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.

Johann Sebastian Bach

• Esther Meynell: The Little Chronicle of Magdalena Bach (1925) ^[1]
• Marc Moskovitz: The Eyes of Bach (2024)
• James Runcie: The Great Passion (2022) ^[2]

Arnold Bax

• 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)

Ludwig van Beethoven

• 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)

Bix Beiderbecke

• Dorothy Baker: Young Man With a Horn (1938)
• George Willis: Three Musicians Trilogy (1943, 1945, 1947) (also Eddy Duchin and Frankie Trumbauer)

William Sterndale Bennett

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

Hector Berlioz

• 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]

Lord Berners

• (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]

Hildegard of Bingen

• P.K. Adams: The Greenest Branch (2018) and The Column of Burning Spices (2019)
• Mary Sharratt: Illuminations (2012) ^[5]

Mario Braggiotti

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

Johannes Brahms

• 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)

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

• 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)

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]
• 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)

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]
• David Mitchell. Cloud Atlas (2004) (as Vyvyan Ayers, with Robert Frobisher as Eric Fenby)
• Ken Russell: Delius: A Moment with Venus (2007)

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]

Karl Eliasberg

• Sarah Quigley: The Conductor (2012) ^[22]

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]
• 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)

César Franck

• 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)

George Gershwin

• 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]

Carlo Gesualdo

• 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)

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

• Thomas Bernhard: The Loser (1983)
• Christopher Miller: Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects: A Novel in Liner Notes (2004) ^[25]

Cecil Gray

• 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]

Jan Hambourg

• Willa Cather: The Professor's House (as the professor's son-in-law, Louie Marsellus) ^[28]

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)

Augusta Holmes

• Ronald Harwood: Cesar and Augusta (1978)

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) ^[29]

Maurice Jacobson

• Stevie Smith: Novel on Yellow Paper (1936) (as Herman) ^[30]

Joseph Joachim

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

Aram Khachaturian

• David Pownall: Master Class (1982) ^[23]

Constant Lambert

• Anthony Powell: Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (as Moreland) ^[31]
• David Pownall: Facade (radio play, 2002)

Henry Lawes

• Robert Graves: Wife to Mr Milton (1942)

Madame Levinskaya

• Bernice Rubens: Madame Sousatzka (1962) ^[32]

Franz Liszt

• 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)

Elisabeth Lutyens

• Henry Reed: The Private Life of Hilda Tablet (1954) (as Tablet) ^[35]

Alma Mahler

• 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]

Gustav Mahler

• 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]

Fanny Mendelssohn

• Peter Härtling: Liebste Fenchel (2011)
• Myla Lichtman-Fields: Felix and Fanny (play, 2011)
• Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Maria Cerinthea) ^[10]

Felix Mendelssohn

• 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]

Noel Mewton-Wood

• Sonia Orchard: The Virtuosso (2009) ^[43]

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• 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)

Maria Theresia von Paradis

• 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)

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) ^[44]

Sergei Prokofiev

• Julian Barnes: The Noise of Time (2016) ^[5]
• Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991) ^[5]
• David Pownall: Master Class (1982) ^[23]

Maurice Ravel

• Arnold Bennett: The Lion's Share (1916) {as Roussel) ^[19]
• Jean Echenoz: Ravel: a Novel (2009, translated 2011)
• Steve Exeter. Debussy's Slippers (2019)

Gioachino Rossini

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

Harold Rubens

• Bernice Rubens: Madame Souzatzka (1962) (as Manek) ^[45]

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) ^[46]

Erik Satie

• Caitlin Horrocks: Vexations (2019) ^[47]

Arnold Schoenberg

• Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus (1947) (aspects of Adrian Leverkühn, see also Wolf) ^[48]

Franz Schubert

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

Clara Schumann

• 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)

Robert Schumann

• 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)

Dmitri Shostakovich

• 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]

Jean Sibelius

• Simon Boswell: The Seven Symphonies: A Finnish Murder Mystery (2005) ^[53]
• Caroline J Sinclair: My Music, My Drinking & Me (2015) (fictionalised memoir) ^[54]

Ethel Smyth

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

Kaikhosru Sorabji

• Christopher Miller: Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects: A Novel in Liner Notes (2004) ^[55]

Igor Stravinsky

• Chris Greenhalgh: Coco and Igor (2002)

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) ^[56]

Kay Swift

• Mitchell James Kaplan. Rhapsody (2021) ^[24]

Giuseppe Verdi

• Franz Werfel. Verdi: Roman der Oper (1923) (as Matthias Fischboeck)

Pauline Viardot

• Alexander Chee: The Queen of the Night (2016)
• Joie Davidow: An Unofficial Marriage (2021)

Antonio Vivaldi

• Harriet Constable: The Instrumentalist (2024)
• Barbara Quick: Vivaldi's Virgins (2007) ^[5]

William Walton

• Lord Berners: Count Omega (1941) (as Emmanuel Smith) ^[57]
• 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) ^[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)

Hugo Wolf

• Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus (1947) (aspects of Adrian Leverkühn, see also Schoenberg) ^[62]

Carl Friedrich Zelter

• 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

1. A. H. Weiler. "Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968)" in The New York Times , April 7, 1969
2. Erin Douglass. 'A novel envisions what it would be like to study with Bach', Christian Science Monitor, 29 April 2022
3. Corymbus: The Music That Time Forgot
4. Duchan, Jessica. Immortal at Unbound
5. Freya Parr. 'Ten of the best (and worst) novels about composers', BBC Music Magazine, 26 February 2019
6. New York Review of Books, 26 October, 2021
7. British Musician and Musical News, Vol. 7 no 67, July 1931, p. 153
8. Weliver, Phyllis. The Musical Crowd in English Fiction (2006)
9. review, Publishers Weekly
10. M.C. Rintoul: Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction (2014)
11. Amory, Mark. Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric (1999)
12. The Letters of Scott Fitzgerald, ed. Andrew Turnbull (1964), p. 570
13. Robert E Kohn. 'The Fivesquare "Amsterdam" of Ian McEwan', in Critical Survey, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2004), pp. 89-106
14. Diedre Bair. 'Getting even with Chopin', in The New York Times, 11 August 1985, Section 7, p.9
15. Pan Macmillian
16. Fry, Helen. Music & men : the life and loves of Harriet Cohen (2008)
17. Collett, Derek (2015). His Own Executioner: The Life of Nigel Balchin. SilverWood. ISBN   978-1-78132-391-5.
18. Claire de Lune review, Montreal Gazette, 24 November, 1962
19. Amos, William. The Originals: Who's Really Who in Fiction (1990)
20. Audrey Wollen. 'The Writer Who Burned Her Own Books', in The New Yorker, 3 January, 2023
21. Richard Lines. 'George Moore's Evelyn Innes', in The Norwood Review No 174 (2008)
22. Art in Fiction: The Conductor
23. The Composer Plays, Oberon (1996)
24. Rhapsody, by Mitchell James Kaplan
25. Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise blog (2004)
26. Leo Hamalian (1996). D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 51. ISBN   978-0-8386-3603-9.
27. Spurling, Hilary: Dancing to the Music of Time, Hamish Hamilton, 2017
28. 'Willa Cather and the Professor's House', in Western American Literature, Vol. 7, No. 1, A Willa Cather Issue (Spring 1972), pp. 13-24
29. Boyle, Andrew J. Delius and Norway (2017), p. 175
30. Bluemel, Kristin. George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics: Intermodernism in Literary London (2004), Chapter 1, p.27-66
31. Lloyd, Stephen. Constant Lambert: Beyond The Rio Grande. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014. ISBN   978-1-84383-898-2
32. Allis, Michael. Temporaries and Eternals: The Music Criticism of Aldous Huxley (2013), p. 56
33. Nélida, Suny Press
34. Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848–1861 (1989), p. 250
35. Henry Reed: Hilda Tablet and Others, BBC Books, London, 1971
36. Art in Fiction: The Artist's Wife
37. Art in Fiction. Ecstacy
38. Faber, Mahler's Conversion
39. 'Thomas Mann', Mahler Foundation
40. Werley, Matthew. Mahler in Context (2020), Chapter 32, 'Influences in Literature'
41. Shannon Draucker. Sounding Bodies: Acoustical Science and Musical Erotics in Victorian Literature (2024)
42. Beyond Desire review, The Age. 12 December, 1956
43. Harper Collins, The Virtuosso
44. 'Helen Adie', at Gurdjieff Club
45. Flynn, Jessica (4 May 2010). "Tributes paid to piano great Harold Rubens". South Wales Echo. Cardiff. Retrieved 13 October 2017.
46. Whittle, David. Bruce Montgomery/Edmund Crispin: A Life in Music and Books (2008)
47. Art in Fiction: Vexations
48. Jack M Stein. Adrian Leverkühn as a Composer , Germanic Review, Vol. 25 (1950)
49. Penguin Books
50. Art in Fiction. Longing
51. Art in Fiction. Ghost Variations
52. Helga Schwalm. 'Imagining Compromised Creativity: Art and Fear in Shostakovich Bio-Fiction', in Slavonica, Volume 25, 2020 - Issue 1
53. sevensymphonies.com
54. GoodReads
55. Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise blog (2004)
56. Eyles, Allen (1986). Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration . Harper & Row. pp.  118-119. ISBN   0-06-015620-1.
57. Lloyd, Stephen. William Walton: Muse of Fire (2002)
58. Bates, Ralph. Rainbow Fish: Four Short Novels (1937)
59. Allis, Michael. 'From Musicology to Novel: Reassessing Robertson Davies's Literary Representation of Peter Warlock', in University of Toronto Quarterly (Winter 2019)
60. Smith, Barry. Peter Warlock: The Life of Philip Heseltine (1994)
61. Angier, Carole. Jean Rhys: Life and Work (1998)
62. Stokes, Richard. The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf: Life, Letters, Lieder (2020)