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.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Arnold Bax
Rebecca West : Harriet Hume (1929) (The title character based on Harriet Cohen)[ 3] Ludwig van Beethoven
Bix Beiderbecke
William Sterndale Bennett
Hector Berlioz
Anthony Burgess : Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[ 5] Jude Morgan: Symphony (2006)[ 9]
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Florimond Anastasa)[ 10] Lord Berners
Hildegard of Bingen
Mary Sharratt: Illuminations (2012)[ 5] Mario Braggiotti
Benjamin Britten
Ian McEwan : Amsterdam (1998) (Clive Linley, correspondencies with Britten)[ 13] Thomas Busby
George Borrow: Lavengro (1851) (as editor of the "Universal Review")[ 10] Frédéric Chopin
Harriet Cohen
Michael Costa
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as St Michel)[ 10] Noël Coward
Christian Darnton
Claude Debussy
Frederick Delius
Edward J Dent
Delia Derbyshire
Arnold Dolmetsch
Edward Elgar
César Franck
Marcel Proust: À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27) (aspects of Vinteuil, see also Debussy and Saint-Saëns) George Gershwin
Carlo Gesualdo
David Pownall: Music to Murder By (1976)[ 22] Jimmy Glover
Eugene Aynsley Goossens
Inez Baranay: Pagan (1990)
Louis Nowra : The Devil is a Woman (2004)Glenn Gould
Christopher Miller: Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects: A Novel in Liner Notes (2004)[ 24] Cecil Gray
Jan Hambourg
George Frideric Handel
Nick Drake : All the Angels: Handel and the First Messiah (2015)Josef Matthias Hauer
Charles Edward Horsley
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Charles Auchester)[ 8] John Pyke Hullah
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Lenhart Davy)[ 10] Halfdan Jebe
C F Keary: The Journalist (1898) (as Hauch)[ 28] Maurice Jacobson
Joseph Joachim
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Charles Auchester)[ 10] Aram Khachaturian
Constant Lambert
Henry Lawes
Madame Levinskaya
Franz Liszt
Elisabeth Lutyens
Alma Mahler
Max Phillips: The Artist’s Wife (2001)[ 35]
Mary Sharratt: Ecstasy (2018)[ 36] Gustav Mahler
Florence Ashton Marshall
Fanny Mendelssohn
Peter Härtling : Liebste Fenchel (2011)Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Maria Cerinthea)[ 10] Felix Mendelssohn
Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[ 5]
Pierre La Mure: Beyond Desire (1955)[ 41]
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Seraphael)[ 8] Noel Mewton-Wood
Sonia Orchard: The Virtuosso (2009)[ 42] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Hubert Parry
Helen Perkin
Carl Ginsburg: Medicine Journeys: Ten Stories (Center Press, 1983) (as Mrs Todd Ashby)[ 43] Sergei Prokofiev
Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[ 5]
David Pownall: Master Class (1982)[ 22] Maurice Ravel
Gioachino Rossini
Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[ 5] Harold Rubens
Anton Rubinstein
George Eliot: Daniel Deronda (1876) (aspects of Julius Klesmer, see also Liszt)[ 19] 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
Erik Satie
Caitlin Horrocks: Vexations (2019)[ 46] Arnold Schoenberg
Franz Schubert
Clara Schumann
Robert Schumann
Jessica Duchen : Ghost Variations (2016)[ 50] Elisabeth Kyle: Duet: The Story of Robert and Clara Schumann (1968)
Peter Härtling: Schumanns Schatten (1996) Dmitri Shostakovich
Jean Sibelius
Simon Boswell: The Seven Symphonies: A Finnish Murder Mystery (2005)[ 53]
Caroline J Sinclair: My Music, My Drinking & Me (2015) (fictionalised memoir)[ 54] Ethel Smyth
Kaikhosru Sorabji
Christopher Miller: Sudden Noises from Inanimate Objects: A Novel in Liner Notes (2004)[ 55] Barbara Strozzi
Russell Hoban . My Tango with Barbara Strozzi (2007) ((as modern day Bertha Strunk)[ 5] Arthur Sullivan
Kay Swift
Mitchell James Kaplan. Rhapsody (2021)[ 23] Antonio Vivaldi
Barbara Quick: Vivaldi's Virgins (2007)[ 5] William Walton
Lord Berners : Count Omega (1941) (as Emmanuel Smith)[ 57] David Pownall: Facade (radio play, 2002) Richard Wagner
Anthony Burgess: Mozart & the Wolf Gang (1991)[ 5] Peter Warlock
Frank Baker : The Birds (1936) (as Paul Weaver)Ralph Bates : Dead End of the Sky (1937) (as Robert Durand)[ 58] Robertson Davies : A Mixture of Frailties [ 59] Aldous Huxley: Antic Hay (1923) (as Coleman)[ 60]
D. H. Lawrence: Women in Love [ 60]
Anthony Powell: Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (1960) (aspects of Maclintick)
David Pownall: Music to Murder By (1976)[ 22]
Jean Rhys : Till September Petronella (short story, 1930s) (as Julian Oakes)[ 61] Osbert Sitwell: Those Were the Days (1938) (as Roy Hartle) Hugo Wolf
Thomas Mann: Doctor Faustus (1947) (aspects of Adrian Leverkühn, see also Schoenberg)[ 62] Carl Friedrich Zelter
Elizabeth Sara Sheppard: Charles Auchester (1853) (as Aronach)[ 10]
^ A. H. Weiler. "Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968)" in The New York Times
^ Erin Douglass. 'A novel envisions what it would be like to study with Bach ', Christian Science Monitor , 29 April 2022
^ a b Corymbus: The Music That Time Forgot ^ Duchan, Jessica. Immortal at Unbound ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Freya Parr. 'Ten of the best (and worst) novels about composers ', BBC Music Magazine , 26 February 2019
^ New York Review of Books , 26 October, 2021^ British Musician and Musical News , Vol. 7 no 67, July 1931, p. 153^ a b c d e f Weliver, Phyllis. The Musical Crowd in English Fiction (2006)
^ review, Publishers Weekly ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m M.C. Rintoul: Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction
^ Amory, Mark. Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric (1999)
^ The Letters of Scott Fitzgerald , ed. Andrew Turnbull (1964), p. 570^ Robert E Kohn. 'The Fivesquare "Amsterdam" of Ian McEwan' , in Critical Survey , Vol. 16, No. 1 (2004), pp. 89-106
^ Diedre Bair. 'Getting even with Chopin ', in The New York Times , 11 August 1985, Section 7, p.9
^ Pan Macmillian ^ a b Fry, Helen. Music & men : the life and loves of Harriet Cohen (2008)
^ Collett, Derek (2015). His Own Executioner: The Life of Nigel Balchin ISBN 978-1-78132-391-5 .
^ Claire de Lune review , Montreal Gazette , 24 November, 1962^ a b c d e f Amos, William. The Originals: Who's Really Who in Fiction
^ Audrey Wollen. 'The Writer Who Burned Her Own Books' , in The New Yorker , 3 January, 2023
^ Richard Lines. 'George Moore's Evelyn Innes' , in The Norwood Review No 174 (2008)
^ a b c d e f g The Composer Plays , Oberon (1996)^ a b Rhapsody , by Mitchell James Kaplan^ Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise blog (2004) ^ Leo Hamalian (1996). D.H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers ISBN 978-0-8386-3603-9 ^ Spurling, Hilary: Dancing to the Music of Time , Hamish Hamilton, 2017 ^ 'Willa Cather and the Professor's House', in Western American Literature , Vol. 7, No. 1, A Willa Cather Issue (Spring 1972), pp. 13-24
^ Boyle, Andrew J. Delius and Norway (2017), p. 175 ^ Bluemel, Kristin. George Orwell and the Radical Eccentrics: Intermodernism in Literary London (2004), Chapter 1, p.27-66
^ Lloyd, Stephen. Constant Lambert: Beyond The Rio Grande . Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2014. ISBN 978-1-84383-898-2
^ Allis, Michael. Temporaries and Eternals: The Music Criticism of Aldous Huxley
^ Nélida , Suny Press^ Walker, Alan. Franz Liszt: The Weimar Years, 1848–1861 (1989), p. 250
^ Henry Reed: Hilda Tablet and Others , BBC Books, London, 1971
^ Art in Fiction: The Artist's Wife ^ Art in Fiction. Ecstacy ^ Faber, Mahler's Conversion ^ 'Thomas Mann', Mahler Foundation ^ Werley, Matthew. Mahler in Context (2020), Chapter 32, 'Influences in Literature'
^ Shannon Draucker. Sounding Bodies: Acoustical Science and Musical Erotics in Victorian Literature
^ Beyond Desire review, The Age . 12 December, 1956
^ Harper Collins, The Virtuosso ^ 'Helen Adie', at Gurdjieff Club ^ Flynn, Jessica (4 May 2010). "Tributes paid to piano great Harold Rubens" . South Wales Echo . Cardiff. Retrieved 13 October 2017 . ^ Whittle, David. Bruce Montgomery/Edmund Crispin: A Life in Music and Books (2008)
^ Art in Fiction: Vexations ^ Jack M Stein. Adrian Leverkühn as a Composer Germanic Review , Vol. 25 (1950)
^ Penguin Books ^ Art in Fiction. Longing ^ Art in Fiction. Ghost Variations ^ Art in Fiction: The Conductor ^ Helga Schwalm. 'Imagining Compromised Creativity: Art and Fear in Shostakovich Bio-Fiction ', in Slavonica , Volume 25, 2020 - Issue 1
^ sevensymphonies.com ^ GoodReads ^ Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise blog (2004) ^ Eyles, Allen (1986). Sherlock Holmes: A Centenary Celebration Harper & Row . pp. 118-119 . ISBN 0-06-015620-1 ^ Lloyd, Stephen. William Walton: Muse of Fire (2002)
^ Bates, Ralph. Rainbow Fish: Four Short Novels (1937)
^ Allis, Michael. 'From Musicology to Novel: Reassessing Robertson Davies's Literary Representation of Peter Warlock', in University of Toronto Quarterly (Winter 2019)
^ a b Smith, Barry. Peter Warlock: The Life of Philip Heseltine (1994)
^ Angier, Carole. Jean Rhys: Life and Work (1998)
^ Stokes, Richard. The Complete Songs of Hugo Wolf: Life, Letters, Lieder