![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Alpennia: My other new protagonist
Nov. 6th, 2014 12:03 pmI’ve posted several blogs about my research and development for Serafina Talarico, one of the primary romantic protagonists in Mother of Souls. But I think I’ve barely mentioned her future interest, not because she’s any less important, but because the research and development work was more accessible.
Just as Serafina was originally logged in my plot notes simply as “the scholar from Rome”, Luzie (last name not yet determined) started out as “the composer”. One of the main plot-threads in this book involves music -- its place in society, the ways that women interacted with it in the early 19th century, and the place it holds in the magico-religious system of the world of Alpennia.
What I knew from the first was that Luzie was a widow of young middle-age, with two school-age sons, who supports her family by giving private music lessons to girls of good family, by doing a variety of behind-the-scenes musical gruntwork for others (like copying out manuscripts), and by turning her family home into a boarding house for respectable single women, especially those working around the performing arts to whom she has personal connections. Her primary story arc would involve conceiving and realizing the ambition of writing a vernacular opera on the topic of the semi-obscure Alpennian historic figure of Tanfrit, a 15th century woman philosopher. Her connection to Serafina would begin as her landlady.
The 1820s setting of this book falls towards the beginning of the era of nationalist opera, at a time when female composers were not an aberration but were far from typical (see, e.g., the index in Wikipedia, grouped at this point by half-century). Even the most superficial poking around suggested further background for my character. Female European composers at this general period tended either to be members of the aristocracy or to be born to musical families.
So to add to Luzie’s characteristics, I determined that she was born to a minor musical dynasty – a father who was a professional composer and musician (but retired for some time now, I suspect perhaps due to a physical issue such as arthritis), a couple of brothers who follow the profession elsewhere in Europe (it being a fairly peripatetic occupation), and a sister who has married another musician but settled down to keep house and look after their aging parents in a minor town elsewhere in Alpennia while her husband follows his wealthy patrons from the winter season in Rotenek to their summer estates.
Luzie married “out of the fold” to an up and coming middle-class professional and left off anything but private social performance until her husband’s early death left her scrambling for a way to earn a living. This leaves her uncomfortably suspended between class strata: now giving lessons to the daughters of people who had previously been her peers and pinching every penny to send her sons to the “good school” that her late husband had chosen for them.
She had left off serious composing when she married, and now sticks mostly to creating compositions for her students. But she has dreams of getting her music out there in the world a little more, despite the somewhat passive-aggressive feedback she receives from one of her manuscript-copying clients, the notable composer Fizeir. It will be exposure to some interesting new information about Tanfrit – and the encouragement of her new friend and lodger Serafina – that draws her to tackling an entire opera. And Luzie has skills unsuspected even by herself…
As the Alpennian stories unfold, we are beginning to see that the religious “mysteries of the saints” that Margerit Sovitre is involved with are not the only way that magic works in the world of Alpennia. (In the words of a character we have yet to meet, “Everything can be a mystery—even sewing can be a mystery if you do it right.”) Although music has not traditionally been a part of religious mysteries in the Alpennian tradition, Serafina quickly realizes that when Luzie performs her own compositions, she “leaks magic” like a lantern giving off light. And in her frustration at being unable to perform mysteries herself, Serafina takes on the project of shaping Luzie’s talents into something more than performance.
What does Luzie want? That’s a question I always ask my point-of-view characters. What she wants first and foremost is to make a good, financially-secure home for her sons. But that drive and her circumstances make for a lonely life, and she also longs for someone to lean on, to share her secrets with, and—though she finds it hard to admit—to find physical comfort with. And, yes, she wants to do something with her musical skills—something more than schooling young women to be able to play prettily at family parties—though it has been entirely too long since she had an advocate who believed in her talent enough to overcome her own doubts. And then she meets Serafina, and through her, the Vicomtesse de Cherdillac who has turned her talents to launching the careers of artistic women.
Just as Serafina was originally logged in my plot notes simply as “the scholar from Rome”, Luzie (last name not yet determined) started out as “the composer”. One of the main plot-threads in this book involves music -- its place in society, the ways that women interacted with it in the early 19th century, and the place it holds in the magico-religious system of the world of Alpennia.
What I knew from the first was that Luzie was a widow of young middle-age, with two school-age sons, who supports her family by giving private music lessons to girls of good family, by doing a variety of behind-the-scenes musical gruntwork for others (like copying out manuscripts), and by turning her family home into a boarding house for respectable single women, especially those working around the performing arts to whom she has personal connections. Her primary story arc would involve conceiving and realizing the ambition of writing a vernacular opera on the topic of the semi-obscure Alpennian historic figure of Tanfrit, a 15th century woman philosopher. Her connection to Serafina would begin as her landlady.
The 1820s setting of this book falls towards the beginning of the era of nationalist opera, at a time when female composers were not an aberration but were far from typical (see, e.g., the index in Wikipedia, grouped at this point by half-century). Even the most superficial poking around suggested further background for my character. Female European composers at this general period tended either to be members of the aristocracy or to be born to musical families.
So to add to Luzie’s characteristics, I determined that she was born to a minor musical dynasty – a father who was a professional composer and musician (but retired for some time now, I suspect perhaps due to a physical issue such as arthritis), a couple of brothers who follow the profession elsewhere in Europe (it being a fairly peripatetic occupation), and a sister who has married another musician but settled down to keep house and look after their aging parents in a minor town elsewhere in Alpennia while her husband follows his wealthy patrons from the winter season in Rotenek to their summer estates.
Luzie married “out of the fold” to an up and coming middle-class professional and left off anything but private social performance until her husband’s early death left her scrambling for a way to earn a living. This leaves her uncomfortably suspended between class strata: now giving lessons to the daughters of people who had previously been her peers and pinching every penny to send her sons to the “good school” that her late husband had chosen for them.
She had left off serious composing when she married, and now sticks mostly to creating compositions for her students. But she has dreams of getting her music out there in the world a little more, despite the somewhat passive-aggressive feedback she receives from one of her manuscript-copying clients, the notable composer Fizeir. It will be exposure to some interesting new information about Tanfrit – and the encouragement of her new friend and lodger Serafina – that draws her to tackling an entire opera. And Luzie has skills unsuspected even by herself…
As the Alpennian stories unfold, we are beginning to see that the religious “mysteries of the saints” that Margerit Sovitre is involved with are not the only way that magic works in the world of Alpennia. (In the words of a character we have yet to meet, “Everything can be a mystery—even sewing can be a mystery if you do it right.”) Although music has not traditionally been a part of religious mysteries in the Alpennian tradition, Serafina quickly realizes that when Luzie performs her own compositions, she “leaks magic” like a lantern giving off light. And in her frustration at being unable to perform mysteries herself, Serafina takes on the project of shaping Luzie’s talents into something more than performance.
What does Luzie want? That’s a question I always ask my point-of-view characters. What she wants first and foremost is to make a good, financially-secure home for her sons. But that drive and her circumstances make for a lonely life, and she also longs for someone to lean on, to share her secrets with, and—though she finds it hard to admit—to find physical comfort with. And, yes, she wants to do something with her musical skills—something more than schooling young women to be able to play prettily at family parties—though it has been entirely too long since she had an advocate who believed in her talent enough to overcome her own doubts. And then she meets Serafina, and through her, the Vicomtesse de Cherdillac who has turned her talents to launching the careers of artistic women.
