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Jonathan Coe’s novel explores the friendship between Ravel and Vaughan Williams
Jonathan Coe’s novel centres on the friendship between Maurice Ravel and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
The French and English composers met in Paris in 1907, when Vaughan Williams took lessons from Ravel for three months.
Vaughan Williams had found his music too heavy and was looking for a way to develop it.
Ravel’s lessons helped shape Vaughan Williams’s musical voice, which drew on English folk music, hymns and chorales.
Ravel and Vaughan Williams had very different personalities and musical interests, but their time together began a lasting friendship.
The novel uses their music to explore French and English identity, including how national traditions can shape people and their art.
Coe tells the story through an imagined memoir by Ravel’s friend Pierre “Mylo” Mylonas, presented as a rediscovered manuscript.
The story focuses on their friendship and its influence; no next steps are stated.
Jonathan Coe’s novel *Lessons in Harmony* explores the friendship between composers Maurice Ravel and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
The two composers spent three months together in Paris, beginning a friendship that influenced both men and their music.
The novel examines how Ravel and Vaughan Williams drew on French and English cultural traditions in their work.
It is framed as an unpublished memoir by Ravel’s friend Pierre “Mylo” Mylonas, which is later “discovered.”
The Guardian review describes the novel as a fantasia that shifts in style and mood.
- Who
- Jonathan Coe wrote the novel about composers Maurice Ravel and Ralph Vaughan Williams.
- What
- *Lessons in Harmony* explores their friendship and how music reflects national identity.
- When
- The composers’ lessons in Paris took place over three months; the year is not stated.
- Where
- Paris, where Vaughan Williams studied with Ravel.
- Why
- Coe said he had wanted to write about the composers since learning they were friends and supporters of each other.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
Vaughan Williams told critic Edwin Evans that he found his own music “lumpy and stodgy”.
Vaughan Williams studied with Ravel in Paris for three months, beginning their friendship.
Pierre “Mylo” Mylonas’s memoir was written, according to the novel’s framing.
- Novel
- *Lessons in Harmony*
- Author
- Jonathan Coe
- Composers
- Maurice Ravel and Ralph Vaughan Williams
- Paris lessons
- Three months
- Memoir narrator
- Pierre “Mylo” Mylonas
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What people are saying
ever since I discovered that my two favourite composers … were friends and supporters of each other, I’ve wanted to write a novel about them
a real artist, who only realised his richness when he learned to be English!
lumpy and stodgy