Something of his Art by Horatio Clare is Hay Festival Book of the Month for December, a unique travel journal that follows Clare's recreation of the walk that J. S. Bach took in the depths of winter in 1705 – his long walk to Lübeck across northern Germany.
Bach, then unknown as a composer and earning a modest living as a teacher and organist, set off on a long journey by foot to visit the composer Dieterich Buxtehude, a distance of more than 250 miles. This journey and its destination were a pivotal point in his life.
More than three hundred years later, Horatio Clare sets off to recreate this walk. The result of this journey is an imaginative evocation of what the twenty-year-old composer would have seen and felt on his long journey, a sustained visualisation of the landscape, light and wildlife of early eighteenth century Germany.
In his review for he New European, Charlie Connelly said: "[It's] a book of great erudition, concision and depth (not to mention one with a cover so beautiful you’ll want to hang it on your wall)."
Run in partnership with Vanity Fair, Hay Festival’s Book of the Month is selected by the festival team in Hay-on-Wye, based on public recommendations, and aims to revisit and re-celebrate great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry that reach through time to touch the present.
Titles are sold in the UK through the festival’s online shop, as well as being available in all good libraries and bookshops, with a digital festival of promotion online, including curated streams on the festival’s new Hay Player archive.
Find out more about Hay Festival’s Book of the Month at hayfestival.org/book-of-the-month or explore #HayBookOfTheMonth on social media:
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