The Symphony and the Novel -a Harmonious Couple?

The symphony and the novel evolved in tandem for two centuries. Music moved on after modernism, but whatever happened to fiction?

From a piece by Will Self in the Guardian...

That both forms reach their apogee in the 19th century – and in very similar ways – seems to me a function of their sharing the same artistic aim: to simultaneously enact the most complete possible world-in-words (or world-in-notes), while also actualising the creative personality itself. For the 19th-century symphonist, the sonic cosmos he created needed to be internally consistent, while at the same time expressing his unique spirit – functions undertaken, respectively, by harmony and melody. In the great 19th-century realist novels similar aims find their outlet in the assumed equivalence of the writer with the impersonal narrative voice. This sleight-of-mind induces in the reader a conviction of the authenticity of the events described and the sincerity of the describer – harmony and melody again.

At the twin peaks of the 19th-century novel and symphony there is an overarching confidence about what the forms can do, a sense of their totalising capability. In the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms, or the novels of Tolstoy and George Eliot, there is little insecurity about the potential of their form – no neuroticism, no insinuating irony. God remains relatively securely in his world, and the novelist or composer remains equally secure in his or her ability to interact with it in the service of producing aesthetic effects. Of course, there's trouble on the horizon – how could there not be? – but for now the enlightenment conception of progress stays in lockstep with the advance of both art forms.