Gran Partita

If Gran Partita is a collection of poetry about music - its forms, its headwinds, its glinting horizons - it is also an evocation of a world scored by heady ambition, alienation, and the fear of failure. Drawing its title from Mozart's Serenade No.10, Matthew McDonald's surreal and haunting debut unfolds across seven movements. Along the way we are met by glamorous concert halls and hotel playlists; bad dates and talking lizards; self-help manuals and ghostly choirs; musings on séances, silence, and slabs of beef marinated in the music of the avant-garde. As logics of performance and optimisation increasingly infuse every aspect of lived existence, distinctions between art and the everyday appear evermore diffuse. At times wryly sardonic, at others tender and introspective, Gran Partita marks the arrival of a striking new voice in poetry. Matthew McDonald is an Australian musician and poet living in Berlin. He is both the principal double bassist of the Berliner Philharmoniker, and the founder and editor of online poetry journal berlin lit. Gran Partita is his debut collection.