By Joe Floyd.

Music has always been a touchstone for me when I write. Musicians have always known that it can cast a spell, set a mood or express an emotion. As a writer, I’ve found that it can also describe an action, or, perfectly capture a characters’ thoughts. It can trace the tempo of a dialog or better evoke the underlying motivation of a character that I’ve been trying to capture in words. You can read books on how to plot or shape a character, but nothing can provide better access to delineating the subliminal, emotional life of your characters as music can. I don’t always write to music, but, I always write better when I do. Music allows me to connect better with a character or a setting. This may say more about me than it does about the connection between writing and music but that’s the subject for a different post.

I’ve found that the music that works best while I’m writing is invariably either classical or movie soundtracks. I tend to listen to movie soundtracks most because they are designed to put you in a particular frame of mind, or emotion. Soundtrack music illuminates a character or scene. It provides a thematic, emotional shortcut which can set your writing in motion, stimulate your imagination and help break through blocks you might have.

I have just one rule about my writing music. It can’t have words (at least not in English). For me words just confuse the process. I’m trying to find MY words, not hear someone else’s’. Humming, chanting or even wordless choirs are fine. I’ve even been known to write to whale song, That said, these are a few pieces I listened to while working on the Vampire’s Opera.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t own the rights to this music. No copyright infringement intended! Copyrights belong to the original owner(s).  Music/Images/Videos posted are for entertainment purposes only!

1) IIia’s Theme from The Original Soundtrack to Star Trek The Motion Picture Yes, music from a Star Trek movie, and one which many label the worst of them all. However, the music is another story. The music is considered composer Jerry Goldsmiths greatest film score. With a career that spanned half a century and hundreds of soundtracks, that’s quite the accolade. The soundtrack to this movie went on to be nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe and was among the 250 nominated by the American Film Institute for consideration for their list of the top 25 American Film scores of all time. This piece, Ilia’s Theme, immediately evoked Giuliana for me. If Maestro Portinari ever wrote music for her, this is what it would sound like. It’s tender, ethereal even. The strings and solo piano weave around one another, point and counterpoint, perfectly capturing both her beauty and her strength.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj4z2Y1y2Ak

2) Adagio of Spartacus & Phrygia from Spartacus by Aram Khachaturian.
One of Khachaturian’s’ most famous works, the adagio is from his ballet, Spartacus. It’s literally music for a dance by two lovers and seemed a perfect piece to embody the relationship of the two main characters of the Vampire’s Opera. They are each other’s yin and yang. Strong individuals on their own, they are more together. The melody from the upper strings is replied to with a countermelody by the lower strings in a delicate pizzicato. The two sections, like our two characters, wind round one another and weave through the piece to climax in a deeply romantic love theme. The music completely captured for me, the tenderness, passion and strength of Nicolas & Giuliana.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZLMKkEGFRo

3) Concerto #8, Moderato by Alan Hovhaness
This concerto is generally regarded as one of composer, Alan Hovhaness’ strongest works. For me, its’ second movement perfectly captures the mood of isolation and sense of aloneness that our character Giuliana felt during her first sojourn in Egypt. She had arrived there as an exile and found herself isolated in an oasis in the heart of a desert, El-Samun, the home of Nicolas Portinari. At night, she wanders the gardens of the palace. It’s there where she first meets Nicolas. He visits her during her nightly excursions and gradually, their relationship develops and they soon fall in love. This piece captures both her sense of isolation as well as the intriguing hint of discovery she makes there. (Starts at 6:59 marker on this video):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNzTxrTwixw

4) Love Remembered from OST to Dracula by Wojciech Kilars
From Polish composer Wojciech Kilars’ soundtrack to Bram Stokers’ Dracula. Yes, a love theme because this is where Nicolas & Giuliana fell in love. The music lends itself to nighttime desert vistas of stars and dunes that also reflects a yearning for something, someone, that’s missing. Love Remembered is a song of both longing, and, of the recognition of what one has been missing. The delicate melody drifts through the piece in the voice of a lone flute against a gossamer web of descending strings. In harmony, they echo and weave around one another quietly, insistently. The music drifts quietly downward to its’ conclusion as Nicolas and Giuliana fall irredeemably in love.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM9KdvA7D7E

5) Clive & Ann from the OST to Maurice by Richard Robbins. I imagined this piece as an excerpt from Nicolas’ Sonata for Francois, a musical piece which becomes a prominent theme in our next book. Woodwinds and a solo piano pick out a melody which traces the outlines of an unrequited love. The piece ends without a concluding chord, leaving the end, like the relationship, unresolved. For now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEQbBzFugBo

6) Surprise attack from the OST to Star Trek 2 by James Horner. On this, his first soundtrack for the Star Trek series Horner took the series musically, into a more emotional realm. I used this music when writing the events that take place at climatic point in the Vampire’s Opera, the explosion at the Portinari Building in Paris. The percussion and plucked strings count down the moment to the explosion, like a time bomb. Menacing horns and strings weave into a sinister melody that perfectly conjures up the suspense of the moment. There’s a lot of quiet in this piece but it was the louder, more dynamic sections that helped capture the scene.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Feb8TnbvyG0

7) Transformation-Seduction from the OST to Cat People by Giorgio Moroder.
Sometimes an object, a piece of equipment or furniture takes on a life of its own and becomes a symbol of something bigger and more important. This was the case for the Clepsydra at El Samun, an ancient water clock designed to make the many fountains at Nicolas’ villa erupt synchronously into geysers at the stroke of midnight. At first the nightly occurrence marks the end of another empty day of exile for Giuliana. Eventually though, the cascade of fountains becomes the signal for the arrival of Nicolas. This piece with its’ pulses of synthesizer wrapped in a nocturnal atmosphere, captures both the sound of the fountains and the mood of expectation I envisioned while writing thesescenes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVdGkKy0r90

8) Main Titles from the OST to Emily Bronte’s’ Wuthering Heights by Ryuichi
Sakamoto. Every great character deserves a great theme and Maestro Portinari’s is served up in the form of the main theme to this 1992 soundtrack by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Nicolas is a paradox. He is a vampire who longs for his lost humanity and is driven to maintain his connection to the human world. He, like this music, shifts between obsession and intensity, between tenderness and malevolence. From the first quavering notes of the flute in the opening to the final muted glissando of the strings, we are allowed to glimpse his darkness and his light and above all his humanity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oUcmForp_E&list=RD1oUcmForp_E&start_radio=1