Do musical instruments have a soul? Ramon Gener (Barcelona, 1967) does a ritual every day: when he gets up, first of all he goes to the library and says good morning on his piano, talks to it, and leaves it open until it's time to go to sleep. One day, when he was already thinking about writing a novel, he says, the piano “asked him to explain his story.” And yes, he has written the novel, precisely titled Història d'un piano, which has won the XLIV Ramon Llull prize, endowed with 60,000 euros, which will be published by Columna (in Spanish, Destino) and will hit bookstores on March 6, the day after the award ceremony. After several successful television programs and three literary essays around music, it is the first novel by the musician and cultural disseminator.
Gener has explained that when he bought the piano it was in very bad condition, but it was “the brand that I wanted to have, although I didn't have the money to restore it.” When he was able to do so, he discovered two things: the serial number, which dated the construction of the Grotrian-Steinweg in 1915 in Brunswick (Germany) and “a secret, something else that one does not expect to find either on a piano or in any place." Then he undertook a journey to discover his past, which took him first to the factory, and then to England, Poland and, finally, Barcelona, so that he ends up narrating the European history of the 20th century, “a story of redemption through music, because a piano is more than an instrument, it is a time machine and the journey of the piano is the journey that we have all taken, a vehicle to understand this journey.”
The author has pointed out that everything that happens and the names that appear in the book are real, but "the investigation reached a point where I had to fill in the gaps", a "very nice process that lasted a few years." He has also explained that he is “just another character in the book, but it is the biography of an instrument and all those who have surrounded it.” At the end of the day, he assured, “there is no one who does not like music, which has a power of redemption, it challenges each of us individually even though it is the same for all of us, we make it our own and it is part of our individual and collective imagination.” “Music – he concluded – has a longing for immortality, and writing tries to immortalize those who are part of it.”
Gerard Quintana – member of the jury with Carles Casajuana, Pere Gimferrer, Isona Passola, Núria Pradas, Carme Riera and Emili Rosales – has insisted on the idea that “music can save us, and literature too”, and he wanted to say that “A jury always hopes to find a treasure, in a prize, and we have had this feeling. It is not a seasonal book, it is a forever book. Carles Casajuana wanted to highlight that it is a very well structured story, and that although according to the author it is based on real events, that does not have great importance for the reader, because it is a novel.
Catalan version, here
