The Bassoon in a modern novel The Traveling Sprinkler

Originally posted on Facebook, The Way of Cane page, September 27, 2020

The bassoon in literature— The Traveling Sprinkler by Nicholson Baker:

“He (Stravinsky) couldn’t begin the Rite with a flute because the flute is a metal tube…. it isn’t biological…What he wanted was the squirming, elemental tropical, green-fused growth-urge of Spring; he wanted cane plants, Arundo donax….”

My dear friend and colleague from many years in the Houston symphony together, timpanist extraordinaire, Ron Holdman, recommended Nicholson Baker’s delightful novel to me last year. He thought I’d enjoy it since he knows I love reading— I’m in two book clubs.

Additionally, there is a lot of great writing about the bassoon, classical music, practicing and reeds— and Claude Debussy.

I would guess from the very accurate details he writes about the bassoon that Baker himself studied, if we believe what he writes (and why wouldn’t we?) with a student of Norman Herzberg, Bill Brown.

Throughout the novel, snippets of very interesting bassoon lore and stories about the lives of Debussy and Stravinsky surface; these are centered around a comparison of Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and the solos opening each work.

Baker goes on much more, but I have to limit myself to fair usage of copy-written materials— as I know from putting together The Way of Cane with all of its quotations from the many things I wanted to use to support my ideas from non-bassoon or musical sources. One has to jump through a lot of hoops gaining permission to quote from other’s published works.

Here’s a teaser for your reading pleasure:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Traveling_Sprinkler/QTraCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Some bassoon related material: pp 36-38 from this link and for anyone who gets the book pages 128-133 not included in this preview, but there are bassoon and musical references (both classical and popular), from beginning to end. Aside from those, I found the book to be a sheer delight.