Q2 Music: A Streaming Resource for Writers

Image: National Library NZ - Boethius, De musica, f.43v, (211 x 144 mm), 12th century, Alexander Turnbull Library, MSR-05.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Porter AnderĀ­son | @Porter_Anderson

 

From October 25, 2011:

I’m at Elizabeth Spann Craig’s (@elizabethscraig) site with a piece on contemporary classical music for mystery writers. Please join me there for the whole post, which includes some great music by leading, living composers. Here’s a little of that piece:

Appointment With Death is Agatha Christie’s travelogue-gone-wrong, set in the “rose red city of Petra.” And some years ago, when I directed Christie’s 1945 stage adaptation of it, I reached for Vivaldi.

I wanted some big, noisy, precisely orchestrated suspense to get my big, noisy, endlessly patient actors into an opening tableaux. And by setting this whole thing in the swamp-gassy gloom of a weird hotel lobby, I could also show off the smart elevator our designers had rigged up for the stage.

So I used the first movement of the Winter concerto from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Sounds like the kind of blizzard that gets Mayor Bloomberg into trouble. Worked like a charm. We managed to get the “detestable” Mrs. Boynton into her seat right on the button of that string-section snowstorm every time.

But how I wish I’d had Q2 Music then. Because I’d have used something far more atmospheric, closer to the exotic locale.

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