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Motif
Explanation and Analysis—Language of Music:
Robert Frobisher often uses musical language as a form of imagery to characterize the world around him. This speaks to his perspective as a composer and the way his work entirely consumes his life. This musical language emerges as motif throughout Chapters 2 and 10.
Note the following example from Chapter 2, in which Frobisher compares scriveners to "demisemiquavers":
Had a view of an alley: downtrodden scriveners hurtling by like demisemiquavers in a Beethoven allegro. Afraid of 'em? No, I'm afraid of being one. What value are education, breeding, and talent if one doesn't have a pot to piss in?
Demisemiquavers—a word that refers to a thirty-second note in the context of rhythmic notation—must be played at a rapid rate that usually requires a high level of skill. Music ever at the forefront of his mind, Frobisher naturally connects the scriveners' rapid movement to the rapid rate of thirty-second notes.
Frobisher also utilizes musical language in more contemplative moments, like in the following passage, also from Chapter 2:
In the smoky firelight the two old men nodded off like a pair of ancient kings passing the aeons in their tumuli. Made a musical notation of their snores. Elgar is to be played by a bass tuba, Ayrs a bassoon. I’ll do the same with Fred Delius and Trevor Mackerras and publish ’em all together in a work entitled The Backstreet Museum of Stuffed Edwardians.
Frobisher hears music even in the most inane and innocuous of sounds: a snore, a sniffle, a sneeze. This tool for processing the surrounding world is but one of the many components of Frobisher's distinct narrative voice.
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