Ahira's Hangar

I love music and it is one of the great passions of my life (though I cannot sing or play a single note ).

So I always take notice when I run into books or series that feature musicians.

While many stories have incidental background music or bards, I always like it when the music makers come to the fore.

I am trying to think of some of the books where music comes to the forefront:

Anne McCaffrey'sDragonriders of Pern has very important characters who are musicians; the Harper Hall is one of the most important places on the planet. A girl trained to sing opera becomes a miner in her Crystal Singer series. And she had a really good book about a starship who loved to sing...

Mercedes Lackey, one of the most prolific writers out there, has a couple of entire series about bards. I read the first three books of one of those. The Free Bards operated despite of a corrupt church IIRC, and tried to spread the truth...

Was it Alan Dean Foster who had a comedy series about a guy transported to another world filled with talking animals? And the guy could do magic by singing rock songs, but the magic always seemed to go wrong?

A recent book by Patrick Rothfuss called Name of the Wind had a main character who was both a musician and a mage...but he was also a bit of a Gary Stu.

Ok, what am I missing?

The Riddle-Master Trilogy. A harpist, Deth, has a major role in the books, and the main character also plays the harp--in fact, the final book is titled Harpist in the Wind.

Is Lawhead's Pendragon series viewed as Fantasy? Both Taliesin and Myrddn are Celtic bards.

A composer was a main character in Iain M. Bank's Look to Windward. For Zindell we have Danlo playing the flute and Alphanderry in the Ea Cycle. Didn't Random or some brother play the drums in Amber? Finally there is incredible quantum physics/classic piano discussion (one of the inventors is a classically trained pianist) in Daniel's Superluminary.

Didn't the Mule play some weird instrument in the Second Foundation books?