To elaborate Proust’s taste and demonstrate Proust’s knowledge to the musicology, I shall discuss the passages relating to the charity concert at the
Marquise de Saint-Euverte (SW457). Proust mentions Mozart, Liszt, Chopin, Wagner, and Vinteuil and depicts how the audiences think about their music. The charity concert has three performances: Liszt’s “Saint Francis Preaching to the birds,” a prelude of Chopin, and a symphony orchestra of Vinteuil.
i. Liszt’s Breakthrough in Piano Technique
To begin with, Liszt is the representative figure to establish the symphonic poems and is famous for his breakthrough in the piano technique. The nineteenth century is an age of “the war of Romantic.” That is to say, the musicians were
advocating the different ideals of music: programme music and absolute music; and Liszt is the former. According to Alan Walker, Liszt's works show three distinct departures from Mendelssohn and Brahms: firstly, he evolved the single-movement cyclic sonata structure which rolled the separate movements of a sonata into one and had its final outcome in the symphonic poem; secondly, he developed the technique of thematic transformation; and thirdly, he believed that the language of
music could be fertilized by poetry and painting.4 As Walker suggests, “During the 1830s and 40s Liszt made an unprecedented advance in piano technique, introducing a range of new technical and expressive possibilities.” Liszt was a pianist master and his skills inspired the pianists after him. As Walker points out, “this breakthrough, coupled with the related evolution in the instrument itself, its greater strength, its bigger sound and wider dynamic range, allowed a richer variety of pianistic textures5.”In the following passage, Proust demonstrates his knowledge to Liszt’s technique of piano. For the audience in the charity concert, the piano technique seems to be astounding. As Proust narrates,
Filled with melancholy irony, Swann watched them as they listened to the pianoforte intermezzo (Liszt’s “Saint Francis preaching to the birds”) which had succeeded the flute and followed the virtuoso in his dizzy flight, Mme de Franquetot anxiously, her eyes starting from her head as though the keys over which his fingers over which his fingers skipped which such agility were a series of trapezes from any one of which he might come crashing a
hundred feet to the ground, stealing now and then a glance of astonishment and unbelief at her companion, as who should say: “It isn’t possible, I’d never have believed that a human being could do that!,” Mme de Cambremer, as a woman who had received a sound musical education, beating time with her hand, transformed for the nonce into the pendulum of a metronome, the sweep and rapidity of whose oscillations from one
shoulders to the other so increased […]. (SW 467)
As Proust points out, Mme de. Cambremer has received a fine musical education, yet
4 The passage was paraphrased from the web of “Franz Liszt” of Grove Music Online without page numbers.
5 The passage was paraphrased from the web of “Franz Liszt” of Grove Music Online without page numbers.
she is also surprised by the piano technique of Liszt’s “Saint Francis preaching to the birds” (CP 467). The technique, as Walker suggests, is “Liszt octaves,” which means that the pianist “played with alternative hands, thumbs overlapping, creating the illusion of regular double octaves at unattainable speeds6.” To the ears of
nineteenth-century aristocracies, Liszt’s music sounds radical. As Proust narrates, for the Princess des Laumes, Liszt’s another intermezzo, is a piece “which did not quite come within the scope of the music she was used to hearing” (SW 470). As Proust continues to narrate, “in order to express by a compromise both of her contradictory inclinations in turn, at one moment she would confine herself to straightening her shoulder-strapes […]” (SW 470). The Princess Des Lumes confines her feelings of admiration and curiosity to the music while hearing the music. The behavior is because that she does not want to bear resemblance with Mme de. Cambremer’s behavior and that she wants to maintain the sense of superiority as a princess.
Proust has presented that Liszt’s innovated voice and technique in the intermezzo which astounds the people in his contemporary.
In addition, according to Scruton, “the term ‘programme music’ was introduced by Liszt, who also invented the expression Symphonic poem to describe what is perhaps the most characteristic instance of it.” As Scruton points out,
[Liszt defines] a programme as a preface added to a piece of instrumental music, by means of which the composer intends to guard the listener against a wrong poetical interpretation, and to direct his attention to the poetical idea of the whole or to a particular part of it.7
Liszt’s definition of program music needs the external language to guide the listener into a dreamy and poetic world. Liszt’s attitude toward music and language is closer
6 The sentence is quoted from the web of “Franz Liszt” of Grove Music Online without page number.
7 This passage is quoted from the web of “Programme Music” of Grove Music Online without page number.
to Wagner’s attitude toward music.
ii. Chopin and the Distaste of Wagner
Proust admires not only Liszt’s piano technique but also Chopin’s piano technique as well. Chopin’s music is an individual sound with its adventurous
harmonic sound and parts of his take part in the Classical music tradition. According to Michalowski,
It was through these mazurkas, nocturnes and études that Chopin’s piano music acquired its unmistakable sound. While that sound may be explained on one level as a transformation of early 19th-century models, it can also be viewed as a recreation, in terms entirely idiomatic for piano, of Bach’s ornamental melody, figuration and counterpoint8.
In the following passage, by the behavior of Mme. de Cambremer, Proust reveals his attitudes toward Wagner’s music while the Performer is playing a prelude of Chopin.
Proust’s tone of narration is quite critical about Wagner in the passage. As Proust narrates,
But nowadays the old fashioned beauty of this music seemed to have become a trifle state. Having forfeited, some years back, the esteem of the connoisseurs, it had lost its distinction and its charm, and even those whose taste was frankly bad had ceased to find in it more than a moderate pleasure to which they hardly liked to confess. Mme. de Cambremer casted a furtive glance behind her. She knew that her daughter in law despised Chopin, and felt quite ill when she heard him played. But finding herself free from the scrutiny of Wagnerian, who was sitting at some distance in a group of her own contemporaries, Mme de Cambremer let herself drift
8 The sentence was cited from the web of "Chopin, Fryderyk Franciszek" of Grove Music Online. .
upon a stream of exquisite sensations. The Princess des Laumes felt them too. (472)
In the passage, Proust uses two phrases “old fashioned of beauty” and “loss of charm”
to describe the music of the pre-Romantic period; and Proust boldly indicates that the audience feels relieved, escaping from “the scrutiny of Wager.” The passage reflects that in the nineteenth century, Wagner’s music was too popular in the theaters and that some people felt they were gladly to be away from the influence of Wagner. As I have mentioned, Rushworth suggests that Proust is an advocator of absolute music (30), the pure music: while Wagner is at the opposite side –
programme music. Tadié suggests that when Proust discovered Wagner’s music and surged into it, his boyfriend Hahn could not accept it (193). Proust uses Wagner’s
“Good Friday Spell” as one of the prototypes of Vinteuil’s sonata, yet here Proust criticizes on Wagner’s music— “the scrutiny” side of Wagner’s music and its
influence to the musicians of nineteenth century in France. According to Millington, in Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1849),
Wagner argues that the elements of dance, music and poetry, harmonize so perfectly in Greek drama, being deprived of their expressive potential when divorced from one another. In the ‘art-work of the future’ they would be reunited both with each other (in the ‘actor of the future’, at once dancer, musician and poet) and with the arts of architecture, sculpture and painting.9
As I have pointed out in the second chapter, Proust is “struck by how much reality”
that Wagner has put into his music (CP205); Wagner always “respects the original nature” (CP 205) – to precisely portray the reality; and Proust has indicated that
9 The passage was cited from the web of Grove Music Online.
Marcel discovers “a trace of the grandfather in an intonation” (CP205). Although Wagner’s music conflicts with the core value of absolute music—the pure music that projects the abstract feelings and imagination, Proust’s attitude towards Wagner’s music is quite neutral— Proust criticizes on Wagner’s scrutiny while affirming its attribution and influential to the nineteenth-century music in France.