Jonathan Coe's latest novel draws inspiration from the unlikely friendship between French composer Maurice Ravel and English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, examining how music shapes and expresses national identity. According to The Guardian, the novel takes the form of an unpublished memoir discovered decades after Ravel's death, narrated by the fictional character Pierre "Mylo" Mylonas, a devoted friend loosely based on the real critic Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi.
The historical foundation for Coe's narrative rests on a genuine moment in musical history. In 1907, Vaughan Williams confided to critic Edwin Evans that his own compositions felt "lumpy and stodgy". His training at the Royal College of Music had been dominated by Germanic traditions—Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Wagner—whose heavy contrapuntal techniques permeated his work. Seeking liberation from this influence, Vaughan Williams initially planned to study under the traditionalist Vincent d'Indy at the Paris Conservatoire. However, Calvocoressi suggested an alternative: Maurice Ravel, then among France's most celebrated young composers.
The two men presented a study in contrasts. Ravel was diminutive, meticulous, intensely reserved, and an enthusiastic collector of intricate mechanical toys. Vaughan Williams was large, unkempt, bluntly nonconformist, and possessed an enthusiasm for English folk music that bewildered Ravel. Their initial encounter proved awkward—during their first lesson, Ravel asked Vaughan Williams to compose a brief minuet in Mozart's manner, a request the Englishman flatly refused. Yet the three months they spent together in Paris initiated a friendship that would leave an indelible mark on both men and their compositions.
Coe has described the novel as a fantasia, employing a freeform structure that eschews rigid traditional frameworks. The narrative possesses the exhilarating immediacy of improvisation, shifting abruptly in tempo and mood, modulating to unexpected harmonic territories. One section, written by another of Ravel's pupils recounting a London visit that Mylo missed, is interspersed with Mylo's exasperated corrections. A virtuoso passage depicting the relocation of a piano reads as though extracted from a Buster Keaton film.
At its core, Lessons in Harmony is a meditation on how national identity shapes artistic expression and personal relationships. Mylo, born to a Portuguese father and Greek mother, oscillating between London and Paris, exists as a man without a fixed homeland—a perpetually impoverished polyglot anchored by a single constant: his private devotion to Ravel. Beneath his beguilingly partisan account lies a complex interweaving of opposing forces: nature and artifice, tradition and modernity, slapstick and gravity, self-interest and generosity, individual identity and national belonging. Though Ravel and Vaughan Williams remained fundamentally different—chalk and cheese—their deepening understanding gradually infiltrates their musical output, softening the boundaries between them. Mylo himself undergoes transformation through witnessing their evolution, becoming more open and receptive.
The friendship's trajectory becomes inextricably bound to historical events. Both composers served in the First World War, Ravel in the trenches and Vaughan Williams as an ambulance driver. Though they fought on the same side against the same adversary, their bond never fully recovered after the conflict ended. Two decades later, the world descended into war again. In the novel's opening passages, Vaughan Williams poses to Evans a fundamental question: can music represent a nation's soul? By the conclusion, as Mylo recalls the triumphant premiere of Vaughan Williams's Fifth Symphony at the Proms on 15 August 1943, critical opinion delivers an unequivocal affirmation. In wartime's darkness, Vaughan Williams emerges as a beacon of hope, embodying a profound shared Englishness, offering inspiration and benediction. Yet Coe leaves readers to contemplate whether great music can ever be so neatly categorised, and whether those who listen to it can genuinely aspire to such an elevated conception of nationhood.
Ravel's music has long been celebrated for its clarity, elegance, and formal emotional restraint—qualities that epitomise the zenith of French cultural values. Conversely, Vaughan Williams constructed his work from ancient hymns, chorales, and folk melodies, deliberately establishing himself within an English musical tradition. The Times declared in 1952 that "'Englishry' is in the very blood and bones of his music," a judgement Ravel himself endorsed, describing his friend as "a real artist, who only realised his richness when he learned to be English!"
Lessons in Harmony represents Coe's sixteenth novel and spans Britain and France in the years before and after the First World War. The fictional character Mylo plays a pivotal role in encouraging Ravel to accept Vaughan Williams as a pupil, while the story intertwines the composers' friendship with Mylo's own tragic narrative.
When will the novel be available?
The novel is scheduled for publication on 12 November 2026, with the print edition priced at £16. Coe will discuss the book at Birmingham's Royal Conservatoire on 11 November 2026, featuring audience questions and a signing. Additional author appearances are scheduled for Waterstones Deansgate in Manchester on 23 November 2026, Bath on 26 November 2026, and Bristol on 1 December 2026, where a live performance of Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello by Marian Givens and Juliet McCarthy will accompany the event.
