List of composers in literature

This list includes fictional portrayals of real (named) composers, and of 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

Ludwig van Beethoven

William Sterndale Bennett

  • Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Starwood Burney)[4]

Lord Berners

Hildegard of Bingen

  • Mary Sharratt: Illuminations (2012)[2]

Frédéric Chopin

Claude Debussy

Frederick Delius

Edward J Dent

Edward Elgar

César Franck

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

George Gershwin

Carlo Gesualdo

  • David Pownall: Music to Murder By (1976)[9]

Cecil Gray

George Frideric Handel

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

Charles Edward Horsley

  • Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Auchester)[4]

Maurice Jacobson

Aram Khachaturian

Constant Lambert

Franz Liszt

Elisabeth Lutyens

Alma Mahler

  • Max Phillips: The Artist’s Wife (2001)[19]
  • Mary Sharratt: Ecstasy (2018)[20]

Gustav Mahler

Felix Mendelssohn

  • Pierre La Mure: Beyond Desire (1955)[23]
  • Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Seraphael)[4]

Noel Mewton-Wood

  • Sonia Orchard: The Virtuosso (2009)[24]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Hubert Parry

Sergei Prokofiev

  • David Pownall: Master Class (1982)[9]

Maurice Ravel

Anton Rubenstein

  • George Eliot: Daniel Deronda (1876) (aspects of Julius Klesmer, see also Liszt)[8]

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

Erik Satie

  • Caitlin Horrocks: Vexations (2019)[26]

Arnold Schoenberg

Franz Schubert

Clara Schumann

Robert Schumann

  • Jessica Duchen: Ghost Variations (2016)[30]

Dmitri Shostakovich

Jean Sibelius

  • Simon Boswell: The Seven Symphonies: A Finnish Murder Mystery (2005)[33]
  • Caroline J Sinclair: My Music, My Drinking & Me (2015) (fictionalised memoir)[34]

Kay Swift

  • Mitchell James Kaplan. Rhapsody (2021)[10]

Ethel Smyth

Barbara Strozzi

Antonio Vivaldi

  • Barbara Quick: Vivaldi's Virgins (2007)[2]

William Walton

Peter Warlock

Hugo Wolf

  • Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus (1947) (aspects of Adrian Leverkühn, see also Schoenberg)[38]

Further reading

References

  1. A. H. Weiler. "Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968)" in The New York Times, April 7, 1969
  2. Freya Parr. 'Ten of the best (and worst) novels about composers', BBC Music Magazine, 26 February 2019
  3. New York Review of Books, 26 October, 2021
  4. Weliver, Phyllis. The Musical Crowd in English Fiction (2006)
  5. Amory, Mark. Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric (1999)
  6. Diedre Bair. 'Getting even with Chopin', in The New York Times, 11 August 1985, Section 7, p.9
  7. Claire de Lune review, Montreal Gazette, 24 November, 1962
  8. Amos, William. The Originals: Who's Really Who in Fiction (1990)
  9. The Composer Plays, Oberon (1996)
  10. Rhapsody, by Mitchell James Kaplan
  11. Leo Hamalian (1996). D.H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 51. ISBN 978-0-8386-3603-9.
  12. M.C. Rintoul: Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction (2014)
  13. Spurling, Hilary: Dancing to the Music of Time, Hamish Hamilton, 2017
  14. Bluemel, Kristin. George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics: Intermodernism in Literary London (2004), Chapter 1, p.27-66
  15. Lloyd, Stephen. Constant Lambert: Beyond The Rio Grande. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-84383-898-2
  16. Nélida, Suny Press
  17. Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848–1861 (1989), p. 250
  18. Henry Reed: Hilda Tablet and Others, BBC Books, London, 1971
  19. Art in Fiction: The Artist's Wife
  20. Art in Fiction. Ecstacy
  21. Faber, Mahler's Conversion
  22. 'Thomas Mann', Mahler Foundation
  23. Beyond Desire review, The Age. 12 December, 1956
  24. Harper Collins, The Virtuosso
  25. Whittle, David. Bruce Montgomery/Edmund Crispin: A Life in Music and Books (2008)
  26. Art in Fiction: Vexations
  27. Jack M Stein. Adrian Leverkühn as a Composer, Germanic Review, Vol. 25 (1950)
  28. Penguin Books
  29. Art in Fiction. Longing
  30. Art in Fiction. Ghost Variations
  31. Art in Fiction: The Conductor
  32. Helga Schwalm. 'Imagining Compromised Creativity: Art and Fear in Shostakovich Bio-Fiction', in Slavonica, Volume 25, 2020 - Issue 1
  33. sevensymphonies.com
  34. GoodReads
  35. Lloyd, Stephen. William Walton: Muse of Fire (2002)
  36. Allis, Michael. 'From Musicology to Novel: Reassessing Robertson Davies's Literary Representation of Peter Warlock', in University of Toronto Quarterly (Winter 2019)
  37. Smith, Barry. Peter Warlock: The Life of Philip Heseltine (1994)
  38. Stokes, Richard. The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf: Life, Letters, Lieder (2020)
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