Symphony of Secrets

Written in 2023 by Brendan Slocumb, Symphony of Secrets includes two time periods, the 1920s and the 2020s, and explores the extraordinary journey of one woman’s music as another musician steals it and passes it off as his own. One hundred years later, a dedicated music professor struggles against the thief’s descendants to give the original musician the credit she deserves. As the dual timelines unfold, Slocumb examines issues of institutional racism, intellectual property, and the emotional impact of music across multiple generations.

Brendan Slocumb completed a degree in music at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and taught music for many years after that. Symphony of Secrets was on the Washington Post’s Best Mysteries of the Year list and NPR’s Best Book of the Year list.

This guide refers to the Random House Large Print edition.

Content Warning: Both the source material and this guide contain descriptions of domestic abuse, racism, and institutionalized racist violence. The source material also includes racist and ableist language, as well as outdated and offensive terms for mental health conditions, which is replicated in this guide only in direct quotes of the source material

Plot Summary

Symphony of Secrets alternates between two time periods: the novel’s present (the 2020s) and the past (1918-1936). The characters in the past are the musicians Frederick Delaney and Josephine Reed. Delaney is a white man who joins a jazz band with Black members. The band introduces him to Josephine, and Delaney takes piano lessons from her. She is Black, neurodivergent, and a musical genius. Josephine records her original music, as well as the music and sounds around her, in a unique notational system that she created. She calls the pages of her transcriptions the Compendium.

Delaney works for a music publisher called Ditmars & Ross, playing the piano at various stores to sell their sheet music. After taking lessons from Josephine and inviting her to live with him, Delaney gets her a job cleaning and filing at Ditmars & Ross. One day at work, she has a mental breakdown. Delaney calms her down by giving her a pencil and paper. When he eventually realizes that she is writing down music, he has her play her original melody on the piano while he transcribes it into standard sheet music. After adding his own lyrics, Delaney sells this music to Ditmars but does not give Josephine writing credit. The song is wildly successful.

Delaney tries to write his own songs in Josephine’s style, but they are inferior, so Ditmars refuses to buy them. Delaney discovers that the Compendium is in a steamer trunk. She plays her original music, and he transcribes the songs as she plays them. He adds lyrics and sells more of her songs without ever giving her credit. Ditmars offers Delaney a job as a house composer. However, Ditmars is not willing to make Delaney a partner, so Delaney turns him down and starts his own music publishing company.

Delaney and Josephine move into the building above the new company. There, she writes commissioned pieces of music and keeps their business afloat, but Delaney continues to take full credit for her work. One day, when she is late in finishing a piece of music, Delaney locks her in her room as punishment, forcing her to produce music for his benefit. After this, Josephine begins to hide pages of the Compendium from Delaney. Delaney starts to learn to read her unique system of musical notation, but he never becomes fully fluent in it. Her music continues to be successful, and they go on tour in Europe, bringing along her Compendium, packed away in five trunks.

In Paris, Delaney becomes upset when Josephine does not give him a piece of music quickly enough for his liking. He physically abuses her, grabbing and shaking her and hitting her head against the wall because she has hidden the music from him. Later, in Antwerp, they attend the Olympic Games, and Josephine is inspired to write five operas about the rings on the Olympic flag. Back in New York, Josephine writes four of the five operas before Delaney discovers that she is hiding music from him. However, he does not manage to find all her hiding places.

Josephine plans her escape, bringing her trunks to Penn Station and booking a train ticket. Before she leaves, she transcribes some of her songs into standard musical notation and sells them to Ditmars’s rival music publisher, Miles Turpin. Miles believes that Josephine stole the songs from Delaney and reports this to Delaney. Wanting to keep the secret that he has stolen all “his” music from Josephine, Delaney arranges to meet Miles and murders him. He then murders Josephine as well. Delaney takes possession of her trunks and translates parts of her Compendium to sell as sheet music and records. However, he never finds the opera called Red, which she has hidden in the wall of the elevator in the publishing house. His inept attempt to recreate the opera is a failure, and he dies by suicide after the opera’s disappointing premiere.

In the 2020s, a descendant of Delaney’s named Mallory finds the lost opera, which is written in standard musical notation. She and the board of the Delaney Foundation hire Bern Hendricks, a music professor who worked on other pieces published by Delaney, to prepare the opera for performance. Bern convinces the Foundation to hire a computer genius named Eboni Washington to help him. There are a few pages of the Compendium included with the opera, which lead Eboni and Bern to Josephine. Josephine’s family gives Josephine’s trunk to Eboni and Bern.

The contents of the trunk, along with computer programs that Eboni writes, prove that Josephine wrote the opera called Red, as well as most—if not all—of Delaney’s other music. The Delaney Foundation demands that Bern turn over the trunk, but he refuses. Another of Delaney’s descendants, Kurt, threatens Bern and hires the police to raid Eboni’s offices. Eboni goes into hiding. Bern and Eboni try to convince a New York Times reporter to write an article about the Foundation’s cover-up of Delaney’s fraud. However, the Foundation uses its power to keep the article from being published. Kurt also hires police officers to jail and assault Bern.

After Bern is released from jail, he and Eboni go on the run together and fall in love. Eboni’s hacking skills undercover Kurt’s involvement in a money-laundering scheme, and she also discovers additional illegal activities committed by other members of the board. Most importantly, they find the music, written in standard notation, that Josephine sold to Miles. This music proves Josephine’s authorship of many Delaney songs. Bern and Eboni tell the board that they will go public with the information if the board does not agree to meet with them.

At the meeting, the board agrees to allow Bern to complete his work on Red and to give Josephine credit for it. Mallory shows Bern where Red was hidden in the elevator. The premiere of Red takes place in the New York Metropolitan Opera House. Bern and Eboni make sure that diverse people can attend. The book ends with Bern telling the audience about Josephine. Finally, the original version of the opera is presented to the world.