List of classical music pieces which inspired or are mentioned explicitly in literature.
| Composer | Musical Piece | Author | Literary Work | | Johann Sebastian Bach | Goldberg Variations | Richard Powers | The Gold Bug Variations (1991) |
| Ludwig van Beethoven | Symphony No. 3 "Eroica" | Anthony Burgess | Napoleon Symphony (1974) |
| Beethoven | Violin Sonata No. 9 "Kreutzer" | Leo Tolstoy | The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) |
| Beethoven | Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67 | E. M. Forster | Howards End (1910) |
| Beethoven | Piano Trio, Op. 97 "Archduke Trio" 1. Allegro (performed by Arthur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifetz and Emanuel Feuermann) | Haruki Murakami}} | Kafka on the Shore (2002) |
| Beethoven | Symphony No. 9 "Choral" | Anthony Burgess | A Clockwork Orange (1962) |
| Claude Debussy | Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune | Anthony Burgess | The Devil's Mode (1989) |
| George Frideric Handel | Water Music | T. C. Boyle | Water Music (1982) |
| Leoš Janáček | Sinfonietta | Haruki Murakami | 1Q84 (2009) |
| Franz Liszt | "Le Mal du Pays" from Années de pèlerinage, Year One: Switzerland (performed by Lazar Berman) | Haruki Murakami | Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2013) |
| Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | Symphony No. 39 in "E-Flat Symphony" | Thomas Hardy | Lines to a Movement in Mozart's E-Flat Symphony (1917) |
| Mozart | Symphony No. 40 | Anthony Burgess | Mozart and the Wolf Gang (1991) |
| Joachim Raff | Symphony No. 5 "Lenore" | Jessie Fothergill | The First Violin (1877) |
| Alexander Scriabin | Symphony No. 3 "The Divine Poem" | Boris Pasternak | Themes and Variations (1917) |
| Giuseppe Tartini | Violin Sonata in G minor "Devil's Trill Sonata" | Jérôme Lalande | Voyage d'un françois en Italie (1769) |
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