Study of the black keys

Study of the Black Keys is a musical novel that not only deals with the life and environment of musicians, but also brings to light the "hidden voice" of the human being.

In "Study of the Black Keys," author Luiz Paulo Faccioli, piano student Paulo Amaro, conductor Leopold Kaufman, his wife Roswitha, and violinist Lara engage in a romantic polyhedron during rehearsals, recitals, and concerts. In a climate of cultural effervescence, the novel is set in Porto Alegre in the 1970s and 1980s, a city that exuded music and charisma and lived with a rhythm all its own, slow and hectic.

Faccioli uses the lives and surroundings of musicians as a metaphor for the weaknesses, ambitions, feelings, and revolts that guide, inflame, and corrode the human soul. Throughout its 23 chapters, the work weaves a vibration on a metaphysical scale, in which desire intertwines with rehearsals, recitals, and concerts, heightening the drama to a climactic climax.

The perspective of the setting and its characters is internal, plotted by an author with in-depth knowledge of the classical world, himself a composer and guitarist. The novel pulls back the curtain of glamour to suggest that behind the art lies the human being—always the human being, fragile and abysmal. Such motifs, to borrow the term from music, are not often explored in Brazilian literature. Music, in the novel, is stripped bare by its most powerful feelings.