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List of composers in literature

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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.

Johann Sebastian Bach

Esther Meynell: The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach (1925)^[1]
James Runcie: The Great Passion (2022)^[2]

Arnold Bax

Rebecca West: Harriet Hume (1929) (The title character based on Harriet Cohen)^[3]

Ludwig van Beethoven

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]
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Rumour: A Novel (1858) (as Rodomant)^[8]
John Suchet: The Last Master (1997–99) (fictional biography in three volumes)

Bix Beiderbecke

Dorothy Baker: Young Man With a Horn (1938)

William Sterndale Bennett

Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Starwood Burney)^[8]

Hector Berlioz

Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)^[5]
Jude Morgan: Symphony (2006)^[9]
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Florimond Anastasa)^[10]

Lord Berners

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]

Hildegard of Bingen

Mary Sharratt: Illuminations (2012)^[5]

Mario Braggiotti

F. Scott Fitzgerald: Tender is The Night (1934) (as Tommy Barban)^[12]

Benjamin Britten

Ian McEwan: Amsterdam (1998) (Clive Linley, correspondencies with Britten)^[13]

Thomas Busby

George Borrow: Lavengro (1851) (as editor of the "Universal Review")^[10]

Frédéric Chopin

George Sand: Lucrezia Floriani (1846)^[14]
Nell Stevens: Briefly, a Delicious Life (2022)^[15]

Harriet Cohen

William Gerhardie: Pending Heaven (1930) (as Helen Sapphire)^[3]
D H Lawrence: Kangeroo (1923) (as Harriet)^[16]
Rebecca West: Harriet Hume (1929)^[16]

Michael Costa

Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as St Michel)^[10]

Noël Coward

Charles Brackett: Entirely Surrounded (1934) (as Nick Farraday)^[10]
Beverley Nichols: Death to Slow Music (as Nigel Fleet)^[10]
David Pownall: Facade (radio play, 2002)

Christian Darnton

Nigel Balchin: Darkness Falls From the Air (1942) (as the poet Stephen Ryle)^[17]

Claude Debussy

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]

Frederick Delius

C F Keary: The Journalist (1898) (as Sophus Jonsen)^[19]

Edward J Dent

E. M. Forster: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905) (as Philip Herriton)^[19]

Delia Derbyshire

Rosemary Tonks: The Bloater (1968) (as Jenny)^[20]

Arnold Dolmetsch

George Moore: Evelyn Innes (1898) (as the father of Evelyn)^[21]

Edward Elgar

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]
David Pownall: Elgar’s Rondo (1993)^[22]
David Pownall: Elgar’s Third (1994)^[22]

César Franck

Marcel Proust: À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) (aspects of Vinteuil, see also Debussy and Saint-Saëns)

George Gershwin

Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)^[5]
Mitchell James Kaplan. Rhapsody (2021)^[23]
George Kaufman and Moss Hart: Merrily We Roll Along (1934) (as Sam Frankl)^[19]

Carlo Gesualdo

David Pownall: Music to Murder By (1976)^[22]

Jimmy Glover

George Moore: A Mummer's Wife (1885) (as Montgomery)^[10]

Eugene Aynsley Goossens

Inez Baranay: Pagan (1990)
Louis Nowra: The Devil is a Woman (2004)

Glenn Gould

Christopher Miller: Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects: A Novel in Liner Notes (2004)^[24]

Cecil Gray

H.D.: Bid Me to Live (1960) (as Vane)^[25]
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)^[26]

George Frideric Handel

Nick Drake: All the Angels: Handel and the First Messiah (2015)

Josef Matthias Hauer

Hermann Hesse: The Glass Bead Game (1943) (as model for Joculator Basiliensis ("the player from Basel").
Otto Stoessl [de]': Sonnenmelodie (1923)
Franz Werfel: Verdi. Roman der Oper [de] (1924) (as Matthias Fischboeck)

Charles Edward Horsley

Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Charles Auchester)^[8]

John Pyke Hullah

Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Lenhart Davy)^[10]

Halfdan Jebe

C F Keary: The Journalist (1898) (as Hauch)^[27]

Maurice Jacobson

Stevie Smith: Novel on Yellow Paper (1936) (as Herman)^[28]

Joseph Joachim

Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Charles Auchester)^[10]

Aram Khachaturian

David Pownall: Master Class (1982)^[22]

Constant Lambert

Anthony Powell: Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (as Moreland)^[29]
David Pownall: Facade (radio play, 2002)

Henry Lawes

Robert Graves: Wife to Mr Milton (1942)

Madame Levinskaya

Bernice Rubens: Madame Sousatzka (1962)^[30]

Franz Liszt

Daniel Stern: Nélida (1846)^[31]
Susanne Dunlap: Liszt's Kiss (2007)
George Eliot: Daniel Deronda (1876) (aspects of Julius Klesmer, see also Rubenstein)^[32]

Elisabeth Lutyens

Henry Reed: The Private Life of Hilda Tablet (1954) (asTablet)^[33]

Alma Mahler

Max Phillips: The Artist’s Wife (2001)^[34]
Mary Sharratt: Ecstasy (2018)^[35]

Gustav Mahler

Ronald Harwood: Mahler’s Conversion (2001)^[36]
Thomas Mann: Death in Venice (aspects of the author Aschenbach)^[37]
Stefan Zweig: The Return of Gustav Mahler (1915), semi-fictional essay^[38]

Fanny Mendelssohn

Peter Härtling: Liebste Fenchel (2011)
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Maria Cerinthea)^[10]

Felix Mendelssohn

Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)^[5]
Pierre La Mure: Beyond Desire (1955)^[39]
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Seraphael)^[8]

Noel Mewton-Wood

Sonia Orchard: The Virtuosso (2009)^[40]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)^[5]
Stephanie Cowell: Marrying Mozart (2004)
Alexander Pushkin: Mozart and Salieri (1830)
Peter Shaffer: Amadeus (1979)

Hubert Parry

George Bernard Shaw: Love Among the Artists (1881) (as Owen Jack)^[8]

Helen Perkin

Carl Ginsburg: Medicine Journeys: Ten Stories (Center Press, 1983) (as Mrs Todd Ashby)^[41]

Sergei Prokofiev

Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)^[5]
David Pownall: Master Class (1982)^[22]

Maurice Ravel

Arnold Bennett: The Lion's Share (1916) {as Roussel)^[19]

Gioachino Rossini

Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)^[5]

Harold Rubens

Bernice Rubens: Madame Souzatzka (1962) (as Manek)^[42]

Anton Rubinstein

George Eliot: Daniel Deronda (1876) (aspects of Julius Klesmer, see also Liszt)^[19]

Camille Saint-Saëns

Marcel Proust: À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) (aspects of Vinteuil, see also Debussy and Franck)

Antonio Salieri

Alexander Pushkin: Mozart and Salieri (1830)
Peter Shaffer: Amadeus (1979)

Godfrey Sampson

Edmund Crispen: Holy Disorders (1945) (as Geoffrey Vintner)^[43]

Erik Satie

Caitlin Horrocks: Vexations (2019)^[44]

Arnold Schoenberg

Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus (1947) (aspects of Adrian Leverkühn, see also Wolf)^[45]

Franz Schubert

Peter Härtling: Schubert: A Novel (1995)
Gaëlle Josse: Un été à quatre mains

Clara Schumann

Janice Galloway: Clara (2004)^[46]
Elisabeth Kyle: Duet: The Story of Robert and Clara Schumann (1968)
J. D. Landis: Longing (2000)^[47]

Robert Schumann

Jessica Duchen: Ghost Variations (2016)^[48]
Elisabeth Kyle: Duet: The Story of Robert and Clara Schumann (1968)
Peter Härtling: Schumanns Schatten (1996)

Dmitri Shostakovich

Julian Barnes: The Noise of Time (2016)^[5]
David Pownall: Master Class (1982)^[22]
Sarah Quigley: The Conductor (2012)^[49]
William T. Vollmann: Europe Central (2005)^[50]

Jean Sibelius

Simon Boswell: The Seven Symphonies: A Finnish Murder Mystery (2005)^[51]
Caroline J Sinclair: My Music, My Drinking &Me (2015) (fictionalised memoir)^[52]

Ethel Smyth

E. F. Benson: Dodo (1893) (as Edith Stains)^[8]

Kaikhosru Sorabji

Christopher Miller: Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects: A Novel in Liner Notes (2004)^[53]

Barbara Strozzi

Russell Hoban. My Tango with Barbara Strozzi (2007) ((as modern day Bertha Strunk)^[5]

Arthur Sullivan

Nicholas Meyer. The West End Horror (1976)^[54]

Kay Swift

Mitchell James Kaplan. Rhapsody (2021)^[23]

Antonio Vivaldi

Barbara Quick: Vivaldi's Virgins (2007)^[5]

William Walton

Lord Berners: Count Omega (1941) (as Emmanuel Smith)^[55]
David Pownall: Facade (radio play, 2002)

Richard Wagner

Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)^[5]

Peter Warlock

Frank Baker: The Birds (1936) (as Paul Weaver)
Ralph Bates: Dead End of the Sky (1937) (as Robert Durand)^[56]
Robertson Davies: A Mixture of Frailties (1958) (as Giles Revelstoke)^[57]
Aldous Huxley: Antic Hay (1923) (as Coleman)^[58]
D. H. Lawrence: Women in Love (1921) (as Julius Halliday)^[58]
Anthony Powell: Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1960) (aspects of Maclintick)
David Pownall: Music to Murder By (1976)^[22]
Jean Rhys: Till September Petronella (short story, 1930s) (as Julian Oakes)^[59]
Osbert Sitwell: Those Were the Days (1938) (as Roy Hartle)

Hugo Wolf

Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus (1947) (aspects of Adrian Leverkühn, see also Schoenberg)^[60]

Carl Friedrich Zelter

Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Aronach)^[10]

References[edit]

^ A. H. Weiler. "Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968)"inThe 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 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 ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g 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

^ 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'

^ 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

^ Art in Fiction: The Conductor

^ 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)

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