{"id":2118,"date":"2016-02-16T16:09:17","date_gmt":"2016-02-16T06:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=2118"},"modified":"2016-02-16T16:14:22","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T06:14:22","slug":"soundtrack-dying-in-the-first-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/?p=2118","title":{"rendered":"Soundtrack (Dying in the First Person)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DITFP_Cover\"<\/a>I listened to a lot of classical music while I was writing\u00a0Dying in the First Person.\u00a0<\/em>Mostly ABC Classic FM<\/a> – so whatever they were playing when I sat down to write seeped into my consciousness and infected the prose. Perhaps as a consequence the main characters also listen to, and talk about, and write about, classical music. The writer in the book also talks about the influence of the motet, as a form, on one of their works (The Box of Beautiful Things)<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Though I’m not a musician, or even an expert listener, music is crucial to my writing practice, and to the way my imagination works. One day, I’ll write about that, I suspect.<\/p>\n

For now, here’s a list of the main pieces of work the characters in Dying in the First Person<\/em>\u00a0listen to or talk about, along with some relevant excerpts from the novel. A soundtrack, if you like, to the movie in my head:<\/p>\n

Edward William Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I had opened a bottle of wine and\u00a0was listening to a recording of Yo Yo Ma and the London Symphony\u00a0Orchestra playing Elgar\u2019s Cello Concerto in E Minor, Opus 85<\/em>.\u00a0When I had my tonsils out as a boy, my mother had come to the\u00a0hospital and given me a recording of the concerto to listen to while\u00a0I recovered. She put the cassette into the player and pressed play.\u00a0During the opening movement \u2013 that elegant, dramatic recitative\u00a0\u2013 she told me that Elgar wrote the first theme for the concerto after\u00a0having his tonsils out, and that he had woken groggily from the\u00a0anaesthetic and asked for pencil and paper. It was 1918, and he was\u00a0in a hospital in London, but throughout the war years he had lived\u00a0in a little cottage in Sussex where, night after night, the sound of\u00a0artillery had crawled across the channel and into his dreams.<\/p>\n

\u2018All of his earlier work,\u2019 my mother said, \u2018was different. Before\u00a0the war there was hope, celebration, a great flourishing of art and\u00a0politics, but afterwards \u2026 \u2019 Here, she turned her head and closed\u00a0her eyes; in that small, antiseptic room we listened to the viola\u00a0hand off the theme to the orchestra and then to the cello. The\u00a0sounds swelled mournfully in the heat. (page 12)<\/p>\n

You can find this recording on iTunes here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Or watch the superb Jacqueline du\u00a0Pr\u00e9 perform the first movement<\/a>\u00a0with the London Philharmonic in 1967.<\/p>\n

Camille Saint-Sa\u00ebns\u00a0Ave Verum in D<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Morgan often played Saint-Sa\u00ebns’s\u00a0Ave Verum in D<\/em>, a keyboard reduction of the four-part\u00a0motet, in the mornings. The women\u2019s voices stepping through the\u00a0tragedy of the Eucharistic hymn, buoyed up by the sombre suck\u00a0and lift of the horn and organ. He often hummed along with the\u00a0parts, or sang the words under his breath while he made coffee.\u00a0His heavy male voice lengthening and deepening the sounds, as\u00a0though longing the true body of Christ into being. (pages 262-263)<\/p>\n

Here’s a video of the Handel Choir of Baltimore singing this beautiful motet.<\/a><\/p>\n

Maurice Ravel’s\u00a0Le Tombeau de Couperin: Menuet<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Her doctor had found a shadow on her chest. She\u00a0had an appointment with a thoracic surgeon the next morning.\u00a0\u2018So soon?\u2019 I said.\u00a0The radio in the background: Ravel\u2019s Le tombeau de Couperin:\u00a0Menuet<\/em>, tinnily echoing around her kitchen. (page 37)<\/p>\n

Here played by Angela Hewitt at the Koerner Hall in Toronto.<\/a><\/p>\n

George Frideric Handel’s Messiah (HWV 56)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

My mother had cooked a turkey every year for us when we\u00a0were boys. Rising before dawn to avoid the worst of the heat as\u00a0she plucked and washed the bird, and prepared the stuffing. When\u00a0we woke, it was to the mixed scents of lemon, bacon, oranges and\u00a0frying onions, and the sound of Handel\u2019s Messiah<\/em>. Played quietly\u00a0at first, but swelling a little, growing louder as the sun first pinked\u00a0and then burned away the night sky. (page 14)<\/p>\n

Sung here by the King’s College, Cambridge Choir.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Johann Sebastian Bach’s\u00a0Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D Minor<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Her breath, when I leaned in to kiss her cheek,\u00a0smelled excessively sweet: a dark, thickly layered perfume of rot\u00a0and apples. The radio was still on, turned low and tuned to the\u00a0same channel. They were playing Isabelle Faust\u2019s thoughtful and\u00a0balanced performance of Bach\u2019s D minor Chaconne. (page 199)<\/p>\n

You can listen to an extract from the Faust recording here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Or buy the album online.<\/a><\/p>\n

Gregorio Allegri’s\u00a0Miserere Mei, Deus<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

When we were fourteen my mother played the Miserere<\/em> on our\u00a0birthday, waking us by setting up her portable record player in\u00a0our room and dropping the needle at precisely 3.00 am: the time\u00a0when the service began in the Sistine Chapel in 1770. We woke to\u00a0the scent of twenty-seven burning candles, and the soft, blended\u00a0voices of the first choir. \u2018At fourteen years old,\u2019 she said, \u2018Mozart\u00a0was travelling through Italy with his father. Leopold was taking\u00a0him to Bologna, to the music teacher Padre Martini. By Easter\u00a0they were in Rome. Wednesday was the day of the Tenebrae: one\u00a0of only two days of the year when the Miserere would be performed\u00a0in the Sistine Chapel. The Miserere<\/em> was considered so sacred, so\u00a0precious a Roman secret, that the performers were threatened\u00a0with excommunication if they smuggled a transcription of the\u00a0music out of the church. Mozart listened carefully to the nine\u00a0voices in two choirs: one with four and one with five parts, to\u00a0their elaborate performance of an improvised counterpoint, the\u00a0ancient but simple falsobordone style with its substrate of Gregorian\u00a0plainsong. That evening, as he and his father sat in their hotel,\u00a0Mozart transcribed the entire Miserere<\/em>, from memory. On Good\u00a0Friday, the boy and his father returned to the chapel. Mozart had\u00a0his illegal manuscript rolled up in his hat; he had come to listen,\u00a0and to make any corrections to his first transcription.\u2019<\/p>\n

Our mother stood and opened the windows to let in the scent\u00a0of the earth softening towards morning, and to turn up the music.\u00a0As the choirs sang, she extinguished the candles as they had done\u00a0in the chapel centuries ago, until only one remained, guttering in\u00a0the window, set into a cupcake. \u2018Happy birthday, little men,\u2019 she\u00a0said as the final words of the concluding Miserere<\/em> were sung. \u2018May\u00a0your fourteenth year be as wicked and courageous as Mozart\u2019s.\u2019\u00a0She held the cupcake before us and we blew out the candle and\u00a0then she leaned over it and kissed our foreheads. It was almost\u00a0light. Almost day.<\/p>\n

Performed here, fittingly, by the Tenebrae choir.<\/a><\/p>\n

And here, in the recording referred to in the novel, by the Tallis Scholars.<\/a><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

What music do you love listening to? Which music do you associate with the most important moments of your life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I listened to a lot of classical music while I was writing\u00a0Dying in the First Person.\u00a0Mostly ABC Classic FM – so whatever they were playing when I sat down to write seeped into my consciousness and infected the prose. Perhaps as a consequence the main characters also listen to, and talk about, and write about,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[175,12,383,167],"tags":[1312,1306,1294,1305,1198,1195,1300,1293,1193,1114,1194,1297,1199,1307,178,1299,1308,1304,1296,1310,1295,1298,1192,1301,1228,1311,1303,1302,1309],"class_list":["post-2118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dying-in-the-first-person","category-art-and-other-catastrophes","category-on-living","category-on-writing","tag-abc-classic-fm","tag-angela-hewitt","tag-ave-verum-in-d","tag-cambridge-choir","tag-camille-saint-saens","tag-cello-concerto-in-e-minor","tag-chaconne-from-partita-no-2-in-d-minor","tag-classical-music","tag-deus","tag-dying-in-the-first-person","tag-edward-elgar","tag-george-frideric-handel","tag-gregorio-allegri","tag-handel-choir","tag-isabelle-faust","tag-j-s-bach","tag-jacqueline-du-pre","tag-kings-college","tag-le-tombeau-de-couperin-menuet","tag-london-symphony-orchestra","tag-maurice-ravel","tag-messiah-hwv-56","tag-miserere-mei","tag-mozart","tag-music","tag-soundtrack","tag-tallis-scholars","tag-tenebrae-choir","tag-yo-yo-ma"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4LH1G-ya","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/Mozart.jpg?fit=951%2C1250","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2118"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2122,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2118\/revisions\/2122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.perilousadventures.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}