Date:         Fri, 24 May 96  11:23:31 EDT
From: "Barbara Weitbrecht, Smithsonian" 
Subject: [SR] That Bach sonata in _The Ionian Mission_
To: Searoom 

>David Dahl (73671.1716@CompuServe.COM) suggests:
>
>I believe that this describes J.S. Bach's Partita No. 2 BWV 1004 for solo
>violin.  It is an incredible piece of music.   Especially the
>chaconne.

Thank you for the suggestion.  I, too, have wondered whether that extended
description in _The Ionian Mission_ referred to a real work.  I had
assumed that it did, but I also believe that O'Brian was doing something
a bit more daring than 1) letting us know about a remarkable piece of
music and 2) letting us see that there's more to Jack Aubrey than his
surface suggests.

It seemed to me that it was interesting that O'Brian chose to describe
a piece of music at such length and in such terms, at just this
part of the novel.  _The Ionian Mission_ is a book with an emotional
"hinge" -- two distinct moods separated by an intermediate section,
which hang together in ways that are not immediately apparent.  It
is, in fact, constructed in much the same way that O'Brian describes
the chaconne:

>                         ...   but it was the great chaconne which
>followed that really disturbed him. On the face of it the statements
>made in the beginning were clear enough : their closely-argued
>variations, though complex, could certainly be followed with full
>acceptation, and they were not particularly hard to play; yet at one
>point, after a curiously insistent repetition of the second theme, the
>rhythm changed and with it the whole logic of the discourse. There was
>something dangerous about what followed, something not unlike the edge
>of madness or at least of a nightmare ; and although Jack recognized
>that the whole sonata and particularly the chaconne was a most
>impressive composition he felt that if he were to go on playing it
>with all his heart it might lead him to very strange regions indeed.

The first part of the book is spent getting the characters to the
blockade in the Mediterranean, and it is a cheerful, even humorous
tale.  It includes the scene I would most like to see included in
any furture Aubrey/Maturin movie -- the sea-battle with cannons loaded
with pyrotechnic gunpowder.

After this good-humored beginning, we settle into the repetitive
routine of the blockade.  This, and the repeated "unexpected arrivals",
seem to correspond to the "curiously insistent repetition of the
second theme."  Then, suddenly, we are haring off to the eastern
Mediterranean, where the subtleties of oriental culture are contrasted
with the simple valor of the English crew.  These are "very strange
regions indeed," in both a literal and cultural sense.

Am I making too much of a surface similarity?  Perhaps -- but Mr.
O'Brian does nothing without a reason.  The extended description
of the Bach sonata, coming right at the "hinge" of the work, was
obviously not an accident.  I think that O'Brian was at the very
least making a revealing statement about the deep similarities of
musical composition and the crafting of a novel.  It's not too
great a stretch to assume that he was also telling us one of the
plot sources for _The Ionian Mission_, which was the sonata itself.

I've mentioned this idea of mine to Allan Janus, and he didn't
say that I was utterly crazy, so I finally found the gumption to
post it.

--
Barbara Weitbrecht
National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
nasop003@sivm.si.edu

Author reserves all rights.