Composers in Literature

[Chew G]

Besides those already mentioned, some, mainly Czech or Czech-related, that occur to me off the top of my head
 
Alois Jirásek, F.L.Vek, and his Mozart v Praze [a play]
Eduard Moerike, Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag [wonderful treatment of the nature of genius]
Shaffer's Amadeus and Forman's movie based on it
Vladimír Holan, Mozartiana [poems]
Jaroslav Seifert, Mozart v Praze [poems]
Many other, less impressive, examples of Mozart in Czech, mostly novels from Trivialliteratur (e.g. Zdenka Psutková, Ruze z Bertramky, pretty awful)
Janacek's opera Osud is about a fictional composer Zivny, with a rather odd do-it-yourself libretto by a young amateur poet
Capek-Chod's novel Humoreska is about the destructive power of music but really about a violinist rather than a composer
 
>From the 1940s and 1950s there are very forgettable novels on a number of the minor Czech figures - Myslivecek (Il divino Boemo, I forget by whom), Zelenka (a truly dreadful one), Benda -- the vein continues with novels about Janacek, etc. There must be many similar things in German
 
On a higher level, poems by Vrchlicky and others on composers such as Dvorak (Vrchlicky's poem on Dvorak is from 1904 after D's death)
 
E.T.A. Hoffmann's Ritter Gluck (and, since Hoffmann was a composer as well as author, Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann)
 
That may do for now - but there are hundreds of such things.
 
Geoff
 
 Prof. Geoffrey Chew
 Institute of Musicology, Masaryk University, Brno
 chewg at seznam.cz
 
 Department of Music, Royal Holloway, University of London
 g.chew at rhul.ac.uk

________________________________

From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list on behalf of Janneke van de Stadt
Sent: Tue 18.3.08 18:31
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: [SEELANGS] Composers in Literature



Dear SEELANGers,

I am in the process of creating a list of literary works  that 
feature composers (not simply musicians), real or fictional, as the 
main characters.  Although I am mostly interested in Slavic 
literature, please feel free to include any title that corresponds to 
the category.

Many thanks,
Janneke

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