Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning
“What does it mean to know a piece of music? What does it mean to know another human being?”
In Counterpoint: A Memoir of Bach and Mourning, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Philip Kennicott reflects on these questions through a richly expansive exploration of a Bach masterwork.
As Kennicott recovered from losing his mother he resolved to learn one of Bach’s most extraordinarily challenging keyboard compositions, the Goldberg Variations, known for their interdependent “counterpoint” melodies that merge into one rich harmony.
Kennicott echoes Bach’s structuring with contrapuntal chapters that alternate between the story of his turbulent relationship with his mother—a difficult, abusive woman who was never satisfied with her circumscribed role in life—and the ups and downs of his seven-year-long attempt to master Bach’s composition. The result is a hauntingly beautiful memoir that counterbalances personal grief with transcendent music.
What People Are Saying
“An absorbing meditation on grief....Elegant prose graces a deeply thoughtful memoir.”
— Kirkus (starred review)
“A wise, haunted, and beautiful book. I found myself reading paragraph after paragraph aloud, marveling at Kennicott’s ability to create a full musical resonance with his words alone. Counterpoint is not only an intimate examination of a masterpiece—Bach’s Goldberg Variations—but an unflinching and humane meditation on the lifelong process of growing up.”
— Tim Page, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and Thornton School of Music, University of Southern California
“A story as complex and poignant as the great musical work at its heart, Bach’s Goldberg Variations.”
— Paul Kildea, author of Chopin's Piano
“An approachable, uniquely thoughtful rumination on a range of musical topics, from the unrelenting demands of musical practice and performance to the mysterious and fraught dynamic between parent and child....Recommended for anyone with an ear for classical music and an interest in biography.”
— Booklist (starred review)
Reviews
“Counterpoint is not just an astonishingly moving memoir about losing a parent; it is an uncommonly graceful, precise meditation on learning a very difficult piece of music. In fact, the book accomplishes through language something I’ve thought absolutely impossible: it makes Bach’s keyboard masterpiece vivid”
— Adrienne Davich in VAN, 2/4/2020
“It is a book full of arresting insights about the way music permeates our lives, as well as heartbreaking reflections on the wounds a parent can inflict on a child.”
— Michael O’Donnell in The Wall Street Journal, 2/15/2020
“With gorgeous prose and granular inspection, Kennicott has created a subtle and profound portrait of love, loss and the human condition.”
— Marcia Butler in The Washington Post, 2/18/2020
“Counterpoint is a thought-provoking and accomplished memoir, meeting Kennicott's own criterion that ‘every good book or great piece of music carries with it the possibility of redemption.’”
Martha Anne Toll at NPR Book Review, 2/19/2020
“Writing about music is a difficult thing, saying in words that which words can never say. Reliance on musicological vocabulary can alienate some readers; dogged explanation of technical terms can irritate others. Kennicott gets it exactly right, refusing to swerve technical necessities but in such a way that his prose seems to take on some of the virtuosity of the music it describes. His deft elucidations are born from deep and intricate knowledge, and from lightly worn research.”
Oliver Soden in The Spectator, 3/14/2020
“…a tender, wise, unflinchingly realistic and plain-spoken memoir that charts Kennicott's pianistic, musicological, historical and emotional journey, with the Goldbergs acting as the supremely apt musical analogy for everything else that's going on…this is a beautiful and unexpectedly uplifting read.”
Charlotte Gardner in Gramophone, 8/2020
