Lessons in Harmony

LESSONS IN HARMONY is a novel inspired by the true story of the friendship between two composers in the years before and after the First World War, blending comedy and depth with all the skill that readers have come to expect from award-winning novelist Jonathan Coe.

The year is 1907 and Maurice Ravel is one of the most admired young composers in France. In Belle Epoque Paris he cuts a charismatic, dandyish figure, whose technically flawless music hides a deep emotional core, and whose unpredictable talent is as hard to pin down as his mysterious personal life.

When Ravel’s devoted acolyte Mylo encourages him to take on a new pupil – a rising British composer called Ralph Vaughan Williams – an unlikely cross-channel friendship starts to blossom. The two men could hardly be more different. Ralph is down-to-earth, married, and currently engaged in a long-term project of collecting forgotten British folk songs – a musical form in which Ravel has no interest.

All they truly have in common is that in clear but indefinable ways, each of them seems an archetypal representative of his own country.

But as the shadow of war approaches, their friendship becomes entwined with Mylo’s own tragic story. The two friends must pursue their vocation through one of the most turbulent but creative periods in history. Will their differing senses of national identity – one ‘typically French’, the other ‘so British’ – liberate or constrain them?

LESSONS IN HARMONY is a stunning novel about the power of music to create beauty, to freeze time, and, at its greatest, to express the personality not just of its composer, but of an entire nation.