Product Description

During the Protestant revolution in Europe, a new kind of music emerged, one that ultimately sought to recognize the deceased and to individuate the sense of loss and grief. But the tradition was virtually wiped out by the Great Funerary Purges of the 1830s and 40s. Kriwaczek tells the fascinating story of this beautiful music, condemned by the Catholic Church for political as much as theological reasons, and of the mysterious Guild of Funerary Violinists that, yes, defends its secrets in our time. This is unquestionably one of the strangest books any publisher has ever risked publishing. Discussing the evolution of European culture, musical forms and society's changing attitudes to mortality and the emotional effects of music upon the soul, this is a dark and magical history.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127773 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Review
"'And so I resolved that henceforth I would only play the saddest music, indeed I would market my concerts as The Saddest Music in the World' Rohan Kriwaczek"

From the Publisher
The extraordinary history of the almost lost tradition of the Funerary Violin-and of the mysterious guild guards its secrets

From the Author
Rohan Kriwaczek is regarded as England’s foremost authority on the history and practice of Funerary Violin. He graduated from the Royal Academy of Music in 1974 with an Advanced Diploma in violin performance. He is currently the Acting President of the Guild of Funerary Violinists, and has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Federation of Funeral Directors (2004). He lives in Brighton.

Customer Reviews

A Brilliant Work of Imaginary Scholarship
Put this one on the shelf next to your old Borges paperbacks and Pavic's Dictionary of the Khazars. It is a wonderfully written and illustrated (both with pictures and scores) scholarly history of a wholly imaginary historical episode: the rise, flourishing, and ruthless suppression of a tradition of violin music played at funerals. Kriwaczek tells of his discovery of the almost forgotten tradition of funerary violin, the guild that carried on its tradition, and the lives of its eccentric geniuses. We learn about funerary violins with their characteristic death's head scrolls, the duels at funerals between rival violinists with whitened faces and beauty marks, the great Hieonymous Gratchenfleiss, who proudly rejected his proper title of "Kurfürstentrauerviolistenmeister" in favor of the simple "Herr." The fact that this is all a product of Mr. Kriwaczek's fertile imagination is beside the point; it should have been real. It's wonderful reading and not to be missed.

A sustained jeu d'esprit
This is the imagined history of an imagined art form: solo violin playing at funerals. Written in an academic style, it is a brilliant pastiche and as such is bound to make one smile: the writing itself is mostly dead-pan and does not attempt to be overtly humorous, except perhaps in the invention of the delicious name - Herr Hieronymous (sic) Gratchenfleiss - given to one particular practitioner of the art and in an odd phrase like the one describing a lady as having `married well and widowed better'. The author fits his story into real events in the political, social and musical history from the 16th to the 19th century, which adds an air of verisimilitude to this tongue-in-cheek work. The book is handsomely produced, and is complete with period illustrations (some must surely have been specially concocted for it) and musical scores.

In the 1830s and 1840s the Catholic Church is said to have launched the Great Funerary Purges to eradicate both the art and, wherever it could, the records relating to it: hence the purported incompleteness of the history. As part of the Purge, in 1841 a fire is said to have destroyed the headquarters of the Guild of Funerary Violinists in Cadogan Square, together with most of its archives.

A fine chapter near the end has some heartfelt reflections about the nature of funerals today from which the spirit embodied in the art of the funerary violin is sadly absent.

A book of fabulously rich invention and ingenuity.

Funny
What's even funnier is that the "product description" above, apparently submitted by the publisher, doesn't even give a hint that the book is a spoof!