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While the Music Lasts
An orchestra is made up of people who are poles apart and all those in between this is the story of such a group in all is stressful,raw exhilarating and incestuous detail.
- GenresMusic
320 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 1995
7 people are currently reading
1145 people want to read
About the author
Alice McVeigh
13 books110 followersAlice McVeigh has been twice-published by Orion/Hachette in contemporary fiction, by UK's Unbound (using a pen name) in Kirkus-starred action adventure and by Warleigh Hall Press in her multi-award-winning Austenesque series (honoured at the last two London Book Fairs, in the 2024 and 2025 UK Selfies awards, twice finalists in FOREWORD INDIES' "Book of the Year" (2022, 2024) etc.
Alice achieved a B.Mus with distinction in performance at Jacobs Indiana University School of Music, and spent three years studying cello privately with William Pleeth, Jacqueline du Pre’s “cello daddy”. After that she freelanced with orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic and Sir John Eliot Gardiner's Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique all over the UK, the EU, America and Asia.
In the 1990s, WHILE THE MUSIC LASTS and GHOST MUSIC were published by Orion/Hachette, to wonderful reviews. Both have since been revised, and are now available in new editions, from Smashwords as well as the author's website.
("Characters rise and fall to McVeigh's superbly controlled conductor's baton” – The Sunday Telegraph. “McVeigh succeeds in harmonising a supremely comic tone with much darker notes." - The Sunday Times.)
Her fifth Austenesque novel - MARIANNE - a new-release SENSE AND SENSBILITY SEQUEL - has so far received stellar reviews from FOREWORD INDIES, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY's BOOKLIFE, the US REVIEW OF BOOKS, SPR, the INDIEREADER, HISTORICAL FICTION COMPANY, etc. It has also won Gold in the Literary Global Book Awards (romance), the American Writing Awards (romance), and the the Coffee Pot Book Awards (literary).
The previous four have been BookLife Quarterfinalists, joint runners-up in Foreword Indies' "Book of the Year" and honoured in the final seven novels considered for the 2024 UK Selfies Book Awards at the London Book Fair.
Alice has long been married to Professor Simon McVeigh. The McVeighs have one daughter, currently working on a PhD-level Presidential Scholarship at Harvard in Chinese Literature.
When not writing or editing, Alice is likeliest to be smiting tennis balls at the Bromley Tennis Centre. (As her daughter remarked, when aged only four: "My mum hits the ball farther than anybody!")
Alice achieved a B.Mus with distinction in performance at Jacobs Indiana University School of Music, and spent three years studying cello privately with William Pleeth, Jacqueline du Pre’s “cello daddy”. After that she freelanced with orchestras including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic and Sir John Eliot Gardiner's Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique all over the UK, the EU, America and Asia.
In the 1990s, WHILE THE MUSIC LASTS and GHOST MUSIC were published by Orion/Hachette, to wonderful reviews. Both have since been revised, and are now available in new editions, from Smashwords as well as the author's website.
("Characters rise and fall to McVeigh's superbly controlled conductor's baton” – The Sunday Telegraph. “McVeigh succeeds in harmonising a supremely comic tone with much darker notes." - The Sunday Times.)
Her fifth Austenesque novel - MARIANNE - a new-release SENSE AND SENSBILITY SEQUEL - has so far received stellar reviews from FOREWORD INDIES, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY's BOOKLIFE, the US REVIEW OF BOOKS, SPR, the INDIEREADER, HISTORICAL FICTION COMPANY, etc. It has also won Gold in the Literary Global Book Awards (romance), the American Writing Awards (romance), and the the Coffee Pot Book Awards (literary).
The previous four have been BookLife Quarterfinalists, joint runners-up in Foreword Indies' "Book of the Year" and honoured in the final seven novels considered for the 2024 UK Selfies Book Awards at the London Book Fair.
Alice has long been married to Professor Simon McVeigh. The McVeighs have one daughter, currently working on a PhD-level Presidential Scholarship at Harvard in Chinese Literature.
When not writing or editing, Alice is likeliest to be smiting tennis balls at the Bromley Tennis Centre. (As her daughter remarked, when aged only four: "My mum hits the ball farther than anybody!")
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 24, 2022
Enjoyable and meaningful diversion. I resonate with these musicians and came to care for them. Nice bit of writing! I'd love to see a follow up (with additional characters) . . . 🙂
February 14, 2023
This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 3.5 of 5
The first thing that strikes me, of course, is the similarity here to the Amazon Prime series, Mozart in the Jungle. Classical music, a big city orchestra, and the wide variety of relationships going on off stage. And, yeah, that's okay with me. I liked Mozart in the Jungle (the TV series) and I enjoyed While the Music Lasts. The book follows a variety of people, connected by the Orchestra of London, and their lives and loves, accomplishments and failures, desires and disappointments.
Isabel Bonner is viola player with the Orchestra of London. She's in her thirties, insecure, and hops around from bed to bed until she meets and focuses completely on an older, married man - a cellist with the orchestra.
Mirabel Felton, a horn player, is raped by the orchestra conductor. She dies in an accident and her will surprises Elaine Brown, her best friend, as it wills all her fortune to Elaine ... as long as Elaine will leave her jerk of a husband.
There is also a concert-going heiress who hooks up with a Tarot card reading cellist, and a misogynist gay man who learns that an ex-lover has AIDS.
This is an interesting book as it doesn't have a central plot, but rather uses a central location (the Orchestra of London) as a character and a focal point around which the loves and lives of these people revolve.
I thought that author Alice McVeigh did a really nice job of capturing the different voices and didn't make them sound too much the same. She also really managed to capture some truly human moments.
...it struck me again how, in some ways, we share ourselves even more deeply with other women than with our husbands – not that we don’t love men better, but they’re a different species, very nearly a different culture, and farther from us.
‘They complete us,’ Mirabel once said, ‘but we can’t travel on parallel courses with them, side by side. With men there’s always a collision, isn’t there, sometimes good, sometimes not so good.
Sometimes the moments are humorous ("She had never to her knowledge met either an anarchist or a homosexual before, and the mixture seemed at once too rich and too thrilling to bear.") and sometimes they seem a little overwritten:
The doorbell – its measured announcement like an offstage trumpet – roused Isabel from her preparations. How many times, she wondered, as she put down the lit candle and moved to the door, how many times and still the startled gearchange of the pulse? Spring had eased into summer, into autumn, the day’s pace had lengthened then started inexorably to shrink again yet still came the prickling nervousness, that it would end, that it couldn’t last, that it was too genuine to last, and too crucial.
But overall I enjoyed meeting these people and being a voyeur of their lives.
Looking for a good book? While the Music Lasts by Alice McVeigh is a glimpse of the lives and loves of a group of people connected through a professional orchestra in Great Britain.
I received a digital copy of this book from the author, through LibraryThing.com, in exchange for an honest review.
The first thing that strikes me, of course, is the similarity here to the Amazon Prime series, Mozart in the Jungle. Classical music, a big city orchestra, and the wide variety of relationships going on off stage. And, yeah, that's okay with me. I liked Mozart in the Jungle (the TV series) and I enjoyed While the Music Lasts. The book follows a variety of people, connected by the Orchestra of London, and their lives and loves, accomplishments and failures, desires and disappointments.
Isabel Bonner is viola player with the Orchestra of London. She's in her thirties, insecure, and hops around from bed to bed until she meets and focuses completely on an older, married man - a cellist with the orchestra.
Mirabel Felton, a horn player, is raped by the orchestra conductor. She dies in an accident and her will surprises Elaine Brown, her best friend, as it wills all her fortune to Elaine ... as long as Elaine will leave her jerk of a husband.
There is also a concert-going heiress who hooks up with a Tarot card reading cellist, and a misogynist gay man who learns that an ex-lover has AIDS.
This is an interesting book as it doesn't have a central plot, but rather uses a central location (the Orchestra of London) as a character and a focal point around which the loves and lives of these people revolve.
I thought that author Alice McVeigh did a really nice job of capturing the different voices and didn't make them sound too much the same. She also really managed to capture some truly human moments.
...it struck me again how, in some ways, we share ourselves even more deeply with other women than with our husbands – not that we don’t love men better, but they’re a different species, very nearly a different culture, and farther from us.
‘They complete us,’ Mirabel once said, ‘but we can’t travel on parallel courses with them, side by side. With men there’s always a collision, isn’t there, sometimes good, sometimes not so good.
Sometimes the moments are humorous ("She had never to her knowledge met either an anarchist or a homosexual before, and the mixture seemed at once too rich and too thrilling to bear.") and sometimes they seem a little overwritten:
The doorbell – its measured announcement like an offstage trumpet – roused Isabel from her preparations. How many times, she wondered, as she put down the lit candle and moved to the door, how many times and still the startled gearchange of the pulse? Spring had eased into summer, into autumn, the day’s pace had lengthened then started inexorably to shrink again yet still came the prickling nervousness, that it would end, that it couldn’t last, that it was too genuine to last, and too crucial.
But overall I enjoyed meeting these people and being a voyeur of their lives.
Looking for a good book? While the Music Lasts by Alice McVeigh is a glimpse of the lives and loves of a group of people connected through a professional orchestra in Great Britain.
I received a digital copy of this book from the author, through LibraryThing.com, in exchange for an honest review.
April 6, 2025
4/5 ⭐️
Thank you to the author and NetGalley for the arc
“Stories don’t ever really end. Instead, they carry on and on, with ramifications and echoes that only clarify after the passage of years. They overlap and interweave. Stars of one story only receive walk-on roles in another, and almost nothing is ever completely finished.”
‘While the Music Lasts’ is one of the most resonating books I’ve come across in a while—and the irony isn’t lost on me.
From the multiple povs to the brutal highs, lows and plot twists, Alice McVeigh expertly captures the intricacies of life within an orchestra.
And yet, among all of this, what struck me most were those raw conversations. It was those times that Alice truly brought us to each character’s level—when the artist was human, just like the rest of us.
Rewritten from its initial publishing in the 1990s, the story follows multiple povs who are all connected through the Orchestra of London: Isabel, who is a viola player with a knack for getting her heart broken; Mirabel, a horn player who is the orchestra’s compass; William, a cellist who’s heart and mind start misaligning; Piotr, another cellist who grapples with personal concerns; as well as many other characters.
The interesting thing about this book is that it doesn’t follow a district plot—instead demonstrating that no story ever ends. At its core, ‘While the Music Lasts’ reveals how the line between the artist and the human is much the same. And for this reason, their relationships, their passions, and their careers intersect, often messily.
And that’s what resonated—that despite how enigmatic, how isolated, how mysterious the world of music is, you realise that being an artist is maybe one of the most human things. That we are all, in one way or another, unable to voice what is inside of us. And that our life can sometimes crash around us, picking up the resonance of those we know most intimately.
Thank you to the author and NetGalley for the arc
“Stories don’t ever really end. Instead, they carry on and on, with ramifications and echoes that only clarify after the passage of years. They overlap and interweave. Stars of one story only receive walk-on roles in another, and almost nothing is ever completely finished.”
‘While the Music Lasts’ is one of the most resonating books I’ve come across in a while—and the irony isn’t lost on me.
From the multiple povs to the brutal highs, lows and plot twists, Alice McVeigh expertly captures the intricacies of life within an orchestra.
And yet, among all of this, what struck me most were those raw conversations. It was those times that Alice truly brought us to each character’s level—when the artist was human, just like the rest of us.
Rewritten from its initial publishing in the 1990s, the story follows multiple povs who are all connected through the Orchestra of London: Isabel, who is a viola player with a knack for getting her heart broken; Mirabel, a horn player who is the orchestra’s compass; William, a cellist who’s heart and mind start misaligning; Piotr, another cellist who grapples with personal concerns; as well as many other characters.
The interesting thing about this book is that it doesn’t follow a district plot—instead demonstrating that no story ever ends. At its core, ‘While the Music Lasts’ reveals how the line between the artist and the human is much the same. And for this reason, their relationships, their passions, and their careers intersect, often messily.
And that’s what resonated—that despite how enigmatic, how isolated, how mysterious the world of music is, you realise that being an artist is maybe one of the most human things. That we are all, in one way or another, unable to voice what is inside of us. And that our life can sometimes crash around us, picking up the resonance of those we know most intimately.
May 4, 2025
4.5*
Told from multiple POV as a loosely entwined story of characters from an orchestra (most members of said orchestra). Each character is unique with vivid imagery of their own. The story starts off with Warren (be warned this opening is tragic) and then follows with characters vignettes - each tangential to the other. It was so well told - even if unconventional and sometimes disjointed temporarily. Piotr, was my favourite character - all other things being equal - he had just the kind of humour that I appreciate - and in every chapter that was his, he made me laugh (whatever that says about me).
I do think that to appreciate this, you need to have some knowledge of the musical world (i.e. musicians, not necessarily first hand) and not expect a single plot line/development.
Also this has cured whatever was left of any romantic notions that I had of a musicians life (which somehow survived years of band in middle school and high school, an adult community class/amateur guitar orchestra, and amateur early music ensemble playing). It really is real world work colleagues but in closer quarters who have to occasionally travel together. And we all know that travelling together brings out everyone's worst (and best occasionally).
I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.
Told from multiple POV as a loosely entwined story of characters from an orchestra (most members of said orchestra). Each character is unique with vivid imagery of their own. The story starts off with Warren (be warned this opening is tragic) and then follows with characters vignettes - each tangential to the other. It was so well told - even if unconventional and sometimes disjointed temporarily. Piotr, was my favourite character - all other things being equal - he had just the kind of humour that I appreciate - and in every chapter that was his, he made me laugh (whatever that says about me).
I do think that to appreciate this, you need to have some knowledge of the musical world (i.e. musicians, not necessarily first hand) and not expect a single plot line/development.
Also this has cured whatever was left of any romantic notions that I had of a musicians life (which somehow survived years of band in middle school and high school, an adult community class/amateur guitar orchestra, and amateur early music ensemble playing). It really is real world work colleagues but in closer quarters who have to occasionally travel together. And we all know that travelling together brings out everyone's worst (and best occasionally).
I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley and am voluntarily leaving a review.
August 19, 2025
I grew up playing musical instruments in bands, orchestras and various ensembles. To this day, I love music and the creative minds of musicians. This was an interesting way to present a diverse range of musical personalities. An enjoyable read. Thanks #NetGalley
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews