I went back to music for the chapter headings in Anyone But Him. This time, though, it’s some of my favourite classical pieces.

Andie is a music teacher and plays the piano at home. She manages to work through a lot of her issues in her music and it’s a source of comfort to her when she’s having a hard time. I learned the piano when I was in school and managed to eke my way through exams up to Grade 4 before I realised that I wasn’t really naturally talented at it and that it was becoming too much like hard work. However, like Andie, I would play the piano when I was upset and it always calmed me down. It also gave me a real love of classical music and I listened to the pieces that I’ve used in the book all the time I was writing it. (Sometimes, though, I’d go off into a trance listening to the music. That’s why I usually write in total silence!)

As with each time I’ve used chapter headings I try to have the pieces reflect the mood of the chapters themselves.

Some of the pieces are very popular and well-known, like

The Four Seasons by Vivaldi (Chapter 1)

Canon in D Major by Pachelbel (Chapter 2)

the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven (Chapter 17)

O Fortuna from Carmina Burana by Orff (Chapter 23)

Other pieces that I really like are

Borodini’s Polovietzkian Dances (Chapter 15) which inspired the song ‘Stranger in Paradise’ in the 1953 musical Kismet

Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a theme of Paginini (Chapter 34) – definitely one of the most romantic pieces of music in the world

A great piano piece is Bach’s Art of the Fugue (Chapter 9). I never quite mastered this one myself….

but – like lots of piano students the world over -- I did learn Beethoven’s Fur Elise (Chapter 21)

And finally another favourite is Chopin’s Prelude in D Flat major (Chapter which is so simple and lovely

Hope you enjoy them too!!