The prototype of Vinteuil’s septet is one of Cesar Franck’s quartets. As Adelson suggests, Proust reveals in his letter: “when the piano and the violin sigh like two birds which are calling to each other, I thought of the Sonata by Franck, whose Quartet will appear in one of the succeeding volumes” (231). The sonata of Cesar Franck is the prototype for Vinteuil’s septet and is the last work of Vinteuil before his death. The description, “the piano and violin sigh like two birds,” coincides with the depiction of Vinteuil’s septet—“something like a mystical cock-crow.” The passage about Vinteuil’s septet is as follows:
And a song already pierced the air, a song on seven notes, but the strangest, the most remote from anything I had ever imagined, at once ineffable and strident, no longer the cooing of a dove as in the sonata, but rending the air, as vivid as the scarlet tint in which the opening bars had been bathed, something like a mystical cock-crow, the ineffable but ear-piercing calling of eternal morning. The atmosphere, cold, rain washed, electric—of a quality so different, subject to quite other pressures, in a world so remote from the virginal, plant-strewn world of the sonata—changed continually, eclipsing the crimson promise of the dawn. At noon, however, in a burst of scorching but transitory sunlight, it seemed to reach fulfillment in a heavy, rustic, almost cloddish gaiety in which the lurching, riotous clangour of bells (like
those which set the church square of Combray aglow and which Vinteuil, who must often have heard them, had perhaps discovered at that moment in his memory like a colour which a painter has at hand on his palette) seemed the material representation of the coarsest joy. (CP333)
From “the bird’s cock-crow calling” at dawn to “the clangour of bell” at noon, Proust depicts the sense of passing of time and the change of the atmosphere. Proust’s musical descriptions of Vinteuil’s septet contain the synesthesia effect of acoustic, visual, and tactile. As Proust narrates, Vinteuil has a “palette.” Proust depicts the change of the tonality with the colors – form the “scarlet tint” and the “crimson promise” in the dawn— to the “burst of the sunlight”— the tone of the color gradually becoming lighter, going from red, yellow, to white. The atmosphere is depicted with tactile sensations—from the “cold, rain washed, electric” weather to the “scoring of sunlight” at noon. The mood of the melody changes from the
melancholy and sober feelings to the “cloddish gaiety” of bells and the “coarsest joy”
as Proust labels. The “lurching, riotous, clangour of bells” in the finale of the quartet leads to Marcel’s childhood memories in Martinville. As Proust points out, Vinteuil must have also heard the Clangour of bell. The description reflects that Proust believes the musician is influenced by the environment when composing. This corresponds to the fact that Proust himself is influenced by the artistic movement in French in the fin-de-siècle. According to Stephen Davies, it is called a mirroring response when people are listening to music. The listener of the music captures the expressions in music and an imaginary persona of the music rather than how the composer really senses when composing the music. As Stephen said,
According to the theory in which a persona is the human subject of the imaginary act of expression we hear as going on in the music, the problem response can be approached as follows: If that response is directed to the
persona, then it will be targeted at the music, for it is in the world of the music that the persona is imagined to exist. And if we hear the persona as undergoing the emotional vicissitudes outlined in the music, then we entertain thoughts about the situation of the persona that is appropriate for mirroring reactions. Admittedly this thought is make-believed, not believed, but if this presents no special difficulty in accounting for our reactions to fictional characters, then the response is also unproblematic in the musical case. (36)
Davies indicates that the persona of the music depends on how the listener thinks and feels when he is listening to music. To use Davies’s words, the narrator senses the memories about the Clangour of the bells in Combray, so his imagination mirrors that Vinteuil must have also heard about it when composing. The make-beliefs of the listener will decide the listening experience. This is why Swann, Marcel, and the audience in the soirée perceive differently when listening to the music—rather than what the composers aim to convey but how the listeners feel and experience at the moment. This is also part of reasons that lead to the incongruous descriptions, since the meaning of the music depends a lot on how the listeners feel and sense from the past and present. My suggestion is that Vinteuil, Marcel, and Swann present the multiple views of art. In the following sections, I will explain my ideas.
Then how does the misfortune musician Vinteuil perceive the meaning of his own music? Vinteuil’s life bears resemblance with that of Cesar Franck—poor and misfortune (Adelson 230). After the passages about the septet, Proust depicts the profanations of Vinteuil’s daughter Vlle Vinteuil to his dead father. Vinteuil’s life is troubled by his neurosis, the exclusion of the social clan, and his identity being a Jew.
Yet somehow in the last work of Vinteuil, this septet, Vinteuil finds the redemption and hope in his music. In The Captive, when Marcel is playing the piano of Vinteuil’s
sonata, he asks the questions: “Could life console me for the loss of art? Was there is art a more profound reality, in which our true personality finds an expression that is not afforded it by the activities of life?” (CP204) The questions hover in his mind and remain unsettled. In the soirée, Marcel asks again the same questions when he is listening to Vinteuil’s septet, as Proust narrates,
If art was indeed but a prolongation of life, was it worthwhile to sacrifice anything to it? Was it not as unreal as life itself? The more I listened to this septet, the less I could believe this to be so. No doubt the glowing septet differed singularly from the lily-white sonata; the timid questions to which the little phrase replied […]. (CP339)
For Vinteuil, music represents a truer reality than his real life and the prolongation of life after death, as Proust narrates, “it had been given him to go on living, for an unlimited time, a part at least of his life” (339). Although Vinteuil is a “timid” and
“sad” (CP338) person, he finds the expression of his true personality through music—
as I have pointed out in the second chapter, “a unique accent” (CP341) which is “a real difference” among other musicians. The lily-white sonata referring to Odette and Swann’s love anthem asks the timid question about love, while Vinteuil’s glowing septet, his last work, asks the question of death. Vinteuil’s septet, as Proust narrates, is “a proof of the irreducibly individual existence of the soul” (CP341). As Proust narrates, music is “the means of communication between souls” (CP344).Music is against rationality and logos, remaining undetermined in meaning. For Vinteuil, his music has the characteristic like a “prayer” and “hope” (CP340) — Vinteuil’s septet, beginning in a melancholy and sober melody, turns into the joyous and triumphant motif at the end. As Proust narrates,
when the sublime came spontaneously to life at the clang of the brass, panting, intoxicated, unbridled, vertiginous, while he painted his great
musical fresco, like Michelangelo strapped to his scaffold and from his upside-down position hurling tumultuous brush-strokes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. (CP 339)
Proust uses Michelangelo, the genius in the Renaissance, to compare to Vinteuil. This passage again presents Proust’s incongruous musical descriptions. The fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel associates more with Baroque music in the church.
However, as Proust narrates, “[a]nd yet not programme, no subject matter, supplied any intellectual basis for judgment. One simply sensed that it was a question of the transposition of profundity into terms of sound” (CP342). Vinteuil’s septet has no programme and subject matter—the description corresponds more to the instrumental absolute music, asking the question of death. In general, Vinteuil’s septet reflects the philosophical pondering of an artist’s purpose of life, while the little phrase in Vinteuil’s sonata asks the “timid question” which is just a practice, a
“timid essay” before the septet. Vinteuil creates a universe through the septet, a truer reality for him, and enables the listener to travel into his universe10. Thus Proust reveals a perspective of art, which is opposite to Plato, that art is not the mimesis of reality but the truer reality and that an artist shall hear from the universe and projected beyond one’s limited experience11.