North Coast Synthesis Ltd.

Carmilla suite

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Neo-Baroque suite for piano four hands, inspired by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novella Carmilla. This is a vampire story predating Dracula, and it introduced many ideas that later became standard parts of vampire lore. To use an anime analogy, if Dracula is the Neon Genesis Evangelion of vampire books, then Carmilla is the Revolutionary Girl Utena of vampire books.

See the posting on the audio server for the downloadable MP3 and FLAC versions, sheet music, and more detailed program notes.

The music is written for two pianists sharing a keyboard, and I imagine Laura and Carmilla, the two main characters in the book, playing it together. From the descriptions in the book, Carmilla would've been a young noblewoman, and would have been expected to learn music, in the middle of the Baroque period just before her death. Assuming she remained interested in music during her undeath (possibly using it to seduce her victims, like the Seventeenth Angel), then it's reasonable she would have ended up with a musical style combining Baroque features with more modern innovations. So that's what this is intended to be: the music of the vampire.