Since Garth Greenwell gives so much else away (ahem) in his foreword to the novel we'll be discussing tomorrow night--Edmund White's Nocturnes for the King of Naples--I am surprised he didn't address the provenance of its title.
It almost certainly refers, at least obliquely, to the actual King Ferdinand IV of Naples (a colorful, sybaritic character in his own right), who commissioned Franz Josef Haydn to compose five concertos for the lira organizzata in 1786. This long-obsolete instrument, essentially a glorified hurdy-gurdy with a miniature organ attached, had a severely limited tonal palette, yet enjoyed a brief fad in the late 18th century. Haydn's concertos, and other compositions for it, are now generally performed as flute-oboe duets.
I suspect White changed "concertos" to "nocturnes" for the sake of alliteration, much as Maurice Ravel said that he chose Pavane pour une infante défunte--known in English as "Pavane for a Dead Princess"--as the title for the famous piano piece (later orchestrated) purely for how it sounded in French--not as a memorial to any particular individual.
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