose riffs veer from the Talmudic to scatological scat, holds forth on history, music, philosophy, theology, art, Jewishness, and the Holocaust. The book consists largely of a sustained, erudite set of free-associations on, for instance, the difficulty of writing about music, what it means to be Jewish, what makes some art transcendent versus mediocre, and the role of the individual in directing the arrow of history. The characters’ intellectual acumen overshadows the traces of their bigotry, especially directed against Asians, and the misogynistic streak each harbors. Cohen’s characters are anything but politically correct; Jews aren’t spared either, and all is subsumed under a general misanthropy, humans faring rather poorly when compared to music. These prejudices are inflected with a profound irony, given that Schneidermann is himself a Holocaust survivor. Cohen baldly exposes warts, rendering characters who are sympathetic yet flawed. Both main characters have a tragic dimension, but it is Laster who ultimately cuts the most tragic figure: six-times over a failure as a husband, estranged from each of his children, and left in the end without even his erstwhile companion.
Cohen’s book sometimes reminds one of Beckett’s trilogy in its comic sensibility, its embracing of the lowly and bodily, and the implication that speaking is fundamentally a way of holding the abyss at bay. What sets Cohen’s book apart from such forebearers is how wonderfully, deliriously steeped it is in the world of music. The book teems with musical allusions and puns, with its descriptions of “flat daughters [and] a sharp mother,” its reflections on Beethoven’s “mania for motivic expansion,” and even a device as simple as replacing “shhhhh” with “pppppppppp.” It’s not all puns, though. Cohen’s own writing is best characterized as musical, such as when he renders “a Russian girl…a prodigy, much fire, lacking technique, unpolished and hot as wild, body boyish up top but bulging below, 19th century thighs…gorgeous in that frumpy concert dress of hers when the straps they fall in the midst of a fast passage to expose her sweaty nibs.” In another instance, he describes film as our “covenant with colors, the flood of all those typhus-yellows and neckbound reds.” Cohen prefaces all this by explaining that a cadenza is a passage designed for musicians to show off. The author, who according to an interview, “probably read a hundred books” in writing this one, shows off unabashedly, fortunately with the chops to pull it off. Having eschewed straightforward narrative, Cohen reels off instead a string of subplots, many of which are engaging. There are the two cutthroat Asian female students who share a practice piano, until one slips razor blades between the keys. There’s the neighbor who hires Schneidermann to feign giving him piano lessons so he can discreetly orchestrate an affair. And there’s the central event, wherein Schneidermann abruptly exits in the middle of a screening of Schindler’s List. Laster files a Missing-Persons report, but Schneidermann is missing in a more metaphysical sense; a composer doomed to obscurity apart from Laster’s cadenza, he remains a mystery even to his closest confidant.
Throughout, the specter of the Holocaust looms over the characters and the novel. Unlike Laster, Schneidermann is a survivor of the camps, and this dichotomy is one we, like Laster, aren’t ever allowed to forget. Laster bears a sort of non-survivor’s guilt, recognizing that while he was able to escape to America to live out his “prodigyhood,” Schneidermann, subject to the immediate threat of extermination, was forced to “train for [both] music and survival.” Understandably, then, out of the thousands of movies he’s attended, it is Spielberg’s attempt to represent the Holocaust on film which becomes the object of Schneidermann’s obsession; he finds it utterly wanting, riddled with discontinuities, inaccuracies, and even outright gaffes, such as Spielberg’s hat reflected in glass. Cohen himself commits few missteps of his own in this formidable first novel, grappling with its weighty themes in language that soars with a virtuoso’s touch and intensity.
February 7, 2025
If Patrick Bateman was a depressed manic music conservatory graduate and ex violinist who reads Greek tragedy and is chronically online on TikTok
Joshua Cohen has one of the wildest backgrounds of the publishing modern writers - graduated Manhattan School of Music with a degree in Music composition, didn’t use it, became a journalist in Eastern Europe instead, and now teaches writing in an MFAish program despite hating on MFAs
One of the most unique books I have read, there’s no plot really, just a long lyric poem ruminating on city metropolitan life and music and composition and art. The cover page looks like sheet music, and there’s a meta-poem on the lower edge of the book that you can flip through like a flip book. Joshua cohens writing is so rhythmic and clever and the music background shines through especially in the Netanyahus. He’s another writer who’s so clever it annoys me but he gets away with it… mostly. Some of the humor didn’t hit for me, he’s extremely ironically degrading to Jews and Asians alike in a classical music context so it’s sometimes funny but sometimes verging into being not funny and just offensive labeling for no reason.
Prime quotes I liked:
“ because I've turned _ would-be - violinists into auto-mechanics, into taxi-drivers. insurance salesmen, lawyers, doctors, exwives, into failures, would. be failures and even suicides (I ask you don't ask), because I've turned myself into
myself,
because I've watered the wine that was art, wasted my time, yours, God's and, yes, Schneidermann's all on this fermata:
this bird's eye staring everything still, but its shell, in here, this gilded expanse I've been heating and stirring in and now peck, peck, peck:
chickenscratch the orchestra would say (but they're underpaid and overworked or invert that),”
“he insisted that Classicism it is the tongue, and that Roman-ficism it is the penis.
that Classicism is the vagina, that Romanticism is the that Classicism is knowing where the clitoris is, that
Romanticism is knowing what to do with the clitoris,
that a Classicist is a virgin (mother), that a Romantic is a whore (mother),
that a Classicist he or she expects to be bought dinner first and that a Romantic she brings dessert, and her or himself, over and up to your wrecked Uptown apartment at 3:45 a.m. in the
morning, that a Classicist or is it a Classic he or she practices
foreplay, that a Romantic has had his or her orgasm and is already asleep….”
Joshua Cohen has one of the wildest backgrounds of the publishing modern writers - graduated Manhattan School of Music with a degree in Music composition, didn’t use it, became a journalist in Eastern Europe instead, and now teaches writing in an MFAish program despite hating on MFAs
One of the most unique books I have read, there’s no plot really, just a long lyric poem ruminating on city metropolitan life and music and composition and art. The cover page looks like sheet music, and there’s a meta-poem on the lower edge of the book that you can flip through like a flip book. Joshua cohens writing is so rhythmic and clever and the music background shines through especially in the Netanyahus. He’s another writer who’s so clever it annoys me but he gets away with it… mostly. Some of the humor didn’t hit for me, he’s extremely ironically degrading to Jews and Asians alike in a classical music context so it’s sometimes funny but sometimes verging into being not funny and just offensive labeling for no reason.
Prime quotes I liked:
“ because I've turned _ would-be - violinists into auto-mechanics, into taxi-drivers. insurance salesmen, lawyers, doctors, exwives, into failures, would. be failures and even suicides (I ask you don't ask), because I've turned myself into
myself,
because I've watered the wine that was art, wasted my time, yours, God's and, yes, Schneidermann's all on this fermata:
this bird's eye staring everything still, but its shell, in here, this gilded expanse I've been heating and stirring in and now peck, peck, peck:
chickenscratch the orchestra would say (but they're underpaid and overworked or invert that),”
“he insisted that Classicism it is the tongue, and that Roman-ficism it is the penis.
that Classicism is the vagina, that Romanticism is the that Classicism is knowing where the clitoris is, that
Romanticism is knowing what to do with the clitoris,
that a Classicist is a virgin (mother), that a Romantic is a whore (mother),
that a Classicist he or she expects to be bought dinner first and that a Romantic she brings dessert, and her or himself, over and up to your wrecked Uptown apartment at 3:45 a.m. in the
morning, that a Classicist or is it a Classic he or she practices
foreplay, that a Romantic has had his or her orgasm and is already asleep….”
February 19, 2010
Absolute hilarious genius. Can't wait to read more by Cohen. Here's to Witz 2010!
April 18, 2021
Finally got around to Joshua Cohen’s first novel. Did not disappoint. You can really see the beginnings of an incredible writer. While it went on too much it is brilliantly structured. His love for Joseph McElroy is evident. His knowledge of classical music at such a young age is mind-blowing. Really really impressive. And with the structure it’s incredibly readable.
And the playlist I got out of this...💯
And the playlist I got out of this...💯
October 21, 2010
Just awesome. Maybe even better than Witz?
Read
June 30, 2016I made it 56 pages. That's enough.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews