Paksworld

One of the constants across cultures is music:  people make music.   They play with rhythm and pitch and loudness–they sing individually and in chorus–they move to the music they make, and make it dance.

I’ve been hooked on music since early childhood.  I write to music–characters have theme music, entire books have music attached them  as I write them.   (Gird: Brahms’ GERMAN REQUIEM.  Luap: Zamfir’s best-known work for panpipes and orchestra.   Listen to both.  Tells you everything about the difference in their character.  Or it does to me.)

This past week, I’ve sung a good chunk of Handel’s MESSIAH with my church choir & friends, and the Austin Symphony.  My husband sang Vivaldi’s GLORIA tonight with his church choir & friends, and a small chamber orchestra.    The GLORIA is definitely a work that belongs in Paksenarrion’s world…but no one there speaks (or ever spoke) Latin, nor is the theology  correct there.  But the music…oh, yes.   Some of MESSIAH could also cross over, but not all of it.

So far, only classical music (in the broad sense) works for me when writing fantasy.   Everything else is too connected to this everyday world…the music I write to (at least when writing fantasy, and often otherwise) has to lift me out of the mundane.   For me this means harmony (dissonance only to resolve it), intricacy, and really gorgeous shadings.  Vivaldi’s GLORIA has all that.