Cue of the Week: “Arabella Taken Hostage”

This piece is about getting under your skin and causing disquiet, rather than something you leave the theater humming. In the corresponding scene from Secrets Beneath the Floorboards, our heroine’s sister has been taken hostage. The mood is, understandably, tense.

Instrumentation-wise, I combined organic-sounding timbres (violins) with electronic ones (the “growing” analog synth). To me this evoked the mood of a hostage situation — something alien intruding on something natural.