Books by Jessica Duchen

Jessica is a versatile author with a musical bias. Her output includes novels, biographies, plays, words&music projects, poetry for musical setting, music journalism and more. Born in London, she studied music at Cambridge and piano with Joan Havill. Her novels often focus on the cross-currents between family generations, with music a recurring theme. The latest, GHOST VARIATIONS, is "the strangest detective story in music", based on the true story of the bizarre rediscovery, and Nazi propaganda conscription, of Schumann's long-suppressed violin concerto. Jessica's biographies of the composers Gabriel Faure and Erich Wolfgang Korngold for Phaidon's 20th Century Composers series have met with wide acclaim. Her writing has appeared in in The Independent, The Guardian and The Sunday Times, as well as BBC Music Magazine and Opera News, among other publications. Her music blog "JDCMB", http://jessicamusic.blogspot.com, has attracted more than 2.5m readers. She has recently written an opera libretto, SILVER BIRCH, for the composer Roxanna Panufnik - a commission for Garsington Opera 2017. Her play A WALK THROUGH THE END OF TIME often pops up at music festivals to introduce Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time and has been performed by actor teams including Harriet Walter & Henry Goodman and Janet Suzman & Michael Pennington. Jessica lives in London with her violinist husband and two big fluffy cats. She loves long walks, cooking, ballet, theatre and scouring second-hand bookshops for out-of-print musical gems. Special passions include Russian literature and Nordic Noir.