In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Eric Beck Rubin’s novel Ten Clear Days is a profound exploration of end of life choices and their weight on family members.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“[Beck Rubin’s] writing, self-assured throughout, is lyrical, even haunting at times. . . . [A]n absorbing, often moving read.”
In his own words, here is Eric Beck Rubin’s Book Notes music playlist for his novel Ten Clear Days:
My soon to published novel, Ten Clear Days, is about a woman seeking medically assisted death, a decision that splits her family in two and sets off ten tense days of waiting – will the doctors acceded to her request? Will the patient follow through? At the same time, it is a story of what brought this person to her decision, which takes the reader back in time to the protagonist’s childhood and upbringing.
In my previous novel, the story was saturated in music. One character was constantly playing records for the benefit of the other, who went on to become a musician. The soundtrack, split in two parts, came easily. Ten Clear Days only refers to two pieces by name. At the same time, the protagonist is a music lover, a concert goer, and music of a certain kind, in a certain register, can be imagined as floating around the edges of the story.
The soundtrack I’ve suggested includes the two pieces mentioned and a few others that create a sense of the atmosphere in the pages and, as much as possible, echo crucial moments in the plot.
1. Mozart, Clarinet Concerto, Second Movement, Deutscher Kammerphilharmonie with Martin Fröst soloist
This is one of the pieces that is named in the novel: the protagonist’s grandson plays a recording for her, remembering the time they listened to it together at a recent performance by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. It is a special piece to the grandson because he knows about the main character’s reverence for Mozart, whose work she describes as effortless, as if breathing and creating music were the same thing. It is a contrast to the broken storylines of the protagonist’s own life, the effort she has had to make to survive, and a model of how she might have wanted her life to be.
2. Shostakovich, Symphony No. 7 ‘Leningrad’, Third Movement, London Philharmonic conducted by Kart Masur
This is the second piece named in the novel, and it is played by the main character herself; she blasts it from her CD player while sitting in her garden. This piece opens on a knife’s edge, which slices through the remainder of the movement; it’s tense and dramatic, like the historical moment it was trying to depict. Shostakovich composed his seventh symphony as the German siege of Leningrad was underway, and nobody knew how it would end.
3. Ligeti, ‘Lontano’, Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Benjamin Nott
Like the protagonist of the novel, György Ligeti is Hungarian. ‘Lontano’, the name of the piece, translates to ‘far away’ but it suggests something more like far, far away – somewhere beyond and outside. What it describes is on the other side of some impossibly high wall. Some place inconceivable for most of the people in the main character’s life, but not for her. She has been to the other side of that wall, and what she experienced there is never far from her.
4. Wagner, Tannhäuser Overture, Wiener Philharmoniker conducted by Sir Georg Solti
Solti, the conductor of this piece, is another Hungarian. And his lento direction of Wagner’s overture exudes its epic qualities. For those susceptible to Big Opera, there is no resisting it, which is the point. It was aesthetic appeals of this kind, overriding reason, that drew so many Europeans to the Nazi cause. I know you came here for a songlist but if you’re this far in, then you must have had a sense this was coming. The fullness and lushness of this Wagner is what led directly to the hollowed out world of that Ligeti.
5. Bach, Organ Sonata No. 4, Second Movement, transcribed and performed by Vikingur Olafsson
We are close to, if not over, an hour of music here, so please forgive me for making this Bach the last stop. This piece brings multiple voices into harmony, it rises and falls, it points to a world beyond the current one, it is fragile yet determined, it strays and returns – like the path taken by the main character in her incredible life.
Eric Beck Rubin is a novelist and academic. His début, School of Velocity, was named one of the Guardian’s Books of the Year. He created and produced the Burning Books literary review and interview podcast, which ran for seven years. His academic work looks at how history is transformed through literature, monuments, and memorials. He teaches architectural and cultural history at the University of Toronto and collaborates with art galleries and architecture firms on exhibitions and design competitions. He lives in Toronto.