Intense and often transient relationships between artists and their muses are well established: Dalí had Gala, the pre-Raphaelites had Lizzie Siddal, Messiaen had Loriod. In Jeremy Cooper’s new novel, Discord, composer Rebekah Rosen has star classical saxophonist Evie Bennet.

The story revolves around a series of meetings in 2022 and 2023 after Rebekah and Evie are brought together by a BBC Proms commission, ‘Distant Voices’. Discord charts the collaboration – Rebekah at the piano, Evie on her saxophones – and their resulting conflicts over matters such as reconciling the personal and the musical, devotion to craft and how art should recognise and respond to the wider world.

They make an unlikely pair. Rebekah’s career has suffered several ‘false starts’: a stint on the ‘provincial’ recital circuit as a pianist and just one good review as a composer. She lives on her husband’s farm in rural Devon, occasionally travelling to London for projects, and listens ‘with obsessive attention’