List of composers in literature
This list includes fictional representations of real (named) composers and musicians, and fictional characters under other names that are generally agreed to be based on a specific composer, or sometimes a composite of several. It doesn't include biographies, unless fictionalized.
- Esther Meynell: The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach (1925)[1]
- Marc Moskovitz: The Eyes of Bach (2024)
- James Runcie: The Great Passion (2022)[2]
- Rebecca West: Harriet Hume (1929) (The title character is based on Harriet Cohen, the Bax character is named Arnold Condorex)[3]
- Jonathan Wylie: Magister (1997)
- Andrew Crumey: Beethoven's Assassins (2023)
- Jessica Duchan: Immortal (2020)[4]
- Sanford Friedman: Conversations with Beethoven (1980s, published in 2014)[5]
- Paul Griffiths: Mr Beethoven (2020)[6]
- Esther Meynell: Grave Fairytale (1931) (as Melchior)[7]
- Patricia Morrisroe: The Woman in the Moonlight (2020)
- Ken Russell: Beethoven Confidential (2007)
- Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Rumour: A Novel (1858) (as Rodomant)[8]
- John Suchet: The Last Master (1997–99) (fictional biography in three volumes)
- Dorothy Baker: Young Man With a Horn (1938)
- George Willis: Three Musicians Trilogy (1943, 1945, 1947) (also Eddy Duchin and Frankie Trumbauer)
- Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Starwood Burney)[8]
- Christine Balint: Ophelia's Fan: A Novel (2005)
- Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[5]
- Jude Morgan: Symphony (2006)[9]
- Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Florimond Anastasa)[10]
- (self-portrait, Lord FitzCricket in Far From the Madding War, 1941)
- Nancy Mitford: The Pursuit of Love (1945) (as Lord Merlin)[11]
- Osbert Sitwell: 'The Love Bird' from Dumb Animal and Other Stories (1930) (as Sir Robert Mainwroth)[10]
- P.K. Adams: The Greenest Branch (2018) and The Column of Burning Spices (2019)
- Mary Sharratt: Illuminations (2012)[5]
- F. Scott Fitzgerald: Tender is The Night (1934) (as Tommy Barban)[12]
- Boman Desai: Trio: A Novel Biography of the Schumanns and Brahms (2011)
- J. D. Landis: Longing (2000)
- Louise Marley: The Brahms Deception (2010)
- Ken Russell: Brahms Gets Laid (2007)
- Kristen Wolf: Escapement (2018)
- Ian McEwan: Amsterdam (1998) (Clive Linley, correspondencies with Britten)[13]
- George Borrow: Lavengro (1851) (as editor of the "Universal Review")[10]
- Elizabeth Berg: Dream Lover (2015)
- Nancy Burkhalter: The Education of Delhomme: Chopin, Sand, and La France (2020)
- Jean Echenoz: Lac (1995, translated as Chopin's Move for the US edition, 2004)
- George Sand: Lucrezia Floriani (1846)[14]
- Nell Stevens: Briefly, a Delicious Life (2022)[15]
- Leon Thornber: Bitter Glory. A Novel of the Life of Chopin (1937)
- William Gerhardie: Pending Heaven (1930) (as Helen Sapphire)[3]
- D H Lawrence: Kangeroo (1923) (as Harriet)[16]
- Rebecca West: Harriet Hume (1929)[16]
- Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as St Michel)[10]
- Charles Brackett: Entirely Surrounded (1934) (as Nick Farraday)[10]
- George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart: The Man Who Came to Dinner (play, as Beverley Carlton)
- Beverley Nichols: Death to Slow Music (as Nigel Fleet)[10]
- David Pownall: Facade (radio play, 2002)
- Keith Winter: Impassioned Pygmies (1936)
- Nigel Balchin: Darkness Falls From the Air (1942) (as the poet Stephen Ryle)[17]
- Anthony Burgess: '1889 and the Devil's Mode', short story in The Devil's Mode (1989)
- Pierre La Mure: Clair de lune (1962)[18]
- Marcel Proust: À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) (aspects of Vinteuil, see also Franck and Saint-Saëns)[19]
- C F Keary: The Journalist (1898) (as Sophus Jonsen)[19]
- David Mitchell. Cloud Atlas (2004) (as Vyvyan Ayers, with Robert Frobisher as Eric Fenby)
- Ken Russell: Delius: A Moment with Venus (2007)
- E. M. Forster: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) (as Philip Herriton)[19]
- Rosemary Tonks: The Bloater (1968) (as Jenny)[20]
- George Moore: Evelyn Innes (1898) (as the father of Evelyn)[21]
- Sarah Quigley: The Conductor (2012)[22]
- Keith Alldritt: Elgar on the Journey to Hanley: A Novel (1979)
- Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[5]
- James Hamilton-Paterson: Gerontius (1989)[5]
- James Miles: The Worcester Enigma (short story, 1988)
- David Pownall: Elgar’s Rondo (1993) and Elgar's Third (1994)[23]
- Ken Russell: Elgar: the Erotic Variations (2007)
- Ronald Harwood: Cesar and Augusta (1978)
- Marcel Proust: À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) (aspects of Vinteuil, see also Debussy and Saint-Saëns)
- Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[5]
- Steve Exeter. Debussy's Slippers (2019)
- Laura Frankos: Broadway Revival (2022)
- Mitchell James Kaplan. Rhapsody (2021)[24]
- George Kaufman and Moss Hart: Merrily We Roll Along (1934) (as Sam Frankl)[19]
- Michel Breitman: Le Témoin de poussière (1985)
- Joel Epstein: The Curse of Gesualdo: Music, Murder and Madness (2020)
- Fran Kempton: The Devil's Tune: a Tale of Music, Murder and Revenge (2018)
- David Pownall: Music to Murder By (1976)[23]
- Erika Rummel: The Road to Gesualdo (2020)
- George Moore: A Mummer's Wife (1885) (as Montgomery)[10]
- Inez Baranay: Pagan (1990)
- Louis Nowra: The Devil is a Woman (2004)
- Thomas Bernhard: The Loser (1983)
- Christopher Miller: Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects: A Novel in Liner Notes (2004)[25]
- H.D.: Bid Me to Live (1960) (as Vane)[26]
- Aldous Huxley: Antic Hay (1923) (as the critic Mercaptan)
- D. H.Lawrence: Aaron's Rod (1922) (as Cyril Scott)[10]
- D. H.Lawrence: Kangaroo (1923) (as James Sharpe)[10]
- Anthony Powell: Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (Maclintick and Gossege as a composite)[27]
- Willa Cather: The Professor's House (as the professor's son-in-law, Louie Marsellus)[28]
- Nick Drake: All the Angels: Handel and the First Messiah (2015)
- Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943) (as model for Joculator Basiliensis ("the player from Basel").
- Otto Stoessl': Sonnenmelodie (1923)
- Franz Werfel: Verdi. Roman der Oper (1924) (as Matthias Fischboeck)
- Ronald Harwood: Cesar and Augusta (1978)
- Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Charles Auchester)[8]
- Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Lenhart Davy)[10]
- C F Keary: The Journalist (1898) (as Hauch)[29]
- Stevie Smith: Novel on Yellow Paper (1936) (as Herman)[30]
- Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Charles Auchester)[10]
- David Pownall: Master Class (1982)[23]
- Anthony Powell: Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (as Moreland)[31]
- David Pownall: Facade (radio play, 2002)
- Robert Graves: Wife to Mr Milton (1942)
- Bernice Rubens: Madame Sousatzka (1962)[32]
- Daniel Stern: Nélida (1846)[33]
- Honoré de Balzac: Béatrix (1839) (as Gennaro Conti)
- Susanne Dunlap: Liszt's Kiss (2007)
- George Eliot: Daniel Deronda (1876) (aspects of Julius Klesmer, see also Rubenstein)[34]
- Julian Livingston: The Anonymous North American Tour of Franz Liszt (1999)
- Sarah Rayne: Music Macabre (2019)
- John Spurling: A Book of Liszts: Variations on the Theme of Franz Liszt (2011)
- Henry Reed: The Private Life of Hilda Tablet (1954) (as Tablet)[35]
- Joseph Horowitz: The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York (2023)
- Max Phillips: The Artist’s Wife (2001)[36]
- James Reidel: Manon's World (2020)
- Mary Sharratt: Ecstasy (2018)[37]
- Willa Cather: The Song of the Lark (1915)
- Ronald Harwood: Mahler’s Conversion (2001)[38]
- Joseph Horowitz: The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York (2023
- Walter Kappacher: Mahlers Heimkehr (2014)
- Thomas Mann: Death in Venice (aspects of the author Aschenbach)[39]
- Frank Tallis: Death and the Maiden (2010)
- Stefan Zweig: The Return of Gustav Mahler (1915), semi-fictional essay[40]
Florence Ashton Marshall (and her sister, the clarinettist Frances Marshall)
- Bertha Thomas: The Violin Player (1880)[41]
- Peter Härtling: Liebste Fenchel (2011)
- Myla Lichtman-Fields: Felix and Fanny (play, 2011)
- Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Maria Cerinthea)[10]
- Rosemarie Bodenheimer: Mendelssohn & Co: a Fictive Memoir (2018)
- Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[5]
- Pierre La Mure: Beyond Desire (1955)[42]
- George Sampson: A Day with Mendelssohn (1910)
- Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Seraphael)[8]
- Sonia Orchard: The Virtuosso (2009)[43]
- Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[5]
- Rita Charbonnier: The Death of Mozart (2006)
- Stephanie Cowell: Marrying Mozart (2004)
- Eduard Mörike: Mozart's Journey to Prague (1856)
- Alexander Pushkin: Mozart and Salieri (1830)
- Matt Rees: Mozart's Last Aria (2011)
- Peter Shaffer: Amadeus (1979)
- Julian Barnes: 'Harmony', from the short story collection Pulse (2011)
- Brian O'Doherty: The Strange Case of Mademoiselle P (1992)
- Michèle Halberstadt. The Pianist in the Dark (2011)
- Jean Thuillier: Franz Anton Mesmer ou L'extase Magnétique (1988)
- Alissa Walser: Mesmerized (2012)
- George Bernard Shaw: Love Among the Artists (1881) (as Owen Jack)[8]
- Carl Ginsburg: Medicine Journeys: Ten Stories (Center Press, 1983) (as Mrs Todd Ashby)[44]
- Julian Barnes: The Noise of Time (2016)[5]
- Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[5]
- David Pownall: Master Class (1982)[23]
- Arnold Bennett: The Lion's Share (1916) {as Roussel)[19]
- Jean Echenoz: Ravel: a Novel (2009, translated 2011)
- Steve Exeter. Debussy's Slippers (2019)
- Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[5]
- Bernice Rubens: Madame Souzatzka (1962) (as Manek)[45]
- George Eliot: Daniel Deronda (1876) (aspects of Julius Klesmer, see also Liszt)[19]
- Marcel Proust: À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) (aspects of Vinteuil, see also Debussy and Franck)
- Alexander Pushkin: Mozart and Salieri (1830)
- Peter Shaffer: Amadeus (1979)
- Edmund Crispen: Holy Disorders (1945) (as Geoffrey Vintner)[46]
- Anthony Burgess: 'Murder to Music', short story in The Devil's Mode (1989)
- Caitlin Horrocks: Vexations (2019)[47]
- Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus (1947) (aspects of Adrian Leverkühn, see also Wolf)[48]
- Peter Härtling: Schubert: A Novel (1995)
- Gaëlle Josse: Un été à quatre mains
- Boman Desai: Trio: A Novel Biography of the Schumanns and Brahms (2011)
- Janice Galloway: Clara (2004)[49]
- Dieter Kühn: Familientreffen (play, 1988)
- Elisabeth Kyle: Duet: The Story of Robert and Clara Schumann (1968)
- J. D. Landis: Longing (2000)[50]
- Werner Quednau: Clara Schumann (1955)
- Kristen Wolf: Escapement (2018)
- Boman Desai: Trio: A Novel Biography of the Schumanns and Brahms (2011)
- Jessica Duchen: Ghost Variations (2016)[51]
- Peter Härtling: Schumanns Schatten (1996)
- Elisabeth Kyle: Duet: The Story of Robert and Clara Schumann (1968)
- J. D. Landis: Longing (2000)
- Kristen Wolf: Escapement (2018)
- Julian Barnes: The Noise of Time (2016)[5]
- David Pownall: Master Class (1982)[23]
- Sarah Quigley: The Conductor (2012)[22]
- William T. Vollmann: Europe Central (2005)[52]
- Simon Boswell: The Seven Symphonies: A Finnish Murder Mystery (2005)[53]
- Caroline J Sinclair: My Music, My Drinking & Me (2015) (fictionalised memoir)[54]
- E. F. Benson: Dodo (1893) (as Edith Staines)[8]
- Christopher Miller: Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects: A Novel in Liner Notes (2004)[55]
- Chris Greenhalgh: Coco and Igor (2002)
- Russell Hoban. My Tango with Barbara Strozzi (2007) (as modern day Bertha Strunk)[5]
- Mitchell James Kaplan. Rhapsody (2021)[24]
- Franz Werfel. Verdi: Roman der Oper (1923) (as Matthias Fischboeck)
- Alexander Chee: The Queen of the Night (2016)
- Joie Davidow: An Unofficial Marriage (2021)
- Harriet Constable: The Instrumentalist (2024)
- Barbara Quick: Vivaldi's Virgins (2007)[5]
- Gabriele D'Annunzio: The Flame (1900)
- Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[5]
- Vernon Lee: A Wicked Voice (short story, 1880)
- Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-5) (as the sorcerer)
- Franz Werfel: Verdi: Roman der Oper (1924) (under his own name and also as Matthias Fischboeck)
- Lord Berners: Count Omega (1941) (as Emmanuel Smith)[57]
- David Pownall: Facade (radio play, 2002)
- Frank Baker: The Birds (1936) (as Paul Weaver)
- Ralph Bates: Dead End of the Sky (1937) (as Robert Durand)[58]
- Robertson Davies: A Mixture of Frailties (1958) (as Giles Revelstoke)[59]
- Aldous Huxley: Antic Hay (1923) (as Coleman)[60]
- D. H. Lawrence: Women in Love (1921) (as Julius Halliday)[60]
- Anthony Powell: Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1960) (aspects of Maclintick)
- David Pownall: Music to Murder By (1976)[23]
- Jean Rhys: Till September Petronella (short story, 1930s) (as Julian Oakes)[61]
- Osbert Sitwell: Those Were the Days (1938) (as Roy Hartle)
- Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus (1947) (aspects of Adrian Leverkühn, see also Schoenberg)[62]
- Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Aronach)[10]
Further reading
- Amos, William: The Originals: Who's Really Who in Fiction? (1985)
- Rintoul, M.C. Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction (2014)
- Rushworth, Jennifer; Scott, Hannah; Ife, Barry Ife (eds.): Song in the Novel (2024)
- Weliver, Phyllis. The Musical Crowd in English Fiction (2006)
- Weliver, Phyllis. Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860-1900 (2000)
- Art in Fiction website
- List of composers depicted on film
References
- ^ A. H. Weiler. "Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968)" in The New York Times, April 7, 1969
- ^ Erin Douglass. 'A novel envisions what it would be like to study with Bach', Christian Science Monitor, 29 April 2022
- ^ a b Corymbus: The Music That Time Forgot
- ^ Duchan, Jessica. Immortal at Unbound
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Freya Parr. 'Ten of the best (and worst) novels about composers', BBC Music Magazine, 26 February 2019
- ^ New York Review of Books, 26 October, 2021
- ^ British Musician and Musical News, Vol. 7 no 67, July 1931, p. 153
- ^ a b c d e f Weliver, Phyllis. The Musical Crowd in English Fiction (2006)
- ^ review, Publishers Weekly
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m M.C. Rintoul: Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction (2014)
- ^ Amory, Mark. Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric (1999)
- ^ The Letters of Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Andrew Turnbull (1964), p. 570
- ^ Robert E Kohn. 'The Fivesquare "Amsterdam" of Ian McEwan', in Critical Survey, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2004), pp. 89-106
- ^ Diedre Bair. 'Getting even with Chopin', in The New York Times, 11 August 1985, Section 7, p.9
- ^ Pan Macmillian
- ^ a b Fry, Helen. Music & men : the life and loves of Harriet Cohen (2008)
- ^ Collett, Derek (2015). His Own Executioner: The Life of Nigel Balchin. SilverWood. ISBN 978-1-78132-391-5.
- ^ Claire de Lune review, Montreal Gazette, 24 November, 1962
- ^ a b c d e f Amos, William. The Originals: Who's Really Who in Fiction (1990)
- ^ Audrey Wollen. 'The Writer Who Burned Her Own Books', in The New Yorker, 3 January, 2023
- ^ Richard Lines. 'George Moore's Evelyn Innes', in The Norwood Review No 174 (2008)
- ^ a b Art in Fiction: The Conductor
- ^ a b c d e f The Composer Plays, Oberon (1996)
- ^ a b Rhapsody, by Mitchell James Kaplan
- ^ Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise blog (2004)
- ^ Leo Hamalian (1996). D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-8386-3603-9.
- ^ Spurling, Hilary: Dancing to the Music of Time, Hamish Hamilton, 2017
- ^ 'Willa Cather and the Professor's House', in Western American Literature, Vol. 7, No. 1, A Willa Cather Issue (Spring 1972), pp. 13-24
- ^ Boyle, Andrew J. Delius and Norway (2017), p. 175
- ^ Bluemel, Kristin. George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics: Intermodernism in Literary London (2004), Chapter 1, p.27-66
- ^ Lloyd, Stephen. Constant Lambert: Beyond The Rio Grande. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-84383-898-2
- ^ Allis, Michael. Temporaries and Eternals: The Music Criticism of Aldous Huxley (2013), p. 56
- ^ Nélida, Suny Press
- ^ Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848–1861 (1989), p. 250
- ^ Henry Reed: Hilda Tablet and Others, BBC Books, London, 1971
- ^ Art in Fiction: The Artist's Wife
- ^ Art in Fiction. Ecstacy
- ^ Faber, Mahler's Conversion
- ^ 'Thomas Mann', Mahler Foundation
- ^ Werley, Matthew. Mahler in Context (2020), Chapter 32, 'Influences in Literature'
- ^ Shannon Draucker. Sounding Bodies: Acoustical Science and Musical Erotics in Victorian Literature (2024)
- ^ Beyond Desire review, The Age. 12 December, 1956
- ^ Harper Collins, The Virtuosso
- ^ 'Helen Adie', at Gurdjieff Club
- ^ Flynn, Jessica (4 May 2010). "Tributes paid to piano great Harold Rubens". South Wales Echo. Cardiff. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
- ^ Whittle, David. Bruce Montgomery/Edmund Crispin: A Life in Music and Books (2008)
- ^ Art in Fiction: Vexations
- ^ Jack M Stein. Adrian Leverkühn as a Composer, Germanic Review, Vol. 25 (1950)
- ^ Penguin Books
- ^ Art in Fiction. Longing
- ^ Art in Fiction. Ghost Variations
- ^ Helga Schwalm. 'Imagining Compromised Creativity: Art and Fear in Shostakovich Bio-Fiction', in Slavonica, Volume 25, 2020 - Issue 1
- ^ sevensymphonies.com
- ^ GoodReads
- ^ Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise blog (2004)
- ^ Eyles, Allen (1986). Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration. Harper & Row. pp. 118-119. ISBN 0-06-015620-1.
- ^ Lloyd, Stephen. William Walton: Muse of Fire (2002)
- ^ Bates, Ralph. Rainbow Fish: Four Short Novels (1937)
- ^ Allis, Michael. 'From Musicology to Novel: Reassessing Robertson Davies's Literary Representation of Peter Warlock', in University of Toronto Quarterly (Winter 2019)
- ^ a b Smith, Barry. Peter Warlock: The Life of Philip Heseltine (1994)
- ^ Angier, Carole. Jean Rhys: Life and Work (1998)
- ^ Stokes, Richard. The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf: Life, Letters, Lieder (2020)