A Life Composed in Stories: Author Frances Thimann on how classical music shaped her latest collection

Nottingham author Frances Thimann’s latest short story collection, Sweet Thames, Run Softly Till I End My Song, brings together all the stories she has written over the course of her career that were inspired by classical music. The collection breathes new life into her pieces, illuminating the profound emotional resonance music can hold. Within this collection, Thimann explores the complex interplay between performers and conductors, and the often stark contrast between musicians' lives on and off the stage – as well as how a single song can evoke a memory, or reawaken history. 

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Frances to discuss the creative process behind her newest collection and the inspirations that shaped it.

Your new short story collection, ‘Sweet Thames, Run Softly Till I End My Song’, explores the emotional resonance of classical music. Can you share more about how this collection came to be and what inspired the initial idea?

I studied music originally, though I never became a professional musician. But it has always been important to me, as a player and a listener, so when I started writing, it felt natural that music would also be important for me to write about.

My first collection, Cello and Other Stories, was born out of this deep connection to music, and that title piece is now the first in this new collection, Sweet Thames, Run Softly, Till I End My Song. This book gathers together all the short stories I have written over the years that explore or are inspired by classical music.  

Classical music isn’t as widely popular as it once was, so I think that made it even more important to me to collect these pieces together. But at first, the writing and then the collection were just for myself, to see the words on a page, and put my thoughts and ideas into a tangible form. But now I hope, more importantly, that perhaps others might find them interesting, and might enjoy them or connect with the music in their own way.

Your background in music clearly informs your writing. How do you think your training and emotional connection to music shape the rhythm, tone, or structure of the stories you tell in this collection?

My early immersion in music as a teenager seems to have never left me. I worked for the British Council, which has proven quite formative to my work – with the people, the music and the travel feeding into some of the ideas I’ve been able to draw on in my writing. Music has really been a fundamental influence on how I write. For instance, music often develops through repetition and extension, and I know I tend to use the repetition of words or phrases perhaps more than most writers, sometimes to the despair of critical colleagues! 

Writers often talk about trying to hear their words in their ‘mind’s ear,’ and I do too, but maybe I hear slightly differently; the rhythm of a phrase is really important to me in music and it plays out in the same way in my writing, hearing how the words fall, how they move.

Some writers have written pieces that reflect the actual form and structure of the music they are writing about - I have not gone as far as that (so far!). But I think my background also does give me some extra knowledge of the music itself, of its composers, and of particular works, how and why they were written, which I can use to feed into my own writing in subtle ways. 

All of these stories had been written previously and were then compiled into this collection. I believe ‘Cello’ is the oldest piece you have written which you chose to include. What was it about that story that made you feel it belonged in this collection? Has its meaning or emotional impact changed for you over time? In rest of the collection, were there any particular feelings that were stirred when revisiting these pieces, or any ideas you chose to change or develop which differ from when the pieces were first published? Do you feel memory and music are an intertwined idea? 

Yes, I think for many writers, there’s always an element of real life found within fiction. ‘Cello’ is probably the oldest piece in the collection, and although it’s not directly autobiographical, it does come from a very personal place. A close family member died very young, and while the woman in the story is the wife – not just a family member – the way the memories are relived through music is reminiscent for me of that time and that event. The piece of music referenced, the Sarabande from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 5, is such an enigmatic and questioning work. It has always seemed to offer some kind of meaning, or at least a form of comfort, around that loss. So 'Cello' still holds the same weight for me now – probably even more so revisiting and revising the piece – as it did when I first wrote it.

End Notes is one of my newer pieces, but it has a strong emotional hold for me. The story really was born from my discovery that Anna Magdalena Bach – Johann Sebastian Bach’s second wife – died in poverty, despite the extraordinary life she had. That shocked and upset me, so I felt I wanted to write some beautiful redemption for her and her dedication to her husband. Writing in her voice felt quite intimate, even a little intrusive at times, but also important. It felt like giving voice to a history that had gone largely unnoticed.

I do feel that music and memory are intertwined. A piece of music can transport us to a different time, place and situation altogether, reminding us of those who are dead or very far away or long gone from our lives. Music is abstract, not specific, unlike words and art (at least, representational art), so it can imply far more, and in some ways can have even more meaning, as it speaks differently to different people.  And it is, of course, a universal language; I have been able to see how this works during the years that I was lucky enough to live and work abroad.

Are there any particular characters or moments in this collection that feel especially personal to you, almost autobiographical, perhaps in spirit? I wondered if perhaps the speaker, Jack in ‘The Silver Rose’, when he is writing, shared an essence with you? Or perhaps Lucy – with her thirst to experience life before she really sits down to write?

In ‘The Silver Rose’, I certainly identify more with Lucy, who wanted to experience a full life before becoming a writer, than with Jack, the more remote character and commentator. But to an extent, I am both! You can be anyone you like as a writer!  And again, so much fiction is autobiographical.

Are there other things you would like readers to take away from this collection emotionally, intellectually, or musically? 

Yes, indeed. In your questions, you have focused very much on emotion and memory, and that is very understandable; it is a big theme in my writing.  But my background has also given me some understanding of the music itself, the reasons for its composition and the lives of the composers and musicians at those times.  

For example, ‘Quartet for the End of Time’ tells the extraordinary story of how Messiaen’s eight-piece movement came to be. It was written under dreadful conditions whilst he was in a Second World War Prisoner-of-War Camp, defying its horrors. It carries such huge historical significance, and I hope it does justice to a powerful moment: with musicians coming together to play in the middle of great suffering, and carrying that with them beyond the war. It’s a story that restores your faith in humanity, and I wanted people to know about that. ‘Risk’ is equally important, telling the story of a symphony in which the musicians all get up and walk away towards the end! In this, I have tried to portray the frequent difficulties and complexities of composers’ and performers’ lives, which resonate as much today as in the 18th century when this piece is set.

Through all of this, if I can, I’d love to encourage people through the collection to go out and experience more classical music, go to an orchestral concert, to play, listen, or just read about music and find the personal emotions it invokes, the history it keeps and the people it has touched. 

The final story shares its name with the book’s title. What made this story, and that phrase, feel like the right emotional note to end on?

That title seemed the strongest and most unusual of all the pieces and therefore the best possible one for the title of the whole collection. But the final story is about memory and ageing certainly, and about time itself.  And though it is based to an extent on the life of one musician and his wife, it is the water, the great River Thames, which seems almost to take the place here of music and memory and time itself.

Sweet Thames, Run Softly, Till I End My Song is available now from Big White Shed and other retailers.