My Cultural Awakening: Bach Helped Me Survive Sexual Abuse as a Child | culture

WWhen I found a cassette tape of Bach-Busoni Chaconne, at the age of seven, this is how I imagine a child would feel when he sees Messi playing football and thinks: I should do that with my life. By then, I had been sexually abused by a teacher for two years, and despite showing all the signs of trauma—night terrors, tremors, bed-wetting, persistent stomach aches—I obediently kept his secret. For me, the world was a war zone of pain. I was a shy, awkward, lonely child, but alone in my bedroom with that piece of music, I found a little light that was meant just for me. Hearing it for the first time was almost a religious experience.

People think classical music is dry, but Bach was not like that. Half of his twenty children died in infancy: and there was no way to relieve this grief except through his music. Bach composed the Chaconne when his wife died suddenly, and he was unable to say goodbye to her or even go to the funeral. Even if you don’t know any of it, listen to it, you’ll know it on some level. When you think this is the end, it continues, like having one more thing to say to someone after they die. There is a lot of truth and a lot of emotions hidden within these sixteen Minutes of music.

At seven years old, music gave me a way to deal with what I was feeling but didn’t yet have the words for. I became obsessed. Every night, I would sit in my room listening to recordings of Bach, then Horwitz and Ashkenazi, pretending to play along with him. It was pure escape, pure fantasy. I could hide inside the music, and it made everything bearable. The chaconne in particular was like an ancient key that slid into my heart.

I had my first piano teacher when I was 14, and won a scholarship to the Guildhall when I was 18, but my parents wouldn’t let me go, preferring that I go to a ‘proper university’ instead. So I stopped playing for 10 years and worked in the city at a job I hated. I returned to playing the piano in my late twenties with the same dedication I had as a child. Learning as an adult was more difficult, but I was more determined. Feeling as if you owe your life to something you’ve lived, breathed, and inhaled since you were seven carries you beyond talent and ambition.

When I was 31, in a psychiatric ward, I heard another piece of music that changed my life. I’ve been trying to kill myself. I didn’t want to die, I couldn’t continue living. A friend smuggled in an iPod nano with Glenn Gould playing the Bach-Marcello Concerto in D minor on it. I’ve never heard anything so beautiful in my entire life. I underwent extensive therapy, but it was as if I was seven years old again, hearing classical music for the first time.

This recording told me the same profound truth that the Chaconnes had when I was a child, but now, as an adult, I was able to put it into words: If something was this pure, I wouldn’t have to die. It gave me motivation to get out, and keep living. I must have heard and performed this piece thousands of times, and every time it amazed me. My first album came out a few years later, and I just released my eighth album. I play on the same stages as my heroes – in the same places, sometimes even in the same month and on the same Steinway.

But sexual abuse as a child is not something you can recover from or leave behind. It’s always there. The assailant was eventually arrested and charged with multiple counts of rape. He died before facing trial. Everyone has their own version of trauma, but somehow we find a way to survive it. Music gave me the tools to feel less alone, and to overcome a childhood full of shame, secrets, and power dynamics. In Chacon, I heard suffering transformed into something living and beautiful. In Marcelo, I heard hope at the moment I needed it. Both stories taught me that there is a lot of good in the world if we know where to look for it.

Finding this tape was a slippery moment. It’s impossible to say how different my life would have been if I’d never heard the song Chacón, but it may have saved my life and given me a career I love. When I was a kid, I thought: If something so incredible can exist, it can’t be all bad. I believed it at seven, and I still believe it now.

The NSPCC offers support for children on 0800 1111, and for adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young people, parents and teachers can call the Child Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can call the Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International. In the United States, call or text the Child Abuse Hotline at 800-422-4453 or visit their website for more resources and to report child abuse or send a direct message for help. For adult survivors of child abuse, help is available at ascasupport.org