Dave asked Emily Devenport:

Is there a list of music from "Medusa Uploaded?" I wanted to make a Spotify playlist to listen to as I read...

Emily Devenport I've got one I made for an annotated version of the book -- it's probably not perfect, but it's not a bad rough draft. Let's see if I can plug it in, here.

If My Book Had a Playlist, It Would Look Like This . . .

Actually, my book is nothing but playlist, as you'll discover once you start reading it. Oichi has a music database in her head, a bit of forbidden technology her father created and implanted there secretly. Here's a sample of that database:

Ralph Vaughan Williams – “Variations on a theme of Thomas Tallis,” London Symphony (no.2) (the EMI recording of John Barbirolli conducting the London Symphony Orchestra blows everyone else out of the water), and Pastoral Symphony (no.3) (Sir Adrian Boult's EMI recordings are gorgeous)

Claude Debussy – Nocturnes, for orchestra (the best recording I've heard is on the Cala label, conducted by Geoffrey Simon with the Philharmonia Orchestra)

Gamelan music (try the album, Music from the Morning of the World)

If you've never heard Japanese Nō music, find some on Youtube. If you've watched Japanese period movies (stories about samurais filmed by Kurosawa, etc.), you've probably heard the instruments used in the film scores.

Pachelbel's “Canon in D” (Lady Sheba's Theme Music)

Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd movement (Allegretto – though it has a lot more emotional impact when played slowly, like a dirge)

Gustav Holst – “Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age (my Default Majesty Music),” “Jupiter, bringer of Joviality,” and “Neptune the Mystic”

Alan Hovhannes – “Mysterious Mountain”

After you've checked out the Japanese Nō music on Youtube, look for The White-Haired Girl Ballet.

You may have heard Leopold Stokowsky's excellent arrangement of The Rite of Spring in the film score of Fantasia (the segment with the dinosaurs), but the original arrangement is pretty mind-blowing.

Tōru Takemitsu – Kwaidan score

Yasushi Akutagawa – Gate of Hell score

Billy Ray Cyrus – “Achy Breaky Heart”

Anatol Liadov – “The Enchanted Lake,” “Baba Yaga,” and Eight Russian Folk Songs for Orchestra (I think of “Sacred Verse” as Gennady's Theme Song)

Duke Ellington – “Take the A Train” and “The Mooch”

I think I may have mentioned the main theme from the film score for Around the World in Eighty Days, composed by Victor Young. If I didn't mention it in this book, I definitely mentioned it in the sequel.

Irving Berlin – “There's No Business Like Show Business” (another piece that plays a big part in the sequel).

Bejamin Britton's Simple Symphony, “Playful Pizzicato”

Sergei Prokofiev – scores from Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible

Rimsky-Korsakov – “Hindu Song”

Franz Waxman – Rear Window (opening credits)

Rogers & Hammerstein – South Pacific (Kitten's favorite musical)

Johann Sebastian Bach – “Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring”

Cab Calloway – “Mini the Moocher”

George Butterworth, “The Banks of Green Willow” (George died in the trenches in WWI, the same war that had such a profound effect on J.R.R. Tolkien)

Antônio Carlos Jobim – “The Girl from Ipanema” (pick your favorite elevator-music version)

I'm probably leaving some stuff out. But if this list gets too long, you'll go cross-eyed anyway. I hope it gives you a chance to discover some new music or revisit old favorites.

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