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Homage to Czerny: Studies in Virtuoso Technique

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With a delightful combination of the ridiculous and the sublime, Jonke

explores surreal dimensions of space and sound, always anchoring his

flights of fancy in accessible imagery. More than any other author,

Jonke, a pianist turned writer, avails himself of compositional

techniques from classical music. Different characters sound their own

themes in cleverly orchestrated conversations. Opening observations are

restated at the end by another character instead of in another key. Not

surprisingly, the first-person narrator is a composer, a young man who

is all the more likable for his difficulties: his missing girlfriend

and his withdrawal symptoms. The title is taken from a collection of

studies by Carl Czerny; the content is a literary tour de force.