Wintersong Inspiration: Amadeus

Originally published at my old blog on June 29, 2016.

If you look at the Goodreads summary for Wintersong, once (if) you get past the entire “Goblin King” aspect, you’ll notice that my protagonist, Liesl, is a composer. Music is an enormous part of the novel, and is, in many ways, the most important foundation of Wintersong, more so than Labyrinth. Music was the bedrock and beginning, the place from which I started to write.

In Wintersong’s origin story, I talked about how I had been writing a retelling of Die Zauberflöte that wasn’t working. Looking back, I can understand why it wasn’t working. The Magic Flute is my favorite of Mozart’s operas,¹ but I love the music, not necessarily the story. The story is both a fairytale rife with Masonic imagery and symbolism² and a populist work of entertainment, so characterization is a bi…