SOSOADAE
June 6, 2026

The Viennese Tale of English Music

A powerful 18th-century British music society experiments with the genius of girls to determine whether women truly have souls.

The Viennese Tale of English Music
 
Set against the historically accurate, brutal exclusion of women from 18th-century classical music, The Viennese Tale of English Music introduces a world where symphonic composers compete like elite athletes in an international contest affectionately called The Round.
 
At the pinnacle of this ruthless industry stands Roger Craven, the Academe’s prized maestro. To the public, he is a flawless cultural idol. Privately, he is a man unraveling—haunted by a fractured marriage, a bitter custody battle, and what is becoming a crippling dependency. The Academe gladly ignores his staggering addictions, so long as his star keeps rising.
 
Driven to maintain its global dominance and believing itself to have reached the limits of male potential, the Academe launches an unprecedented plan to absorb a progressive, independent girls’ school and exploit the musical minds of young women. Roger is dispatched to orchestrate the takeover, forcing him into a complex alliance with the school’s director— his brilliant childhood friend—Amelia Eaves.
 
At the same time, as Roger is embarking on a high-stakes tour to contest his fiercest continental rival, a sinister presence from his past emerges to shatter his carefully constructed armor. To survive the machinations of the empire that owns them, Roger and Amelia must confront the deepest hypocrisies of themselves and their world in a fight to unleash a forbidden, commanding voice that will challenge the very definition of human genius.
 

I. Roger Craven (The Celebrated Maestro)

An excerpt from the book in development. (This audio features a rough draft excerpt, which does not interfere with the narrative flow or arc)
 
Listen to Roger’s introductory arc:

A musical prodigy is transformed from a boy the world should never have known into the celebrated heart of England’s famed Academe. For the Academe, with great omnipotence comes the eternal race to maintain it. This excerpt in development explores the heavy burden of genius, the institutional pressure to secure a legacy, and the precarious intersection of talent and artifice.

Music: Selections from “Brigte” Symphony and Cantus Academus by Nefertiti Van der Riese

II. Amelia Eaves (The Outcast Maestra)

An excerpt from the book in development. (This audio features a rough draft excerpt, which does not interfere with the narrative flow or arc)

Listen to Amelia’s introductory arc:

The infamous Amelia Eaves has made a comfortable life for herself as a defiant composer navigating the misogynic gatekeeping of the musical elite. This excerpt in development explores the collision between artistic ambition and societal erasure while casting doubt on the benefit of finding autonomy, or peace, within exclusion.
 

III. Amelia & Roger

An excerpt from the book in development. (This audio features a rough draft excerpt, which does not interfere with the narrative flow or arc)

Listen to the introductory arc of Roger and Amelia’s relationship:

Who taught this woman how to compose anyway? Amelia and Roger have a defiant musical partnership that persists in the shadows of an exclusionary establishment. This excerpt examines the dangerous intimacy between two geniuses and the silent complicity of an elite society that permits their collaboration only so long as it remains invisible.

History Behind The Tale

While The Viennese Tale of English Music takes place in a heightened world where composers compete like athletes, the subjugation and exclusion of women is drawn directly from historical reality, where men control genius and the public sphere while women are kept physically and politically weakened, with no natural path to power or influence apart from a man, marriage, and his household—and believing they have no physical way to defend themselves.
 
In 18th-century Europe, women were systematically barred from mainstream symphonic composition and public leadership. Writing “loud, fast, grand” music and commanding bands of men was deemed unladylike, dangerous, and a violation of deeply entrenched gender roles. Brilliant female minds were intentionally kept legally, politically, and physically dependent on male households.
 
This novel honors the silent, real-world geniuses of that era by asking a speculative question: What if they fought back?
 
The Viennese Tale’ is dedicated to the Beautyful, unknown; the Beautyful, forgotten; and the Beautyful, unborn.
 

 Another Difficult History

The Viennese Tale of English Music uses a historical lens to examine modern social inequities. Female otherness, vilification, and subjugation go back to antiquity and are also linked to racial injustice, particularly anti-Blackness, in a literary device called Manichean Leitmotif.

The story is structured as a Manichean Leitmotif, but where it conveys ‘degenerative’ movement is instead used to explore the actual degenerating intentions of structural (and physical) class violence and structural (and physical) racial and sexual caste violence. It also depicts the challenges of what we today understand as “allyship.”

 

 

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