Musical bumps: Discord, by Jeremy Cooper, reviewed
From skylarks and bumblebees to the changing seasons and the sea, composers have long drawn inspiration from the natural world. In Discord, Jeremy Cooper’s eighth novel, Rebekah Rosen goes a step further, seeking inspiration not in nature itself but in a wartime diary chronicling the annual crops on a Peckham allotment. She intends to use this natural code as the basis of a piece for saxophone and orchestra commissioned for the 2022 BBC Proms. Her chosen soloist is Evie Bennett, a rising star on the international stage. Cooper’s narrative traces their complex – indeed, discordant – collaboration, through alternating points of view. Though both trained at the Royal College of
