The Ten Best Songs Based on Books

The list, care of the Guardian.

A Dark Lyricist Turns to Tales for Children

Colin Meloy is the lead singer of one of my favorite bands, The Decemberists. He's also a children's writer.

From a story in the New York Times...

The brain behind the brainy rock band the Decemberists is changing course, putting his musical pursuits on hold to write a trilogy of children’s novels with his wife, Carson Ellis, an illustrator. They contain, in drips and dribbles, one of Mr. Meloy’s favorite motifs.

That would be blood. The dark colors in the first volume of “The Wildwood Chronicles,” titled “Wildwood” and recently published by Balzer & Bray, should not surprise anyone familiar with the band’s playfully roguish songbook, which includes, amid seafaring yarns and espionage procedurals, blanching descriptions of rape, torture and the serial murder of children.

The book, intended for ages 9 to 12, brims with grimly comic violence. Coyotes dressed in Napoleonic uniforms train musket, cannon and bayonet on woodland bandits, talking birds and an industrious rat named Septimus. Many perish in the fight, although not nearly as many as Decemberists fans might be accustomed to.

Mr. Meloy reined himself in, not only because he was writing for a young audience, but also because he had to keep his story sufficiently peopled for 541 pages. “In a book you have to consider the repercussions,” he said. “In a song, after three and a half minutes, it’s done. So you can kind of kill people off willy-nilly.”

The Symphony and the Novel -a Harmonious Couple?

The symphony and the novel evolved in tandem for two centuries. Music moved on after modernism, but whatever happened to fiction?

From a piece by Will Self in the Guardian...

That both forms reach their apogee in the 19th century – and in very similar ways – seems to me a function of their sharing the same artistic aim: to simultaneously enact the most complete possible world-in-words (or world-in-notes), while also actualising the creative personality itself. For the 19th-century symphonist, the sonic cosmos he created needed to be internally consistent, while at the same time expressing his unique spirit – functions undertaken, respectively, by harmony and melody. In the great 19th-century realist novels similar aims find their outlet in the assumed equivalence of the writer with the impersonal narrative voice. This sleight-of-mind induces in the reader a conviction of the authenticity of the events described and the sincerity of the describer – harmony and melody again.

At the twin peaks of the 19th-century novel and symphony there is an overarching confidence about what the forms can do, a sense of their totalising capability. In the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms, or the novels of Tolstoy and George Eliot, there is little insecurity about the potential of their form – no neuroticism, no insinuating irony. God remains relatively securely in his world, and the novelist or composer remains equally secure in his or her ability to interact with it in the service of producing aesthetic effects. Of course, there's trouble on the horizon – how could there not be? – but for now the enlightenment conception of progress stays in lockstep with the advance of both art forms.

Mozart Manuscript Uncovered

A solo part suggests Piano Concerto No 23 was composed for his favorite pupil, Barbara Ployer, researchers say.

From a piece in the Guardian...

A manuscript of Mozart's Piano Concerto No 23 with an explosion of unfamiliar extra notes has suggested to a researcher that the piece was written for and performed by one of the composer's favourite pupils.

Research by the pianist and music historian Robert Levin – who will perform the more ornate version next week with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London – has suggested the manuscript is a more faithful impression of how Mozart would have performed such pieces.

The extra section was written so Mozart's favourite pupil, Barbara Ployer, could perform it, and the manuscript includes further notes in her handwriting. Mozart himself would have improvised the embellishment in performance.

Abandoned Manuscripts Found

Beethoven, Arthur Conan Doyle and Kafka are among many artists who gave clear instructions that some work should not be published. They were ignored.

From an article in the Telegraph...

The world premiere today in Manchester of a lost movement from a Beethoven string quartet raises the old question of whether some works, as their creators may have intended, are best consigned to the cutting-room floor of history. The section in question, written in 1799 as part of his Quartet in G, was subsequently completely rewritten by Beethoven, who then discarded the original. “Only now do I know how to write quartets properly,” he confided in his sponsor, Prince Lobkowicz, urging him not to pass the first draft to anyone.

But Barry Cooper, Professor of Music at Manchester, who has fitted together fragments found of the original for tonight’s unveiling, is convinced this rediscovery provides compelling new insights. “The prospect of hearing a Beethoven work that has been absent for over 200 years,” he says, “should be of much interest to anyone who loves his music.”

Ignoring an artist’s stated wishes like this is surprisingly common. This week, The Narrative of John Smith, a “lost” first novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, found in papers in the British Library, hits the bookshops, despite the consensus among experts that the creator of Sherlock Holmes considered it substandard and therefore suppressed it.

A Piano Piece Inspired by Franny and Zooey

Listen to it here.

15 Wonderful Songs Inspired by Poets

The list, care of Flavorwire.

Here's one by M. Ward based on William Blake's poetry...

Bjork's Biophilia

Bjork's new album is nothing if not creative.



From a piece in Creative Review...



As well as these fetching tuning forks, Biophilia, The Ultimate Edition also contains The Biophilia Manual – a 48 page hardbound, cloth-covered, thread-sewn book, with a lenticular panel tipped on to the front cover (spreads shown, above). It can be removed from the case by means of a ribbon pull. The box also contains two audio CDs including the Biophila album plus additional exclusive recordings. The discs are housed in uncoated black board wallets with foilblocked covers and spines.

Of Mice and Men - the Opera

The Economist takes a look at a staging of the Carlisle Floyd-created production.

From the piece...

For Mr Beresford, it was odd that no modern American opera had ever been performed in Australia, despite the strong cultural ties between the two countries. He persuaded Opera Australia, the country’s main company, to take on both productions. Audiences have enthusiastically endorsed his judgment. On the opening night of “Of Mice and Men”, a standing ovation greeted Mr Floyd when he came on stage. Now 85, the American composer expressed delight that his opera had finally found Australian audiences more than four decades after its premiere in Seattle.

The timing does seem right to revisit Steinbeck’s Depression-era story. It follows two migrant labourers, George and Lennie, who must rely on each other in the harsh environment of rural California. Mr Beresford first heard the opera when he was directing “Cold Sassy Tree”, a later work of Mr Floyd’s, for the Houston Grand Opera. He was struck by the strength and poignancy of a duet in the second act between Lennie and the story’s one (unnamed) female character as they relate their respective dreams: he to find his own farm with George, she to find fame in Hollywood. Both dreams are palpably doomed. “It knocked me out,” says Mr Beresford to The Economist. “I knew then that I must take this opera to Australia, even for that duet alone.”

With carefully judged moods, Mr Floyd’s music brings the story to life. His musical composition matches the tautness of the novel, and what he calls its “almost total lack of diffuseness”. The Sydney production is also distinguished by stage settings that give an unmistakable sense of time and place.