Mozart in Literature

Mozart in Thomas Hardy's poem and a novel by Chinese author Dai Sijie (trans. by Ina Rilka) Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress Literature

The information was sent to me by Terry McIntee, a friend from one of my early Mozart groups way back 2006.  I originally posted his email in my first classical music website CM Lounge. I'm republishing the content to share with Mozarteans and other Mozart enthusiasts. (Thanks a lot, Terry.)

Terry found a couple of things that connects Mozart to literature. He knows that I've always been most interested with any trivia relating to Mozart, including this musical genius's mention in books, movies, to about anything worth knowing.


The first is a poem by Thomas Hardy called: LINES to a movement in Mozart's e-flat symphony

It begins with : Show me again the time

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.

A Brief Insight of Vienna Blood by Frank Tallis

19 September 2009

Something about F. Tallis's Vienna Blood

(A good read especially for Wolfgang Mozart fans)


Liz Ringrose: Guest Reviewer


I was recently recommended to read a novel by Frank Tallis: Vienna Blood.

The person said I should read it because I'm a Mozart fan. I didn't see the significance of this as I began to read but it became clear as the plot developed. To say anymore than that would be giving too much away to anyone who wants to read it.

Marrying Mozart - A Novel

Marrying Mozart: A Novel by Stephanie Cowell

(Released by Viking Penguin)


Marrying Mozart is a novel about the life and loves of the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and a family of four beautiful musical sisters.

Marrying Mozart: A Novel

The lives of the four Weber sisters are changed by the arrival of twenty-one-year-old Wolfgang Mozart, a young man struggling to find his place in the eighteenth-century musical world. The sisters will inspire him with their singing; he will write great music for them (including the "Queen of the Night") and fall in love with at least two of them, but the one he eventually marries is not the one he first loves.

This is Stephanie Cowell's fourth published novel. She is an American Book Award winner and a lyric coloratura soprano. The novel will be translated into German and Italian.

For more information on the novel and the author, visit her website at  www.StephanieCowell.com

(c)  2007-2017.  Tel Asiado.  Written for Inspired Pen Web.  All rights reserved.

Mozart in Novels

For Mozart lovers: Novels we reas along the way with a mention of Mozart.

Contributed by Liz Ringrose 

Mozart in "Snow Falling on Cedars


Snow Falling on Cedars is a novel written by David Guterson published by Vintage Books. It's supposed to be inspired by one of my all-time favourite novels, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Thanks Liz.)

"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."



Mozart in These Foolish things


These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach is published by Random House. Moggach makes us face the realities of aging - sincere, funny and at times terrifying. Still an honest view of old age, what it offers and where it might or leads us.


I also read a humorous book called These Foolish Things by Deborah Moggach. In this novel a seriously overworked Indian doctor has to have his ghastly English father in law (Norman) living with him. The old man is uncouth and vulgar. I love this passage:

"Mozart's Requiem. Only then could he become a husband again - a human being, even. The house was so small, with her father in it. Ravi's body was in a permanent state of tension. Every room he went into, Norman was there. Just at the Lacrimosa he would blunder in, the transistor [radio] on a string around his neck burbling the cricket commentary from Sri Lanka."

(Thanks Liz. The use of Mozart's Requiem to me is relevant. Symbolic. Significant.)