Besides individual, non-serial novels, Keigo Higashino has also written two loose series where we meet the same protagonists: the Galileo series with Dr Yukawa, a scientist who helps his friend police detective Kusanagi with difficult cases (so far 9 volumes, of which 3 have been translated), and Police Detective Kaga, who by now has filled ten books with his adventures (of which two have been translated).
Higashino wrote his first book about Kyoichiro Kaga already in 1986 ("Graduation," when Kaga was still at university, so rather different from the other books in the series) and the last one dates from 2013. As Higashino has said, "Kaga is a person who has a solid character." Higashino therefore often relies on him "when writing challenging, experimental works" different from what he has undertaken so far.
That is certainly the case in "Newcomer" (Shinzanmono) from 2009, No 8 in the series. A woman in her forties living alone in Nihonbashi Kodenmacho has been strangled. Kyoichiro Kaga, who has just started work at the Nihonbashi department, walks around the streets of Ningyocho, an area unknown to him, and visits families and shops that may have some relation to the case.
In fact, the novel consists of a series of short stories - each short story becomes a chapter - and each time there is another protagonist; in each short story Kaga (who is not the central character) solves a small mystery or human relations problem concerning people who have some connection with the victim or incident. The stories are also interrelated, we go back and forth in time and place, and in the later stories learn more about events in the earlier stories. On top of that, going around in a sort of concentric circles, we gradually approach the central case and learn more about the murder and its possible solution.
The short stories are set in Ningyocho, part of downtown Tokyo ("shitamachi"), where you won't find any traditional architecture - it has been filled with square blocks of concrete office buildings - but where, in between the modernization, some old human feelings survive, especially in the traditional shops, such as a rice cracker shop, a ryotei restaurant, a shop selling pottery, another one selling (and repairing) clocks, a shop selling old-fashioned toys, etc. etc.
The title "newcomer" refers not only to Kaga, who has been transferred to a new district, but in the first place to the murder victim, a woman who has separated from her uninterested husband and egoistic son, and has started a new, independent life in this old neighborhood, but who also had a particular reason to start living here...
The murder case is neatly solved, although there are no fireworks or double tricks. The book is focused on life as lived in an old downtown part of Tokyo, and on the altruism of detective Kaga, who, while solving the larger mystery, also finds time to help the people he meets with their daily problems. For non-Japanese, this book is especially interesting as a window on life in Japan.
In a Japanese survey held some years ago, "Newcomer" scored fourth place among all novels by Keigo Higashino (The Devotion of Suspect X was not unexpectedly No 1), which is quite high. I give 4 stars, as for me it is the best book by Higashino.
Also published under the UK title "The Hollow Man," this was my first Dickson Carr novel. Coming from the cosmopolitan, intellectual atmosphere of Van Dine (The Benson Murder Case), I had to get used to the Gothic, 19th century mood of this book (although written in 1935), behind which the shadow of Charles Dickens looms large (not my favorite writer, to say it politely). Other reviewers have pointed at the influence of G.K. Chesterton, whose physical appearance is borrowed by Carr for his detective Doctor Fell – a huge and rather noisy man who is constantly harrumphing, wheezing, blowing his nose and waving his two walking canes around (all characters in this book are often angry and upset - I much prefer the serene Philo Vance). Amateur sleuth Dr Fell assists his friend CID Superintendent Hadley in difficult cases.
Carr has been celebrated as the iconical "locked room" mystery writer and here we get even two such mysteries (one in a closed room, the other in an empty street) - and as additional bonus also Dr Fell's famous lecture on types of locked rooms. That lecture is quite interesting (and fits the story) and divides locked rooms into the following types: - Not a murder, but a series of coincidences ending in an accident looking like murder. - It is murder, but the victim is forced to kill himself or crash to an accidental death. - Murder by a mechanical device already planted in the room. - Suicide, which is intended to look like murder. - Murder which derives its problem from illusion and impersonation. - Again an illusion, but this time the victim is presumed to be dead long before he actually is. - Murder which, although committed by somebody outside the room, nevertheless seems to have been the deed of somebody inside (the "long distance" or "icicle" crime).
The second crime in the book, in which a man is apparently shot at close range by nobody in an empty, snowy street, is ingenious and also plausible. Chapeau! The first murder in the locked room is a bit more problematical. The killer, a visitor wearing a mask, literally seems to have vanished into thin air. Without giving away the plot, I can say that some kind of illusion is at work here, but by the addition of a (difficult to understand) trick with a mirror, Carr makes it too complex for its own good. It is a series of tricks that in the end doesn't convince - although the central illusion is again a nice idea.
These two murders (the first one of a foreign professor interested in witchcraft living in London, the second one of an illusionist who had threatened him) play our against a back story set around 1900 in Transylvania, about three brothers and three coffins, a daring escape from prison and cruel double-dealing. The story fits well in the overall spooky atmosphere of the novel.
That being said, there are also several problems with this book. I don't know why it was necessary to include the two characters of the American Ted Rampole and his wife Dorothy (friends of Dr Fell), as they have no function at all - Ted is not even a Watson-type. Their ratiocination about the crimes is rather superfluous and leads to the only boring parts in the short book.
The other problem is the forced, narrow-minded coziness. Yes, this novel was written by an American, but, spending most of his working life in London, Carr had become more British than the English themselves. London is described as a cozy Dickensian paradise that never changes. The only danger comes from the outside: those bloody foreigners who start killing each other (Romanians, in this case - to stem their influx, 80 years later Britain would foolishly leave the European Union). British coziness is a form of nationalism, and nationalism was the scourge of the first half of the 20th century - and again of our own troubled times.
(also called tsukuri 作り or tsukurimi 作り身 in the Kansai)
Sliced raw fish
"A cardinal principle of Japanese cuisine is that any seafood fresh enough to be eaten raw, should be served raw" (Richard Hosking, A Dictionary of Japanese Food)
"Raw fish" is the common translation for "sashimi," but it is not entirely correct. In the first place, besides fish, also other seafood as shellfish and crustaceans is regularly used; and in certain regions, even raw meat. The second thing is that it must imply slicing (as the Japanese characters above indicate) - Japanese cuisine is not built on "cooking" and "heating" as the Western one, but on the skillful use of the cook's knives (hocho). In other words, raw oysters are not considered as sashimi, but raw slices of scallops are included. The role played by human intervention is also clear from the term used in the Kansai for sliced raw fish: tsukuri means "made, created" and also includes an aspect of "skill." This means that the preparation of sashimi is the preserve of professionals such as sushi chefs, as they are the only ones who possess the necessary experience and skill to use the high-quality knives, and have been trained in how to cut (which parts, which direction the knife should be moved, which type of knife should be used, etc.).
Sashimi is a key component of formal multi-course meals (kaiseki), where it is usually the second course, after the initial appetizers - this to prevent that its sensitive flavors become unintelligible to tongues spoiled by strong simmered or grilled dishes. It is the dish in which the chef demonstrates his skill with the cook's knife. Sashimi also figures regularly on the menus of sushi restaurants.
A special way of eating sashimi in specialized restaurants is ikizukuri, in which the fish is sliced while still alive. The sashimi is arranged artistically on the body of the fish, between the head and tail, and may be served in an ornate manner, for example on a wooden boat-shaped dish. The restaurants usually have a fish basin or tank from which the fish is caught immediately before preparation. In sharp contrast to the refrigerated sashimi from the supermarket, sashimi in ikizukuri is still warm when eaten. Ikizukuri is a common way of offering sea bream (tai).
Most often, however, sashimi is simply arranged on a dish with garnishes typical of the season. Commonly used types of fish are tuna (maguro), sea bream (tai), yellowtail (buri), octopus (tako - always first boiled) and squid (ika). Eaters dip the fish into strong shoyu (tamari-joyu) containing wasabi and benitade (water pepper), and eat it with the garnishes on the dish like thinly sliced strips of raw daikon and aojiso (green beefsteak plant).
Eaten at home it is a small luxury which is usually bought prepared by the fishmonger, or nowadays more often the supermarket. Also at home, it is eaten at the beginning of the meal with a dip of soy sauce and grated wasabi, possibly with the addition of benitade.
A special form of sashimi is tataki (たたき, "pounded"), which is lightly seared on the outside, leaving it raw inside. Katsuo (skipjack tuna) is often served in this way.
As mentioned above, sashimi can also refer to thinly sliced raw meat (carpaccio-like), such as horse meat, beef, chicken and whale, but these dishes are extremely rare and limited to local cuisines, such as basashi (raw horse meat) in Kumamoto. Moreover, raw meat is dangerous as it can lead to fatal food poisoning.
Infinitely more healthy are vegetables used as "sashimi" - these can be anything from avocado to bamboo shoots, but the most interesting one is konnyaku, cut into short thin strips, which is for example popular in Shiga prefecture. Konnyaku sashimi is served with vinegar and miso.
It is a mystery why S.S. van Dine, the creator of Philo Vance and one of the most successful writers in the detective genre, has fallen so completely from grace. He was enormously popular between 1926 and 1936, something which is also demonstrated by how quickly Hollywood adapted his novels for the screen with such famous actors as William Powell. How is it possible that the most influential mystery writer since Doyle became just a dusty name in the history of the detective genre?
The clue to the mystery may well be the character of Van Dine's detective, Philo Vance. Vance is a wealthy aesthete and connoisseur of the arts, a genuine intellectual. Is that perhaps why modern readers don't like him? We live in sadly lowbrow times, in which intellectuals and experts feel forced to hide their light under the bushel. In contrast, Vance, who is an authority on every subject imaginable, shares his vast knowledge at every opportunity, without any sense of shame, but also without arrogance. He is not afraid to show that he is an intellectual and I love his character for that. Vance doesn't mind being an outsider.
One of the funniest scenes in the present novel comes when a police sergeant asks Vance, who is looking at some cigarette stubs perhaps related to the murder, with ill disguised sarcasm: "Tobacco expert?" "Oh, dear no." Vance’s voice was dulcet. "My specialty is scarab-cartouches of the Ptolemaic dynasties."
"S.S. Van Dine" is actually the pseudonym of Willard Huntington Wright (1888-1939), who in real life was an important art and theater critic who moved in avant-garde cultural circles in pre-World War I New York. Besides several books on art, and many articles of literary criticism, he also wrote about philosophy in an introductory study about Nietzsche. Between 1926 and his death, he wrote 11 detective novels and novellas, of which the first six are generally considered as the best. "The Benson Murder case" was his first novel, written when, while recovering from an illness, he was not allowed to do any exhausting work.
"The Benson Murder Case" shows how Philo Vance first became a detective. The police - including his friend Markham, the district attorney, who has asked for his help - still have to get used to his personality and to collaborating with him. Vance argues convincingly that alibis are useless and also demonstrates how dangerous it is to trust circumstantial evidence. Interestingly, the whole first chapter is devoted to a description of Vance's collection of world art.
As the first novel in the series, "The Benson Murder Case" is focused on the reasoning mind of Philo Vance, at work in solving the mysterious death of a stockbroker, who is found in his brownstone mansion with a bullet through his head. By the way, all the Philo Vance novels are set in central New York and give a nice picture of Manhattan in the late 1920s.
One of the greatest things in Van Dine's novels is his magnificent and sometimes ornate English prose style. This style is radically different from the plain (and often simplistic) vernacular used by other detective writers as Agatha Christie and may be a second reason for Van Dine's present neglect. But I love the rhythm of his sentences - detective novels usually don't get beyond the B-level, but Van Dine writes on a decided A-level. Another feature I admire is the fine characterization and interest in psychology.
The following aspects of the Philo Vance novels became "classical" and were often imitated by other detective writers:
- The fair play puzzle plot: the detective reaches the solution based on clues provided also to the reader - different from for example the Sherlock Holmes stories and most other, older detective fiction; in 1928, Van Dine formulated his famous "20 rules for writing a detective novel."
- The use of elaborate diagrams and maps, which are meant to give a realistic, "documentary" quality to the story.
- To give the name of the author "S.S. Van Dine" to the first-person narrator of the books (usually called "Van" by Philo Vance). This trick would later be be copied by Ellery Queen (and Japanese Shin Honkaku writers like Alice Arisugawa and Norizuki Rintaro).
Van Dine indeed exerted much influence on later writers as Ellery Queen, John Dickson Carr, and Agatha Christie. One element not copied by them and rare in detective fiction is Van Dine's copious use of footnotes, which often have a role in the novel as well (I am very fond of footnotes - one of my favorite novels is Nabokov's Pale Fire, which consists of a poem and footnotes in which a novel is hidden).
Van Dine's clever plots are still fascinating, as are his strong sense of place and time - plus the excellent style of writing. Although I object to too fanciful puzzle plots (as in my review of Murder in the Crooked House), Van Dine is very different: his puzzle is perfectly realistic (it is not a closed room mystery here - although he would write a very good one in The Kennel Murder Case) and he doesn't include a childish "challenge to the reader" as Ellery Queen did. He had exactly the right idea at the right time, but fell out of favor when the "hard-boiled" school of detective fiction became the dominant type in the U.S. in the 1930s. And as he died at a rather young age, he unfortunately didn't have the opportunity to adjust his writing to the new times.
I love S.S. Van Dine’s detective stories with their imaginative and elaborate problems. Above all, in these novels Van Dine proved himself to be a cultured cosmopolitan.
The Benson Murder Case at Faded Page (public domain in countries where the copyright term is life+50 years and where the copyright term is life+70 years (author died in 1939))
Higashino Keigo has overreached himself in "Midsummer's Equation," the third novel in the Galileo series (in Japan it is Part 6, but that is because he has also written three volumes of short stories which are of a rather different character compared to the novels). The setting is nice, for once not in Tokyo but in Hari Cove, a sleepy former resort town. Mineral deposits have been found offshore and Dr Yukawa has been invited by the company seeking to develop the find as an independent expert (a bit strange because he is a physicist and not a mineralogist or biologist). He has to testify at hearings to be held with a group of local environmentalists who are against the development as it may destroy the seascape. That night, the only other guest staying at the decaying inn he has selected (refusing the accommodation offered by the company as he wants to remain independent) dies in what seems an accident (a fall on the rocks). Soon it comes out that the man in fact died from carbon monoxide poisoning and was a former policeman from Tokyo. As appears gradually, he was looking into an old crime in which the owners of the inn and their daughter (now a fierce environmentalist) are implicated. So cops from Tokyo get involved, including Kusanagi who has frequent telephone contact with Yukawa to get his take on things.
Now the problems of this book: - The story of the mining company and the environmentalists has been set up with a lot of fanfare (and a lot of space) but is halfway discarded like a bag of refuse - the reader expects a link with the main plot, but it has just been "filling." - There are too many persons in the novel, from environmentalists (friends of the daughter) to the 12-year old nephew of the inn keepers and the large number of policemen, local and from Tokyo; and in combination with Higashino's rather rudimentary characterization skills, this leads to confusion. The novel "sprawls" too much, there is no clear focus. - I won't spoil the fun by revealing details about the old and the new murder, but only say that the motivation is implausible - on the one hand the extent of altruism of one person is unbelievable, and on the other hand the circumstance lying at the base of all crimes would only be considered a problem in an old-fashioned 19th century novel, not in our modern times (also not in Japan).
Keikichi Osaka (1912-1945) was born too late. He wrote his first detective story in 1932 (published thanks to the help of established detective author Koga Saburo), but in 1937 Japan entered the war and society started frowning upon Western-style detective stories as undesirable. Osaka had to switch to spy stories and comical stuff, and was unable to write anything of value. On top of that, he was drafted in 1943 and sent to the Philippines where he succumbed to disease under harsh circumstances (for an impression of those circumstances, just read Fires on the Plain by Shohei Ooka). So he only wrote detective stories for a short five years and was forgotten after his death. Happily, we now see a re-appreciation of his work which foreshadows the puzzle mystery boom from just after the war. We even have a volume of his stories in English, for which translator Ho-Ling Wong is to be applauded.
The book contains 12 stories, in a representative selection (modern Japanese editions contain together about 30 stories, which is probably all there is). When you have seen other reviews by me about Japanese detective stories (such as Murder in the Crooked House), you know already I am not a great fan of pure puzzle mysteries, but happily Osaka rises above that limitation.
The earliest story in the collection - and the first one published by Osaka - is "The Hangman of the Department Store," and there we still find the kind unrealistic solution that is typical of so many puzzle stories. But all other stories are better, with the sole exception of "The Hungry Letter-Box," which is one of the comical spy stories written in the late 1930s, and indeed negligible. The title story, by the way, rests also on a trick (of the way of looking at things in a different manner) and is not as strong as the following stories which are my favorites:
By far the best story in the book is "The Mourning Locomotive," a story which has nothing to do with puzzles or "honkaku." It is a sad and tragic tale, without a crime, but it contains a mystery behind which we find deep human feelings. The story is set in a railway depot, where the workers have to clean up the trains after deadly accidents have happened by running over suicidal people. They are surprised when at a given time the trains start running over pigs, always at the same location, and with the same driver. Their search leads them to a shop selling funeral wreaths and a mysterious girl peeping through the doors at the back of the shop...
Very good is also "The Three Madmen", seemingly a traditional whodunit, but which by playing with notions of sanity and insanity leads to a great surprise at the end.
I also liked Osaka's final story "The Demon in the Mine," set inside a coal mine with very harsh working conditions. When one miner is sacrificed in the name of safety for the others, it seems as if his ghost is killing those who have sealed him up inside a tunnel...
Impressive is also "The Monster of the Lighthouse," in which a series of baffling happenings seems to point at something supernatural, but there is of course a logical explanation. Although this one is rather unrealistic, the story thrilled me because of the painful human drama.
Another eerie take is "A Cold Night's Clearing," set on a snowy night. The ski tracks leading away from the house where a murder has happened, gradually disappear, as if the murderer had flown up to the sky. The fate of the child in the story is heartbreaking...
The best of Osaka Keikichi's stories have an unusual atmosphere and even hallucinatory quality, but the strong point - in marked contrast to much (Shin) Honkaku fiction - is that he doesn't need any weird-shaped mansions or desert islands, but sets his stories in our unremarkable, daily-life world where his imagination finds weirdness behind the veil.
In my review of his second novel, Murder in the Crooked House, I have introduced Soji Shimada and the renewed interest he generated in Japan with his books in the genre of the puzzle detective in the style of Ellery Queen and Dickson Carr. I will not repeat here what I have written in that review about the puzzle detective in Japan (called "honkaku," about which many misunderstandings exist), but only add that in the late 1980s Shimada became the mentor of a group of young writers from Kyoto who also put the puzzle – mostly a closed room mystery – central, thus creating a trend. And that meant all spotlights were aimed at his first novel, "The Tokyo Zodiac Murders."
In that same review, I have also given my reasons for not being very fond of exclusive puzzle detectives: they may be good as puzzles (sometimes), but characterization, motivation, narrative and plausibility go out of the window.
That is also the case in “The Tokyo Zodiac Murders.” Shimada starts by forcing us to read the testament of a lunatic painter who plans to murder his six virginal daughters and nieces and cut off their body parts as head, shoulders, chest, hips, thighs, and lower legs to fashion these together into what he calls one perfect woman, Azoth. His confession is larded with astrological nonsense which makes it a rather hard read. There is a brief “ero-guro” suggestion that the man is a doll lover and once fell in love with a mannequin in a show window, but that avenue is not pursued - it could have been a more interesting story than what we have now (in fact, Ian McEwan has written such a story called "Dead as They Come" in his collection First Love, Last Rites).
The painter cannot execute his plan: on a snowy night he is murdered in his studio in what seems a perfect locked-room mystery. All the same, a month later the six young women disappear and their mutilated, cut-up bodies start appearing in various parts of Japan. On top of that, another daughter of the painter, who had been married and was excluded from the Azoth set-up as she was no virgin anymore, is murdered and raped in her house. The police suspect that the (third) wife of the painter is somehow involved in the series of crimes, but she never confesses and the murders remain unsolved.
That was in 1936. The novel takes place 40 years later when astrologist Kiyoshi Mitarai and his Watson-like sidekick Kazumi Ishioka try to solve the by now notorious mystery after receiving a new clue. Mitarai is one of the most unlikable and arrogant detectives I have ever come across. Ishioka is a blank sheet, for his character is never filled in, but he must be a masochist as he can bear to be in the company of Mitarai.
But if you expect the novel to get underway now, you will be disappointed, for we get endless pages of explanation and speculation in which the friends discuss the 40 year old murders. There is a lot of astrological hogwash again, about the latitudes and longitudes where the bodies were buried, about certain metal mines in the vicinity, and how the body parts for Azoth were determined by the stars. The only positive thing is that all this nonsense doesn’t play any role in the solution of the crime, so it doesn't matter if you skim through these sections…
When we are about halfway in the book, Mitarai and Ishioka finally do some detection work by going to Kyoto to follow-up a clue. But they come across a number of red herrings and the detection peters out. Mitarai disappears and Ishioka mainly spends his time sightseeing. Finally, when it is almost time to return to Tokyo, Mitarai by chance finds the solution in a flash of insight, but a trip to Kyoto would not have been necessary for that…
The explication of the locked room he discovers is rather unspectacular after all the noise about it - this in contrast to the solution of the main mystery of the dismembered virgins. I will only say that there is a real nice trick here which probably will make puzzle lovers enthusiastic, but which leaves us others who are mainly interested in a good story rather unsatisfied, as motivation is completely inadequate.
Shimada imitates Ellery Queen by pausing the story twice and challenging the reader, a breakdown of the “fourth wall” which is also a rather unnecessary copycat action.
I do like strong plots in detective novels, but my objection against exclusive puzzle mysteries is that such elements as narrative, characterization, motivation and everything else that makes a story interesting as a story, as literature, are either missing or too weak. When you want to solve puzzles, why not pick up a computer game or do a traditional crossword puzzle? Well, I should probably pick up Nabokov, Proust or Thomas Mann instead of a detective...
In the Baroque period, the violin consolidated its position as expressively the most wide-ranging of non-keyboard instruments. This was the age of the great violin makers, like Amati and Stradivari.
We see two lines of development which together lead to the mature violin sonata:
The sonata for violin and continuo. The violin here is the principal melodist; it is given harmonic support through a prescribed figured bass played on the harpsichord, a small organ or a plucked string instrument as the archlute; the bass line can be further strengthened by a low string instrument as gamba or cello. The sonata of this type first emerged in Northern Italy, then moved to Austria and Germany, and later to France. Principal centers of activity were Venice, Bologna, Vienna, Dresden, Hamburg and Paris, cities where patronage and publication were easily found. Gradually this sonata developed into two types: the sonata da camera ("chamber sonata") which was in fact a suite of stylized dances, and the sonata da chiesa ("church sonata") which had no link with dances and was usually divided into four movements slow-fast-slow-fast.
The accompanied sonata (second half 18th c.). Here the violinist served in a subordinate position to an obbligato keyboard. This type of sonata challenged the sonata with basso continuo and finally superseded it, leading to the true dual sonata for two equal players.
In the Classical period, we see the flowering of that second type of sonata, the accompanied sonata, in the hands of composers like Johann Christian Bach and Johann Schobert, until and including the early works of Mozart (surprisingly, Haydn did not write any important violin sonatas). This was the period of the transition from the violin sonata with continuo to the violin sonata with keyboard obbligato. But due to the atrophied violin part, the accompanied sonata is not great music - when listening to this type of music, one continually has the feeling something important is lacking. The reason for writing such works was that music had moved to the home, where daughters received a thorough education in piano playing, while the sons studied the violin, but with much less thoroughness. So the violin part had to be much simpler than the piano part in order to make music making in the home possible. It is in the later works of Mozart and those of Beethoven that we finally find complete equality between violin and piano (these works were of course not written for the home, but for professional performers or expert amateurs). In this period composers also began to assign their works to a specific melodic and keyboard instrument instead of leaving that open to the performer.
In the early Romantic period, finally, the sonata (for violin and other solo instruments) played a secondary role to the concerto, owing to the emphasis on virtuosity and brilliance of that time.
[Based on Robin Stowell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Violin, p. 168 f.f.]
1. Biagio Marini, Sonata quarta "Per il violino per sonar con due corde" from Op. 8 (1626) Italian violin music led to the rise of instrumental music as a separate genre in the 17th century. As the "king of instruments," the violin was considered equal to the voice in its ability to run the gamut of expression from sadness to joy. The earliest known sonatas for violin and bass (unfigured) appear in Cima's Concerto Ecclesiastici of 1610, but more important were Biagio Marini's (1594-1663) adventurous essays in the genre. Marini's second collection (Opera Ottava) is an instrumental book containing everything from dances to sonatas and symphonies for one to six instruments, "all curious and modern inventions. The violin sonatas in this book are characterized by spectacular idiomatic writing (double and even triple stops). Marini greatly expanded the performance range of the violin. He was also one of the first composers, along with Marco Uccellini, to call for scordatura tunings ("scordatura" is a tuning different from the normal, standard tuning that typically attempts to allow for special effects or unusual chords or timbres). In this way, Marini moved the violin sonata genre away from the free instrumentation of his predecessors. He made contributions to most of the genres of his time and explored unusual compositional techniques. What remains of his music shows great inventiveness, lyricism, and harmonic boldness. Marini's music was printed and influential throughout the European musical world. He traveled extensively and "court hopped," holding positions in Brussels, Neuburg an der Donau, Düsseldorf, and many Italian cities (Padua, Parma, Ferrara, Milan, Bergamo, and Brescia). Marini also served under Monteverdi at St. Mark's in Venice.
Listen to: Violine | Sabine Stoffer Orgel | Magdalena Hasibeder
2. Marco Uccelini, Sonata over Toccata V, "detta La Laura rilucente", Op 4 (1645)
Marco Uccelini (1603-80) was another key figure whose output of mainly secular music for solo violin further developed the resources of that instrument, and helped the rise of independent instrumental music. Uccelini's positions included that of choir master for the Este court at the cathedral in Modena. He composed operas, ballets and instrumental works but none of the
first two genres survive; the instrumental works
include sinfonias, sonatas, and dances and are contained in seven
different collections. His publication Sonate over canzoni (1649) is reckoned as the first publication devoted solely to music for solo violin and continuo. Along with Marini, Uccelini developed an idiomatic, virtuosic approach to violin writing in which he aspired to emulate the expressive range of the human voice.
[Performance listened to: Romanesca (Andrew Manze) on Harmonia Mundi] 3. Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, Six Sonatae Unarum Fidium (1664) After the pyrotechnics of the early Italian violin masters introduced above, the history of violin music next turns to the Austro-Germans. Johann Heinrich Schmelzer (1620 or 1623 - 1680) was the first "home-grown" Kapellmeister appointed to the Viennese Imperial Court. Schmelzer was one of the most important violinists of his time, making significant contributions to the development of violin technique and promoting the development of sonata and suite forms in Austria and southern Germany. Schmelzer was able to distill Italian rhetorical brilliance into a stable sonata form. Schmelzer and other Austrian virtuosos such as Biber are also known for their use of figurative and imitative music. The six sonatas of 1664 have their share of virtuosity, but they also contain a new lyricism. This is evident in the Fourth Sonata, where intricate figurations in the violin unfold over a recurring bass pattern. The "Unarum Fidium" in the title translates as "for one violin," with overtones of "a single loyalty.
Listen to Sonata IV, from Sonatae unarum fidium: Edmund Taylor - Baroque Violin Mathilde Blondel - Baroque Cello James Bramley - Theorbo Alexandra Kremakova - Harpsichord
4. Heinrich Biber, The Mystery (or Rosary) Sonatas (1676) Although Italy was the center of instrumental prowess in the 17th century, the finest of all virtuosi was Heinrich Biber, who spent most of his working life in Salzburg. Born in Bohemia, he studied with Schmelzer in Vienna. Biber is generally considered one of the most important composers for the violin in the history of the instrument. According to Wikipedia, "his technique allowed him to easily reach the 6th and 7th positions, to use multiple registers in intricate polyphonic passages, and to explore the various possibilities of scordatura tuning. During Biber's lifetime, his music was known and imitated throughout Europe. He also wrote one of the earliest known pieces for solo violin, the monumental Passacaglia in G minor that concludes the Mystery Sonatas. The Mystery Sonatas are fifteen sonatas depicting the lives of Christ and the Virgin Mary - they may have been used in traditional rosary devotions in which the faithful walked around a series of paintings placed in a church. In the original edition, each piece is accompanied by a small engraving depicting the mystery it represents. The first five sonatas represent the "Joyful Mysteries". Annunciation (in this sonata you can hear the fluttering of angels' wings), Visitation, Nativity, Presentation in the Temple, and Finding Jesus in the Temple; the next five are the "Sorrowful Mysteries": Agony in the Garden, Suffering in the Temple, and Finding Jesus in the Temple. Agony in the Garden, Flagellation, Crowning with Thorns, Carrying of the Cross and Crucifixion; the last set consists of the "Glorious Mysteries": Resurrection (the rising from the dead), Resurrection of the dead, Resurrection of the dead, Resurrection of the dead. Resurrection (the rising of the sun is vividly depicted), Ascension, Descent of the Holy Spirit, Assumption and Crowning of the Virgin. The work concludes with the aforementioned Passacaglia for solo violin, usually known as "The Guardian Angel. Biber's music is not programmatic, but rather evokes the appropriate devotional mood through the use of stylized dance forms and variations. With the exception of Sonatas 1 and 16, all of the sonatas feature various forms of scordatura (unconventional tuning), with a particularly rich variety of phrasing. Except for Sonatas 1 and 16, all of the sonatas have various forms of scordatura (unconventional tuning), with Sonata No. 11 requiring a particularly complex arrangement of crossed strings. This means that at least three violins must be prepared in advance for a continuous performance. This sequence of sonatas is a great symbolic enactment of faith and meditation.
Listen to: Mysterie No.1 - The Annunciation (Biber Rosary Sonata 1) Bjarte Eike & Barokksolistene
5. Arcangelo Corelli, Twelve Sonatas Op 5 (1700) Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713) represents an early high point in the development of the violin sonata. Although instrumental music was becoming increasingly important in his time, it is unusual that he wrote no music at all for the voice. His entire output falls into three genres: the trio sonata, the solo violin sonata and the concerto grosso. Corelli was a perfectionist and his published works are few, but his influence was enormous. He is one of the few early composers whose works have remained in the repertoire. Educated in Bologna (at a time when there was something of a backlash against the extravagance of the early virtuosi, with Bologna as an important centre for the development of more serious instrumental music), Corelli's later working life was mainly based in Rome, where he had important patrons. His violin playing was noted for its pathos and elegance. The twelve solo sonatas Op 5 are a distillation of Corelli's understanding of the best qualities of the instrument. The violin technique is brilliant, but always in the service of the music. The collection consists of eleven violin sonatas, six of the sonata da chiesa type and five sonata da camera; the twelfth work is a series of twenty-three variations on the popular dance tune 'La Follia'. This collection was hugely influential - by the end of the century it had appeared in more than 40 editions. Corelli's consolidation of violinistic and compositional conventions brought the genre of the violin sonata into the 18th century galant style and set the standard for the next 100 years. Corelli's teaching also initiated the first major school of violin playing. His many pupils helped to spread his influence throughout Europe.
Listen to: Sonata Op 5 No 12 in D minor La Follia (Da Kamera: Hiro KurosaKi violin, Alberto Martínez Molina harpsichord, Ruth Verona cello)
6. Antonio Vivaldi, Twelve Sonatas Op. 2 (1712-13)
Despite its misleading early opus number, the Opus 2 set of 12 violin sonatas is very much the work of the mature Vivaldi (1678-1741). It is in fact his most significant set of violin sonatas, in which he also pays homage to Corelli's Op. 5. The first edition appeared in Venice. Vivaldi's sonatas for violin and continuo are in a composite church-chamber mold, in which the chamber elements are predominant as is clear from the many dance movements. The style of Op 2 is brilliant. Every sonata begins with a prelude and every prelude has a different style one from the other. The prelude of the second sonata, for example, is a cappriccio in concertante style, while the prelude to the fourth sonata is a restrained andante. Vivaldi's violin sonatas possess a clear architecture, as well as lively and always new rhythms, a simple tonal harmony and are full of invention.
[Performance listened to: Jacques-Francis Manzone and Martine Raibaldi on BNL Production (Auvidis)]
7. Johann Sebastian Bach, Sonatas for violin with obbligato keyboard BWV 1014-18 (1719) Bach's six sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord are in trio sonata form, with the two upper parts in harpsichord (right hand) and violin over a bass line provided by the harpsichord (left hand) and an optional viola da gamba. The first five sonatas are in four movements, following the conventions of the sonata da chiesa, while the sixth sonata is in five movements. Unlike Baroque sonatas for solo instrument and continuo, where the realization of the figured bass was left to the discretion of the performer, the keyboard part in these sonatas was specified by Bach. They were probably written around 1719, when Bach was employed by Prince Leopold of Cöthen. At this time he had access to an excellent German-made harpsichord, which led to his increased interest in the instrument. These sonatas are thus early examples of the equality of violin and keyboard. They are warm and expressive works, with soulful slow movements and appealing fast ones. The level of melodic invention is very high. Together with the solo cello suites and the solo violin sonatas, they show us Bach at his most concentrated and intimate.
Listen to: Bojan Čičić, violin
Steven Devine, harpsichord
(Netherlands Bach Society)
8. Johann Sebastian Bach, Sonatas and partitas for solo violin BWV 1001–1006 (1720)
This marvelous set consists of three sonatas and three partitas for unaccompanied violin and served as the archetype of unaccompanied sonatas for later generations of composers. Bach wrote the autograph in 1720 in Cöthen, but some pieces may go back to his Weimar period. It is not known who performed these magnificent works (a possibility is Johann Georg Pisendel), but publication had to wait until 1802. One expects that a stringed instrument can only play a single line of music, without harmony or counterpoint, but Bach proves that is very different: through the spreading of the component notes of a chord (and of course also double and triple stops) Bach implies harmony and counterpoint in such a way that it is sometimes difficult to believe you are listening to only a single violin! This is especially the case in the second movement of each sonata which is a fully realized fugue (the fugue of the third sonata is especially complex, derived from the chorale Komm, heiliger Geist, and employing such contrapuntal techniques as stretto, inversion and double counterpoint). The first movements are preludes; the third movements are lyrical and the fourth and final movements have the structure of a typical binary suite movement. Unlike the sonatas, the partitas make use of the usual Baroque stylized dances of allemande, courante, sarabande, and gigue, with the addition of new elements. Famous is the extremely virtuoso chaconne of the D minor partita, which Yehudi Menuhin called "the greatest existing structure for solo violin." But this is Bach, so the technical virtuosity is never a surface matter, and the music abounds with vivid melodies of a deeply emotional quality.
[Performance listened to: Sigiswald Kuijken on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi]
9. Johann Georg Pisendel, Sonata for Violin Solo in A minor, JunP IV.2 (around 1720)
Johann Georg Pisendel (1688–1755) was a German Baroque musician, violinist and composer who, for many years, led the Court Orchestra in Dresden. He was friends with Bach and Telemann and also knew Vivaldi personally. Pisendel was the foremost German violinist of his day and as he met Bach in Weimar, he is sometimes named as the performer of the solo violin sonatas by that composer. He wrote very little music himself, but everything is high in quality and his influence was great. All of his surviving works are instrumental and include ten violin concertos, four concertos for orchestra and two sonatas for violin. His major work is the Sonata for Solo Violin in A minor, which has been suggested as an influence on Bach’s solo violin writing. It is in four movements, the final one a set of variations.
[Performance listened to: Thomasz Aleksander Plusa on Brilliant Classics] 10. Georg Philipp Telemann, Violin Sonata in D minor from Sonate metodiche Op 13 (1728, 1732)
Although Bach is now held in the highest esteem, in the 18th c. it was Telemann who was widely regarded as Germany's leading composer. Much of his instrumental music promoted music-making at home. The title "Sonate metodiche" ("Methodic Sonatas") sounds didactically dreary, but in fact these twelve sonatas for violin or flute (or oboe) and continuo are full of invention and expressive charm. They were published in two sets of six, and were meant to assist performers in the art of embellishment. The "methodical" or instructive intent of the collection is provided in the suggested written-out melodic elaborations of the opening movements of each sonata. The first six sonatas are in the strict four-movement form, the second set is much freer (and in five movements).
[Performance listened to: Boston Museum Trio et. al. on Sony]
11. Jean-Marie Leclair, Sonata No 4 in B flat major from Troisieme Livre de Sonates Op 5 (1734)
Jean-Marie Leclair (1697–1764) is considered as the founder of the French violin school. Leclair was born in Lyon, but studied the violin in Turin. After that, he mainly worked in Paris, for example at the Concert Spirituel and at the court of Louis XV, but he also was five years at the court of the Princess of Orange in the Netherlands. As a composer, Leclair successfully drew upon all of Europe's national styles. Typical about his style are the well-balanced phrases with small, detailed ornaments. Another element are the solemn textures that often open a work. The sarabande of Sonata No 4 shows a classical French balance of phrases and a lyricism with detailed nuances of melody and ornament (John Butt in sleeve notes of Hyperion recording).
[Performance listened to: Elizabeth Wallfisch & Convivium on Hyperion]
12. Pietro Antonio Locatelli, Sonata No 6 in D major from XII Sonate a violino solo a basso da camera Op 6 (1737)
Locatelli (1695-1764) studied and worked in Rome, after which he traveled through Italy and Germany from 1723 to 1728. In 1729 Locatelli moved to Amsterdam, where he stayed until his death. He published (or re-published) most of his music in Amsterdam and took great care to present flawless editions. Like Locatelli's Violin Concertos Op. 3 with their associated Capricci, the Violin Sonatas Op. 6 were standards for virtuosos and made him famous throughout Europe. These are modern sonatas written in a progressive harmonic idiom and mostly in three movements instead of the traditional four. They announce the new galant style that was just coming into fashion in the 1730s.
[Performance listened to: Elizabeth Wallfisch (Locatelli Trio) on Hyperion]
13. Franz Benda, Violin Sonata in F minor, L3.73 (1740-45)
Benda (1709-86) was a Bohemian violinist and composer, who worked for much of his life at the court of Frederick the Great in Berlin. Benda was a master of violin playing, the mellow sweetness of his highest notes was reportedly unequaled. Benda composed 17 symphonies, numerous concerti and sonatas for violin, and other chamber works. Benda is a typical representative of the galant style; his cantabile composing style allowed space for elaborate ornamentation during performance (freely added by the performer) which was the height of fashion in this period. The violin part is a far cry from the big sound one usually hears nowadays; in the sleeve notes, Glen Wilson speaks of a silvery tone "like the fluty warbling of the nightingale." In Benda's time, the sonata had dropped the initial slow movement and grown into a three-part structure. The music for the accompanying instrument was generally written out, doing away with the flexibility of the continuo.
[Performance listened to: Hans-Joachim Berg & Naoko Akutagawa on Naxos]
14. Francesco Maria Veracini, Sonata No 12 in D minor from Sonate Accademiche a violino solo e basso Op 2 (1744)
Florence-born Veracini (1690-1768) worked as violinist and composer in Venice, Dresden and London. Veracini's music stands out for its brilliance, clarity and diversity. He wrote violin concertos, orchestral suites and recorder music, but is best known for his sets of violin sonatas. One of these is the Sonate Accademiche, a title which should not be taken in the sense of "academic," for meant are "musical societies." Veracini was one of the greatest virtuosi of his time. He played in great centers of music as Dresden, London and Venice. His contemporaries looked upon him as an "encyclopedia" of violin technique. He was expert in the art of increasing or diminishing tone and a whole range of bowing techniques. In his violin compositions, exceptional virtuosity is also demanded from the violinist's left hand. Veracini's expertise in the field of vocal music is revealed in his slow movements, which have a true Italian "cantabilita." But above all, it is said, his music demonstrated the cosmopolitan experience he had acquired in the course of his travels throughout Europe. The 12th sonata in D minor consists of the movements Passagallo, Capriccio cromatico, Adagio and Ciaconna. The opening Passagallo has an almost Northern restraint and is marked "Very broad and just as it is, but with grace" - in other words, Veracini wants the melody to be payed sweetly and elegantly, but without superficial ornamentation or outpourings.
[Performance listened to: Fabio Biondi et al on Opus 111]
15. Giuseppe Tartini, Violin Sonata in B-flat major Op 5 No 6 B.B5 (late 1740s)
Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) was a composer of great significance and also an excellent performer, pedagogue and theoretician. In his youth he led a nomadic life in northern Italian towns as a violinist - Veracini's playing was a great inspiration for him. From 1721 he became leader of the orchestra of St Anthony's Basilica in Padua, although his appointment also allowed him to travel. Here he founded his famous violin school, which attracted pupils from all over Europe. He also wrote several treatises and other theoretical works on the violin and musical theory in general. Tartini was a prolific composer for the violin: more than 130 violin concertos, about the same number of violin sonatas and about 40 trio sonatas. Many of them were published in Amsterdam, London or Paris. In that last city his Op 5 appeared in an elegantly engraved edition in the 1740s. It is said that Tartini's style changed around 1744, from extremely difficult to graceful and expressive. The Op 5 sonatas belong to both styles; the sixth sonata in B flat major is an early work which contains lots of virtuoso passage work. It is in three movements with a slow opening movement followed by an elaborate Allegro. The last movement, in the rhythm of a minuet, is a set of variations of increasing complexity.
[Performance listened to: Elizabeth Wallfisch et al on Hyperion]
16. Georg Friedrich Handel, Sonata in D major Op 1 No 13 HWV 371 (1750)
Handel's sonatas have always been popular with violinists (they have been performed uninterruptedly since the 1730s) and are as it were miniatures of his style that usually found utterance in grander structures. The problem with Handel's violin sonatas is authenticity - historically, there has been something of a muddle and great violinists like Kreisler used to perform certain sonatas which now are considered as spurious. Modern scholars are in broad agreement that five genuine sonatas exist, based on detective work in paper types and handwriting. These are the sonatas in D minor, G minor, D major, G major and A Major HWV 361. On top of that, Handel's work was often pirated, and some of the violin sonatas appeared in editions for oboe or flute, undoubtedly without Handel's consent. The genuine D major sonata HWV 371 was not published during Handel's life time - although it is now considered as his masterpiece in the genre. It dates from around 1750, so very late in Handel's career - in fact, it was the last piece of chamber music he wrote. In four movements, this sonata is characteristic Handel. The opening Affettuoso is deeply expressive like an opera aria. This is followed by a brilliantly virtuosic Allegro. The Larghetto is darkly colored. The closing Allegro is lively with a dance-like feel.
[Performance listened to: Andrew Manze on Harmonia Mundi]
17. W.A. Mozart, Violin Sonata No 33 in E flat major K481 (1785)
In addition to his genius as a composer and pianist, Mozart was also an accomplished violinist and violist. This is especially clear from the Violin Sonata in E flat major, one of the most mature works in Mozart's chamber music catalog and also a marvel of well-balanced and well-crafted construction on every level. The opening Molto allegro is in sonata form, but has three clearly outlined subjects, which all reappear in the recapitulation. Despite the expansiveness of the material, Mozart introduces a new idea in the development section, a four-note motif that he also used as the main subject of the "Jupiter" Symphony’s finale; it reoccurs in the coda of the first movement. The central Adagio is an idiosyncratic mix of rondo and variation, and the finale is a set of variations on a theme of twenty bars, culminating in an animated figure. Mozart finished this sonata just days ahead of his Piano Concerto 482 in the same key; in the last variation of the sonata’s finale, the "hunting" style echoes the concerto’s concluding rondo.
[Performance listened to: Szymon Goldberg and Radu Lupu on London]
Listen to: Michael and Daniel Barenboim
18. Hummel, Violin Sonata in D Major Op 50 (1810-14)
Hummel (1778-1837) was Mozart's piano pupil and he carried his teacher's classical style into the 19th century - his music stands at the transition from the Classical to the Romantic era. His main oeuvre is for the piano, on which instrument he was one of the great virtuosi of his day. He wrote eight piano concertos, ten piano sonatas and much chamber music which also features the piano. He only wrote a few violin sonatas, of which this is the latest and most enjoyable, cast in three movements. It was written when Hummel was in his thirties and at the height of his fame. The Allegro con brio starts with a breezy and carefree theme in the violin, which is then taken up by the piano. The ensuing Andante is relaxed and playful, though concise. The Rondo Pastorale finale offers some catchy music, with a memorable main theme. In the middle section, the violin introduces a "gypsy theme." The writing in this sonata is full of color and excitement for both instruments. As Richard Burnett writes in his sleeve notes, "A composer at his best in extrovert untroubled music is a rare phenomenon. [...] A blend of sophistication and innocent gaiety is the hall mark of Hummel's finest compositions..."
[Performance listened to: Ralph Holmes and Richard Burnett (original instruments) on Amon Ra]
19. Ferdinand Ries, Violin Sonata in F minor Op 19 (1810)
Ferdinand Ries was Beethoven’s student, friend and biographer. He was a gifted and prolific composer whose works, like those of many other composers of his time, were largely overshadowed by Beethoven’s all too giant presence. Ries’s music was widely known and admired in his lifetime, and his 18 Violin Sonatas are models of the Viennese classical style established by Mozart. The Grande Sonata in F minor, Op. 19, published in 1810, is a large-scale work in both structure and content. It has been linked with Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata on the basis of the dramatic urgency of its main theme and identical tonality. In the Allegro Agitato first movement the feverish piano accompaniment expresses a mood of foreboding. The second theme turns to a major tonality, but the mood of urgency remains. The Andante movement is one of Ries’s loveliest creations, with simple but expressive themes and a flowing triple meter. The breathless Rondo finale returns to the mood of the first movement, but at the same time conveys a playful feeling rather than a dramatic one. The rondo theme is a quirky staccato figure in the piano, followed by a lyrical legato melody in the violin.
[Performance listened to: Eric Grossman and Susan Kagan on Naxos]
20. Beethoven, Violin Sonata No. 10 Op. 96 (1812, published 1816)
The loveliest of Beethoven's violin sonatas, written nearly ten years after his second-to-last. In four movements, it was written for the renowned French violinist Pierre Rode, who disliked too much virtuosity and resounding finales, which may have influenced the calmness of this sonata. Indeed, although somewhat subdued, it possesses true ethereal beauty. It belongs to Beethoven's more lyrical "Middle Period," following closely after the Seventh and Eighth Symphonies. The sonata was dedicated to Beethoven's royal pupil Archduke Rudolph, who gave the first performance together with Rode at a private concert. In this sonata violin and piano are absolutely equal partners. The first movement begins with a delicate trill, opening hesitatingly, with short figures passing between violin and piano before the first subject is fully stated. The movement is pervaded by shimmering trills, symmetrical arpeggios and seamless exchanges between piano and violin. The moving Adagio second movement is at first quiet, but builds up slowly to an emotional peak. The brief but energetic Scherzo has a highly contrasting trio. The Poco allegretto fourth movement (a concession to Rode?) is a set of variations on a gentle theme, a light and bright finale that suits the sonata admirably.
[Performance listened to: Itzhak Perlman and Vladimir Ashkenazy on Decca]
Listen to: Leonidas Kavakos, violin
Enrico Pace, piano
A troubled psychologist is sent to investigate the crew of an isolated research station orbiting a bizarre planet, whose ocean functions as a huge, fluid-like brain. This "brain" may be responsible for the mental disruptions the crew members experience - it apparently gives life to the contents of the unconscious mind. In the station, the psychologist meets his deceased wife, with whom he had a passionate relationship before she committed suicide. It is of course not really his wife - she is an amalgam of his memories of her that have taken physical shape. But our memories of even those closest to us are never the complete, other person - we always know others only partially, and on top of that, through our own prejudices. The wife is suicidal, she complains, because that is how her husband views her. The psychologist struggles with his memories and his feelings of regret and tries to find an opportunity for a second chance. A sharp and incisive exploration of the unreliability of reality and the power of the human unconscious.
Screen adaptations by Tarkovsky (1972, a legendary film) and Steven Soderbergh (2002).
In a small, wind and rain swept East Anglican town, Florence Green, a middle-aged widow decides to open a bookshop in a long-unused, damp 500-year-old property, the Old House. She soon discovers that she has to share the building with a rather vicious poltergeist, but even worse is the opposition of the town’s gentry in the person of its first lady Violet Gamart, who needs the same property to set up a cultural center and doesn’t countenance any opposition. So the battle lines are drawn. It is 1959 and England is still very much a strict class society...
The novel is set in the small East Anglican town of Hardborough, an “island between sea and river,” which was modeled on Southwold in Suffolk (one of the locations visited by W.G. Sebald on his walking tour described in The Rings of Saturn). This is a rather isolated (even moldy) town with a population of only 1,000 so you can imagine the small-mindedness and gossip that are daily fare here. Penelope Fitzgerald actually lived and worked in Southwold in the 1950s — and, indeed, in a bookshop! — and her descriptions of the dreary landscape with its endless salty water lands are masterly and brought to life by many small details. So is her take on the motley crew of local eccentrics.
Florence Green has set up the bookshop with her small inheritance plus a loan from the local bank. She buys the damp Old House (putting up with the ghost) and acquires stock. Happily, she doesn’t have to fight her battle alone. She is helped by Mr Raven, the marsh man, who brings in his Sea Scouts to put up the bookshelves for her — this in return for her help in holding the slippery tongue of a horse while Mr Raven filed down its teeth; a local girl, Christine, wise and tough for her eleven years, comes to help in the shop; and Florence also gets some moral support from the reclusive local squire, Mr Brundish.
And in the beginning she even does quite well. These were wonderful times for bookshops. People still read books — television was in the late fifties still rare in most European countries (coming much later than in the U.S. — I remember the excitement of us kids when my parents bought our first black-and-white TV set in the early sixties). There is no public library in the small town, so Florence also starts a small lending library and this is so popular that the locals almost fight over the most popular books (the gentry of course expecting that these volumes would be reserved for them so that they could read them first). Then as now, the popular books are gossipy volumes about royalty and famous people, to my regret (but not to my surprise), although when Florence stocks up on Nabokov’s Lolita, the rumor that this is a “dirty book” also seems to have reached the isolated town and buyers block the sidewalk as they line up to obtain a copy.
But in the end Florence is no match for Mrs Gamart, the wife of a retired general and as leading cultural luminary, the first lady of the town. Mrs Gamart wants the Old House for her own hobby, the establishment of a local arts center. When, in the early pages, Florence refuses to give up the building, she reacts so subdued that we might think nothing much will happen. But Mrs Gamart moves behind the scenes in a nasty, manipulative way.
Mrs Gamart deftly uses the small mistakes Florence makes: she brings in the law when the pavement in front of the new shop is blocked by locals thronging to purchase Lolita (Florence has stocked up on the novel at the advice of a seedy BBC employee, without knowing herself what it is); she sets education officials on the trail of Florence’s underage school-girl assistant, especially after the girl has affronted her; she pushes the town council to start its own public lending library, so that Florence looses that part of her business; and she finally pulls some strings in parliament so that the town can make a compulsory purchase of the Old House for the cultural center nobody wants and drive Florence out.
Florence believed that she could succeed by hard work and sincerity. Unfortunately, that is all to often not enough in our Machiavellian world (and especially not in the English world which at the time the novel is set was still very much a class society). In the end, she is run out of town with her investment gone, her house gone, her books gone. The novel is a black social morality play that shows us small town life at its philistine worst. Fortunately, it is uplifted by the wonderful descriptions of landscape and people.
Vladimir Nabokov was wrong in calling Mansfield Park “a fairy tale” in his Lectures on Literature. That designation would be suitable for Pride and Prejudice, but not for this least-loved of Jane Austen’s six novels, as Mansfield Park is by far the most realistic and dark novel Austen wrote, and for once it doesn’t end in a riot of marriages. That is exactly why I prefer it to her other work.
Of course, Mansfield Park is just as much about love and courtship as all Jane Austen’s novels – making a good and safe marriage was a life task for a woman like Austen who came from the lower gentry and didn’t have her own income or possibility to work. (Between brackets: this focus on income coupled with a very rational approach to romance makes Jane Austen somewhat of a philistine, like Daniel Defoe – or should we rather call it “English common sense”?). The happy ending has clearly been tacked on this time and is not at all so happy: after all the dark deeds – passion, eroticism, illicit love – that are continually boiling over in the novel, it is rather unconvincing that things could end so tepid. I like Mansfield Park because it is the most consciously literary of all Austen’s novels, with a well-balanced composition. And there are delicious characters in the “badder than bad” Henry and Mary Crawford, or that super-hypocrite, Mrs Norris. Wonderful scenes are the visit of the young people to an estate where a few of them climb over a rather Freudian fence to wander into the wilderness; as well as the rehearsals for a “dirty” play, where the eroticism drips off the pages.
[Jane Austen drawn by her sister Cassandra]
What makes Mansfield Park rather unpopular with the average Jane Austen fan is the character of its protagonist, Fanny Price. Fanny is an adopted child, an impecunious niece, indeed a Cinderella-figure. She is demure, to say it in neutral terms; critical readers have called her “mousy, shy, nervous, and pathologically virtuous.” She is the opposite from the popular, assertive Lizzy Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Interestingly, in Mansfield Park Jane Austen has given Lizzy Bennet’s qualities to the anti-heroine, Mary Crawford, turning the heroine-centered courtship romance on its head. As the proverbial “poor relation” (she reminded me of the “poor aunt” from a famous story by Haruki Murakami), Fanny is forced to live in a cold and gloomy attic, ignored by her female cousins Maria and Julia (only her kind cousin Edmund pays attention to her) and bullied into quiet submission by a stern uncle and aunt – not to speak of the grotesquely hypocritical Mrs Norris, herself a hanger-on and therefore extra cruel to other hangers-on. Fanny has to know her place in this hierarchical society and that means keeping her mouth shut and suffering in silence.
In other words, Austen shows us how it is position and class rather than character that forces Fanny into her subdued role. Austen has often been criticized for writing romances that were unconnected to larger society. At least in Mansfield Park (and to a lesser degree in Persuasion) she writes on a wider canvas and shows the ills of a strictly class-determined society.
Mansfield Park, by the way, is a new country house. Fanny’s uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, has become rich thanks to the sugar trade; he has large estates in the colonies (still worked by slaves at the time the novel was written) and has to travel there because of “poor returns.” His double absenteeism causes damage not only in his plantations but also on his estate in England. When he travels to Antigua, taking his profligate son Tom with him, he leaves the house under the guardianship of the bullying Mrs Norris. One of the ironies of the novel is that Sir Thomas goes to Antigua to sort out his problems, only for his own house to be thrown into moral chaos by his absence.
The plot is set into motion by the arrival of brother and sister Crawford, the mesmerizing and seductive relatives of a new parson in the village. They come from London and bring corruption with them, but they are of course at the same time delicious figures. I have already mentioned Mary Crawford – her brother Henry is just as sadistic and sexy as Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, but with infinitely more charisma than that rather charmless man. Like exotic birds of prey Henry and Mary bring the necessary sparkle to the novel – and who minds that they are the anti-heroes and not the “good ones”? Identify yourself with the god-like position of the author (and not the protagonist) and look from above with an ironic smile at the silly goings-on among those small human ants.
The chaos which ensues when the Crawfords are taken up into the company of the Bertrams is shown in two major scenes: an outing to a neighboring estate, and the putting on of an erotic play, turning the big house into a theater.
[Stoneleigh Abbey, on which Austen's fictional Sotherton was partly based]
The Byronian Henry Crawford creates havoc and rivalry between the Bertram sisters, Fanny’s cousins. And the kind Edmund, Fanny’s secret flame, falls in love with Mary Crawford, although she is a bit shocked to hear he is destined for the church (being the second son). Maria Bertram is betrothed to the weak aristocrat James Rushworth; a day trip to his estate, Sotherton Court, predicts her ruin. She leaves the estate through some grimly Freudian iron railings into the wild countryside beyond in the company of Henry – leaving her fiancé behind. The flirting couple doesn’t even have the patience to wait for the key to the gate, but climbs over the spikes.
Mary Crawford – who like a siren plays the harp – takes the role of a coquette in the play the young people rehearse in a later event. The highlight is an inflammatory scene in which Mary’s character seduces a pious clergyman played by Edmund. Fanny, of course, is watching and despairing, consumed with sexual jealousy. But in an interesting twist, Henry later decides to try to seduce Fanny – when Fanny keeps refusing him, her uncle (who by now has returned to the chaos of his house) punishes her by sending her temporarily back to her own family in Portsmouth: she is to experience the reality of life without servants who clean up after you. So she sees her grog-drinking father again, her slattern mother and the flock of unruly brothers and sisters.
But Austen also emphasizes the claims of innate merit and talent over social position and inherited wealth. Fanny’s brothers, who have been educated in the hard school of the Portsmouth family and who have to work to get ahead, will be successful in life, in contrast to Sir Thomas’s children, who are profligate through lack of self-discipline. At the beginning of the novel, Sir Thomas was keen that Fanny should know her social place, as she is different from the “Miss Bertrams.” But at the end he recognizes “the advantages of early hardship and discipline, and the consciousness of being born to struggle and endure.” Jane Austen makes abundantly clear that Fanny’s noisy and messy lower-middle class family is a better breeding ground for success in life than the pampered existence at Mansfield Park.
In that sense, Mansfield Park is Austen's most modern and pioneering novel. And it is very contemporary in demonstrating the value of meritocracy above the worthless lives of the landed gentry, the Bertrams and their friends - whose idleness is made possible by income derived from England's Caribbean colonies - from the work of slaves.
This is another novel by one of the writers of the so-called Shin-Honkaku group - young writers who as students in Kyoto had already dabbled in mysteries via "detective clubs" and who in the late 1980s, under the auspices of Shimada Soji, and sponsored by two large publishers, started a high production of puzzle mysteries. It was another try for me, for I was not very enthusiastic about The Moai Island Puzzle by Alice Arisugawa, nor about Murder in the Crooked House by Shimada himself.
The title of the present novel, published in 1989 by Takemaru Abiko, immediately makes one of the problems I have with this type of mystery clear: in order to create a "locked room," the authors bend over backwards to devise the strangest locations: in the shape of a decagon (The Decagon House Murders), as a crooked house built like the Tower of Pisa (Murder in the Crooked House), or, as here, a mansion in the shape of an 8. Now, contrary to the United States where Van Dine, Queen and Dickson Carr had an ample choice of strange mansions, in Japan large mansions are very rare and mainly limited to a few historical houses from the early part of the 20th century. So this setup is highly unrealistic. In that respect authors like Yokomizo Seishi (The Honjin Murders) and Akagi Takamitsu (The Tattoo Murder Case) did a better job, for - although their "locked room" solutions are just as implausible - they at least used normal Japanese houses, the one traditional and the other modern.
The second problem is that the types of murders possible in a locked room are limited - the writers of this sort of puzzles soon start repeating themselves or copying other, older writers. That is the case with Abiko, for this mystery with a crossbow and a mirror sounded rather familiar - you, too, may soon be able to guess the solution. And then there is little left, for you can forget about fascinating characters, an interesting way of writing like Hammett or Chandler, or good descriptions of atmosphere.
What is new with Abiko is the humor, here especially in the person of the assistant of the police inspector, but humor travels badly between cultures and anyway, Abiko's type of humor is rather childish. And that brings me back to the complaint I also had about The Moai Island Puzzle: the feeling that you are reading a book for kids rather than a novel for grown-ups. In any case, to my regret there is nothing "path-breaking" about either Abiko or the few other Shin Honkaku writers I have read so far.
Two stars because I applaud translations from the Japanese.
Tanizaki Junichiro is my favorite modern Japanese writer. Although I have learned to plow through his often difficult (but very beautiful) Japanese, new translations are always a feast. And of the large number of short stories he wrote, mainly in the Taisho period, only the tip of the iceberg has been revealed in English. So, this was a very welcome book, and the translations by Anthony Chambers and Paul McCarthy, two Tanizaki specialists, are very fine.
Why then am I not completely satisfied? Just out of greed (like the insatiable members of the Gourmet Club), because there are so many other interesting morsels out there which were not included, and which I would like to see in English...
Here is an overview of the stories included, mixed with my wishes for more translations:
1. The Children***** ("Shonen", written in 1911). A very strong story. Three mischievous friends play sadomasochistic games in a mysterious Western-style mansion. It is the girl who dominates and "enslaves" the two boys, her brother and his friend. This story won Tanizaki critical recognition from Mori Ogai and others.
2. The Secret***** ("Himitsu", 1911). The best story in this anthology. The world-weary, hedonistic narrator, who lives a secluded life in the annex to a temple in an old part of Tokyo, experiments with cross-dressing. Guess what happens when in that state he meets the woman who used to be his mistress, and she leads him, blindfolded, to her house?
In the years from 1910 to 1915, when Tanizaki also wrote his canonical "Tattoo" (1910), which has been translated by Howard Hibbett in Seven Japanese Tales, Tanizaki made a flying start as a new writer. In my insatiable greed I am also waiting for translations of such stories as:
- "Devil" (Akuma). The story which earned Tanizaki the sobriquet "Akumashugi" or "Diabolist." A young man, captivated by a certain lady, steals her handkerchief to savor its odor. She has a bad cold and the handkerchief is dirty, but even so the young man "licks it like a dog." Not very appetizing, but this is an important story in the Tanizaki canon.
- "The Whirlwind" (Hyofu). A young artist is exhausted after a bout of debauchery with a Yoshiwara geisha and decides to travel to Northern Japan to recuperate. But the call of the blood remains strong... This story was banned by the censor and the issue of the magazine Mita Bungaku in which it had appeared was taken out of circulation by the authorities.
- "The Kylin." Confucius visits the State of Wei, where Duke Ling has been enslaved by his beautiful consort Nanzi, a typical Tanizaki-type cruel woman, who even threatens Confucius' state of mind. As the philosopher leaves Wei in defeat, he declares: "I have never yet met a man who loved virtue as much as he loved sex" (an authentic quote from the Master!).
- "The Jester" (Hokan). About a traditional Jester (hokan), who has to play the fool in order to be laughed at by people, his relation with his rich patron and with the geisha he is secretly in love with. It is also the tragedy of a man who is too susceptible to the thinking of others. (I just now found a translation on the web by Edilberto Alegre, see https://asj.upd.edu.ph/mediabox/archive/ASJ-04-01-1966/alegre-translation-of-hokan-04-01-66.pdf).
- "A Golden Death" (Konjiki no shi). Although Tanizaki himself considered this longer story a failure, it is interesting for two reasons: it foreshadows Edogawa Ranpo's Strange Tale of Panorama Island - in other words, Ranpo got his inspiration partly from Tanizaki - , and it was appreciated by Mishima Yukio for the reason that Tanizaki's protagonist aimed at a "unity of life and art" that would end in his "golden death" in a paradise he creates for himself - an idea close to Mishima's own philosophy (and death).
- "The Tumor with a Human Face" (Jinmenso). Features a haunted film that drives the viewers mad, like the videotape in The Ring. I just now discovered this has been translated by Thomas LaMarre in Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Junʼichirō on Cinema and "Oriental" Aesthetics, an interesting study about Tanizaki and cinema.
We continue with the contens of The Gourmet Club:
3. The Two Acolytes**** ("Futari no chigo", 1918). Set in medieval Kyoto, this is the story of two young monks who follow different paths: one leaves the sacred mountain for a life devoted to earthly passion while the other remains faithful to his vows.
4. The Gourmet Club**** ("Bishoku Kurabu", 1919). About a group of fat men whose quest for new tastes leads them in ever weirder directions. In the end we see them (blindfolded) nibbling on the seductive hands that proffer them the exotic foods.
Other great stories from this period (1916-1920) are:
-"Fumiko's Feet" (Fumiko no ashi, 1919). An old man, infatuated with the beautiful feet of his young mistress, asks a painter to paint her portrait in such a way that her feet are displayed to advantage. When the old man lies dying, he obtains bliss by having Fumiko's foot press against his forehead. Foreshadows Tanizaki's Diary of a Mad Old Man.
- "On the Road" (Tojo, 1920). The story of an almost perfect crime. A man's wife dies of apparently natural causes, but a suspicious detective succeeds in tracing step by step how the man plotted to get rid of his wife so that he could marry a more attractive woman.
Happily, other interesting stories from these years have already been translated:
- "Devils in Daylight", translated by Keith Vincent in Devils in Daylight, about a writer and his friend who stake out a secret location where through peepholes in the knotted wood they become voyeurs at the scene of a shocking crime... or so it seems.
- "The Little Kingdom", translated by Paul McCarthy in A Cat, a Man, and Two Women. A seemingly quiet new student has a penchant for shrewd power politics and discipline, and in the end realizes authoritarian control over his fellow students and even the adults. A chilling story that foreshadows Lord of the Flies.
We continue with the contens of The Gourmet Club:
5. Mr Bluemound*** ("Aozuka-shi no hanashi", 1926). A degenerate admirer is obsessed with the relationship between an actress and her image on celluloid. In the early 1920s Tanizaki wrote several film scenarios.
6. Manganese Dioxide Dreams*** ("Kasankamangansui no yume", 1955). A story with autobiographical elements, a bit like The Maids. In the end the narrator's activities - eating in famous Chinese and Japanese restaurants in Tokyo, watching the film "Diabolique" with Simone Signoret, dabbling in Chinese history - mingle in a feverish dream only to end in his toilet bowl.
Other great stories from this period (1921 and after - from the Showa period on, Tanizaki almost stopped writing short stories, but concentrated in longer work) are:
- "Aguri" and "The Thief", translated by Howard Hibbett in Seven Japanese Tales. The first story concerns a vampirish young mistress who is a precursor of Naomi;
- The Strange Case of Tomoda and Matsunaga, translated by Paul McCarthy in Red Roofs and Other Stories. A farcical story in which Tanizaki creates a man who (like The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) alternates between his thin, quiet and retreating Japanese personality (Matsunaga) and his robust Western and cosmopolitan self (Tomoda), who gregariously travels the world under various aliases. Also "Red Roofs," in the same volume, again about a Naomi-type femme fatale.
- "Professor Rado," translated by Paul McCarthy in A Cat, a Man, and Two Women. A reporter attempts to penetrate the life of a secretive professor.
The writing of this review has somewhat satisfied my appetite, for I notice that the later period (second half of Taisho) has been reasobaly well served. It is only the early Taisho period in which many delicious dishes are still waiting for translators... (And as everything is rather scattered, it would be great to have Tanizaki's "collected short stories" in a few nicely bound volumes, but that is probably an impossible wish.)
Newcomer by Keigo Higashino
