Sarah B. Mohler

The Truccian society I portray in The Silence Between the Notes was heavily influenced by the New Economic Period in Soviet history (1921-1928), in which economic strictures were relaxed and small industries, farms, and shops flourished as electricity, radio, telephones, and film first became widely available, and the backlash that occurred during the Great Purges (1933-1938), when artists, writers, musicians, intellectuals and other “Enemies of the People” were imprisoned, exiled, executed, or forced into suicide for not being found sufficiently loyal to the Soviet government.

Certain scenes in The Silence Between the Notes pay homage to great Russian and Soviet-era novels. Like Natasha, the heroine of War and Peace, Claire goes to the opera, but fortunately keeps her head and is not seduced away from her true love. Likewise, Mrs. Teal’s story echoes events portrayed in Lydia Chukovskaya’s Sofia Petrovna.

In The Flight of the Bluebird, the second novel in the trilogy, which follows The Silence Between the Notes, a coup occurs that resembles the violence and confusion of the 1993 October coup I witnessed while studying abroad in Moscow. The photo above is one I took after Boris Yeltsin bombed the “White House,” the Duma’s legislative building, when the Duma tried to oust him from power. Nearly 500 people were killed, making it the bloodiest uprising since the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. I was 20 at that time, and it was the first time I had ever heard the sound of machine gun fire and the distant boom of bomb shells dropping.

Lumien, the scholar Claire and her parents revere, is inspired by the Russian philosopher and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, pictured below. I studied with Caryl Emerson and Saul Morson, the authors of The Creation of Prosaics, one of the definitive works on Bakhtin’s oeuvre. My life and scholarship has been profoundly shaped by their insight into Bakhtin’s aesthetics and ethical inquiry.

Photo Credits: Key Theories of Mikhail Bakhtin

Raichevsky, the composer whose music makes Claire wish to become a pianist, is a combination of Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky.

Von Solnitz, Claire’s other favorite composer, is stand-in for Mozart.

The films of the Polish/French director Krzysztof Kieślowski inspired several scenes in The Silence Between The Notes. Claire’s mother’s blissful moment sitting in the park is an homage to a scene in Bleu in which Julie, played by Juliette Binoche, experiences a similar state of bliss when the sunlight plays over her face.

Photo Credits: Film Aflixionado

Claire and Eugenia’s portrait, which is used to promote their radio program was inspired by the billboard advertisement featuring Valentine in Rouge.

Photo Credits: Three Reasons: Three Colors: Red

For their first broadcast, Claire and Eugenia tell several stories. The story Claire tells of the cow is inspired by the Irish song, “Ballyconnell Fair.” My favorite version is sung by Eimear Arkins. You can find it here.

Eugenia is fascinated by insects and encourages Claire to create musical pieces about the insects they discover in the palace garden. Claire’s Insect Suite, is inspired by Saint Saën’s Carnival of the Animals and Karel Čapek’s Insect Play.

Photo Credits: Brown University Library, “The New Game of Human Life” (1790)

My husband, child, and I love to play board games. In The Silence Between the Notes, Claire creates a role-playing board game for Eugenia that is inspired not only by the Hasbro game Life, which I loved playing with my cousin Chrissy growing up, but by “The New Game of Human Life” created by John Wallis and Elizabeth Newbery in 1790, which I saw a replica of during a visit it to Colonial Williamsburg.

Intrigued, I bought a copy of the board game at the gift shop. Though I loved the spiral design of the board, I found the rules overly complicated. I came up with a simplified design for a game in which a player could navigate a game board, determining the life of their character through chance (rolling a die each turn), choosing one of the options on the cards color coded with the space they landed on (free will), or choosing a number at the beginning of the game and committing themselves to whatever option designated by that number on the card corresponding to the space on which they land (fate). Thus, Claire’s game of Fate, Chance, and Free Will was conceived!

COMING SOON: A downloadable pdf of a Fate, Chance, and Free Will board, a packet of cards for Clarence, Martha, Billy, and Jenny, and the rules.

Chocolate Cranberry Scone (upper left) and Chocolate Lingonberry Scone (lower right) made by Laura Nemetz, who tested my recipes. Thanks, Laura! Photo: Chrissy Gulick.

I love making scones. I created these because my child likes chocolate chip scones and my husband likes berry scones, and this scone pleases them both.

In The Silence Between the Notes, Claire and Eugenia make lingonberry chocolate scones in the palace kitchen. Lingonberries can be hard to find in the U.S., so I usually make these scones with cranberries. I always buy a few extra bags at Thanksgiving, chop them up in the food processor, and freeze them so I can make these scones anytime.

Ingredients

1/3 cup butter

1 egg beaten

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

6 tablespoons milk

1 ¾ cups flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ cup chopped cranberries or lingonberries

½ cup chocolate chips

Extras for serving: butter, orange marmalade, whipped cream

Directions

1. Use butter chilled in the freezer for this recipe. Your scones will come out so much lighter. Better yet, always keep a cup of butter in a container in the freezer so you can pull it out whenever you need it.
2. Combine egg, vanilla, and sugar in one bowl and the flour, baking soda and salt in another. Then, mix the contents of both bowls together.
3. Taking a knife in each hand, cut the butter into tiny nuggets spread throughout the mixture.
4. Add the milk. Add slightly more milk if the mixture is too dry.
5. Add the cranberries and chocolate to the mixture.
6. Form into a ball and flatten it out slightly. Wrap it in cling wrap and chill it in the freezer while your oven preheats to 400.
7. Take the flattened ball out of the freezer and place it on a baking sheet or baking stone. Cut the ball into eight triangles and arrange them on the pan or stone.
8. Bake for 10-15 or until golden brown. If your triangles are thick, they may need more time. You should be able to poke them with a fork and have it come out either clean or with small crumbs.
9. Serve warm with extra butter, orange marmalade, or whipped cream on the side!