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April 29, 2005
TT: Too much information (and that's just tough)
Until last week I hadn't peered into Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu (familiarly known in Shakespearean English as Remembrance of Things Past for reasons known only to Proust's first translator, C.K. Scott Moncrieff) since college days, save to check the odd quote from time to time. Don't ask me why, but when I flew my Upper West Side coop for a couple of days of silence and sunshine by the Hudson River, I tossed the first installment of the Modern Library's 1934 two-volume omnibus edition of A la recherche into my shoulder bag. I cracked it open as I sat by the river, and since then I haven't looked back.No sooner did I return to Manhattan than I was filled with an irresistible desire to listen to the piece of music that is the real-life model for the imaginary sonata by M. Vinteuil with whose "little phrase" the narrator of A la recherche is obsessed (and which is the subject of today's almanac entry). If you've read George Painter's biography of Proust, you know what it is. If not, read on, bearing in mind that Reynaldo Hahn, the musician referred to below, was Proust's lover:
Reynaldo's traditionalism was no doubt salutary for himself, but would only have been disastrous for Proust: it could never have led to the invention of Vinteuil. To please Reynaldo he did his best to like Saint-Saëns: he wrote two articles in Le Gaulois of 14 January and 11 December 1895, in which, however, his attempts at praise only succeeded in displaying his reservations. "Saint-Saëns uses archaism to legitimise modernity; he bestows upon a commonplace, step by step, through the ingenious, personal, sublime appropriateness of his style, the value of an original creation...he is a musical humanist," says Proust very truly. And yet, it was from Reynaldo's tuition and from the charming, meritorious but secondary music of Saint-Saëns, that the "little phrase" of the Vinteuil Sonata took its beginning.
It was perhaps at Mme Lemaire's, and played by [Eugène] Ysaÿe ("his rendering is splendid, majestic and luminous, with admirable form," wrote Reynaldo in his diary), that Proust first heard the Saint-Saëns Sonata in D Minor for violin and piano. His imagination was captured by the chief theme of the first movement, a mediocre but haunting melody whose only musical merit is its simplicity, and whose fascination comes from its very banality, like that of a popular song or dance-tune, and its incessant repetition....Afterwards, in Reynaldo's room at 6 Rue du Cirque, with its enormous stone fireplace, or in the dining-room at 9 Boulevard Malesherbes, Proust would say: "Play me that bit I like, Reynaldo--you know, the 'little phrase.'" So the little phrase of Saint-Saëns became the "national anthem" of his love for Reynaldo, as Vinteuil's became that of Swann's love for Odette.
I yield to no one in my admiration for Painter's skills as a biographer, but as a music critic he left something to be desired. For this reason, I suggest you listen Saint-Saëns' D Minor Violin Sonata and try hearing for yourself what Proust heard in it. Alas, Jascha Heifetz's zephyr-swift, supremely aristocratic recording is currently out of print, but this version ought to be quite serviceable. (The "little phrase" is heard for the first time about a minute and a half into the first movement.) I put it on as soon as I got back from Cold Spring, and I've been listening to it ever since.
Would that Eugène Ysaÿe himself had recorded the "little phrase," but his recordings all date from 1912 and 1913, back when nobody thought a whole violin sonata was worth waxing. He did, however, record 15 short encore pieces, four of which are included on a two-CD anthology called The Great Violinists: Recordings from 1900-1913. The sound is dim and Ysaÿe himself was rather past his prime, but they still offer a treasurable glimpse of the immensely characterful playing of a legendary turn-of-the-century artist.
While we're on the subject of Proust-related recordings, I delight in telling you that Reynaldo Hahn also cut a double handful of ancient, scratchy 78s on which he can be heard singing, among other things, some of his own songs, all of them sung to his own deft piano accompaniment. He had a small, throaty baritone voice that didn't amount to much, but listen to his 1909 performance of "Offrande" (the text is by Verlaine) and you'll hear what I can do no better than to describe as the quintessence of all things French. Alan Blyth conveys its quality nicely:
Hahn's dry, evocative baritone runs through the song rather more quickly than one would expect; I cannot make up my mind whether that is because he wants it to be heard as a single, trancelike supplication to the loved one with many phrases taken in a single breath, or whether his frail voice simply could not sustain it at a slower pace. I incline to the former view. Whatever the reason, it is a reading that is so haunting that repeat performances are imperative, like the need to drink yet another glass of a dry eau de vie.
Exactly.
By the way, you'd probably better get used to hearing way the hell too much about Proust for at least the next couple of weeks. I'm totally immersed, and happy to be. To be sure, it's kind of strange to be revisiting A la recherche at the same time that I'm working on my Louis Armstrong biography, but the six-degrees-of-separation game will take you from Marcel to Louis in two easy steps, by way of Armstrong's friend Bix Beiderbecke...but I'll save that one for another day.
Posted April 29, 2005 12:02 PM
