Vyvyan Ayrs

Vyvyan Ayrs is famous British composer of Edwardian Times. We meet him in Cloud Atlas at the end of his life, where he is living with his family as a reclusive and aging man.

Biography
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica (that is to say, in the fictional world of David Mitchell), Vyvyans Ayrs was born in Yorkshire in 1870

He died of syphillis in 1932 in Neerbeke in Belgium.

In Black Swan Green
When protagonist Jason Taylor encounters Mademoiselle Eva Crommelynck, she now 70 years old Belgian aristocrat mentions her complicated relationship with her father. This is where we discover the Encyclopedia Britannica entry of Vyvyan Ayrs, telling us his fame in musical history has somewhat faded.

In Slade House
Vyvyan Ayrs is briefly mentioned by the character of Norra (a woman with musical ambitions) in Slade House, where she mentions a dream that she was rescued from her prison by Vyvyan Ayrs himself.

Works
Matruschyka Dolls Variations

Untergehen Violinkonzert

Die Todtenvogel

Film Adaptation
Vyvyan Ayrs is played by actor Jim Broadbent, quite close to his book original. Following the movie directors's decisions to explore the themes of reincarnations and consecutiveness, the movie implies by the recurrence of Jim Broadbent that Vyvyan Ayrs is a reincarnation of Captain Molyneux (from The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing), and will be further reincarnated in Timothy Cavendish (in the Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish), a blind street musician in Nea So Copros (in An Orison of Sonmi) and finally an unnamed Prescient character seen on the Prescient ship (in Sloosha's Crossing)

Trivia
Vyvyan Ayrs is mostly inspired by Delius, as Mitchell mentioned the inspiration for the Letters from Zedelgem chapters stems from his reading of Delius and I, written by Eric Fenby, who was an amanuensis of the then impaired Delius. Delius and I is directly mentioned in a pile of book in Black Swan Green.