The emotional aspect of music and its potential use as a source of intellectual engagement in life is discussed throughout McEwan's writings and is studied in the previous chapter in relation to sublimity. The influence and public perception of the composer in modern British society is discussed in the final chapter. Between these two points of analysis rests the question of how an enveloping ‘power’ of music as an understandable and translatable force within society, as well as for the individual, can be seen in McEwan's writings. Chapter 2 examined how musicians can seek out particular works and why people are individually drawn to certain repertoire. This chapter moves beyond the point of intellectual engagement with known works and towards the examples McEwan gives of pieces that can powerfully seize the attention of both the music lover and the professional musician. I shall examine complementary points within McEwan's writings that illuminate his particular understanding of this role in performance and reception. The final sections of this chapter examine his particular approach to the music of Mozart.

A Seminal Moment in Life

With respect to his perception of the role of literary reception, the following comments of McEwan are valuable in understanding his overarching approach to the nature of the artistic encounters and individual responses that are a focal point throughout his writings on music.

McEwan's statement is taken from a larger lecture delivered at Oxford in 2003. He highlights emotions a reader can relate to even if they are not in a contemporary setting because an author, or a composer, can draw a reader, or performer, into their world. As Lynn Wells notes, there is an ‘historical distance’ that a reader can be aware of. What it means ‘to be a person’ is at the core of understanding the place of otherness in McEwan's writings because the nature of character interpretation is subjective.