I get asked a lot whether I listen to music when I’m writing. And the answer is a definite yes. I don’t know why. My brain is wired that way I guess.
I firmly believe writing and music are cosmically interlinked, so when I write I listen to music. A lot of music. And I go with its groove. And when I was writing “Sergei and Hans” one song that I listened to over and over again was “The Hills Of Manchuria”.
According to its Wikipedia page the song was created in 1906 during the Russo-Japanese War, and as Russia entered more and more wars the song grew in popularity.
As for the song itself, I was looking for a good Russian song of that time period to really dive into. I loved reading classic Russian literature (Chekov and Dostoyevsky particularly) and I loved that dark sense of the soul that most cultures just don’t have. So I was looking for a song to transport me the same way the literature did. And during the first listening to “Hills of Manchuria”, I knew that this was the song.
There were two versions that I constantly listened to to put me in the mood to write “Sergei and Hans”. Version 1 and Version 2.
Version 1 was my absolute favorite. Without any lyrics, the song still transported me into the Russian landscape and its consciousness. Its E flat major set the tone. And its tempo, its sweeping, crisp/waltzy rhythm, captured everything I wanted to know about my main character Sergei and his longing to go home.
Version 2 was a little too intense. The vocals are deep. The lyrics are too patriotic. The sentiment: too Russian. I listened to it when I was most lost in the writing. And it got me to where I needed to be. Needless to say, a little went a long way.
Music always puts me in a mood, (which can vary wildly in range) and while writing Sergei and Hans, this song was played hundreds of times, and played a major impact in the writing.
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