Virginia Woolf thought about her books as music before she wrote them; Gabriel García Márquez listened to vallenato, a style of Colombian folk music, when he worked and even went so far as to describe One Hundred Years of Solitude as “a vallenato of 400 pages”. But writing about music itself is no mean feat. In my debut, The Instrumentalist, my solution was to make music tangible. I gave my lead character synaesthesia, and let the notes pour through windows and sweep over the rooftops of Venice. Here are five books about classical music that I think offer a virtuosic performance.
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Music and Silence by Rose Tremain
Set in the 17th-century Danish court, this is the story of Peter Claire, a young lutenist who arrives from England to join the royal orchestra. Atmospheric, tender and gripping, Tremain explores the extraordinary power of music through her language. Melodies have a “strange and haunting sweetness”, and notes are “carried, as breath is carried through the body”.
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Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Patchett’s novel explores what happens between captors and captives when they’re connected through music. Set amid a hostage situation in an unnamed country, our lead is the radiant Roxanne Cross, a world-famous opera singer. The abrupt terror of the context lies in stark contrast to the beauty of the music Roxanne performs. Patchett’s prose flows throughout the story like a melody.
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Amsterdam by Ian McEwan
In Amsterdam, Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday are two old friends who meet at the funeral of a mutual ex-lover and find their lives inextricably linked in the weeks that follow. Clive is a top composer and, for me, it’s in the descriptions of his work that this novel sings. A piece composed at the top of a cello’s range sounds like “some furious energy restrained”. A crescendo is compared to “a giant drawing breath”. And melody erupts “into a wave, a racing tsunami of sound”. It won McEwan the Booker prize in 1998.
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Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung by Min Kym
Few writers have been able to express the intense relationship between prodigy and instrument as well as Min Kym has in this extraordinary memoir. It’s the story of growing up with a rare talent and of being controlled by those who seek to shape you. When her million-pound violin is stolen, Kym finds she is no longer whole. The question becomes: can she piece herself back together without it?
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Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens
This quirky debut explores the life of writer George Sand through the eyes of a long-dead ghost who is in love with her. It’s filled with music because Sand was in a romantic relationship with composer Frédéric Chopin. Music sounds “like how a smile would sound”. And watching Chopin play is a skin-tingling experience. “The feeling was like a phrase ending on a deceptive cadence, hovering, deliciously unresolved.” A joyfully original work.
The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable is published by Bloomsbury on 15 August. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
This article was amended on 9 August 2024. An earlier version said George Sand was married to Frédéric Chopin; the pair had a long relationship but did not marry.
