Lessons In Harmony

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Product Information

ISBN9780241837740
AuthorsJonathan Coe
PublisherPenguin Books
FormatPaperback
Publishing Date12/11/2026
Price (excl. tax)€20.52
Tax€1.23
Price (incl. tax)€21.75
Availability+20 units in external warehouse

Product Description

FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR 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.

'A new Jonathan Coe is always a treat' The Times

'My comfort read: anything by Jonathan Coe' Bob Mortimer