Stories with Music: Midnight Man, The Spell of the Toadman, Blue John, Daughter of the Sea (concert version)

Opera: Daughter of the Sea, The Magician’s Cat, Wild Cat

Stories with Music

A group of musicians called The Lindsay String Quartet wanted to do a concert for children, and they asked me if I would write a story around the sort of music that they play. I listened to a piece of music by a composer called Debussy, his Quartet in G minor, and immediately pictures starting coming into my mind—I could see somebody running, searching for something. I could see streets of houses, and then dark moors. I could see a night sky. I could hear a refrain that made me think of the words midnight man, and I could hear another refrain like a dog barking softly. As I was listening to the music I was writing all this down, and then I drew a line under the words Midnight Man and started straight away to write the story-poem.

The Lindsays performed the piece at their Christmas concert, with an actress reading my words. Because the pictures in my head were so strong, I wondered if The Midnight Man might make the text for a picture book. I sent it to Walker Books and they said yes straight away. Very soon they sent me Ian Andrew's ideas for the artwork and I knew that he and their designer were going to make a beautifully atmospheric book of it.

The following year the Lindsay String Quartet invited me to write another story for their Christmas concert. This time I listened to a haunting piece of music by Smetana, called In My Life. I was listening to it in my car, sitting overlooking the Derbyshire hills, and it seemed to be so much part of that landscape that I knew I wanted to write a story that was set there. The music moved between the emotions of joy and sadness, loss and finding, sometimes it seemed to be about dancing, and sometimes it seemed to be about loneliness. I could hear a refrain in it, voices asking Where am I? Who am I? Where are you? I could see ice and darkness and sunlight, and I thought about the caverns nearby where a rare and beautiful stone called Blue John is mined. I decided to invent a character called Blue John, a boy created out of stone, and to make up a kind of fairy story about him.

This time I worked very closely with the music, listening to it many times and following its moods exactly. I followed the notes in the score and wrote the story to fit in with the stops and starts, the quiet and loud parts, and sometimes allowed the notes and the words to fit together exactly, so the actor and actress would read it like a spoken song.

So Blue John had two lives—a piece of music, and a story. I wanted to know if, like Midnight Man, it could have three, so I sent the story to Puffin Books, and they commissioned Tim Clarey to illustrate it as an exquisite picture book.

Music and stories can work the other way round, too. One of my daughters is a professional musician, and she set Midnight Man to her own music, so that my speaking voice, her singing voice and the voices of the harp, the violin, cello and flute weave in and out in a sort of sound picture. I had been inspired by Debussy, and she in turn was inspired by my words.

She also set a shortened version of my novel Daughter of the Sea to music, singing sections of the text without making any changes to the words at all. This is a concert performance with me reading, Sally singing, and four instruments playing. You can buy the CD or hear part of it on her website, www.sallydoherty.com.

For their Christmas 2001 concert the Lindsays commissioned another story, based on a piece by Janáçek, called the Kreutzer Sonata, and it inspired me to write a story called The Spell of the Toadman, about a child who rescues a wild green horse from a spell of enchantment.

Music is a very powerful inspiration. If you want to try writing to music yourself, I advise you to find a piece that you don't know, otherwise you'll hum along to it. It mustn’t have words, or they will distract you. As you listen, jot down the pictures and the moods that come into your head. Just let the words flow—don't try to shape them into sentences or into a story. Then look through them and see what you've got. Listen to the music again, building up the ideas. Then just write, without the music. Let the words sing.

The Midnight Man, Walker Books, 1999. Illustrated by Ian Andrew.
Blue John, Puffin Books, 2003. Illustrated by Tim Clarey.

Opera

The opera Daughter of the Sea was written in a different way. I wrote the libretto, (that’s the little book, or the words) based on my novel, and the composer Richard Chew then set it to music. It was performed in July 2004 at the Crucible Theatre Sheffield and was a Music in the Round production, with a cast and orchestra of professional singers, The Lindsays, and local children.

In the same year I was commissioned by Welsh National Opera (WNO) to write a concert opera—that is, a small-scale opera with minimal set and movement. They asked me to use the music of four composers; Dukas, Saint-Saens, Liadov and Julian Philips, and I wrote a libretto called The Magician’s Cat. It was toured in England and Wales with a very large orchestra (60 piece!) and a very small cast—two singers! Children from different schools sang as well, and also helped to create the back-projection of images that flowed throughout the production.

Wild Cat

My children’s opera, Wild Cat, will be on tour in Wales in April and May. It is a Welsh National Opera Max production, and the composer is Julian Phllips. The principals are from WNO and soloists and chorus from schools. On its Welsh tour 40% of the words are in Welsh, translated by the poet Menna Elfyn. Wild Cat tells the story of a small town that is haunted by a prowling beast. One of the children, Catrin, desperately wants to see it, but a villager, Mark is sent to kill it. On the way, he meets his childhood self and the Spirit of Wild Things, and learns that we must love the wildness within us and around us. Wild Cat is the third part of the Earth, Sea and Sky trilogy, and lasts 45 minutes.

Here are the tour venues and dates:

• Wednesday April 25th Caernarfon Galeri, 1.30 and 6.30
• Friday April 27th Ulhedre Centre, Holyhead, 1.30 and 6.30
• Wednesday May 2nd Theatre Ardudwy, Harlech 1.30 and 6.30
• Friday May 4th Theatre Clwyd, Mold 1.30 and 6.30
• Friday May 11th Cilycwm (marquee) 1.30 and 6.30
• Friday May 18th Weston Studio, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff. 10am Redflight Barcud. 12pm Dolffin. 2pm Wild Cat Tickets sold separately
• and Saturday May 19th Weston Studio, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff. 2pm Redflight Barcud, 3.30 Dolffin, 5pm Wild Cat (tickets sold as trilogy)

All tickets to be booked at appropriate theatres.

Wild Cat is my third opera. It was commissioned by WNO Max in November 2006, to have its first tour in Wales in April and May 2007. It is a chamber opera (which means it has a small cast of singers and musicians, so it can play in small theatres).

Wild Cat tells the story of a small town that is haunted by a prowling beast. One of the children, Catrin, desperately wants to see it, but a young man Mark is sent to kill it. On the way, he meets his childhood self and the Spirit of Wild Things, and he begins to understand how important wildness is to all our lives. He learns that we must love the wildness that is within us and around us.

Wild Cat is the third part of the WNO MAX Earth, Sea and Sky trilogy, and lasts 45 minutes. There are three soloists from WNO: Mark Evans, Elisabeth Toye and Claire Turner, and two soloists and choruses are chosen from the primary schools located in each of the 6 venues. The composer is Julian Philips, who partly composed the music for the Magician’s Cat concert opera, and the director is Nik Ashton.

I was asked to write the libretto for Wild Cat in November 2006, for initial performance in 2007. The libretto is the story, which is all sung. Writing a libretto is a mixture of writing a play and writing a poem, and the only way I know of writing one is to sing it! Of course my music would be nothing like the wonderful music of the composer, but singing it helps me to give the story speech patterns that aren’t like prose, and to give the lines metre and, where I think it needs it, rhyme. When I send it to the composer it’s all laid out in songs (arias), choruses (for the choir or group of singers) and recitative, which is the narrative sung links. Then he asks me to add verses, reduce bits, develop bits, etc as the ‘real music’ which is in his head begins to develop. It’s a wonderfully exciting way of working and I feel really privileged to be asked to write for such a talented composer and for such excellent singers and musicians.