Music in literature
Sun, Oct 16 2011, 7:13AM
For music lovers who also like a good read, how about some suggestions of books that feature music?
Can I begin with a recommendation of Vikram Seth's "An Equal Music"?
Part of the blurb on the back cover of my edition is: "The finest novel about music ever written in English". Over the top perhaps, but it's the best one I know of, although to be fair, it's first and foremost a love story. The protagonists are musicians, the narrator being a second violinist in a string quartet. A considerable list of chamber music features: selection, rehearsal, performance, the complex interaction between the players - but it is the intimacy and the detail of the effect of each piece that is so convincingly conveyed (to this non-musician, anyway).
The fact that Decca released a double CD with the music featured (466 945-2) shows how much music is involved.
I found the novel a truly great read, combining two of my greatest passions, and would love to know of other novels that feature music. Any suggestions?
Vic.
Sun, Oct 16 2011, 8:27AM
#2
RE: Music in literature
I agree with you about the Vikram Seth, Vic. And I agree with James about the Ishiguro: although I don't remember much about the musical side (perhaps appropriate for that dream-like novel). Ishiguro is clearly interested in music - his recent collection of short stories Nocturnes has music as a background 'theme'. Julian Barnes is also interested in music: he's written a number of short stories with a musical theme, including one apparently about Sibelius (he's not named as such, to my recollection) in his collection The Lemon Table. He also has a funny and evocative story in that collection about a Festival Hall concert (Haitink is conducting a Mozart piano concerto and Shostakovich's 4th Symphony!).
Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus is of course a composer... more than that I can't say as I found it too hard to get into, if I'm honest.
Lots of good/great novelists were fond of music - but it strikes me that there are very few (if any: the Seth may indeed be the best to date) great portrayals of music in literature. The debt seems to be in the other direction. I suppose this is because the medium, while allowing ambiguity, is too unlike music. If you compare reading with listening, what you naturally do with a book - cast your eyes over the words at the pace suitable for you (generally a steady pace), go back, clarify, 'pause' as you consider a point etc - you don't really do with music, and certainly couldn't with live music. Imagine asking Haitink (since he's been mentioned) to stop, go back, play that bit again three times and just hang on for a minute or two while you think about it!
Sun, Oct 16 2011, 6:26PM
#3
RE: Music in literature
Beethoven's 5th in Howards End, Beethoven and Schumann or Schubert in A Room with a view - These all just go to show that you should not look for music in literature, or literature in music. Try and seperate the two - no matter how much of a misguided liberal you might be.
Sun, Oct 16 2011, 7:52PM
#4
RE: Music in literature
I read Ian McEwan's Amsterdam with a sinking feeling that, really, here's an author with no idea of what it is to be a composer, or any knowledge of the aesthetics of any branch of 'modern' music. Which is strange because he works regularly with Michael Berkeley; but not as strange as Amsterdam winning the Booker Prize. (Slightly off topic: but the composer in Kieslowski's film Three Colours Blue, Patrice de Courcy, is equally unbelievable. Kieslowski's film was pre-Karl Jenkins tat, but the idea of any composer writing music like that becoming the national figure implied in the film is kind of nonsense. Still a great film though.)
So another vote for Doctor Faustus; and let's not forget about Proust's fictional Vinteuil.
Sun, Oct 16 2011, 8:07PM
#5
RE: Music in literature
There are Nicholas Jenkins' cronies in the middle books of Powell's Dance to the Music of Time. It's fun cross-referencing to his autobiographies to figure out who's who. Moreland, despite Powell's denials, has to be Constant Lambert perhaps with a dash of Walton thrown in. Maclintick is more of an amalgam. Warlock for starters, but perhaps with some Rawsthorne in there too although that would move Rawsthorne back in time. What other leftist embryonic composers were there, shortly pre-war? I've no idea who Carolo, the violinist, might be.
Then there's the Albert Murray trilogy Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree and The Seven League Boots. But we're talking jazz/blues here, music that is, how should one put it, rather infra dig? - for some forum members.
Sun, Oct 16 2011, 8:11PM
#6
RE: Music in literature
I read Ian McEwan's Amsterdam with a sinking feeling that, really, here's an author with no idea of what it is to be a composer, or any knowledge of the aesthetics of any branch of 'modern' music. Which is strange because he works regularly with Michael Berkeley; but not as strange as Amsterdam winning the Booker Prize. (Slightly off topic: but the composer in Kieslowski's film Three Colours Blue, Patrice de Courcy, is equally unbelievable. Kieslowski's film was pre-Karl Jenkins tat, but the idea of any composer writing music like that becoming the national figure implied in the film is kind of nonsense. Still a great film though.)
So another vote for Doctor Faustus; and let's not forget about Proust's fictional Vinteuil.
Amen on all counts.
Mon, Oct 17 2011, 2:40PM
#7
RE: Music in literature
Haruki Marakami loves music (as well as running, books and cats). There are frequent references to it, for instance 'The Archduke Trio' is listened to in "Norwegian Wood" and in his latest novel, "IQ84", Janacek's "Sinfonietta" has a prominent place in the opening pages. I enjoy his very original, often strange, not to say weird, novels. When it comes to the most musical of writers, of those whose work is imbued with music, Proust would come top of my list.
Mon, Oct 17 2011, 3:32PM
#8
RE: Music in literature
Music begins where words end. So, attempting to convey its intangible yet visceral power is one of the most frustrating endeavours any music-loving auteur can undertake.However, it's among the most enticing too.
Some striking and apparently successful "endeavours":
-Leo Tolstoy : The Kreutzer Sonata - No other writer has latched on to the sexual power of music quite astutely as the great Leo. The celebrated short story slices open the equation of musical with sexual partnership, inspired by the elemental drive of Beethoven's homonymous Violin/Piano Sonata.
-Ivan Turgenev : The Song of Triumphant Love - Turganev was in love with Pauline Viardot, the famoso operatic singer. This peculiar short story presents music as a sort of black magic in a love triangle that offers disturbing resonances. Music, according to Turganev, can cast a spell more potent than human passions. (Does remind you some other thread's subject?)
-Marcel Proust : Swann's Way - Here, the author comes close to elucidating the most indefinable sensations of musical response.
-Ann Patchett : Bel Canto - A direct tribute to the transformative power of music.
-Louis de Bernieres : Captain Corelli's Mandolin - "Hail Hitler" versus "Hail Puccini"! The music as the strongest and the only one note of Hope. (Again, traces of the "subject" of another thread).
-Joanna Trollope : The Choir - The power of music to bring people together, properly celebrated through the refined music of a cathedral choir.
-Jilly Cooper : Appassionata - The power of music may drive some of the characters, but music may inspire the power hunger of a few outside egos too.
- E.M. Forster : Howards End - The scherzo of Beethoven's Fifth as never before (or after) envisaged.
-Jessica Duchen : Rites of Spring - The galvanising power of music shines out in a ritual of life and salvation.
So, Vic, enough "food for thought"?
Good exploration and eventual reading (I cannot bear it anymore).
Parla
Mon, Oct 17 2011, 7:30PM
#9
RE: Music in literature
Then there's the Albert Murray trilogy Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree and The Seven League Boots. But we're talking jazz/blues here, music that is, how should one put it, rather infra dig? - for some forum members.
The Murray books are pretty good. But have you read James Baldwin's Another Country?
The way jazz seeped inside Jack Kerouac's writing is very interesting. On The Road, the version we've known for years is great, but earlier this year I read the original scroll version - ie one para lasting about 650 pages - and the deep connection between jazz and Kerouac is even stronger. Highly recommended.
Mon, Oct 17 2011, 10:51PM
#10
RE: Music in literature
It must be too long since I read Amsterdam as I have no recollection of any musical connotations (or much else in it for that matter): An Equal Music would have been a more worthy literary prize winner. I don't want to turn this into too much of a book forum but I seem to recall that in one of my favourites, Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, Ronald Merrick puts on a record of Gieseking playing Debussy when entertaining Daphne Manners (in both the book and what is for me the greatest ever TV adaptation of a novel - Jewel in the Crown).
Thu, Oct 27 2011, 6:16PM
#11
RE: Music in literature
Thomas Mann's Dr Faustus must be one of *the* musical novels -- but it has so far defeated me twice now (whereas The Magic Mountain is utterly wornderful -- but music free, as far as I recall).
BUt here's an oddity: Thomas Bernhard's strange and compelling THE LOSER which features (at least in the recall of the narrator) a character called Glenn Gould who, like Wittgenstein's nephew, may bear some passing resemblance to someone real...
Sun, Jun 24 2012, 8:03PM
#12
RE: Music in literature
My wife's currently reading Leaving The World by Douglas Kennedy in which two characters have a long and involved conversation about Bruckner's Ninth Symphony, comparing different recordings by Harnoncourt, Wand, Karajan et al, and commenting on Bruckner's structural genius. Then - wait for it! - one of them turns out to be a fictitious reviewer for Gramophone, based in Canada, who has been writing for the magazine for fifteen years.....
Sun, Jun 24 2012, 9:42PM
#13
RE: Music in literature
Two oddball cases:
In the late 70s, Radio 3 broadcast a programme called "The Devil's Jig," including "realizations" by Humphrey Searle of the compositions of Adrian Leverkühn described in such great verbal detail in Doktor Faustus. I still have the bootleg I made as a putridly earnest teen. They ain't lining up for it - though to be fair I think Searle has been much and unfairly battered.
For mystery readers, the late Reginald Hill's On Beulah Heights, one of the Dalziel and Pascoe novels, is centred in various ways on Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. Very early in the book there's an extremely funny parody of Radio 3's Record (now CD) Review, referred to as Coming Out.
Mon, Jun 25 2012, 2:38AM
#14
RE: Music in literature
There are a few books whose form is based on a musical work. The examples which come to mind are Richard Powers' Goldbug Variations, which takes its form from the Goldberg Variations, and Anthony Burgess' Napoleon Symphony, which takes its form from a source too obvious to mention. Douglas Hofstadter wrote a dialogue in the form of a crab canon in Godel, Escher, Bach (i.e., two voices, one the exact reverse of the other).
Mon, Jun 25 2012, 7:03AM
#15
RE: Music in literature
Contrary to what Alun Severn remembers, Mann's "The Magic Mountain" does have an important chapter, towards the end, in which Hans Castorp gets control of the gramophone and his favourite records, and his reactions to them, are described in some detail ("Fullness of Harmony", P635 in the copy I have)
Also the plot of Aldous Huxley's 'Point Counter Point' has a significant place for a gramophone recording of the slow movement' of Beethoven's Op 132 String Quartet.
Alan
There are quite a few, but one that's at once fascinating and maddening, is Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled. It's about a concert pianist trying to get to a concert and continually being diverted. The whole thing is like a maze, with music (and the music of memory, too) at its centre.