Difficult Rhythm: Music and the Word in E. M. Forster

Difficult Rhythm examines E. M. Forster’s irrepressible interest in music, providing plentiful examples of how the eminent British author’s fiction resonates with music. Musicologist Michelle Fillion analyzes his critical writings, short stories, and novels, including A Room with a View, which alludes to Beethoven, Wagner, and Schumann, and Howards End, which explicitly alerts readers to how fiction can adopt musical forms and ideas. This volume also includes, for the first time in print, Forster’s notes on Beethoven’s piano sonatas. Documenting his knowledge of music, his musical favourites and friends, and his attitudes toward various composers, performances, and competing musical theories, this engaging book traces the musical influences of luminaries such as Wagner, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Britten on Forster’s life and work. Michelle Fillion is a professor of musicology at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, and the editor of Early Viennese Chamber Music with Obbligato Keyboard.