PROUST'S NOTES TO THE IMAGINARY MUSIC OF VINTEUIL: A LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU AND THE PROGRAMME MUSIC CONTROVERSY

Several extended similes interspersed throughout A la recherche du temps perdu imply Proust's dismissive attitude towards programme notes, an opinion which is shared by Debussy and can be considered a reaction against composers such as Liszt and Berlioz. Nonetheless, Malcolm Bowie is right to highlight that in the novel descriptions of Vinteuil's music do resemble those of a programme-note writer, and indeed in the septet episode a concert programme is evoked in more flattering terms. And yet Proust's writing has also been championed, notably by Eve Norah Pauset, as a literary model for musicologists to follow. Furthermore, while programme music would seem to be an ideal musical form for writers to attach themselves to, absolute music itself is equally in truth a peculiarly literary concept which exists only in that very language which it claims to transcend. Proust is in the paradoxical position of admiring the purity of absolute music in general and in the abstract, while relying in his novel on a programmatic, metaphorical style of musical depiction once specific musical pieces are invoked. Moreover, the Proustian experience of listening to music is revealed to be intermittent and impure, as it is inevitably filtered through language and thought. Absolute music is a literary and philosophical ideal which can be conceptualized in language and the imagination but not directly experienced, as the listening subject constitutes an immediate sullying of its abstract, non-verbal purity. © The Author (2011). Published by Oxford University Press for the Court of the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved