Reading playlist Animal Farm
You watched the rules change one word at a time, and said nothing.
Artists and music for this book
Dmitri Shostakovich
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Benjamin Britten
Sergei Prokofiev
Alfred Schnittke
Why this music
The music stays deceptively quiet and pastoral — folk-tinged strings and sparse woodwind — because the horror here is gradual, not sudden. As the pigs consolidate power, the warmth drains out: melodies grow angular, harmonies unresolved. The listener should feel the same slow unease the animals do: things sound almost right, but aren't.