The art of selecting soundtracks for books
An activity that brings me joy that I'd like to introduce you to is the art of selecting soundtracks for books. I read a lot, mostly science fiction and fantasy novels. I'll often curate a playlist of music to accompany a book, much as you might carefully select a wine to pair with a meal that you're taking your time in preparing. In this post I'll talk about why I think this activity is enjoyable and what you can get out of it, some principles to inspire your selections, and share some curated examples of particularly apt pairings.
Why create soundtracks for your reading?
The obvious starting point for why you should consider pairing music with your reading is that it enhances your experience of the book! Music can be part of setting your environment for reading time in the same way that you might cultivate your physical surroundings for reading. Music can be part of that, just the same as physical details like settling into your favourite corner of your home, brewing a cup of tea, getting the lighting just right, and snuggling up under a blanket all set the atmosphere for your reading experience. That's a particularly involved (and possibly exhausting!) vision of setting up to read, I definitely don't do that all the time! Putting on music is an easy way to get a small slice of that environment in almost any setting (headphones are your friend here).
Music also works to enhance your reading on a small scale. An obvious comparison is film soundtracks: these can do a lot to enhance the emotional impact of a film, so why not do this with books also? Lining up a particular story beat with a piece of music that matches the emotional tenor of the story can really accentuate the impact of the story. This also has the pleasant consequence of linking your memories of the book with the music; whenever you think of that story you'll remember the feeling the music conjures in you, and whenever you hear that music you'll remember what it felt like to inhabit the world of the book. One of the reasons I read is to experience wonder, and adding in music is an easy way to increase the density of the moments of wonder you experience. There's the intrinsic wonder you get just from the story, but you're also setting yourself up to have moments of wonder from alignment of the music and text.
Creating a soundtrack for a book can also be a creative activity in itself. I get a lot of joy from getting it right, finding a piece of music that so correctly fits a book. This is particularly true for books that I've read before without music, that I later manage to find some musical connection that is the perfect fit. As someone who enjoys re-reading my favourite novels, I get something extra to look forward to when not only do I get to re-read a favourite book, I know I have a killer soundtrack lined up for it.
What to consider when selecting music
A useful concept to consider is diegetic music, that is, music existing within the world of the story itself. An obvious route to a soundtrack for a book is if the characters literally hear a piece of real-life music. From one perspective that is the most appropriate music to listen to for that part of the story! More broadly, thinking about what types of music exist in the world the characters inhabit can guide you towards what real-life music might be suitable for helping you feel that you're immersed in that world.
Turning back to film for inspiration, you can probably think of moments where non-diegetic music is a crucial part of some scenes in a film (the original Star Wars trilogy has some of the most potent uses of this in my opinion if you want to do some research). Even though the characters within the story aren't themselves listening to this music, it serves to set the emotional tone for the viewers/readers. A good book soundtrack does the same thing as a good film soundtrack of staying out of the way of the action, but still being an integral part of the emotional landscape.
Incidentally, existing soundtracks for films/television/video games are a great place to start curating your own soundtracks for books. Soundtrack music is often instrumental, which is a helpful feature if you find yourself getting distracted from reading because of lyrics in music. Video game music in particular is often designed to hit a particular emotional beat while helping you focus on whatever gameplay is going on, rather than distracting from it. It can be helpful to select from soundtracks you're already familiar with, since you can calibrate the tone from being familiar with the music. It can also be fun to incorporate existing soundtracks from media you haven't consumed into your reading playlists! This is a fun way to build really powerful emotional connections to a piece of music that you wouldn't otherwise listen to.
Gallery of examples
Presented here are selections from some of my favourite book soundtrack pairings. Warning: hyperlinks on pieces of music go to that music on youtube, so be prepared for audio.
A Civil Campaign
A Civil Campaign, a Comedy of Biology and Manners by Lois McMaster Bujold is the 13th (by some reckoning) novel in her Vorkosigan saga. It is something of a cross between a regency romance and sci-fi political intrigue, centered around the backdrop of an impending imperial wedding at which our protagonist Miles Vorkosigan is to be the best man.
The centerpiece of my playlist for A Civil Campaign is the Kaiserwalzer by Johann Strauss.
Thematic connections abound here. Perhaps most obviously: translated to English the name of the piece is "emperor waltz", and Barrayaran Emperor Gregor Vorbarra is a central character in the novel. While it is a stretch to think that this literal piece of music would be played on Barrayar in the future of the Vorkosigan saga, it is not at all a stretch to think that the musical traditions that the Kaiserwalzer is part of would extend to Barrayar, what with its cultural heritage (English, French, Greek, and Russian settlers) and general affect of late 20th century military tradition. Barrayarans definitely play marches for military parades, and the Vor definitely attend lots of balls. This music just fits into the world of the book!
This waltz is also fitting in character for the novel, both have lightness and humour mixed with dignity and grandeur. Unlike some other books of the series this is not a particularly dark novel. There are villains, and they do present serious threats to the protagonists Ekaterin and Miles. But on the whole this novel is laugh-every-paragraph funny and rife with surprising moments of our heroes being good people and the Kaiserwalzer mirrors this tone incredibly well.
My playlist for A Civil Campaign more or less formed around the realization that the Kaiserwalzer was the perfect fit for it, and from there it branches out to various waltzes and marches by Strauss and others.
Anathem
Anathem by Neal Stephenson. The premise in a non-spoiler nutshell: what if the western monastic tradition had an uninterrupted 4000 year history, and also was based on mathematics instead of religion?
This is probably the most well-developed of my book soundtracks, owing to several factors:
- the novel is long (close to 1000 pages in hardcover), and split into 13 very concrete sections with their own locales and feels
- there's a lot of diegetic music to draw from, as the "monks" of the book have a variety of musical traditions not too dissimilar from ones in our world, and giving thought to these is part of the world-building
- the book literally has a soundtrack composed by David Stutz, of mathematically-inspired music from the world of the novel.
- Neal Stephenson himself did an interview with the New York Times where he talks about the music he listened to while writing Anathem.
My playlist for Anathem is detailed enough to have dedicated albums for certain chapters, and even songs to match certain scenes. Just to call out a few:
The bulk of the music is choral, which is fitting as most the in-world music is choral since the "monks" are particularly low-tech and eschew the use of instruments. A fun part of setting up a playlist for a re-read of Anathem is figuring out my headcanon of how real world choral styles line up with the various monasteries we visit over the course of the novel. Compare a Renaissance motet by Thomas Tallis with a modern one by Paweł Łukaszewski
If I had to distill the playlist down to a single album it would be Monk and the Abbess by Musica Sacra. The blend of medieval music by Hildegard von Bingen and modern choral music by Meredith Monk is a shockingly good encapsulation of the spirit of the novel. As much as David Stutz's soundtrack was composed specifically for this novel, I think Monk and the Abbess fits at least as well if not better, with the benefit of being a tad more listenable!
Possibly the best single scene-to-song pairing I have among all books is (avoiding spoilers, if you've read the book you know the scene) Orolo at Ecba, paired with Beyond the Walls by Akira Senju from the soundtrack to Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. I came across this pairing accidentally, but it is such a powerful combo, especially if you hit the timing exactly right.
A Deepness in the Sky
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge. Part of his Zones of Thought series, it chronicles two groups of spacefaring humans with different moral systems who come into conflict while investigating an anomalously behaving star system, which turns out to be populated with its own intelligent life.
My playlist for this novel is a single album: Amos Roddy's soundtrack to the video game Citizen Sleeper.
At a surface level this pairing fits: soundtrack for a sci-fi video game is probably a good fit as a soundtrack for a sci-fi novel, right? The reason this pairing works is that the moods match so well: Citizen Sleeper's soundtrack is thoroughly melancholy, with moments of intensity and contentment scattered throughout. I actually did play the game before using the soundtrack to pair with Deepness, and I immediately knew that it was an excellent fit for this story.
The Golden Compass
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Lyra has grown up at Oxford in a world which is recognizably similar to our own but with fantastical elements, notably every human having a "dæmon", an animal familiar reflecting their inner self. She goes on a journey to the Arctic to search for her missing friend and uncover some of the mysteries of her world.
This is another single album playlist: the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal's 1987 recording of works of Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov.
This music I find particularly apt for the Arctic latter half of the novel. The Russian Easter Festival Overture in particular is the right mood of the desolate and bleak moments up North. I think that Jean Sibelius' orchestral works could be a very good fit here too, I'll give them a try next time I give this a read.
Wrap-up
I hope you're inspired to give book-soundtracking a try! As ever if you are inspired to give this a try I'd love to hear about what your pairings, shoot me a message at ericdavidstubley@gmail.com to let me know what you came up with.