Tuning the World E-Book

Jens Johler

• Herausgeber: Alexander
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 54

Beschreibung

The free excerpt of the first German novel about Johann Sebastian Bach contains the Content, and 4 of 48 chapters of the praised book. Everyone has heard of Johann Sebastian Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier – but hardly anybody knows anything about his journey to F sharp major. In March of 1700, shortly before his fifteenth birthday, Johann Sebastian Bach set off on his journey. His destination: to create perfect music, music that unites heaven and earth in harmony. His search finally brought him to Lübeck, where he became acquainted with Andreas Werckmeister and the well-tempered tuning. In this tempering – and that is new! – you can play everything, all keys, in major and minor. But perfection has its price: All notes are "tempered" a bit, which means falsified; the music has a touch of artificiality from now on. And not only the notes and pitches – nature and people are also being tempered. Gardens are laid out with geometric precision, rivers are canalized, cities redesigned. Night becomes day thanks to street lighting, the pocket watch makes it possible to take along the time with you, the tuning fork enables choral pitch. The journey into an artificial world has begun. When Bach completed the Well-Tempered Clavier, he was overcome with profound doubt: Is not his work "only of this world" – perfect, artificial, profane? "For us, Bach's life consists primarily of biographical gaps. We know some things; but we don't know much. These gaps offer a novelist his chance. The facts were my fetters but they were also my source of inspiration. I did not invent anything 'freely' in the meaning of arbitrarily, though." Jens Johler "Jens Johler by no means turns the historical facts around.... Instead, he is writing a great of development novel in which private motifs and the course of time intertwine like fugue themes. " Harald Asel, rbb Inforadio

Leseprobe

Jens Johler

TUNING THE WORLD

Novel

Based on an idea by Johler & Burow

© for this edition by Alexander Verlag Berlin 2013

Alexander Wewerka, Fredericiastr. 8, 14050 Berlin, Germany

All rights reserved, in particular the right to public presentation, radio and television broadcasting as well as translation. This also applies to individual sections.

Map on front end-sheet and back end-sheet: Nova totius Germaniae Descriptio geographica, Henricus Scherer, around 1700, copper engraving. Map Department of Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz Drawings of the circles of fifths: Norbert W. Hinterberger Typesetting and page layout: Antje Wewerka

ISBN 978-3-89581-399-3

Jens Johler

Tuning the World

Excerpt

These extracts contain the prologue as well as four of a total of fourty-eight chapters in the book.

© Alexander Verlag Berlin.

For further information please contact

[e-mail]

Celestial Monochord, Robert Fludd 1618

Contents

March 1722

1 Departure

2 Final court hearing

3 The philosopher

4 Latin school

5 The Lion of Eisenach

6 The three music pieces

7 Adam Reincken

8 Opera, the crooked snake

9 The muse

10 Circe

11 It’s all about emotion

12 I want to give you my heart

13 Lackey

14 The journey to F-sharp major

15 Southward!

16 Evening concerts

17 Angela

18 Mare Balticum

19 Dorothea Catrin

20 The new mood

21 Foreign sounds

22 The gallery

23 Consistory

24 Wedding

25 Curious variations

26 Ratswahl Cantata

27 Weimar

28 Shout for joy! Exult!

29 Hunting Cantata

30 Black birds

31 The competition

32 Senesino

33 The manuscript

34 The loyal subject

35 The County Judge’s jail

36 Court Marshal

37 Köthen

38 Quarrels

39 The opus

40 The arrow

41 Why have you forsaken me?

42 The master’s praise

43 The well-tempered clavier

44 Channeled sounds

45 Night

46 H-C-A-B

47 Father and son

48 St. Mathews Passion

Appendix:

Fiction and Facts