Virginia Woolf & Music

Book excerpt: “A truly comprehensive, multi-perspective, and up-to-date survey of the undeniable role of music in Woolf ’s life and writings” (Music and Letters). Through Virginia Woolf's diaries, letters, fiction, and the testimony of her contemporaries, this fascinating volume explores the inspiration and influences of music—from classical through mid-twentieth century—on the preeminent Modernist author of Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, Orlando, A Room of One’s Own, and other masterful compositions. In a letter to violinist Elizabeth Trevelyan, Woolf revealed: “I always think of my books as music before I write them.” In a journal entry she compared herself to an “improviser with [my] hands rambling over the piano.“ Approaching the author’s career from a unique perspective, Virginia Woolf and Music examines her musical background; music in her fiction and her own critical writings on the subject; its importance in the Bloomsbury milieu; and its role within the larger framework of aesthetics, politics, gender studies, language, and Modernism. Illuminating the rich nature of Woolf's works, these essays from scores of literary and music scholars are “a fascinating and important contribution to scholarship about Virginia Woolf, music, and interdisciplinary art” (Music Reference Services Quarterly).