Faure’s Pavane: “What Does It Mean?” and “Why That Matters”

Notes 59/1 (Sept 2002), 55-57

2014

This paper explores two notable moments in the history of musically inspired fiction: Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu and Jean Echenoz's Cherokee. Focusing on the understudied question of music considered as a textural model for literary representation, I ask what the depictions of musical performances in these two novels reveal about their authors' larger representational projects, and suggest that they provide revealing insights into their respective views on the relationship between foreground and background, character and place, consciousness and world. In this sense, it is possible to read the musical passages in Cherokee as a kind of ironic rejoinder to Proust's depictions of Vinteuil's music, elucidating Echenoz's decision to set aside almost all consideration of his characters' interiority in favour of an externalist poetics of surfaces and contingent encounters.

2005

2014

Théophile Gautier's first edition of Emaux et camées (1852) marks the juncture at which Romantic, Neoclassical, and nascent Symbolist poetic theories converged under the umbrella ideology of "Parnassianism." Emaux et camées synthesizes the aesthetics promoted by these diverse groups, primarily by 1) using "musical" and "painterly" language, 2) emphasizing correspondences among arts, and 3) paradoxically demanding an attention to form and the artist's labor while also emphasizing art's inutility during a century characterized by Progress. Gautier's Emaux et camées bridges painterly and musical poetics to create a new model for poetry. While the vocabulary of painting captivated many nineteenth century writers, music became increasingly admired by poets because of its freedom from representation, and as an "intention-less language." "Musical" poets indemnified the mantra "art for art's sake" and touted the intermingling of art forms, belief systems, and cultural practices during a time when usefulness, authoritarian rule, and homogeny were staunchly reinforced in the political and public spheres. Emaux et camées appeared in 1852, marking a point of departure for poetry. Gautier preserved earlier poetic principles, but also invested a robust work ethic and a devotion to form in his collection. Numerous offshoot poetic groups arose as a result of Gautier, who had reclaimed music's nuanced, fragmented, performative, and anti-utilitarian nature for poetry and poetics. v Acknowledgments I am indebted to many people for the completion of this dissertation and to being recently hired as the Academic Technology Analyst-Specialist to the Humanities at Yale University upon deposit of this thesis. First and foremost, to Professor Royal S. Brown, my dissertation advisor, without whom I would not also have published my Master's thesis in College Literature, pursued scholarship and research in musicology, or obtained the freelance work and fellowships I completed as a doctoral candidate. Second, to Professor Mary Ann Caws, who expanded my knowledge of multi-talented writers including Gautier, who mentored me during several semesters as her graduate assistant, and who graciously acted as reader for my dissertation committee. Third, to Professor Francesca Canadé Sautman, who as a longtime Executive Officer of the French Department was relentlessly supportive and passionate about my candidacy even when I had lost all confidence and interest in my research, and who acted as a reader on my dissertation committee. I am truly privileged and honored to have received their guidance and support the past 14 years. A special thank you to Jann Pasler (UCSD) and Ray Knapp (UCLA), and to Sylvia Kahan (Music), Jane Roos (Art History), and Remy Roussetzski (French) at the Graduate Center-whether in the early phases of my candidacy or for the weightier research, these scholars offered suggestions, critiques, and support out of sheer generosity. I want to thank Seth Paynter, my longtime friend and fellow musician, who invested countless hours analyzing and debating the music theory component of this thesis. vi I dedicate this dissertation to my friend, David McRae (1985-2014), whose joy, wit, and exuberance sustained me these 14 years. Fortitudine. vii "Alphabets" From time to time we take our pen in hand And scribble symbols on a blank white sheet. Their meaning is at everyone's command; It is a game whose rules are nice and neat. But if a savage or a moon-man came And found a page, a furrowed runic field, And curiously studied lines and frame: How strange would be the world that they revealed. A magic gallery of oddities. He would see A and B as man and beast, As moving tongues or arms or legs or eyes, Now slow, now rushing, all constraint released, Like prints of ravens' feet upon the snow. He'd hop about with them, fly to and fro, And see a thousand worlds of might-have-been Hidden within the black and frozen symbols, Beneath the ornate strokes, the thick and thing. He'd see the way love burns and anguish trembles, He'd wonder, laugh, shake with fear and weep Because beyond his cipher's cross-barred keep He'd see the world in all its aimless passion, Diminished, dwarfed, and spellbound in the symbols, And rigorously marching prisoner-fashion. He'd think: each sign all others so resembles That love of life and death, or lust and anguish, Are simply twins whom no one can distinguish Until at last the savage with a sound Of mortal terror lights and stirs a fire, Chants and beats his brow against the ground And consecrates the writing to his pyre. Perhaps before his consciousness is drowned In slumber there will come to him some sense Of how this world of magic fraudulence, This horror utterly behind endurance, Has vanished as if it had never been. He'll sigh, and smile, and feel all right again. Herman Hesse, The Glass Bead Game Trans. Richard and Clara Winston (2002) ix Agréments: Extra Materials and Appendices 203 ξ Appendix I: Gautier poems with musical references 204 ξ Appendix II: 19 th century references to musicality 209 ξ Appendix III: alchemical portrait 217 ξ Appendix IV: images of woman 218 ξ Notes 222 ξ Personal Reflections 225 ξ Works Cited 226 Il n'imita personne, et reste inimitable. "Quand il était écolier," Alexandre Cosnard Overture Rumor has it that Théophile Gautier possessed a remarkably flawless penmanship. When asked how he avoided deletions in his press copies, Gautier responded with a question: "Why expect corrections in my manuscripts when none existed in my head?" This curious detail comprises an entire paragraph of three devoted to Gautier and his position in a trinity of top literary journalists (with Charles Sainte-Beuve and Prosper Merimée) of the mid-nineteenth century (Avenel 454). Gautier's insistence that his error-free calligraphy mirrored his cerebral process may be self-aggrandizing, but it also reveals something key: Gautier did not take communication lightly, and intended for readers to unquestionably accept the views he stated as sincere, truthful, and accurate. An unwavering commitment to ideas and ideals, nevertheless, poses difficulty for readers of Gautier's complete works. Unlike other canonized poets of the period (i.e., Hugo, Verlaine, Rimbaud), Gautier defies categorization. Gautier's poems contain Neo-Classical, Romantic, Parnassian, Decadent and Symbolist structures, themes, and contexts. We cannot affix Gautier to a literary movement; rather, he is the chief pioneer of an eclectic, musical poetry-a poetry that perfectly blends traditional musical and poetic devices with a new musical aesthetic. In Gautier's works, one notes an effort to re-bridge what remained linked in music, but had become separated in poetry as a result of the writing and "reading" of rhetorical elements in poetry as musical elements: immediate and essential meaning.

Source of uncountable musical interpretations since the beginning of the 20th century, the ancient Greek tragedy continues to concern, seduce and inspire numerous French composers who create essentially stage works. Opera, in particular, becomes again an ideal form of research, creation and innovation of myths. During the years 2000, Medea’s myth has been revived three times at the operatic stage by Christophe Looten (1958), Michèle Reverdy (1943) and Pascal Dusapin (1955). In 2001, Christophe Looten composes the opera Médée de Thessalonique (three acts; for four soloists and instrumental ensemble) according to Frédéric Lenormand’s libretto. It was staged at the Opéra d’Arras and performed by the Ensemble Ars Nova. Two years later, Médée of Michèle Reverdy (five acts; for five soloists and orchestra), based on Christa Wolf’s Medea-Stimmen, Bernard Banoun’s and Kai Stefan Fritsch’s libretto, was performed at the Opéra de Lyon. Finally, Pascal Dusapin’s Medea (initially titled Medeamaterial and composed in 1992) according to Heiner Müller’s text, was presented as a choreographed opera (choreography by Sasha Waltzon) at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg in 2007. These operas show obviously a contemporary musical expression if we take in consideration the incredible and very demanding voice demonstration in Medea, the great taste for exploration and invention in Médée or even the use of a bi-pentaphonique mode in Médée de Thessalonique. Following very different and modern adaptations/rewritings of the Euripides’s original text, sometimes linked to actual events (Berlin Wall, Heiner Müller), are these works “connected”, in a way, with the ancient Greek musical past and how? Can we trace the use of any kind of modes? Is modality present and associated with each composer’s distinct and proper musical language and if so, why? This paper will attempt to answer these questions in order to comprehend the French contemporary operatic creation inspired by the ancient Greek Drama.

Musicologica Olomucensia, 2015

This study addresses the music-related aspects of the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss within the context of musicology and with a specific focus placed on his Mythologiques tetralogy. The aim is to define thematic categories for the individual theses within which they are further contextually understood. Selected references to music from Lévi-Strauss’s work were analysed, compared, and interpreted, taking into consideration the theories of structural linguistics and anthropology. The topics chosen for the investigation include the system of relationships between language, mythology, and music, the analysis of myths using musical scores, the thesis that both music and myth are instruments that suppress time, the mythical nature of musical forms, and an analysis of Maurice Ravel’s Bolero. The study takes into account current musicological applications that use the structural analysis of myths, and also critical reflections regarding Lévi-Strauss’s theories. The individual categories were defi ned as structural homologies of myth and music, methodological tools of a metaphorical type to analyse myths using music, and the area commenting on the principles governing the styles and forms in the development of European art music and composed poetry.

Horizonte - Neue Serie - Nuova Serie, 2017

The relationship between poetics and literary practice within Italian literature in the seventeenth-century represents one of the most centraland controversial -research topics in early modern drama. 1 Understanding the relationship becomes even more problematic when examining the period at the end of the Cinquecentothe transition from the Renaissance to the Baroquewhen the epistemological discourse and rules of poetics change. It is in this complex period that the birth of the musical drama as a new genre occurs, which can be effectively studied through Ottavio Rinuccini and Jacopo Peri's Dafne (1600). This article has two main objectives: First, to demonstrate the existence of a link between genre theory at the end of the sixteenth century and Rinuccini and Peri's Dafne, which leads to a new understanding of the opera. Starting with Giovan Battista Guarini's theory of tragicomedy, and then focussing on the literary genres Rinuccini makes use of in his Dafne, I will demonstrate how the mixing of genres becomes a central theme for the Florentine dramatist. Second, to explore how the poetics of pleasure in Dafne appears to be contaminated by the poetics of docere, a type of poetics which conforms to the court within which this early operatic production has its origins.

Notes, 2010

Choice Reviews Online, 2010

The idea that there was a time when men and women lived in perfect harmony with nature and with themselves, though rooted in classical antiquity, was one of the most fertile products of the Renaissance literary and artistic imagination. This book explores one specific aspect of this idea: the musical representation and stylization of the myth of Arcadia in sixteenth-century Italy. Giuseppe Gerbino outlines how Renaissance culture strove to keep this utopia alive, and demonstrates how music played a fundamental role in the construction and preservation of this collective illusion. Covering a range of different musical genres, including the madrigal, music for theater, and early opera, the book overcomes traditional barriers among genres. Illustrative music examples, including previously unpublished music, serve to expand the reader's knowledge of this important repertory, and provide new insights into the role of music in the formation and dissemination of cultural myths.

Anabases, 2013