The Cellist of Sarajevo

“It screamed downward, splitting the air and sky without effort . . . . There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded.” (xv) 

This powerful sentence launches this novel, placing us firmly within the very traumatized consciousness of one of the four major characters we will come to know during the course of this novel, the “cellist of Sarajevo.” The cellist is remembering the most recent massacre during the ongoing Siege of Sarajevo— a cruel mortar attack specifically aimed at killing civilians—and, even more cruelly, hungry civilians standing in line to purchase their meager bread rations. The “scream[ing]” is the sound the mortar made before it hit the street, killing twenty-two of the citizens standing there, most of whom were friends or neighbors of the cellist. Needless to say, this event has deeply affected the cellist, and he is in a state of shock, which is reflected in his rambling thoughts and fragmented memories.

The cellist’s thoughts wander from his music, to the massacre, to his sister’s wedding and on to other more comforting memories, like the feel of his father’s reassuring grip upon his shoulder while posing for the family photo. He also cannot help but reflect upon his most painful recent memory, the bombing of the Sarajevo Opera Hall where, in better days, he was the principal cellist of the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra. The loss of the opera hall is especially painful for the cellist, who feels as if “he were inside the building, as if the bricks and glass that once bound the structure together had become projectiles that sliced and pounded into him, shredding him beyond recognition” (xvii).

He also reflects upon Albinoni’s Adagio—a scrap of a sonata one musicologist found in the rubble after Dresden was bombed in World War II and turned into a beautiful symphony, an adagio. What fascinates him most about this piece of music is not that a music specialist worked for 17 years to create a new symphony from a fragment or even the haunting beauty of the finished piece. What he is truly fascinated by is the fact that such beauty can be wrought out of complete annihilation: “That something could be almost erased from existence in the landscape of a ruined city, and then rebuilt until it is new and worthwhile” (xv).

One thing is now clear to the cellist—he must use his talents to bring some hope and beauty back to Sarajevo’s people. He must remind people that there is something sacred left in life. The cellist vows that although he may not survive his newfound mission, he will sit in the middle of the street, in fact, inside the crater left by the mortar’s impact, and play this adagio for 22 days, one day for each of those killed in the attack.

What he wants to do is give Sarajevo and its residents back a vital gift that music, especially the adagio, has given him:  “If, after several hours, this hope doesn’t return, he will pause to gather himself, and then he and his cello will coax Albinoni’s Adagio out of the firebombed husk of Dresden and into the mortar-pocked, sniper-infested streets of Sarajevo. By the time the last few notes fade his hope will be restored (xvi).