Orfeo – a seamless fusion of music and biochemistry

TL;DR

Orfeo is an intellectually rich and emotionally resonant novel that merges classical music, biochemistry, and political paranoia into a unique meditation on art, life, and freedom. Richard Powers draws readers into the life of 70-year-old composer Peter Els, whose hobbyist genetic tinkering turns him into a fugitive in post-9/11 America. But the novel’s real centre is music – its beauty, its historical weight, and its elusive power to both comfort and unsettle. Far from a standard thriller, Orfeo is a deeply layered narrative that asks what it means to dedicate a life to art, and whether creativity can truly set us free. Perfect for readers drawn to literary fiction that rewards patience, erudition, and emotional investment.

First Thoughts

Some authors impress with the depth of expertise they bring to their fiction, and for me, Richard Powers is firmly in that category. Having read The Overstory first, I initially found Orfeo a tougher nut to crack – more cerebral, less immediately absorbing. The protagonist, Peter Els, struck me as aloof, even unlikable, and it took several false starts before I broke through the early chapters. But once I did, I was hooked by Powers’ seamless fusion of music and biochemistry, and the sheer brilliance with which he explores both.

There’s a moment when Els, sitting in a café, recognises a Steve Reich piece playing and Powers launches into a dazzling exposition – a passage that both delighted and educated me. This was when I knew I was in. As Els flees across America after a Homeland Security misunderstanding, the narrative folds into his past – his creative evolution, his flawed relationships, and his attempts to leave a lasting artistic imprint. The ending is especially poignant, with Els using the internet as a kind of final public composition. In the end, I’m so glad I stuck with it. Orfeo is deeply rewarding, frequently comic, and brilliantly written. Powers is an astonishing writer. I need to read more.

About the Book

Published in 2014 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize the same year, Orfeo is Richard Powers’ eleventh novel. It follows Peter Els, a septuagenarian composer whose late-life interest in DIY genetic experimentation spirals into a full-blown bioterrorism panic. After a routine emergency call leads authorities to his home lab, Els panics and flees, inadvertently becoming the subject of a national manhunt.

While that premise suggests a political thriller, the bulk of Orfeo is retrospective, tracing Els’s life through memories triggered by his flight. These include formative moments as a music-loving child, a chemistry student, an avant-garde composer, and a reluctant father and husband. The novel revisits his artistic struggles, failed relationships, and philosophical musings on the role of the artist. Powers structures the narrative around these flashbacks, weaving in themes of surveillance, freedom, and the meaning of artistic legacy.

Els’s story unfolds through lyrical prose, meditations on famous musical works, and imagined future texts that complicate the timeline and deepen the mystery of his intentions. In modernising the Orpheus myth, Powers explores how creative passion can both isolate and redeem. Orfeo may be slow to build, but its finale – a haunting, defiant swan song – leaves a lasting impression.

What Others Think

Orfeo received a mix of admiration and challenge from reviewers, who largely agreed on its intellectual depth and musical resonance, though noted its structural complexity and slower pace.

In one review, the novel is framed as an ambitious update of the Orpheus myth, with Powers exploring whether music and storytelling can resurrect lost truths and transform human experience. The reviewer highlights Powers’ skill in dramatizing philosophical ideas without landing on definitive answers, as well as his exploration of the cost of artistic obsession.

Another review from the Washington Independent Review praises Orfeo as a high-wire act that meditates powerfully on music’s place in both personal and historical narratives. It argues that the book transcends its thriller frame, offering profound reflections on 20th-century musical history, the overreach of the modern surveillance state, and the idea of music as a restorative, almost spiritual force.

In a Guardian review, the novel is appreciated for its wit and erudition, despite initial marketing that overemphasised the fugitive storyline. While some musical descriptions may go over the heads of non-specialists, Powers’ imagery and humour help render even the most abstract concepts vivid. The most gripping passages aren’t action scenes but Els’s deeply felt responses to music, echoing the book’s recurring idea that sound alone can tell stories.

Themes, Style & Impact

At its heart, Orfeo is a meditation on the nature of artistic creation – what it costs, who it serves, and whether it can outlive the artist. Powers constructs the novel around the classical myth of Orpheus, whose music could move the dead, and he does so with a blend of narrative daring and philosophical inquiry. Through Peter Els’s journey, Powers investigates how music operates as both memory and prophecy, a language without words that nevertheless tells stories.

The novel is stylistically ambitious, shifting between past and present, real and imagined, musical notation and literary metaphor. Powers’s prose veers between the cerebral and the lyrical, demanding attentive reading. He often leans into the abstract: sentences may suggest more than they state, inviting multiple interpretations. For readers willing to engage, this creates a deeply immersive and reflective experience.

Themes include surveillance and state control, particularly in a post-9/11 context; the artist’s alienation from the public; the conflict between tradition and avant-garde in music; and the intersection of science and art. Els embodies the tension between the solitary pursuit of beauty and the societal demand for security and conformity. His refusal to abandon harmony and beauty in favour of algorithmic experimentalism symbolises a broader resistance to cultural nihilism.

Powers also probes whether we can be free – artistically, politically, spiritually – in an age of constant observation. In doing so, he reminds us that creation, like rebellion, may lie in the act of simply listening.

Final Thoughts

Orfeo isn’t an easy read – at times, it’s abstruse, structurally intricate, and demanding of your attention. But for those who persevere, it’s a profoundly rewarding novel, and like Orbital, is wonderfully lyrical. Richard Powers conjures a world where the personal and political, the musical and molecular, all vibrate together in complex harmony. Peter Els may be a flawed and distant figure, but his story resonates with anyone who has ever tried to create something beautiful in a world that doesn’t always understand.

It’s also, crucially, a book that improves as it progresses. If the early pages seem opaque, they’re ultimately justified by what follows: a deeply human portrait of an artist’s life, shot through with wit, melancholy, and moments of astonishing clarity. Orfeo left me reflective, moved, and – fittingly – reaching for music.

Further Reading

• The Overstory by Richard Powers – A later, more accessible novel by Powers, also deeply concerned with patterns and systems in nature.
• The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross – A brilliant nonfiction history of 20th-century music, sharing Orfeo’s focus and enthusiasm.
• The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers – Another Powers novel blending music and genetics.
• Steve Reich (composer) – Referenced in the novel and central to one of its most vivid scenes.
• The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen – Mentioned in one of the reviews, offering a contrasting approach to contemporary American life.