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The Vinteuil Centenary: Music, Memory and Repetition in Proust - CONVERSATION

23 June 2022, 2:00 pm–4:00 pm

Marcel Proustt

Short talks on music, identity and memory in Proust’s great novel, In Search of Lost Time. Linked to CONCERT in the evening!

This event is free.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Cost

Free

Organiser

Institute of Advanced Studies / UCL European Institute

Location

UCL Haldane Room, Wilkins Building
Gower Street
London
WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom
“This year marks 100 years since the death of Marcel Proust. Readers and scholars alike have long noticed the central role played by music in Proust’s major work, In Search of Lost Time. One aim of this project funded by Music Futures is to analyse and reconsider the role of music in the novel. But another aim is to produce a new composition in the light of this analysis, and to perform it at UCL.

The project therefore consists of two, linked events which focus on the theme of music, identity and memory in Proust’s great novel. Proust explores many of these themes through the famous sonata, and then septet, written by the fictional composer, Vinteuil. But the narrator of the novel discusses numerous real composers, too.

This event will offer a series of short talks, aimed at the general public, on the subject of Proust and music.

Talks will come from different disciplinary angles, including philosophy, composition, music history and literary studies.

Speakers

  • Alex Hills, Composer and Lecturer, Royal Academy of Music
  • Emily Kilpatrick, Associate Professor, Royal Academy of Music
  • Jennifer Rushworth, Associate Professor in French and Comparative Literature, UCL School of European Languages, Culture and Society
  • Tom Stern, Associate Professor of Philosophy, UCL

Organised by Tom Stern 

Linked to concert at 7:00-8:30 pm.

Featuring a new composition by Alex Hills, this concert engages with the relationship between sensation and identification essential to Proust’s involuntary memory – when is a chord just a chord, and when does it trigger the memory of the beginning of the Debussy violin sonata?

The rest of the concert is inspired by the novel and by the music of the salons of the time: Schumann, Fauré and Wagner all feature in the book. Reynaldo Hahn and Leon Delafosse were friends of Proust who may have provided models for his characters. Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and Lil Boulanger are figures from either historical end of the French musical tradition that was so important to him.

Register for the concert

 

This event is part of the Music Futures Festival. Check out our website for more information.

All welcome. Please note that there may be photography and/or audio recording at some events and that admission is on a first come first served basis. Please follow this FAQ link for more information. All our events are free but you can support the IAS here.

Image credit: 'a few centimetres in the midst of this superhuman multitude’, coarse figurine on the Porch of the Booksellers, Rouen Cathedral, photo by Thomas Stern.