Polyphony: Bach and the Sorrow of Life Author: Philip Kennicott Translator: Wang Zhixia Beijing United Publishing Company

Life and music, life and death, are all polyphony

Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of 2020

"A profound memoir enhanced by elegant prose"

——————

"Polyphony" is a brave and honest book. The author chose a particularly difficult way to get over the pain of losing a loved one: carefully reviewing the not-so-good relationship with her mother. The heart-wrenching past still contains moving love and tenderness. In the exploration of Bach's music, the meaning of life and the essence of music are truly harmonious.

——Zhi'an

Poetic and unforgettable.

—Alex Ross

Polyphony is a thought-provoking and highly successful memoir that fully meets the standard set by Kennicott: the hope of redemption that lies within every good book and every great piece of music.

--NPR News Book Review

With beautiful prose and careful observation, Kennicott paints a subtle and profound portrait of love, loss, and ourselves.

—The Washington Post

This book is not only an in-depth study of the masterpiece "Goldberg Variations" by Bach, but also a firm and humane reflection on the long process of human growth.

—Tim Page

——————

Contents:

After his mother's death, Kennicott decided to start learning Bach's greatest and most complex work, the Goldberg Variations, hoping to explore the meaning of music and even the meaning of life.

The mother was unhappy all her life, and treated her children sharply, harshly, and even hysterically. However, after her death, looking back on her life, was she ever truly understood by her family?

The process of practicing the Goldberg Variations is full of hardships. It challenges the performer's self-confidence with its extremely high difficulty, and at the same time emotionally forces the performer to face the deepest, most private and loneliest self of consciousness.

Kennicott wrote about his experience of dealing with grief and practicing music in this book, Polyphony, constantly exploring and trying to answer two crucial questions:

How do you know a piece of music? How do you know a person?

——————

Editor's Recommendation:

★ Pulitzer Prize winner's sincere masterpiece: a painful and candid look back on life. Senior classical music critic and Pulitzer Prize winner Kennicott presented this deeply moving work with amazing candor and beautiful writing. As a child, he never really understood his mother, and as a music lover, he never really understood Bach. The greatest sorrow of life was finally answered in Bach's great work "Goldberg Variations".

★Life and music are intertwined, an elegant polyphonic piece written in words. Thoughts on music and memories on life flash alternately in the book, and the author's thoughts on the essence of music and life run through it, forming this literary movement that echoes and is related to each other like a polyphony.

★Kirkus Reviews' Best Nonfiction of the Year Alex Ross, Tim Page and others praised it unanimously Kirkus Reviews named it the best nonfiction work of 2020, calling it "a profound memoir, enhanced by elegant prose." Senior American music writers Alex Ross and Tim Page also praised it, fully affirming the poetry and depth of the book.

Philip Kennicott

Art critic, classical music critic, Pulitzer Prize winner.

Kennicott graduated from Yale University in 1988 with a degree in philosophy. He joined The Washington Post in 1999 and is currently the chief art and architecture critic. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 and 2012, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2013. Kennicott has also served as the chief classical music critic for the Detroit News and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and has written about classical music for publications such as Gramophone and Opera News.