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John Maltravers
Young musician attending Oxford in the 1896 horror novel The Lost Stradivarius by John Meade Falkner. His wicker chair makes strange noises every time he plays a suite called "L'Areopagita," by Graziani (presumably real composer Bonifazio Graziani). After an especially spirited rendition he sees a strange man seated in the chair who leads him to find the Stradivarius of the title in a hidden cupboard.
But the violin belonged to the "very wicked and very clever" Adrian Temple, and after John suffers a fainting fit, his personality changes for the worse.
From his earliest boyhood he had been passionately devoted to music, and had attained a considerable proficiency on the violin. In the autumn term of 1841 he made the acquaintance of Mr William Gaskell, a very talented student at New College, and also a more than tolerable musician. The practice of music was then very much less common at Oxford than it has since become, and there were none of those societies existing which now do so much to promote its study among undergraduates. It was therefore a cause of much gratification to the two young men, and it afterwards became a strong bond of friendship, to discover that one was as devoted to the pianoforte as was the other to the violin. Mr Gaskell, though in easy circumstances, had not a pianoforte in his rooms, and was pleased to use a fine instrument by D'Almaine that John had that term received as a birthday present from his guardian.
From that time the two students were thrown much together, and in the autumn term of 1841 and Easter term of 1842 practised a variety of music in John's rooms, he taking the violin part and Mr Gaskell that for the pianoforte.
The four movements of "L'Areopagita" are a "lively" Coranto, a Sarabanda, a Gagliarda (the noise-making movement), and a Minuetto.
