Today’s World Violin Day! As you know, I play harp, not violin. However, a violinist and his instrument figured prominently in my audiobook of FANNY HERSELF: A PASSIONATE INSTINCT by Edna Ferber and in the music I chose to go under the credits.

I started to write this quick story as a Twitter thread, but I strive to keep my original content on MY site and share it on social media.

On Tuesday 3 June 2014, I wrote in my journal:

The recording of FANNY HERSELF [by Edna Ferber] is done! Yay!

I had been thinking…of how to change the title to make the book different from the free edition…I want to retain the original title but add something to it to differentiate it [due to Kindle rules for publishing public domain books.]

The Audioblocks site [now Storyblocks.com] lets you search by instrument, mood, and time in addition to genre…I knew I wanted something with a violin solo since Fanny’s brother Theodore was a child prodigy violinist. She and her mother had to do without almost everything in order to pay for his studies overseas. He doesn’t even have a lot of lines in dialogue, yet you always know about Fanny’s brother.

I found a piece that sounds like a clock ticking and machinery before a violin solo of a contrasting tune emerges. It has a tension that suddenly resolves, just like the end of the book! I really liked it on the first listen and declared it perfect on the second one when Drew listened and liked it, too. The music was named “Passionate Instinct”.

And “Passionate Instinct” is now part of my ebook’s title — FANNY HERSELF: A PASSIONATE INSTINCT. Drew and I both think it sort of describes the book.

Not only did I write all of that in my journal, but I also wrote this 2014 article about finding and using M. Leone Bracker’s hand-drawn illustrations from 1917 in my ebook.

I looked at the illustrations this morning, and sure enough, I found one of Theodore playing violin for his teacher.

 

You can hear the haunting violin music I selected for the credits below.

Opening credits (Note that book was in the public domain when I recorded it. I would now say “The text is in the public domain” instead of the details I gave about the original publication.)

Closing credits