If Music be the Food of Love

 

 

Music plays an important part at several points during Flying Free, the third of my novels, and I wondered if you’d like to hear some of the pieces I mention, along with reading a small excerpt from the novel.

Today, I hope you enjoy  The Four Sea Interludes from Britten’s Opera, Peter Grimes.

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Jayne had never been to a live orchestral concert before and was unprepared for the power of such a performance. It took her by storm. The first piece, Four Sea Interludes from Britten’s Opera, Peter Grimes, brought all the varying sounds of the open sea surging into the auditorium, shivering down her spine. All her senses sparked into life.

Eyes closed, she could feel the chill breeze of dawn over the desolate seascape, hear gulls whirling and crying, the tide slowly swelling, shingle churning on the beach. It was so real to her, prickling her skin with goosebumps, transporting her once more to the beaches of her youth and the mornings when she woke early and crept out of the house before her father was awake. She could smell the salty air, taste it on her lips. Her face lifted to the wind as it brought the chill of the water onto the beach. Her bottom cold on shingle and sand, watching dawn creep across the sky. In a world full of sound, smell and colour, there was emptiness.

She hadn’t been back since she was ten years old, yet the evocative music forced long buried memories to surface and she remembered well the chill of a seaside dawn. She shivered again.

In the last of Britten’s four interludes a storm raged out at sea. Excitement mounted in Jayne as it surged around her. The same fearful excitement she used to feel as a child, glorying in the power of the elements. She didn’t try to shelter at those times, but let herself be buffeted and drenched, having no fear of the storm’s fury. After such a tempest she always felt purged and renewed.

Exhilaration lifted her out of her seat as the orchestra brought the storm crashing to its end.

~~~

Four Sea Interludes from Britten’s Opera, Peter Grimes,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE6GRSOaRw4

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I wonder, do you ‘see’ the same things as Jayne when you listen to this music?

What does it conjure up for you?

Flying Free is available as Kindle or Paperback