'Musical' Novels

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: Joe_F
Date: 05 Apr 08 - 07:35 PM

Trilby, by George du Maurier. Wicked hypnotist makes tone-deaf girl into star singer.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: ClaireBear
Date: 05 Apr 08 - 07:48 PM

Back in the sci-fi/fantasy world, Terry Pratchett's Soul Music was very amusing. I read it when my best friend was in Celtic rock band Tempest, so "music with rocks in" really spoke to me. Gael Baudino's Gossamer Axe (at least I think it was hers) was amusing for similar but not identical reasons.

One of my favorites in the genre is Greg Bear's The Infinity Concerto, which is entirely dependent on a piece of music. And come to think of it, my all-time favorite novel Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees, has many ongoing musical themes and a phemonenon called "the Note" that, when the protagonist hears it, sends him into a near-dissociative state that shakes his faith in the solidity of his middle-class, burgher-like existence as mayor of Lud, and has him suspecting the reality of perilous--and consistently denied--faerie.   

I'm sitting in a house that R.A. MacAvoy (who is a friend) and her husband built. We bought it from them when they left our intentional community so he could work for "the dark side" in Redmond, Washington. One of the characters in her Twisting the Rope (which I read before I knew her) was closely based on another dear old friend, which completely surprised me when I read it.

And speaking of friends, one of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books -- sorry, I forget which one; it's been years -- has a scene that features a trio directly based on Dave Swan's Oak, Ash and Thorn in (as I recall) its pre-Swan iteration. You can tell because they are singing "Aldones Bless the Human Elbow" -- also because the physical descriptions are picture-perfect.

Cheers,
Claire

Subject: 'Musical' Novels
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 04:50 PM

Fantasy writer Janny Wurts is not to every taste. "The Wars of Light and Shadow" is a yet-to-be-completed series of world-building fantasy books, all of them long. One of the, for want of a better word, Warriors (adversaries?) is a musician so gifted that he has been trained by the MasterBard of his nation, and at his master's death has succeeded him as the MasterBard. There is a great deal going on in these books besides music. However, when the MasterBard, also known as the Master of Shadow, pulls out his fantastical stringed instrument (name: "lyranthe"), something transformational usually happens. There is a lot of emphasis on music as a multi-dimensional force of life and healing. In the most recent of the books, "Initiate's Trial," a dying man is literally musicked back to life with the lyranthe. If Janny Wurts is not to your taste, you will know it within a paragraph or two. If she's not too much for you, her reverence for music is edifying.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: Jack Campin
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 07:46 PM

A tape measure and a set of bathroom scales tell me everything I want to know about Janny Wurts's books.

Joseph Skvorecky wrote a series of books set in the Czech jazz scene; I haven't read any of them yet.

(A lot of posters in this thread that I haven't read any posts from in a long time).

Is Barbara Trapido's "The Travelling Hornplayer" actually about a hornplayer? I've never looked inside it.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: Joe_F
Date: 16 Feb 16 - 08:39 PM

Thomas Mann, _Dr Faustus_. Wicked composer sells his soul for the devil's help in escaping the decadence of music.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 17 Feb 16 - 09:38 AM

Has anyone mentioned "Under The Greenwood Tree " by Thomas Hardy. Great book!

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Feb 16 - 10:35 AM

The fifth chapter of E M Forster's Howard's End (1910) takes place at a Mendelssohn - Beethoven - Brahms concert at which the characters become confused, lose things; & as a consequence form significant acquaintances, which end in tears and death, imprisonment and ruin, deception and deceit -- a sort of prolepsis of the 'purposes mistook' with which the novel abounds. Too complicated to rehearse in detail here, but clear in context and well worth reading.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Feb 16 - 11:25 AM

There are a couple of very funny music scenes in Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat".

Alex Benzie's "The Year's Midnight" is built around the story of "Macpherson's Farewell".

Hint: use your browser's text search facility to check what's been mentioned before.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: GUEST,HIlo
Date: 17 Feb 16 - 12:06 PM

I HAD FORGOTTEN "Howard's End. One of my all time favourite Novels and a great scene at the concert.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: Jack Campin
Date: 17 Feb 16 - 02:25 PM

H.C. Robbbins-Landon's, 1789, Mozart's Last Year, is heartbreaking, but beautifully written.

Only a 16-year wait for a correction, but it isn't a novel and the year was 1791.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/tomserviceblog/2009/nov/25/hc-robbins-landon-mozart

It's astonishing that we can know so much about somebody who died more than 200 years ago. Robbins Landon even includes a floorplan of Mozart's flat.

There are so many musicians whose lives could form the basis for a novel. For a challenge: Ravel, who seems to have been asexual. I can't think of an asexual character in fiction.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: keberoxu
Date: 17 Feb 16 - 03:17 PM

One composer who would be a challenge is Franz Josef Haydn. Not because he had no relationships -- he enjoyed wine, women, and song as much as most men. But Haydn was an uncommonly GOOD human being, not a saint, simply good. They left Haydn out of "Amadeus," I would guess, partly for that reason. It's easy to demonize Salieri; it's convenient to play up the scatological humor in Mozart's letters. It's quite another matter to make a case for a really good man.

The Haydn/Mozart mentor/friend relationship was a remarkable one, and I despair of ever seeing it fictionalized or dramatized, unless I have missed something and this has already been done.

There are three dramatic incidents in the Haydn/Mozart connection that I would love to see acted out, but it will only happen in my dreams:

the moment when Haydn addresses Mozart's father Leopold in public to tell him what an exceptional composer his son is.

Haydn leaving Austria for England, and a tearful Mozart bidding him goodbye, and saying in unconscious prophecy that he fears that they will never see each other again.

Old Haydn, enjoying the fulfillment of his life with success in London, receiving the news that young Mozart is dead -- and watching Haydn's heart break, as though he had literally lost a son.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: GUEST,silver
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 05:07 AM

Someone mentioned Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" - long time since I read it, but I recall a chapter where the migrant workers had a dance, and a number of well-known tunes were mentioned. Also, earlier in the novel, the first time the Preacher appears, he is singing to himself.
Laurie Lee's "Cider with Rosie", "I walked out one Midsummer morning", and "A Rose for Winter" - like Woody Guthrie's books, somewhere between autobiography and fiction - deal a lot with music.

And, of course, there is the fairly recent "Revival", by Scott Alarik.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: CupOfTea
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 01:04 PM

I second an endorsement for Revival. I had the pleasure of being introduced to the man and his own performance at the same time as learning he'd written a novel. I'd enjoyed his nonfiction writing and the novel was even better. It gave me the same depth of "YES! That's how it is!" recognition as I'd had from Elizabeth Scarborough's Songkiller trilogy.

I cherish authors who incorporate traditional music as an integral part of the world they create, particularly when they get that spark of recognition from my own experience and knowledge. That validation of veracity in the details surely gives fiction more of an ability to carry us deeper. What comes to mind is the section in Sharyn McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun where a traveling Scottish trad musician stumbles upon a filk sing at a science fiction convention, with initial bewilderment. The novel would be familiar to SF fans, mystery fans, (as well as those intrigued by the title), yes, but the intersection of those worlds with an acknowledgement of trad music is what endears it to me most.

Charles DeLint is the author who uses musicians and their world most powerfully and extensively over many novels and short stories. As musician in his own world he " gets it" completely - as he does with visual art as well.

Another peek into the Folk world book I marginally remember is one I think may have been a memoire rather than fiction is Last Night's Fun by Cirian Carson (and may have botched the name), with vivid tales from Scottish folk band adventures. Wish I could locate this book again for a retread, but our library has the horrid habit of getting rid of interesting books to make room for multiple copies of the latest best seller.

Thinking about this has now kept me from getting ANY work done today. Merry Mudcat time sink to you all.

Joanne in thawing Cleveland

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: GUEST,Jack Campin
Date: 18 Feb 16 - 01:58 PM

Ciaran Carson.

It's a factual book, written as a Kerouac-like road trip. I thought it was rather overdone and hypey.

Nobody's yet mentioned Lovecraft's "The Music of Erich Zann" - only a short story but rather good. I don't know if Lovecraft ever used music as a topic elsewhere.

There is a three-volume fictionalized biography of Beethoven by John Suchet. Somehow I expect it to be an unrewarding slog, but others may think differently.

Given the success of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", there has to be an opportunity for a similar mashup. I once suggested Dave Bulmer as Yog-Sothoth the Eater of Souls; Paganini as Dracula is a natural. And perhaps a combo of Keith Richards and Dorian Gray.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: GUEST,Henry Hill
Date: 19 Feb 16 - 12:31 AM

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is the best! :D

_______
Sandsaver

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: Thompson
Date: 14 Jan 17 - 01:35 PM

For those who speak Irish, Rún an Bhonnáin, http://www.siopa.ie/en/i-41-run_an_bhonnain/i.aspx?ID=41 about a killer who targets sean-nós singers, all linked to the writer of An Bonnán Buí.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: Felipa
Date: 14 Jan 17 - 05:26 PM

There is a genre of Irish language songs in which a spoken story is allied with the sung piece. Some of these old song-stories have in the past century inspired plays, story books, longer books. Dúbhglas de hIde based his play "Casadh an tSugáin" on the song of that name (known in English as Twisting the Hayrope, but I havent heard or read any English language lyrics), Cliodhna Cussen wrote a children's book of the story of "An Bhean úd Thall" (Irish version of An Bhean Eudach), and there's a couple of books based on the story of Úna Bhán. Lyrics and info about those 3 songs are already on Mudcat.

I see via internet that there is a book by Patrick Devanney titled "Una Bhan: Flaxen Haired Rebel" http://www.independent.ie/regionals/sligochampion/news/former-summerhill-students-novel-tells-na-bhn-story-27563979.html "

Many will have heard the legendary tale of Úna's ill-fated love affair with Tomás Láidir Costello: her father refused to allow them to marry and Úna died of a broken heart; Tomás used to swim to Trinity Island in Lough Key to keep vigil at her grave, resulting in his death from pneumonia; he was buried beside Úna and two trees grew over their graves, which intertwined to form a lovers' knot.

"Using a novelist's license in his latest book, 'Úna Bhán, Flaxen-Haired Rebel', Patrick Devaney paints a very different picture of Úna. Far from being a "garden rose" or a "gold candle on the queen's table", as portrayed by her poet-lover Costello, Devaney depicts Úna as a courageous but troubled young woman who demands to be treated as an equal in the maledominated world of the 17th Century. She becomes a rebel committed to driving the foreigners out of Ireland"

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 15 Jan 17 - 05:27 AM

It's been a long time since I read it but I suppose Dermot Bolger's 'Father's music' should b added. And Kate Thompson's 'The New Policeman', is a nice read, albeit aimed at a younger audience.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: Jack Campin
Date: 15 Jan 17 - 05:54 AM

Donna Leon's books often feature music from Venice - she also wrote the booklet for a CD of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" where she retells a bunch of lurid stories from Venetian history. "The Jewels of Paradise" has Baroque musicology as its background.

Have we covered Ellis Peters' series of crime stories based on English and Slovak folksong?

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: Susan of DT
Date: 06 Aug 21 - 05:54 AM

Refresh since the topic came up again

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Aug 21 - 06:24 AM

Thomas Mann, _Dr Faustus_. Wicked composer sells his soul for the devil's help in escaping the decadence of music.

Not quite sure I read the plot the same way, but anyway - the composer is biographically Nietzsche and musically Schoenberg. The big palindromic piece is based on Schoenberg's Die Jakobsleiter.

Subject: RE: 'Musical' Novels
From: GUEST,Jack Campin (on a library computer)
Date: 07 Aug 21 - 06:26 AM

That GUEST was me (can't post to Mudcat using my phone any more).