Sarah Landenwich

Dear Reader,

I was a teenager studying piano at a performing arts high school when I first learned about the concept of musical ancestry. A kind of pedagogical family tree, the goal is to try to trace your musical lineage back to a great composer or performer. The idea is that if your teacher’s teacher’s teacher was somebody great, some of that greatness was—somehow—distilled down to you.

For instance, I am a musical descendant of Franz Liszt, which sounds impressive unless you know that Liszt was a prolific teacher who taught scores of pupils over the course of his long life. There are thousands of us Liszt descendants walking around, and let me be the first to tell you that I am no musical genius. Did I get anything of the great composer from my own lovely piano teacher, who taught me, “If you’re going to fail, fail LOUD!” and who once banged her fist on the stage floor and screamed “Poland, Poland, Poland!” while I feverishly rehearsed Chopin? She certainly made an everlasting positive impact on my life (and offered her insight and corrections to the musical information in this book over countless hours of phone calls), but I doubt that has anything at all to do with Franz Liszt.

As an adult, I see the layers of pretention and exclusivity in this idea of musical lineage, as well as the emptiness of it. I’ve known my share of incredibly talented people. Some had the privilege to study with renowned teachers. Most did not. As a community college instructor (of writing, not of music), I taught a number of talented young people as well. None of them attended a prestigious school or studied with a remarkable mentor, but there were a few whose talent could have wowed the world stage (and may still).

But teachers do shape us. The best ones shape us forever. So do the worst. In the pursuit of excellence, many artists encounter a teacher or mentor who leads with fear instead of love, shame instead of praise, abuse instead of instruction. I once met a violinist whose teacher, when he was just a little boy, held the tip of a knife below his elbow while he played. He would learn the proper form, or he would bleed. I don’t believe greatness can be passed down like a precious heirloom. But I think trauma can be.

So I set out to write a novel about three women—one in the 19th century, one in the early 20th, and one in modern times—connected by their musical lineage. Of course back in the 19th century where this story begins, this musical line would have begun with a man. And of course, since they were women in a time when women weren’t supposed to be great at anything outside the domestic sphere, the women in the earlier time periods of this story would have faced soul-crushing obstacles. Some of those obstacles would have been the very men who were supposed to champion them.

I conjured the famed composer-performers of the Romantic period—their bombast and mental health struggles, their pain and poeticism. I built a genius-monster, that prototypical tortured artist who is terrible to know but who creates sublime art. I brought into his life a female pupil—a talented, strong, incredibly gifted woman who harbors secret ambitions of composing. She turns out to be more talented than him. They both know it.

And then I thought—wait. I know how this story goes. You do, too. The woman is the one who composed his music, and the less-talented jerk of a man usurped her talent and glory, right?

That’s a good story, and it’s an important story because it’s a real story that happened throughout history more than we’ll ever know. But it’s also a story I could see all the way to the end of, like a boat sailing out to sea, and I wanted some waves.

So I thought, what if I lead the reader to think they’re reading that familiar story and then ….

If, after you’ve read, you think I’ve failed in my pursuit, I hope at least you’ll think that I failed loudly.

I also hope you’ll read the essay at the end of the book, “The Truth Behind Aleksander Starza and The Fire Concerto,” which discusses in more detail the historical realities that informed this novel.

With deepest gratitude for reading,

Sarah Landenwich