The Piano Tuner

I have just finished reading this debut novel by Daniel Mason. It is one of the better books I have read recently. The story was about Edgar Drake, an English piano tuner summoned by the British War Office to tune an Erard grand piano for a Surgeon-major in a remote jungle in Burma. The book is full of history, exotic cultures, music, literature, and (my favorite part) medical science. I realize that I still have so many questions about the book that a second reading is necessary in the future.

The author, Daniel Mason, was a medical student at UCSF when the book was published in 2002. He graduated from Harvard with a bachelor's degree in biology. He spent a year studying malaria on the Thai-Myanmar border. This was a big reason why I started reading the book: a biologist-turned-writer writing about music, diseases, and cultures. It turned out to be a good choice.

This book also made me study Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier (WTC). I found this website that analyses all 48 fugues in Book I and Book II. It is really cool to be able to visualize the fugue subjects appear in different voices and develop and interact. I highly recommend it.

The fugue in F Sharp minor in Book II of the WTC is mentioned in the novel in a somehow romantic and dream-like setting. It is said to remind the protagnist of "the opening of a flower, the meeting of lovers, the beginning of a song." How do you interpret it?