Music is a key element to this play, more so than any other by Peter Shaffer. He wanted strange and disturbing sounds produced on primitive instruments such as saws, reed pipes, drums (tablas and bongos) and cymbals to create the aural world of 16th Century Peru. Shaffer was so impressed with Marc Wilkinson's score for The Royal Hunt of the Sun, which he has described as "perhaps the best score for a play to be written since Grieg embellished Peer Gynt",Shaffer, Peter. The Collected Plays. Harmony Books, 1982: p. x that he now considers it integral to the play.
