BS: Musical performance in fiction

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: GUEST,Mrr at work
Date: 09 May 12 - 05:44 PM

Also all the Redwall books; they had lots of music in them.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: Midchuck
Date: 09 May 12 - 07:34 AM

Funny no one's mentioned the "Silver John" stories of the late Manly Wade Wellman, so far.

Peter.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 08 May 12 - 11:54 PM

Several of Robert Browning's Dramatic Monologues [fiction though in verse] attempt to describe the musical technique and experience. "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha" seems to me the most impressive, relating the music the organist is playing to the great building in which he is playing it; tho it ends with the frustration of the narrator, whose thought processes are interrupted by his light going out just as he is reaching his architectural-analogical conclusion as to how the composer of the "mountainous fugues" gets his effects.

'Abt Vogler' and 'A Toccata of Galluppi's' are two other of his poems on the same lines; tho this last is more about the listener's interpretation, and the effect the music has on him, than any analysis of the music itself; and in 'Abt Vogler', the music becomes a symbol of RB's preoccupation with the impossibility of finding perfection on this Earth ~ "On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round" ~ and the necessity of death to find that perfection:~ "have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,
The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep".

But I think these 3 poems will give some such verbal/musical enlightenment as this thread appears to seek.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: Songwronger
Date: 08 May 12 - 06:26 PM

I remember Heinrich Boll, in one of his war novels, describing a piece of music by J. S. Bach. Some German officer listens to a Bach prelude played on a harpsichord, and Boll describes the piece like a plant bursting out of the ground, growing, reaching upwards, branching, flowering. Amazing passage, but I can't recall the book.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: Will Fly
Date: 08 May 12 - 01:34 PM

Thanks for the tips, folks - greatly appreciated!

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: Wesley S
Date: 08 May 12 - 01:24 PM

I thought the book Crazy Heart by Thomas Cobb was about as authentic as it gets when it comes to describing musical performances.It's the book the Jeff Bridges movie was based upon. It's pretty obvious to me that the author is a guitar player. If not - he did an impressive amount of research.


Book - Crazy Heart

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 08 May 12 - 12:39 PM

Terry Pratchetts 'Soul Music' must come pretty close. But then again he is using parody of real songs and musicians and when he describes what is going on it is pretty easy to visualise what he means.

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 07 May 12 - 10:52 PM

Ann Patchett's Bel Canto contains some masterful descriptions of operatic performance.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: Jack Campin
Date: 07 May 12 - 05:59 PM

As I remember it the "On the Road" passage is more about the audience's reaction to Shearing than about the performance itself.

There's a good one in Halldor Laxness's "The Fish can Sing", where two characters are trying out a piano reduction of a new composition they've never heard before (Roberto Gerhard's Violin Concerto). He gets the experience of something coming off the page and slowly beginning to make sense for the first time. (I still haven't managed to hear that concerto, but I've wanted to ever since reading Laxness's description).

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 07 May 12 - 05:59 PM

I used to admire E M Forster's account of the Schlegels listening to Beethoven's 5th Symphony in Chapter V of Howard's End. Looking at it again, I now find it a bit twee; but it does constitute an effort to verbalise the musical experience fictitiously.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: meself
Date: 07 May 12 - 02:52 PM

Coming Through Slaughter, by Michael Ondaatje, about early jazz cornetist Buddy Bolden.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: fat B****rd
Date: 07 May 12 - 01:23 PM

I'm stretching the term 'fiction' a bit but, there's a great scene in On The Road where Sal and Dean watch George Shearing.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 07 May 12 - 10:30 AM

I seem to remember the poem about the Pied Piper of Hamelin by Robert Browning tried to describe the music and its irresistible attraction for the rats and then the children. As a child, I could almost 'hear' it, so it must have been very well-depicted.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: Will Fly
Date: 07 May 12 - 07:41 AM

Ah - I have that book! And, yes, it has the right feeling. I remember thinking at the time it was one of the few books that managed to get the real feel of jazz across.

Subject: RE: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 07 May 12 - 06:50 AM

You could try "The Bear comes Home" by Rafi Zabor. Apart from the fact that the saxophone playing central character is a large brown bear
(I suppose it's what's called "magical realism") it comes across pretty authentically in the stuff about jazz solos. At least I think it does - I've never played a saxophone solo so I can't be that sure, but it feels right.

Subject: BS: Musical performance in fiction
From: Will Fly
Date: 07 May 12 - 04:27 AM

I've put this below the line as I think it's really about literature than music - but a Mudelf might think differently. Up to you.

In an idle moment recently (washing up yesterday's dinner pots and pans) I was mulling over the impossibility, IMO, of describing a musical performance, particularly in novels. Even if the author has some musical knowledge, no amount of description ever seems to capture the actuality of either performing or listening to a performance.

I've come across such descriptive scenes here and there over the years. Many years ago I read "Young Man With A Horn" (Dorothy Baker, 1938) - based on the life of Bix Beiderbecke - and the descriptions seemed laboured and unsatisfactory. More recently I read "Saturday" (Ian McEwan, 2005) - not a book I cared for, in spite of the acclaim that surrounded it - in which the author describes his talented son's blues guitar playing. Didn't impress me one whit.

Can anyone recommend a novel in which the description of musical performance - of any sort - rings true?