My new novel, Duet for One, is a love story, a journey through grief, and a tour of the classical-music world, based in my hometown of Philadelphia. As a former violist, and during Duet’s 20-year gestation, I’ve paid close attention to books about classical music. Fully capturing music on the page is impossible because it is ephemeral. You hear it, and then it’s gone. And yet, some books sing, immersing readers in an unfamiliar world and raising questions that go far beyond the notes played. Here are seven such books that honor the complexities, joys, and challenges of classical music.

Symphony of Secrets: A Novel by Brendan Slocumb (Vintage). Author Brendan Slocumb is a professional violinist and violist. He is also African American. Symphony of Secrets is his second musical mystery and it’s a page-turner. A Black musicologist is called in to investigate a newly discovered manuscript by a famous white composer. Along the way, the musicologist stumbles onto corruption, racism, historical erasure, and more. The book follows two stories, one in the present and one in the early 20th century, letting the reader and the researcher uncover the truth together. Even as it entertains, Symphony of Secrets makes a sobering statement about “forgotten” Black classical composers and musicians throughout American history.

Sisters: A Novel by Lily Tuck (Atlantic Monthly Press). National Book Award-winner Lily Tuck takes an unsparing look at step-motherhood in this tale, writing in brief blocks of text that pack a punch. The narrator/stepmother is not named, nor is the ex-wife, nor the husband. The ex-wife is a pianist who graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She was trained by pianists who were renowned when I was growing up, such as Eleanor Sokoloff and “her Bösendorfer” piano, “with ninety-seven keys instead of eighty-eight.” Tuck describes the classical repertoire the ex-wife has in her fingers and the musical career she surrendered to raising children and supporting the husband who then left her. In Sisters, music stands in for how much a person — in this case, the ex-wife — can lose.

If I Were a Racist: Exploring Racism in Music Teaching by Nathan Holder (Holders Hill). Why is classical music overwhelmingly white? What is the correlation between the height of Europe’s involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the wealthy patrons who fostered composers such as Mozart? Who knew that George Frideric Handel traded stock in the Royal African Company? Why is musical notation a norm when many, if not most, cultures have passed down rhythm and melody aurally? And what do the terms “world music” and “African music” say about our ignorance of specific local musical traditions? In this enlightening book, the author cautions that “Anti-racism is a stance — it means continually being aware of how racism has embedded itself.”

The Song of Names: A Novel by Norman Lebrecht (Anchor). Narrator Martin Simmonds’ boyhood is reordered when his parents take in a young violin prodigy fleeing Nazi Poland. Dovidl, as the refugee is nicknamed, is a risk-taking genius. He’s not only a singular violinist but also a brilliant student. The two Jewish boys grow up together — Dovidl, from a Polish shtetl, and Martin, an urban sophisticate from London. Yet it is Dovidl who opens up Martin’s world as they survive the Blitz and attend school together. Dovidl’s sudden disappearance just before his concert debut drives the plot, which addresses not only the fiercely competitive world of classical music but also the cloistered life and scholarship of the Hasidic community in postwar England. The combination makes for an engaging read.

The Changing of Keys by Carolyn Jack (Regal House Publishing). The narrator of this poetic novel is pegged for a piano career but switches to opera once he leaves home, causing a permanent rift with his stage mother. Like the prodigy in The Song of Names, he is raised by a surrogate family who supports his choices. Through the scrim of music, author Carolyn Jack examines a man whose emotional life has been misshapen and suppressed by the early death of his father and by separation from — and hatred of — his mother. Like Lebrecht, the author shines a light on the complex burdens of talent. With a wonderful command of language, she conveys musical understanding and the missed cues and hardships of familial estrangement.

Dvořák’s Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music by Joseph Horowitz (W.W. Norton & Company). Here, historian and concert producer Joseph Horowitz discusses the bright future for American music that Bohemian composer Antonín Dvořák envisioned when he was appointed to be a music professor in New York, where he lived from 1892 to 1895. It was clear to him that Black and Indigenous music foretold the future of American classical music. The author delves into both American literature and music history to unfurl the doomed nature of Dvořák’s prophecy. In a too-often-told story, jewels of the classical-music establishment, including Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, quashed non-white voices. While jazz was the luminous outgrowth of this suppression, Dvořák’s Prophecy asks: What would’ve happened if the American cultural establishment hadn’t been so intent on maintaining white supremacy?

Time’s Echo: Music, Memory, and the Second World War by Jeremy Eichler (Vintage). This is a stunning portrait of the role of music in the 20th century as seen through four prominent composers. It walks through collective memory, posing intriguing questions about how and why music holds truth. Eichler accomplishes this, in part, by examining iconic works elegizing World War II. Time’s Echo describes the incomparable Jewish contributions to European music and culture and their subsequent giant absence wrought by the Nazis. Part requiem, part poetry, part music, and all heart, this is a book that will contribute to the ages.

Martha Anne Toll’s second novel, Duet for One, came out May 6, 2025, with generous pre-publication praise. Her debut novel, Three Muses, won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction and was shortlisted for the Gotham Book Prize. Toll serves on the board of directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. A graduate of Yale, she holds a B.A. in music and a J.D. from Boston University School of Law. She comes to writing professionally after a career in social justice.