The Playlist: George Saunders’ Writing Soundtrack For Lincoln In The Bardo
Lincoln In The Bardo by George Saunders – Dua’s Monthly Read for October – is set in 1862, one year into the American Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln loses his son to a severe illness. In this ghostly historical reimagining, Saunders takes this moment to contemplate grief and familial loss, as we follow Willie into the next life. Here, Saunders shares the music he listened to while writing this experimental book.
“I finished Lincoln In The Bardo one fall, up at our house outside of Oneonta, NY. I was teaching that semester and writing long hours on my non-teaching days, and listening to a lot of music between sessions, for two reasons, really.
“First, to keep my spirits up and maintain high standards; I listened to certain pieces over and over, in a spirit of ‘I want my book to be as intense as these works, so don’t let up and don’t get tired.’ In this category, among the things I was listening to were”:
One Sunday Morning – Wilco
Via Chicago – Wilco
Jumpers – Sleater-Kinney
Vaseline Machine Gun – Leo Kottle
Red House – Jimi Hendrix
The Light – Regina Spektor
Freddie The Freeloader – Miles Davis
Paranoid Android – Radiohead
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea – Neutral Milk Hotel
String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor – Dmitri Shostakovich
Easy Way Out – Elliott Smith
Speed Trap Town – Jason Isbell
“I listened to a second category of music for mood, really – to try to immerse myself in a certain pastoral, 19th-century vibe in hopes that this would translate into the book somehow. I also found that listening to orchestral or operatic pieces made me shoot higher, somehow, especially in the way these works have lots of voices, competing and contradicting and moving around, which was an aspiration I had for the book. In this category were pieces like…”
Appalachian Spring – Aaron Copland
Lincoln Portrait – Aaron Copland
The American Scene – Manhattan Chamber Orchestra
Appalachia Waltz – Mark O’Connor, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer
First Impressions – Mark O’Connor, Yo-Yo Ma, and Edgar Meyer
Century Rolls – John Adams
Mass in B Minor – Johann Sebastian Bach
First Symphony – John Corigliano
