Mozart in Novels

Novels that mention Mozart

1. Da Vinci Code

For anyone familiar with Dan Brown’s controversial bestseller The Da Vinci Code, we come across a reference in page 134, well, in some of our own copies. Robert Langdon the Professor is talking to his students about PHI, which he calls the Divine Proportion or 1.618. He says it occurs in nature, in art, in architecture, and “appeared in the organizational structure of Mozart’s sonatas.”  Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (p.134)

(Contributed by Terry McIntee) 

2. An Angel at my Table

"One evening however, when Karl and Kay brought two records, 'A Little Night Music' and Beethoven's Violin Concerto played by David Oistrach, Frank said, 'We can play them on Janet's radiogram.' Accepting it. I can see that room with the bare wallboard and the wooden floor which Frank oiled each Saturday morning with a mop soaked in linseed oil ('it keeps down the dust'), with the canvas chairs ('the most comfortable type') with their wooden arms, the room that already held all the characters from War and Peace, Anna Karenina, the stories of Tolstoy and Chekhov, from Proust, Flaubert, Olive Schreiner, Doris Lessing, receiving now the music of Mozart and Beethoven while we listen."  An Angel at my Table by Janet Frame (p.152, Vintage Edition)

(Contributed by Terry McIntee)

3.   Snow Falling on Cedars

This is another of those books we read along the way with a mention of Mozart.  Isn't it great when Mozart pops up in literature and other media? I read Snow Falling on Cedars recently and loved the part where Ishmail Chambers sees a recording of the Jupiter on the record player beside his mother's bed, and he imagines her lying there listening to Mozart.  Snow Falling on Cedars is a novel written by David Guterson published by Vintage Books. It's supposed to be inspired by an all-time bestseller, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

(Contributed by Liz Ringrose.)



Note: One of my Mozart groups way back July 2006 planned on listing novels where Mozart is quoted. This list has been revived today, Nov 18, 2012,  intended to be an ongoing post, with latest contribution/s added.