Counterpoint by Philip Kennicott

[King Bob]

The subtitle on this is "a memoir of Bach and mourning." After his mother dies, the author, art and architecture critic for the Washington Post, decides to learn to play Bach's Goldberg Variations. He took piano lessons when he was younger, but was never a professional. The book is partly about Bach, both biographical (although we don't have much info) and about some of the music, of course focusing more on the pieces he is studying, and partly about his mother, who might have wanted to be a professional musician, and his difficult relationship with her.

The parts on Bach are great; I learned more about him and about some of the music. If he had focused on learning a different piece (I would have preferred Art of Fugue) it would have been even better. But it would have been maybe half as long, about 120 pages or so, and might have been hard to get published. It would have been a fantastic book though. The parts on his mother were sometimes tough going. She was prone to sudden rages and quick changes of mood. My mother had a bit of that sometimes and I didn't enjoy reading about it. After her death, he tries a lot to figure out his mother and does come to a sort of understanding of her. He ends with some musings about memory, death and what the music means to him. Some of that was pretty good.

Probably not to any of your taste. It did make me want to read some more about Bach, but the only bios I've seen are pretty hefty.