Narrative Resonance: Music and Literature in Conversation
Exploring Continuities of Human Thought
About
Narrative Resonance is a concert series of lecture-performances in partnership with libraries, bookstores, art galleries and high schools in the greater NYC area. Each event pairs a work of classical chamber music with a work of literature, putting them in conversation to explore the emergent parallels, illuminating the persisting truths they offer us in our modern world. Events are about 60 minutes in length, consisting of a presentation about the intersection of the two works, and culminating in a full performance of the musical work by musicians from the Juilliard School, Yale University, and Columbia University.
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How might Virginia Woolf’s approach to narrative parallel German composer Robert Schumann’s use of form? What can Clarice Lispector’s abandoning of linear time reveal about French composer Maurice Ravel’s use of rhythmic, harmonic, and motivic material to restructure time? What do Mary Oliver's poems about letting go share in common with composers' final string quartets?
Our Mission
In today's fast-paced digital age, listening to live classical music and reading are both becoming increasingly infrequent practices in our lives, fading from the modern focus. In presenting performances of chamber music in tandem with discussions of literature through accessible in-person demonstrations, we hope to show people precisely how our engagement with these art forms strengthens and preserves our humanity. Libraries, and literary spaces at large, are a sacred space for local communities. In the spirit of breaking barriers to learning, our goal here is two-fold: ​​
1) bringing this extraordinary music to existing local communities by giving them a window into the musical language
2) bringing musicians and artists into literary spaces to help preserve them for future generations.
Metaphor and analogy are some of the most effective ways that we can observe this continuity of thought and emotion throughout the course of human history, and across divisions of genre. We continue to play Classical Music and read literature not only because they abstractly move us, but because they also offer insights about the human condition, sentiments that ring true centuries later, reimagined in each successive translation. The goal is, of course, never to prescribe or impose one interpretation onto the listener—great art needs no explanation or justification. All we can do as artists is to offer one possible reading of these works that serves as an entry point for audiences into genres that are unfamiliar to them.
Watch
Fluttering Figures: Schumann and Woolf
February 26, 2026, 7:00 pm @ New Canaan Library
Neela String Quartet
How might Virginia Woolf’s approach to narrative illuminate German composer Robert Schumann’s use of form? The emotional impetus of Schumann’s Third String Quartet mirrors that of Woolf’s writing: rather than relying on a narrative arc, hopeful figures flutter in and out, side to side, across the quartet, and the music is spurred on by the ebb and flow of wave-like currents. Woolf herself wrote that she conceived all of her writing as music before putting pen to paper. This event is an exploration of "little moments," inner worlds, and themes and variations. ​​
Upcoming Events
“Maurice and Clarice”: Reinventing time in Ravel’s Piano Trio and Lispector’s Agua Viva
April 10th, 2026, 6:00pm
The Juilliard School - Juilliard Station
What might Clarice Lispector's writing and Maurice Ravel's music share in their approach to reshaping time? In Ravel’s Piano Trio, through his use of rhythmic forms and distinctly colored harmonies, sonority becomes the new arbiter of time, like in Lispector's Agua Viva. In both of these works of art, a “moment of time” is no longer identified by its location within the work’s form or structure. Instead, all instances of a returning musical or literary figure seem to be of precisely the same exact moment in time, regardless of where they occur in the work. The writing creates our sense of time, rather than flowing linearly through it. Ravel thus lets us walk forward towards our past, unifying present and past into what Lispector describes as an eternal present.
Accessible to those new to classical music and to Lispector, this 1-hour program will consist of a short lecture presenting textual and musical examples and culminate in a full performance of Ravel's Piano Trio by Michael Davidman, Kyle Pinzon, and Vibha Janakiraman.
Listen to them perform Ravel's Piano Trio:
Resilience amidst Kaleidoscopic Change: Octavia Butler, Vivian Fung, and Folk Tunes
April 16th, 2026, 5:30pm
Trenton Public Library
120 Academy St, Trenton, NJ 08608
​Join us to learn how Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, music by Vivian Fung, and Québécois Folk Tunes based on Acadian Songs might work together to answer a pressing question: How do we forge resilience, community, and identity amidst cultural instability and kaleidoscopic change?
Accessible to those new to classical music and to Octavia Butler, this 1-hour program will consist of a short lecture presenting textual and musical examples and culminate in a full performance of Vivian Fung’s String Quartet No.5 and Québécois Folk Tunes by the prize-winning Katarina String Quartet, the Juilliard School’s graduate string quartet in residence. For more information on the musicians, visit katarinastringquartet.com.
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​Listen to the Katarina Quartet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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The Poetic Earth: Haydn and Emerson
April 25th, 2026, 2:00pm
Norfolk Library
9 Greenwoods Rd East, Norfolk, CT 06058
In recognition of Earth Day, join us for Norfolk's "Earth Forum" weekend to explore one of Haydn's most inventive string quartets in conversation with the Transcendentalist essays and poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson. How might Emerson's conception of the divine through nature illuminate the radiant faith of the slow movement of Haydn's Op. 76 No. 5? The program will also explore the relationship between poetic form and phrase structures, rhyme and rhythm, and the breaking of rhetorical conventions.
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Accessible to those new to classical music and to Emerson, this 1-hour program will consist of a short lecture presenting textual and musical examples and culminate in a full performance of Haydn’s String Quartet Op. 76 No. 5 by students from the 2025 Norfolk Chamber Music Festival: Vibha Janakiraman, Nate Strothkamp, Lourdes Pinney, and Emil Olejnik.
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For more information on the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, visit https://music.yale.edu/norfolk.​
Events Coming Soon at...​
Larchmont Library - September 10th
Desmond Fish Public Library - September 24th
Poughkeepsie Public Libraries - October 10th
Success Academy - Fall 2026
Brooklyn Public Library - October 2026
Hastings Library - November 2026
and more...
