Tag Archives: strings

#writing #music: #JamesHorner and @samuelsofficial

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After wading through the muck’n’mire of Cancel Culture, I’d like to celebrate Spring’s arrival with you. It comes upon the choir of strings, written by a beloved composer, performed by dynamic voices.

Stringed voices.

Norwegian violinist Mari Samuelsen and her cellist brother Hakon have been performing both together and separately for years. Like me, they’ve always adored the music of composer James Horner–how can one not? This man’s music brought life to blockbusters like Braveheart, Aliens, and Titanic. His music filled the movies of my childhood: Something Wicked This Way Comes, American Tail, and Start Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, to name a few.

Just as writers and readers dream of meeting the authors who inspire them, the Samuelsens dreamed of Horner composing a piece for them.

And, as the happiest of stories go, this dream came true.

Mutual friend and Norwegian director Harald Zwart finagled a meeting with James Horner and the Samuelsens. After performing for Horner, Mari asked if Horner would write a concerto for them.

He said yes.

I feel like I’m transported to the classical style Horner himself loved. The beginning cello solo here reminds me of the bassoon opening Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Then the violin enters, and I can’t help but think of Firebird Suite,also by Stravinsky. It’s no coincidence both works were adapted to accompany visual stories of creation and destruction in Disney’s Fantasia and Fantasia 2000.

And Horner himself is a storyteller, such a storyteller. The cello and violin are the characters of this story; its setting, the dawn of spring. Can’t you just feel the encroaching sunrise with the muted swell of the woodwinds? And here come the strings: warmth, growth. Green shoots struggle for freedom from thawing soil. Cello and violin walk–no, dance–through the landscape, casting out the final frost fairies to welcome spring’s sprites. The sprites run as the orchestral strings unleash them into the air.

I could go on, but I am sure your own imaginations picture this dance of change and color. It delights me to hear beloved themes from Horner’s other work woven into this tale: the strings bring forgotten magic from Something Wicked This Way Comes, a touch of kindled love from Titanic. The orchestral woodwinds remind me of the bravery buried in Wrath of Khan. Yes, I hear many loved harmonies of my childhood fantasies come and go until the final moment, when all is silent but for the violin and cello, an echo of the song’s beginning.

It helps the harmonies are played with such passionate players. I must find more of the Samuelsens’ work–their expression with bows and breaths are unlike any I’ve heard before.

If you loved Part 1, then please, listen to Part 2 and Part 3 of James Horner’s concerto. It’s such a stunning work, and one of Horner’s last; he died the year this album was released, 2015.

I am so thankful to have found Pas De Deux, and cannot wait to write more about the composer who led me to this album. But that will have to wait. Until then, let me give you a sample in the form of his contribution performed by the Samuelsens. May this song bring you dreams of Spring’s duet, its color and storms ever dancing with ribbons of sunlit magic.

But most of all, may this song fill your heart with a hope defiant of all darkness.

Thank you so much for reading this small journey through music’s inspiration. I hope you’ll take a moment to check out my novel and free fiction, as well as subscribe to my newsletter.

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!

Writer’s Music: Mychael Danna V

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The Good Dinosaur Soundtrack Cover.jpgI never thought I would include a Disney score, especially when they have such a choke hold on their music files (shakes fist at The Nearly Omniscient Mouse). This is why you don’t see a complete song at the bottom of this post. (Update: Special thanks to fellow writer Michael Dellert for helping me find a YouTube video of the music!) But how can I not write about Mychael Danna, especially when he outdoes himself yet again?

Having lived my life in the woods and farmlands of the Midwest, I couldn’t help but adore Danna’s The Good Dinosaur. The story itself is an old one: think of a family out west working the homestead. The boy is thrust from his home by the elements, and must now cross the wilderness to return home. Now substitute the boy for a dinosaur. Ta da–movie!

Opinions on the film run a pretty wide gamut, so I’m just going to leave them be. What I love is the western flavor Danna uses in this score. It’s sweet, almost bittersweet, in the strings. The occasional fiddle tune comes along, some banjo, some woodwinds and piano. The brass swells, lone and strong. His mix of percussion at tense moments reminds us a child is the hero, that he must be so despite the terrors of the sky.

Yet of all the orchestral elements, I still find the strings to be the true stars in this score. Violins are such a unique instrument in their ability to relate whimsy or sorrow at the turn of an eight note, which I think is one of the reasons Danna uses them so much here. They bring a reader to tears when the protagonist mourns his father, to laughs when he’s running away from dino-chickens. There’s a majesty to the strings I have not heard in a long time: a melody so simple, yet elegant, like leaves rustling in the sunshine.

Poetry without words.

Click here for more on THE GOOD DINOSAUR.

(Fortunately, the Amazon page for the score has sample tracks, so you can listen to the work.)

Click here for more on Mychael Danna.

#Writing #Music: Peter Gabriel

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gabriel_scratchmb_header2Rarely do I allow myself to write with lyrical music on in the background. The words don’t always jive with what I picture in my head, and tend to distract me from the goal of the scene.

And yet, there are some songs that work on a level where the music and the words are intrinsic to each other, like a vine that climbs the old iron fence and flowers before your eyes. You can’t remove the fence, and you can’t remove the vine, for together they create a single unique image. The individual components are now in union, and for the better.

That’s one of the reasons I enjoy Peter Gabriel’s rendition of “Heroes” so much. Set apart, the strings are just. Breathtaking. The build is dramatically, almost painfully slow, but you know they’re building, so you’re willing to stay, and well up with them. Touch the stars with them. Return to earth with them.

Set apart, Gabriel himself is just. Heartbreaking. The song itself shares a deep hope, yet when Gabriel sings it, there’s this sense of fate–for all the crying out to the heavens, the singer will continue to be alone, for his hope can never be truly fulfilled.

United, this song transcends to a Shakespearean height in longing, love, and imagination.

The first time I heard this song, a scene formed in my head, bright and complete. It’s a rare experience for me, to see a piece of story in such detail–usually I can only hear the dialogue, or see something important, and have to clean up the fuzzy bits over the course of multiple revisions.

Not that scene, though. This song brought it to me, whole and beautiful, and it’s stayed as it was first drafted. Perhaps this song will help you uncover that precious, bittersweet something hidden beneath the starlight.

Click here for more on SCRATCH MY BACK.

Click here for more on Peter Gabriel.

 

 

 

Writer’s Music: Anne Dudley

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The let-down. The loss. However your characters experience it, there will come a time when the conflict snaps the characters’ will in two, and everyone needs a chance to cope.

I stumbled upon Anne Dudley’s album A Different Light in my father’s collection. Like me, he had rather eclectic taste in music. He didn’t always have patience for instrumentals, so I was rather surprised to find this.

“A Different Light” burdens a violin with most of the melody. Strings are all one hears in long, mournful chords. The solo violin seems to be lost in a disconnect from the rest of the strings, dwelling upon its own pain while the rest of the world presses forward, until the final minute–all the harmonies of sadness become one great swell, and then break apart again to fade, and to fade. When plot pauses to deal with loss, cast your characters in “A Different Light.”

Click here for more on Anne Dudley.

Click here for more on A DIFFERENT LIGHT.