This chapter examines the nature of sublimity in relation to the performing musician and the specific musical references found in McEwan's writings. Beginning with the value of solitude and individualism, I focus on key moments that illuminate why understanding McEwan's choices is critical to understanding those of his characters that encounter music each day. To understand their interpretation of a musical language is to better understand their own language, behaviour, and decisions. The nature of response to music is personal and not necessarily related to whether someone is a professional musician or not. This is a point that McEwan is clear about as he portrays both amateur and professional musicians. Consequently, the nature of emotional engagement with music in McEwan's writings ranges from the detached appreciation of a partner's commitment to performance to a contrasting world of otherness that borders on an enveloping secret world and understanding that is remote to those around them. It is this latter world that bears special contextualisation.

Public and Private Solitude

Since the 1980s there has been a rising complaint against the addition of unnecessary noise in public spaces in Britain. Background music in lifts, shops, shopping centres, commercial aircraft, restaurants, and pubs has become typical throughout the country in recent decades. It is a point that McEwan has discussed personally, but it also relates to the nature of quiet, the use of background music in his novels, and the role of sublimity, specifically when music can be chosen by a character rather than imposed upon them. This chapter examines the role of musical encounters in McEwan's novels and how certain pieces of music can have specific relevance to a particular character. In order to consider this topic, it is important to initially examine McEwan's approach to silence and solitude as this has a direct bearing on how music is ultimately heard by his characters. Music in his novels does not serve as a background but rather fills a particular role in understanding the context of the narrative.

The relative place of silence has been replaced with an energy of sustained noise, the only difference being which noise is considered the most effective in terms of the commercial outcome it is supposed to generate. For some people, it is constant sensory overload as well as the removal of a freedom to encounter the world on individual terms.