Music Against the Night by Yiyun Li
Many thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for sending
me an advanced copy of Yiyun Li’s exquisite new book Music Against the Night.
Li, among the most gifted and lauded novelists and short story writers today,
doesn’t just craft a compelling world of two artists learning the vocabulary
and instrumentation of their art, but rather orchestrates a world where these
two characters’ stories converge after their exiles and journeys from modest,
if not precocious, beginnings. Luckily, readers are able to inhabit this world
that Li composes much like they were immersed in a symphony hall, beset by the
emotional timbres of the various sections, eliciting a range of emotions as
John Field and Adelaide Percheron struggle against social, financial, and imposed
expectations, using music as their lingua franca.
I wasn’t familiar with John Field, who was a real Irish composer,
credited with creating the nocturne, although Chopin is more recognized for
this style of composition. Field was born in Dublin, and due to his musical
family, was touted as a prodigy, with his father and grandfather hoping that he
would become the next Mozart. As a result, the family moved to England to further
his musical development, recognizing that common theme about escape and exile
from Ireland, and seeking artistic growth and development in England and the
continent. The first part of the book, which consists of four alternating
sections that examine the early lives of John and Adelaide, focuses on John’s
life and the undue expectations of being a child prodigy. These were some of
the most sensitive and touching moments in the book, where we encounter John as
a child, who struggles against the memories of an older brother, also named
John, who didn’t survive infancy. In fact, we learn as much about John’s family
dynamics and the high infant mortality rates of 18th century Ireland,
discovering how these dead siblings remain a part of the family, like a broken
chord pattern sustaining the melancholic, rhythmic foundation of a nocturne. One
of my favorite parts of this section is when John discovers the hidden music in
objects, finding that crosses in a nearby cemetery evoke a music only he can
hear. He finds similar inspiration in the soot-o-sweep songs that young chimney
sweepers in Dublin cry to advertise their work, listening above the city’s din
as their cries gradually recede into a “weep”, possibly a reference to Blake’s “Chimney
Sweeper” poem. I loved the way Li has Field find inspiration among his daily Dublin
life, finding meaning and emotion in everyday occurrences. It made me wonder
whether Li also experiences as a similar feeling of seeing the extraordinary in
the everyday, but it’s also a reminder in how we may often overlook what is
sublime and pleasurable in what others neglect to notice.
The sections of the book alternate between John’s journey
from Dublin to England and Adelaide Percheron’s challenges growing up as an
orphan under her shrewd grandmother’s care in Pondicherry, a coastal city in
southern India under French colonial rule. Just as we learn about John Field’s
family’s tragedies, we also learn about the tragedies of Adelaide’s mother, who
also seemed to be haunted by a lost child like John’s mother. However,
Adelaide, who eventually acquires the nickname Percherette, was descended from
a grandmother whose “tangled web of Portuguese, Dutch, Arab and Tamil” seemed
to mark Percherette as neither French nor Indian, leaving her identity and future
somewhat ambiguous and predetermined. “Adelaide was often reminded by her aunts
and the ayahs that she was not French but a mixed-blooded girl. Her hair was
course and unruly, her eyes neither blue like a French girl’s nor dark and deep
like her cousin’, but a blend of brown and green, dirty and lusterless.” Although
she Percherette grows up to inhabit and use her ambiguity to redefine herself, eventually
moving to Paris, she sees others attempts to label and limit her opportunities
in Pondicherry as a kind of death or paralysis, where escape is the only
option. Her grandmother, Leonora, also sees something in Percherette that is different,
whether it is her intelligence or appearance, that prompts Leonora to devote
more attention and special conversations to Percherette. While Leonora has
meeting times with all the grandchildren under her care, it seems that her time
with Percherette is more instructional, devoted to lessons in communication,
expressions, and finding ways to extract information or concessions from
others. Like John managing the burdens of expectations that come with being
labeled a prodigy, Percherette is battling with the consequences of low
expectations as a woman and someone who is not fully European. I enjoyed these
sections as well, as they provide a kind of counterpoint in the novel to John’s
experience, where we see how despite the difference in expectations, we
recognize the unfair burdens often foisted on children that can impact their
futures in ways we may not intend. Despite the differences, Li’s development of
the characters and world building for Pondicherry establishes a harmonic
relationship between Percherette and John, where they both escape their seemingly
provincial backgrounds for greater expectations.
Parts three and four both focus on John and Percherette as
they journey to England and Paris respectively and develop new friendships and tutelage
that leave them with indelible experiences. John eventually ends up studying
with Muzio Clementi in England, while Percherette ends up on a ship bound for
France with colleagues of her father, despite the disapproval of Leonora. Again,
the characters act as a counterpoint, with John devoting himself to his studies
with Clementi and Percherette defying the standards and expectations to gain escape
to the excitement of Paris. Clementi, who like John and Adelaide, was a real
person, was one of my favorite characters in the book. I knew of him from my
kids’ piano studies, along with Carl Czerny, who also appears in the book as
almost the antithesis of Clementi. Both Clementi and Czerny were musicians and
educators, but where Clementi comes across as an innovative and enterprising
musician, recognizing the importance of developing both a name and a persona,
Czerny seems to have established more of a mechanical, soulless production line
of etudes, which my kids can attest are truly the bane of piano studies. John
visits Czerny in a later incident when he is seeking some respite after being
away from Russia. I wasn’t sure if anything in Li’s own piano studies, which she
describes in her recent book Things in Nature Merely Grow, helped her
characterize these two different noted piano educators. While I found it humorous
in some ways, Clementi is the one character who truly nurtures the brilliance
and talent in John, enabling him to not only become a skilled and notable
performer at a young age, but also to develop the compositional skills that
allowed him to establish nocturnes. These later chapters also detail the time
away from their homes and families, and how John and Percherette establish new companionships,
John with the composer George Pinto and Percherette with a girl named Fortunée.
The similarities and differences in their experiences further the counterpoints
of love and loss that motivate and haunt John and Percherette.
While I haven’t read everything by Yiyun Li, the novels that
I’ve read are an immersive experience where I feel fully attuned to the worlds
she’s composed. Whether it’s the cold, harsh world of The Vagrants that
evoked chill and isolation of a small village in Cultural Revolution era China
or the complicated intensity of childhood friendships in The Book of Goose,
Li composes powerful narratives that function as counterpoints, harmonizing two
emotionally complex stories to creative a cohesive relationship that is
established with the prelude or coda, announcing John’s death to his estranged
wife Percherette. Like Agnès in Book of Goose, we see how expectations and
precociousness can have a conflicting impact on one’s development. John, who is
encouraged to lie about his age and whose grandfather co-authors his earliest
musical compositions with him, reminded me a lot of the challenges that Agnès experienced
in becoming a published writer and having more opportunities. Similarly, we see
how the complicated and intense relationships we have as children, like Agnès
and Fabienne, John and George, and Percherette and Fortunée. I also thought
about the nature of identity throughout this book, as both John and Percherette
have their identities shaped largely by others when they are younger, choosing
their names and ages, while also seeking out opportunities and futures for them,
much like Mrs. Townsend is for Agnès, as more of a dictator seeking to impose
an identity on her rather than allowing her identity to develop and emerge
naturally. I felt like both John and Percherette deal with the burden of
expectations, both great and limited, in how others perceive them. However, it’s
Li’s writing, all aspects of her writing, that made this book so immersive and
evocative, like the cross’s that call out to John and inspire him to hear what
others cannot. It’s a sadness, but also the recognition of the beauty in the everyday
experiences and observations, especially those that others may fail to notice.
Furthermore, Music Against the Night also has a throwback feel to it in
that it feels like a classic novel from Dickens or Dostoyevsky, filled with
ancillary family members and characters (and lots of wonderful parenthetical
asides that provide further insight into these often historical figures). I was
initially upset that the book ended, wanting more from John and Percherette’s
relationship, but then I realized that Music Against the Night is only
the first part in a trilogy, so I’m hopeful that the next two parts will help
explain how John ended up in Russia, tutoring Tolstoy’s mother in piano, and
how he and Percherette progressed in their relationship from piano student and
teacher to lovers, spouses, and then estranged. We get some information from
the interludes between the alternating parts of the novel, but I’m anticipating
more to the story of John and Percherette.
Yiyun Li mentioned that it was through reading Tolstoy’s War
and Peace that she first learned about John Field, and Music Against the Night is an ambitious and immersive look into the world of his development
as a forgotten innovator in music. We also learn about the artistic development
of his wife, a woman who was able to compose and play the pianoforte without
any formal musical training. Music Against the Night also explores the
theme of escape and exile, and how these can often be necessary for further
artistic development or even survival. Music Against the Night is a
wonderful read that I couldn’t put down, wanting to continue to learn more
about how John and Percherette ended up together and estranged. I’m eagerly anticipating
the next movements in this trilogy, yet this is a book that I could see
rereading to find other melodies that emerge from Li’s exquisite prose. Highly
recommended!
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