Musical Connection!

Symphony No. 4 - Gustav Mahler

     Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 4 is pretty perfect for Hold Me Closer, Necromancer. We are playing this piece in the Symphony Orchestra right now, so when this blog entry was assigned, I felt like this Symphony was pretty a good representation of the book. The first thought that brought me to choosing this was the mood in itself. Lish McBride's book is what I would call a dark comedy, and in this particular symphony, as well as a lot of Mahler's work, the mood changes a lot from dark to light and silly. Mahler tends to make a good balance of brass and strings to bring out the dark and light sides, respectively. The kind of ironic thing about this piece though, is that this movement is centered around one song called "Das himmlische Leben" which is presenting a child's vision of heaven...and the book's protagonist and antagonist are both necromancers, who have the power to raise the dead. In this sense the whole piece is about death and the aftermath of death.

     Symphony No. 4 has four separate movements. Normally, a first movement isn't the biggest, but starts out confident, representing the piece. Oddly enough, this piece starts out pretty restrained, with strings or woodwinds taking the majority of the melody. In the book, it also starts out kind of slow and uncertain with the main character being kind of down on life. The second movement is based off a skeleton who plays the fiddle and dances from medieval German art. A violin, at an odd tuning plays the skeleton. The dancing and odd tuning goes along with the book in how Sam has found out what he is, but is now dealing with very strange situations. In the meantime, he still keeps the same light and sarcastic attitude, the only thing now is the building tension. The third movement has a very solemn march. It feels like the time in which Sam and Brid are locked in the cage, awaiting Douglas every day to see what will become of them. The fourth and final movement is the actual song, at least the song is sung by a soprano, who is supposed to represent the child's perspective of heaven. It's a mixture of both sadness and hope, where at the end of the book, Sam deals with these same issues. He feels guilt over what happened to his best friend and for murdering a man, even if he was going to kill him. There's still hope though, because Sam for one, is still alive, getting a new house (even if it was Douglas's), and on towards repairing relations with his mother. If you really listen to the whole thing, Symphony No. 4 and Hold Me Closer, Necromancer align pretty well.

Picture Presentation

[Setting]


[Necromancer]


[Girl with No Body...]


[Fast Food Work]


[The game that started it...]


[The weapon that caused it...]


[What brought him in.]



[Witches]



[Werewolf Girl]



[Caged Prisoners]



[Bound from Yourself]



[Mythical Council]



[Medicine Bag that Binds the Power]



[Losing and Finding Yourself Again]



[Friendship]



[Life and Death]



[Rejection from Father/Sam's Vegetarian]


\
[Young Ghost Girl]



[Sam forgives and makes up with his mother.]



[Moving On]