Several of the musical compositions featured in Desperate Measures were chosen because they emphasize tension - either through their historical tragic undercurrents, their technical friction, or their moral crisis. Music becomes the battleground for Dmitri’s deteriorating control over his own body. In the world of classical performance, mastery requires flawless, precise communication between mind and muscle. As Dmitri’s degenerative condition progresses, every performance turns a display of art into a high-stakes struggle against physical failure. Acute suspense is created during concert scenes, where the complexity of the violin repertoire mirrors the rising chaotic deterioration inside Dmitri’s nervous system. We are pulled into agonizing apprehension: Will his hands obey the music’s demanding rhythm or succumb to his illness? Every frantic crescendo feels like a desperate race against a collapsing body.
Prominent in its portrayal of tension is Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9 in A major (“Kreutzer”) in the chapter “Lovesick.”
A notoriously demanding composition, the sonata is characterized by an adversarial dialogue between violin and piano where harmony constantly threatens to disintegrate. Its cultural legacy (Tolstoy’s 1889 novella, The Kreutzer Sonata) entails obsessive passion, friction, and emotional imbalance. Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini reinforces these heightened stakes by imagining Dante’s tragic lovers caught in the winds of an inescapable tempest.
Music drives a fundamental thematic conflict of the book - the agonizing contrast between the immortality of art and the frailty of the human body. Even the antique violin that has outlasted generations is a symbol of survival, of timelessness; Dmitri, however, must play it increasingly aware that his own time is running out. The countdown infuses his history with profound and bittersweet urgency. Music becomes the ultimate metric of Dmitri’s survival.
Technical tension is woven into the theme with Dmitri’s performance of the Bach Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D minor.
This piece is a monument of solo violin repertoire, requiring the performer to sustain multiple independent melodic voices simultaneously using triple and quadruple stops (playing three or four strings at once). Bach leaves no room for physiological error. The unyielding pulse of Bach’s variations, like an ominous metronome mimics a clock ticking down. As Dmitri struggles to execute the voice-leading chords, the gap between his cognitive command and his failing physical hands creates a terrifying, visible friction on stage.
Vieuxtemps’ Violin Concerto No.5 in A minor is famous for its rapid tempos, aggressive double stops, and soaring upper-register phrases.
One can readily visualize Dmitri balancing on a tightrope with every hesitant step challenged by volatile passages, every mental lapse risking a highwire plunge. Similarly, the Caprices by Paganini utilize extreme ricochet bowing and rapid left hand pizzicato (plucking) requiring demonic virtuosity.
Paganini’s music stretches human anatomy to its absolute limits, employing lightning-fast neural firing and explosive physical stamina. The velocity of the music suspends us in fear, every microsecond contains the threat of a dropped bow, a missed shift, or a sudden muscle spasm. The narrative changes from the dread of slow, steady deterioration to sharp, immediate panic.
The Brahms Violin Concerto in D major is a late-Romantic composition offering an expansive, exhausting dialogue between a lone individual and a massive, overwhelming force. Given what we can imagine about Dmitri’s illness, we agonize at the prospect that his singular violin voice is drowned out if his body gives way before the final cadence.
Beethoven, Bach, Paganini, Vieuxtemps, and Brahms ensure that tension is never abstract. The mechanics of the musical score drive the suspense of his physical and artistic survival.
Clearly, music has the power to emphasize tension. In the next blog, let’s explore its ability to stimulate love, to seduce, to break a heart. “If music be the food of love, play on…” (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night).