# Classical Music in Other Arts



## EricIsAPolarBear (Aug 18, 2007)

I get a kick out of seeing or reading about classical music in other art forms. Painters, poets, novelists and film makers find composers and musicians to be attractive subjects.

Today I read Ian McEwan's novel _Amsterdam_. One of the protagonists of this novel is a contemporary British classical music composer, a self described successor to Vaughan Williams (though from the further descriptions, he seems more of a pre-modern composer). McEwan obviously knows his stuff and we get to see through the character Clive's mind the world of composition (in fairly technical terms for literature anyway). I found it a gas to read. Anyway, the novel itself is really strong (it won the Booker Prize).

I thought that this might be a good forum to share your favourite examples of this, and selfishly, it might give me some more books to read or films to watch


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## BuddhaBandit (Dec 31, 2007)

There is always the masterful use of Beethoven's 9th Symphony in Anthony Burgess' great novel _A Clockwork Orange_ and subsequently in Stanley Kubrick's movie version. The piece is the protanganist's, Alex, favorite classical work- he always mentions putting on "a little bit of the old Luuudwig Vaaannn". Both book and movie are pretty intense, but both are really good.


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

Well, there's always the Red Violin (movie) and Chaconne (book) by a person whose name escapes me at the moment. It's a novel about a kid whose life is changed by Bach's Chaconne or something like that. Walt Whitman uses musical terminology pretty often in his poetry, most notably in Song of Myself. That should somewhat whet your appetite...


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