Lemony Snicket's The Composer is Dead

Share your passion for music with your favourite children and delight in musical discovery with the world-famous Lemony Snicket's fun-filled investigation into the world of instruments featuring the Queensland Symphony Orchestra and the hilariously rubber-faced Bryan Probets as the inquisitive inspector.

Beethoven, Bach and Mozart are dead. Were they drowned out by the drums? Did the clarinet sneak up on them? Or did the trumpets blow them away?

Help solve this perplexing mystery. In the quest to discover who killed the composers, our detective interrogates each section of the orchestra to determine what they do and how they work.

Told with an overdose of hysterical humour, this introduction to musical instruments features the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

"I hope that as long as there are orchestras, orchestras will play The Composer is Dead, and when there are no more orchestras...the world ends!" Lemony Snicket


THE WOEFUL WORLD OF LEMONY SNICKET

Not only is there no happy ending. There is no happy beginning, and very few happy things in the middle...
~ Lemony Snicket

There is no magic wand, heroics go unrewarded and bullies go unpunished. Snicket's world is a woeful one, but he has faith in his young readers' ability to get the joke. His sales of sixty million and growing suggest he might be right.

Lemony Snicket is a fictitious character, presented as being a real life author/character, created by author Daniel Handler. Handler came upon his nom de plume by chance. While researching right-wing groups for his novel The Basic Eight, he was asked for his name to be added to a mailing list. In order to avoid being put on the mailing list the words "Lemony Snicket" popped out. In-joke, Handler's friends then adopted the moniker for ordering pizzas and writing to newspapers.

Handler has since continued to surround Snicket with a comical enigma. When Handler appears at interviews, it is because his client Mr Snicket has unfortunately been eaten by a crocodile on the way. There is also the world famous Snicket Cocktail, only to be drunk during unhappy hour, and a Lemony Snicket autobiography, which is unauthorised.

Mr Snicket even warns his young fans that under no circumstances should anyone be reading these books for entertainment. Nevertheless, his growing audiences are happy to enter his feel-bad world, and seek out their fun in the strangest of places.

Lemony Snicket comes from a family of three children. His surviving relatives include his brother Jacques Snicket and sister Kit Snicket (who both appear as supporting characters in the Series of Unfortunate Events books).

After graduating boarding school he was employed by a newspaper called The Daily Punctilio where he was an obituary spell-checker and theatre critic.

Lemony Snicket conducted an ill-fated romance with the actress Beatrice Baudelaire, Lemony and Beatrice being at one point engaged to be married, but Beatrice breaking off the engagement for unclear reasons, returned her ring to Lemony, along with a two-hundred page book explaining why the two could not be wed. Beatrice later died in the fire that destroys the Baudelaire mansion. Snicket frequently alludes to Beatrice in his narration and dedicates each of the Series of Unfortunate Events books to her.

Snicket is frequently disparaging of himself; he has described himself as a coward, and confesses that he has done things that were not noble, most notably the original theft of the sugar bowl from Esmé Squalor. He has also implied that he had a part in the murder of Count Olaf's parents, Olaf being the main antagonist in the Series of Unfortunate Events.

In the narration of his books, Snicket describes doing many unusual things in his free time, including hiding all traces of his actions, locating new hiding places, considering suspicious dishes and researching the perilous lives of the Baudelaire children. He claims to often write himself a thank-you note in an attempt to cheer himself up, but these attempts are always in vain.

Lemony Snicket warns his young readers that reading his books will not be the snuggled-up ride they may expect from their fiction. With his dark, gloomy plots and complicated words, Snicket provides an antithesis to Harry Potter.

Things to try

• Hear from the author - Visit the online video playlist Lemony Snicket and Nathaniel Stookey on The Composer is Dead
• Instruments of the orchestra - Play classical music CDs to start the day. Engage active listening skills of hearing, understanding and analysing. Look at a seating chart for a symphony orchestra.
• Visit the interactive site for San Francisco Symphony, the original orchestra to perform The Composer is Dead.

Books to read

• Lemony Snicket's The Composer is Dead
• The Magic Flute retold by Ann Gatti
• The Bear Who Loved Puccini by Arnold Sundgaard and Doominic Catalano
• Berlioz the Bear by Jan Brett
• Beethoven Lives Upstairs by Barbara Nichol and Scott Cameron

 

About the company

Visit the Queensland Symphony Orchestra website

 

Introduce students to the instrumental families of a symphony orchestra. The hero status of Lemony Snicket's detective series among older readers provides fertile ground to explore the genre of mystery. 

Ages: 6+

Essential Learnings QCAR Framework 

Ways of working - The Arts
Respond to arts works and describe initial impressions and personal interpretations, using arts elements and languages

Knowledge and understanding - Music
Familiar sound sources, including vocal and instrumental sources, have characteristic sound qualities (tone, colour)

Assessable element
Responding
E.g. Create a soundscape to accompany the narration of a favourite story. Choose a book with a clear storyline and various characters. Select instruments available in your classroom or school to represent characters from the book, along the lines of Peter and The Wolf, music and text by Sergei Prokofiev.   
- Low pitched sounds may represent slower, older characters or serious moments
- High pitched sounds may indicate younger characters or amusing situations
- Compare the bassoon with the flute as an example

Before

• Hear from the author - Visit the online video playlist Lemony Snicket and Nathaniel Stookey on The Composer is Dead
• Instruments of the orchestra - Play classical music in the classroom to start the day. Engage active listening skills of hearing, understanding and analysing.  Look at a seating chart for a symphony orchestra. Visit the interactive site for San Francisco Symphony the original orchestra to perform The Composer is Dead. 
• Mystery and detective fiction - Consider summarisation, prediction and reading for details. Read A Dark Dark Tale by Ruth Brown, Tuesday by David Wiesner

Books

• Lemony Snicket's The Composer is Dead
• The Magic Flute retold by Ann Gatti
• The Bear Who Loved Puccini by Arnold Sundgaard and Doominic Catalano
• Berlioz the Bear by Jan Brett
• Beethoven Lives Upstairs by Barbara Nichol and Scott Cameron

Podcast for teachers and parents

The Music Education Series
In May 2009, Keys To Music presented four programs focusing on the importance of good musical experiences in a child's education. Graham Abbott's guest in the series was the eminent Australian conductor and music educator Richard Gill.

More information on the podcast for teachers and parents.

About the orchestra 

Find out more about the orchestra on Queensland Symphony Orchestra's website.