Introduction

Summary

The introduction provides the literary, musical, and critical contexts for the book. It opens with Forster’s contribution to Humphrey Jennings’s documentary A Diary for Timothy, using it to illustrate the intersection of music and politics. It reviews the formalist approaches that have until now dominated the interpretation of music’s influence on Forster. Alluding to the shifting perception of music from a non-referential art to a political discourse in musicology, the introduction demonstrates that inattention to contemporary ideas of and debates about music leads to inadequate, implicitly Eurocentric readings. The Introduction argues that it is necessary to draw attention to the political – political in its broadest sense, be it racial, national, sexual, or social – resonances of Forster’s engagement with and representations of musics. The Introduction proposes Forster’s notion of ‘not listening’ as a way to examine his representations of music and uses Tibby Schlegel’s listening to Brahms in Howards End to illustrate the many extramusical associations that a single reference to music can generate. The Introduction finishes with an outline of the ensuing chapters.