Yiyun Li's 'Music Against the Night': A Writer's Quest to Resurrect John Field and Adelaide Percheron

In her essay for The New Yorker's "Why I Write" series, novelist Yiyun Li recounts how a chance encounter with composer John Field in Leo Tolstoy's autobiography led her to embark on a trilogy of historical novels about Field and his wife, Adelaide Percheron. Field, an Irish virtuoso born in Dublin in 1782, invented the nocturne, influenced Chopin, and spent his adult life in Moscow as a leading pianist and sales representative for Muzio Clementi's pianofortes. He died in Moscow in 1837 at age fifty-four. Percheron, born in Pondicherry, French India, in 1790, was an orphan who traveled to Moscow, became Field's student, mistress, and eventually his wife; the marriage fell apart and her ambitions were dashed. Li began writing the novel in January 2023 and had completed three-quarters of it when her son James died in February 2024, shortly after playing a piano piece for her. Li reflects on the nature of historical fiction, the boundaries between past and present, and her aspiration to write not historical or autobiographical novels but to carry the past and bring its figures close to the present. She also describes learning to play the piano to better understand her characters, and shares memories of her own childhood in Beijing, including a 1974 photograph and a 1976 poetry recitation audition after the death of Zhou Enlai.