In Search of Lost Tune

The usual contenders for the Violin Sonata tune that runs through Proust's In Search of Lost Time are French or Belgian violin and piano pieces of the period (i.e. Franck, Fauré, or Saint-Saëns), but now that I am actually reading the first volume of the novel, I have had the subversive thought that the piece may not be French at all.

Proust refers to specific pieces of music by Liszt, Chopin, and Wagner, Gluck, and Beethoven, but he never mentions Mendelssohn, at least not in the first two volumes.

After reading the passage on page 362 of the Lydia Davis translation of Swann's Way

When, after the Verdurin evening, he had had the little phrase played over for him, and had sought to disentangle how it was that, like a perfume, like a caress, it encircled him, enveloped him, he had realize that it was to the closeness of the intervals between the five notes that composed it, and to the constant repetition of two of them, that was due this impression of frigid and withdrawn sweetness . . .

I knew I had found a clue. An odd set of circumstances followed. At least odd for me. I thought of the usual suspects from the French Violin Sonata repertoire, and couldn't think of a “stand-out” tune that would fit that description. But, when I reached for my copy of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto (you can listen to the whole piece here), which I only thought of practicing today because of some technical things regarding shifting and bowing I have been working on lately, I found that the tranquillo theme in the first movement that gets developed through all three movements fits the bill.

Here it is in a higher register which further illustrates this description, “What had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes on which it lingered as though waiting for something, holding on to them in a prolonged expectancy, in the exaltation of already seeing the object of its expectation approaching, and with a desperate effort to try to endure until it arrived, to welcome it before expiring, to keep the way open for it another moment with a last bit of strength so that it could come through, as one holds a trapdoor that would otherwise fall back.”

Further evidence of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto as the model for the Venteuil Sonata comes from these passages in Swann's Way:

“It was the andante from the Sonata for Piano and Violin by Vinteuil.”

[The second movement of the Mendelssohn Concerto is marked “Andante.”]

“He would begin with the sustained violin tremolos that are heard alone for a few measures, occupying the entire foreground . . . ” “But they fell silent; under the agitation of the violin tremolos which protected it with their quivering . . .”

“The beautiful dialogue which Swann heard between the piano and the violin at the beginning of the last passage” has to refer to this statement of a variation of the melody in the last movement, which is an emotional high point of the piece:

At any rate, I think that in pages 362 through 366 Proust describes the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto as accurately as he describes the depths of the human heart. I will leave you with this. It's time to make some coffee and read more Proust!