Possessed by the devil

Subtler in its purring resonances than the cello and more closely resembling the human form in its body, the viola da gamba was cultivated to its greatest heights in the court of Louis XIV. The great virtuoso Marin Marais will be the most familiar name for any who are acquainted with this instrument, but two later figures of equal ability were Antoine Forqueray and his son, Jean-Baptiste. Tumultuous in their relationship, they become the rather unexpected subject of a compelling new novel by Michael Meehan.

Lovers of the gamba and its music will be fascinated but shocked as they turn its pages. Antoine Forqueray’s few surviving pièces de viole have earned the reputation of being among the hardest of all gamba music to perform, surpassing in difficulty even the most technically challenging works of Marais. They are gruff, bellicose works that wrestle over the instrument’s seven strings with a physicality that must have felt dangerously new for its time. Meehan is wonderful at describing his wild improvisations; he makes Forqueray seem possessed by the devil.

Forqueray is known to have possessed a terrible temper, both as husband and father. Meehan conveys in remorseless detail how Forqueray inflicted cruelty on his wife and particularly on his son while teaching him how to play his almost impossibly hard compositions. We quickly learn that this man is a pure sadist, regularly beating the young Jean-Baptiste during lessons and smashing his instrument in a fit of anger.

Reminding us how Leopold Mozart punished his son Wolfgang Amadeus whenever he played a wrong note, Jean Baptiste’s scarred journey through life forms the backbone of this novel. Disturbingly, we read how the father laughs as he pounds his little boy in time to the music, in the process ‘forging links between beauty and the memory of pain’. The confluence of beauty and agony, love and torture, make an ever-present undercurrent.