THE SEVENTH PARTITA

A harpsichordist obsessed with Bach is asked to track down a missing musician who may be in possession of a rare, lost piece by the great composer in Matsuoka’s novel.

Kaden Dave Oshima is a musicologist and “old crackpot musician” (he’s in his mid-60s) living in Honolulu. In his own words, he leads an “uncertain existence of contemplation” in which he ponders “morality, truth, ecstasy, and clear understanding from this world.” He is a devotee of Bach’s incomparable music and believes that in addition to the composer’s six partitas, all published in 1731, there must be a seventh, unpublished one—Kaden reasons that the structure of the six known partitas indicates a concluding seventh in F major. Unsurprisingly, his attention is gripped when he is contacted by a man named James Zhao, who explains that his younger sister Susan, an accomplished violinist, has vanished—and that he has reason to believe that she possessed Bach’s missing piece of music. In this mesmerizing work, Kaden is given a chance to find the composition he passionately imagines and whose absence he grieves like a lost lover. (“Fortunately, he is called master because he was so prolific, and what survives serves to make us mourn what is lost.”) The author’s knowledge of the relevant music is simply magisterial, and Kaden’s passion is infectious—one could not read this book without wanting to listen to Bach’s work. At the heart of this arresting narrative is the question of what it means to properly preserve the works of artistic masters (modern interpretations of Bach “do not preserve Bach for humanity, they destroy it”). Matsuoka’s writing is eccentrically absorbing; readers are pulled into a world where art reigns supreme and its passionate adoration is the prime mover.

A stunning novel, enchantingly peculiar and deeply moving.