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)
• Marc Moskovitz: The Eyes of Bach (2024)
• James Runcie: The Great Passion (2022)

Arnold Bax

• Rebecca West: Harriet Hume (1929) (The title character is based on Harriet Cohen, the Bax character is named Arnold Condorex)
• Jonathan Wylie: Magister (1997)

Ludwig van Beethoven

• Andrew Crumey: Beethoven's Assassins (2023)
• Jessica Duchan: Immortal (2020)
• Sanford Friedman: Conversations with Beethoven (1980s, published in 2014)
• Paul Griffiths: Mr Beethoven (2020)
• Esther Meynell: Grave Fairytale (1931) (as Melchior)
• Patricia Morrisroe: The Woman in the Moonlight (2020)
• Ken Russell: Beethoven Confidential (2007)
• Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Rumour: A Novel (1858) (as Rodomant)
• 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)

Hector Berlioz

• Christine Balint: Ophelia's Fan: A Novel (2005)
• Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)
• Jude Morgan: Symphony (2006)
• Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Florimond Anastasa)

Lord Berners

• (self-portrait, Lord FitzCricket in Far From the Madding War, 1941)
• Nancy Mitford: The Pursuit of Love (1945) (as Lord Merlin)
• Osbert Sitwell: 'The Love Bird' from Dumb Animal and Other Stories (1930) (as Sir Robert Mainwroth)

Hildegard of Bingen

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

Mario Braggiotti

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

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)

Thomas Busby

• George Borrow: Lavengro (1851) (as editor of the "Universal Review")

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)
• Nell Stevens: Briefly, a Delicious Life (2022)
• Leon Thornber: Bitter Glory. A Novel of the Life of Chopin (1937)

Harriet Cohen

• William Gerhardie: Pending Heaven (1930) (as Helen Sapphire)
• D H Lawrence: Kangaroo (1923) (as Harriet)
• Rebecca West: Harriet Hume (1929)

Michael Costa

• Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as St Michel)

Noël Coward

• Charles Brackett: Entirely Surrounded (1934) (as Nick Farraday)
• 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)
• 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)

Claude Debussy

• Anthony Burgess: '1889 and the Devil's Mode', short story in The Devil's Mode (1989)
• Pierre La Mure: Clair de lune (1962)
• Marcel Proust: À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) (aspects of Vinteuil, see also Franck and Saint-Saëns)

Frederick Delius

• C F Keary: The Journalist (1898) (as Sophus Jonsen)
• 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)

Delia Derbyshire

• Rosemary Tonks: The Bloater (1968) (as Jenny)

Arnold Dolmetsch

• George Moore: Evelyn Innes (1898) (as the father of Evelyn)

Karl Eliasberg

• Sarah Quigley: The Conductor (2012)

Edward Elgar

• Keith Alldritt: Elgar on the Journey to Hanley: A Novel (1979)
• Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)
• James Hamilton-Paterson: Gerontius (1989)
• James Miles: The Worcester Enigma (short story, 1988)
• David Pownall: Elgar’s Rondo (1993) and Elgar's Third (1994)
• 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)
• Steve Exeter. Debussy's Slippers (2019)
• Laura Frankos: Broadway Revival (2022)
• Mitchell James Kaplan. Rhapsody (2021)
• George Kaufman and Moss Hart: Merrily We Roll Along (1934) (as Sam Frankl)

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)
• Erika Rummel: The Road to Gesualdo (2020)

Jimmy Glover

• George Moore: A Mummer's Wife (1885) (as Montgomery)

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)

Cecil Gray

• H.D.: Bid Me to Live (1960) (as Vane)
• Aldous Huxley: Antic Hay (1923) (as the critic Mercaptan)
• D. H.Lawrence: Aaron's Rod (1922) (as Cyril Scott)
• D. H.Lawrence: Kangaroo (1923) (as James Sharpe)
• Anthony Powell: Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (Maclintick and Gossege as a composite)

Jan Hambourg

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

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").
• ': Sonnenmelodie (1923)
• Franz Werfel: ' (1924) (as Matthias Fischboeck)

Augusta Holmes

• Ronald Harwood: Cesar and Augusta (1978)

Charles Edward Horsley

• Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Charles Auchester)

John Pyke Hullah

• Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Lenhart Davy)

Halfdan Jebe

• C F Keary: The Journalist (1898) (as Hauch)

Maurice Jacobson

• Stevie Smith: Novel on Yellow Paper (1936) (as Herman)

Joseph Joachim

• Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Charles Auchester)

Aram Khachaturian

• David Pownall: Master Class (1982)

Constant Lambert

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

Henry Lawes

• Robert Graves: ' (1942)

Madame Levinskaya

• Bernice Rubens: Madame Sousatzka (1962)

Franz Liszt

• Daniel Stern: Nélida (1846)
• 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)
• 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)

Alma Mahler

• Joseph Horowitz: The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York (2023)
• Max Phillips: The Artist’s Wife (2001)
• James Reidel: Manon's World (2020)
• Mary Sharratt: Ecstasy (2018)

Gustav Mahler

• Willa Cather: The Song of the Lark (1915)
• Ronald Harwood: Mahler’s Conversion (2001)
• 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)
• Frank Tallis: Death and the Maiden (2010)
• Stefan Zweig: The Return of Gustav Mahler (1915), semi-fictional essay

Florence Ashton Marshall (and her sister, the clarinettist Frances Marshall)

• Bertha Thomas: The Violin Player (1880)

Fanny Mendelssohn

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

Felix Mendelssohn

• Rosemarie Bodenheimer: Mendelssohn & Co: a Fictive Memoir (2018)
• Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)
• Pierre La Mure: Beyond Desire (1955)
• George Sampson: A Day with Mendelssohn (1910)
• Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Seraphael)

Noel Mewton-Wood

• Sonia Orchard: The Virtuoso (2009)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)
• 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)

Helen Perkin

• Carl Ginsburg: Medicine Journeys: Ten Stories (Center Press, 1983) (as Mrs Todd Ashby)

Sergei Prokofiev

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

Maurice Ravel

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

Gioachino Rossini

• Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)

Harold Rubens

• Bernice Rubens: Madame Souzatzka (1962) (as Manek)

Anton Rubinstein

• George Eliot: Daniel Deronda (1876) (aspects of Julius Klesmer, see also Liszt)

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)

Pablo de Sarasate

• Anthony Burgess: 'Murder to Music', short story in The Devil's Mode (1989)

Erik Satie

• Caitlin Horrocks: Vexations (2019)

Arnold Schoenberg

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

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)
• Dieter Kühn: Familientreffen (play, 1988)
• Elisabeth Kyle: Duet: The Story of Robert and Clara Schumann (1968)
• J. D. Landis: Longing (2000)
• 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)
• 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)
• David Pownall: Master Class (1982)
• Sarah Quigley: The Conductor (2012)
• William T. Vollmann: Europe Central (2005)

Jean Sibelius

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

Ethel Smyth

• E. F. Benson: Dodo (1893) (as Edith Staines)

Kaikhosru Sorabji

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

Igor Stravinsky

• Chris Greenhalgh: Coco and Igor (2002)

Barbara Strozzi

• Russell Hoban. My Tango with Barbara Strozzi (2007) (as modern day Bertha Strunk)

Arthur Sullivan

• Nicholas Meyer. The West End Horror (1976)

Kay Swift

• Mitchell James Kaplan. Rhapsody (2021)

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)

Richard Wagner

• Gabriele D'Annunzio: The Flame (1900)
• Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)
• Vernon Lee: A Wicked Voice (short story, 1880)
• Friedrich Nietzsche: Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-5) (as the sorcerer)
• Franz Werfel: Verdi: Roman der Oper (1924) (under his own name and also as Matthias Fischboeck)

William Walton

• Lord Berners: Count Omega (1941) (as Emmanuel Smith)
• David Pownall: Facade (radio play, 2002)

Peter Warlock

• Frank Baker: The Birds (1936) (as Paul Weaver)
• Ralph Bates: Dead End of the Sky (1937) (as Robert Durand)
• Robertson Davies: A Mixture of Frailties (1958) (as Giles Revelstoke)
• Aldous Huxley: Antic Hay (1923) (as Coleman)
• D. H. Lawrence: Women in Love (1921) (as Julius Halliday)
• Anthony Powell: Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1960) (aspects of Maclintick)
• David Pownall: Music to Murder By (1976)
• Jean Rhys: Till September Petronella (short story, 1930s) (as Julian Oakes)
• Osbert Sitwell: Those Were the Days (1938) (as Roy Hartle)

Hugo Wolf

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

Carl Friedrich Zelter

• Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Aronach)

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