BOOK 1, PRELUDE 17, A-flat Major
I am not given to emotion.
But even now, 25 years on, the sound of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier makes the hairs bristle at the nape of my neck. My stomach spasms, my heart jolts, and in an instant I am back there, back in a small music room with lime-green walls and a scuffed upright Steinway.
The Well-Tempered Clavier comprises 96 preludes and fugues that Johann Sebastian Bach wrote for the Clavier, or piano as it is now called.
I know each one. And once, when I was in my musical prime, I could play a number of them too.
There is one prelude, however, that I only play on the glory days, on the anniversaries. And that is when I start to choke up.
I used to be able to play this prelude from memory, note perfect, every finger knowing exactly where and when they had to be on the keyboard. But those were in the palmy days when I was prepared to devote two hours to practising a single bar of music.
Today all I have left are the relics of my indifferent musical talent. I can only manage five bars before my fingers clunk onto the wrong notes.
Everything ends in discord.
Though if I were note perfect, it would make no difference. For even years back I could never finish the prelude without crying.
It's the Prelude 17, in A-flat Major.
When I write it like that, it sounds so stark.
But, you should hear it. Hear all 90 seconds of it. Even first time round, right off the gun, you'd think it quite charming. Delightful. Second time it's even better.
The purists might claim Bach wrote many better preludes. But then memory is everything, is it not? And when I hear this prelude, I dream of a woman who was, is, and will always remain, the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.
When I think of her, she is never static, like in a photo. For as I remember her she is always laughing, really laughing, mouth open, with the most perfect white teeth.
First I recall her mouth and then her hair, a dark mane that cascaded over her shoulders in a glistening wave of silk; and her lips, always kissable red, erotic moist; and her flashing walnut eyes; and her fingers, long sensual fingers with exquisite buffed nails, tailor-made for the piano.
I’ve had other loves since - extraordinary passions. Though their stories are for another time.
This woman was my first great love.
And her name? Her name was India.
I know that what she did was wrong, that it is immoral for a teacher to seduce her 17-year-old pupil. But at the time that was not how I saw it. I thought I’d been given the greatest gift of my life.
My memories though run in sequence. And always, after remembering the magic of India, I recall myself 25 years ago.
These days everything has mellowed into ‘easy come, easy go’.
But then I was all things and everything: exuberant and truculent, moody and energetic, sporty and slothful, gangly and assured, witty and graceless, sensitive and obtuse, and charming and callow in equal measure.
I was also an emotional iceberg, while at the same time being riddled with the most insane jealousy.
I was, like another ignorant, self-obsessed lover before me, a man who loved not wisely but too well. But, unlike Othello, I was only 17 at the time.
