Program Notes: The Music of Jane Austen

This very special program is inspired by one of literature's greats, and features works arranged for orchestra from the music in television and film adaptations of her novels as well as other selections associated with Jane Austen, some of them performed on the concert stage for the first time ever (May 15). Read more about the program below from Europäische FilmPhilharmonie Creative Director, Fernando Carmena.

In Search of Jane Austen’s Sound 

“Music is, of all subjects, my delight,” declares Lady Catherine de Bourgh — the most imperious character in Pride and Prejudice. Yet even from one of Jane Austen’s most arrogant ladies, we are reminded that music and society were inseparable in her world, as they remain in ours. The quest for a distinct Jane Austen “sound” — then as now — is very much the starting point of this program. 

For those who, in 1995, spent six weeks immersed in the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice, directed by Andrew Davies and starring Jennifer Ehle, Colin Firth, and our concert host, Susannah Harker, that sound materialized as a 6/8 urgent piano figure, punctuated by hunting horns — an indelible musical signature of the modern Austen experience. That unforgettable score by the late composer Carl Davis evoked not only the refinement of Mozart and Haydn, but also smuggled in a subtle scherzo: a cat-and-mouse playfulness marrying wit, romance and social critique — the very hallmarks of Austen’s style. 

Austen’s own literary marriages granted nuptials to the heroines of all six of her novels, yet she herself chose not to marry. Her truest union was with literature. There, women emerge fully capable of shaping their own destinies and asserting their choices, even within the confines of patriarchal structures and laws. 

This concert opens a door into this world through two complementary musical dimensions: the scores of iconic Jane Austen film and television adaptations, and the music she herself collected and heard in Hampshire, England, at the turn of the 19th century. 

Jane Austen’s Songbook 

Although our author seldom names specific musical pieces in her novels, her life was deeply immersed in well-documented music. Eighteen volumes from her family’s collection survive, containing over 600 pieces, more than 150 copied by Austen herself. Preserved at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, they range from opera piano transcriptions to popular songs and country dances. 

Drawing on this archive, our program presents the first orchestral arrangements of a curated musical triptych — a portrait of Jane Austen in sound. It includes Charles Dibdin’s The Joys of the Country (1790); Silent Sorrow (1798), a ruminative song by Georgiana Cavendish; and Thomas Billington’s William (1788), a lively ballad of a young woman awaiting her sailor’s return, based on a Haydn sonata. These are not merely historical artifacts but living echoes: pieces once heard in drawing rooms and at balls, copied in her own hand, and — perhaps — sung in her own voice. 

Sense and Sensibility 

In her hilarious Golden Globe acceptance speech for Sense and Sensibility (Ang Lee, 1995), Emma Thompson described composer Patrick Doyle as “a Scot who displayed the kind of wild behavior one has come to expect of that race.” Yet Doyle’s music, far from untamed, marries Mozart’s elegance with Elgar’s panache. On screen, Marianne Dashwood (Kate Winslet) brings Doyle’s airs vividly to life, singing and performing at the piano as if they were authentic Regency-period pieces. 

In our concert, we present a new five-movement suite, culminating in the haunting Weep You No More, Sad Fountains, performed by the exquisite soprano Jane Eaglen — the very voice heard in Doyle’s Oscar-nominated score. 

Friendly Persuasions 

Two introspective Austen heroines, Fanny Price and Anne Elliot, inspire the next musical triptych. Lesley Barber’s Theme from Mansfield Park (Patricia Rozema, 1999) captures Price’s (Frances O’Connor) integrity through angular, bouncing strings, woodwinds, harp and vibraphone — a modern inflection that aligns with a film re-examining Austen through the lens of colonial and slave-owning wealth. 

Ilan Eshkeri’s furious Rondo from Austenland (Jerusha Hess, 2013) exemplifies a composer inspired more by Austen’s literary soul than by the film canvas: “I explored traditional classical structures within a post-minimal context, allowing emotional meaning to emerge gradually — closely aligned with Austen’s writing, where deep emotion contrasts with social constraint.” 

Intersecting with these visions, composer Martha Agostini and I developed Andante Persuasivo, a meditation on a pivotal scene from the BBC’s Persuasion (Adrian Shergold, 2007), in which Anne Elliot (Sally Hawkins) performs Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata before Captain Wentworth. Agostini reimagines Beethoven and interweaves it with the musicality of Wentworth’s famous confession letter, creating an emotional tension comparable to a controlled explosion — a silent earthquake that only Austen could inspire. 

Variations on Emma 

Two portraits of the same lady — handsome, clever and rich — continue our Austen journey. Rachel Portman’s Academy Award-winning score for Emma (Douglas McGrath, 1996) distills the title character’s world into four minutes of sheer elegance, highlighted by Portman’s unmistakable string writing and crowned by a bold piccolo trumpet that evokes Emma’s (Gwyneth Paltrow) spirited personality. Not to be forgotten, Portman’s achievement also paved the way for more female composers to reach the Oscars podium. 

The 2020 adaptation, directed by Autumn de Wilde and scored by Isobel Waller-Bridge and David Schweitzer, radiates light opera and folk charm around Emma’s (Anya Taylor-Joy) matchmaking deeds. Schweitzer notes: “There’s a lot of humor in the film, and Autumn really wanted the music to emphasize the comic timing. She sometimes described the characters as behaving like clockwork figures in a carefully choreographed world.” 

Dancing with Jane Austen 

A rambunctious song, The Irishman (ca. 1791), brings us back to Austen’s own music library and, perhaps, to her sentimental biography. Did she copy or sing such a tune with Tom Lefroy in mind — her first documented flirt? Letters to her sister Cassandra from winter 1796 hint at playful sparks: “I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved.” A paraphrasis on two dances heard in Emma (1996) and Pride & Prejudice (2005) helps us imagine such encounters. 

Roman Gottwald’s “double dance” explores two late-17th-century pieces still popular a century later: the Rondeau from Purcell’s Abdelazer and Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot from The Dancing Master. As Catherine Morland and Henry Tilney observe in Northanger Abbey, there is much to be said about parallels between dancing — and marriage. 

Pride & Prejudice & Finale 

Dario Marianelli’s Oscar-nominated score for Pride & Prejudice (Joe Wright, 2005) places the piano once again at the center. Echoing the style of Beethoven’s juvenilia, his music becomes inseparable from Elizabeth Bennet (Keira Knightley) wandering Longbourn at dawn, reading First Impressions (the working title of Austen’s own Pride and Prejudice), capturing intimacy, spirit and longing. Marianelli’s subtle work, like Portman’s, Doyle’s, or Davis’, remains etched in the hearts of Austen lovers — nearly as much as her own words. 

“Of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness,” Virginia Woolf wrote of Austen — and it is precisely that subtle mastery, that elusive brilliance, which continues to captivate us — through her words and, we hope, now through this musical tribute in search of Austen’s “sound,” performed by the Seattle Symphony under the baton of Sunny Xia. Austen’s world is consciously domestic and deceptively small, yet it resonates universally and profoundly. Perhaps this is because, as Woolf also observed, Austen wrote “without hate, without bitterness, without fear” — qualities that feel especially vital in our own time. 

Fernando Carmena © 2026 
Creative Director – Europäische FilmPhilharmonie 

Presented in cooperation with Europäische FilmPhilharmonie (EFPI). Libretto by Fernando Carmena with Manfred Callsen.