Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
In Search of Vinteuil
Music Writing and the Literary Act of Creation
James Holden was born in Ashford and educated at Loughborough University. He is co-author (with Dr Simon King) of an experimental work of science-fiction criticism entitled Conceptual Breakthrough: Two Experiments In SF Criticism Star/Alien (2007). Dr Holden has also guest edited a special issue of the online journal Writing Technologies on the work of Martin Heidegger. He plays the piano.
Positioning himself as autobiographer, literary critic and pianist, James Holden presents
an homage to Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du
temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). “One night I came
across the recording of a piano work that I had composed whilst
still at school. The strange thing was, I had no recollection of
it whatsoever. As I sat and listened to it, it revealed to me, or
so it seemed, a self that I had no connection with and a past that
I had not lived.” In Search of Vinteuil is an attempt to gain
access to all of the lost and impossible experiences the music piece
pointed towards.
A first critical act is to turn
to the passages in Proust’s long novel that deal with music,
focusing in particular on the descriptions of the fictional composer
Vinteuil’s ‘Sonata for piano and violin’ and ‘Septet’.
Analysis reveals the role of memory in musical appreciation, and
music’s ability to lay before us different worlds. Armed with
this engagement, literary tools emerge to understand this personal,
uncanny experience and how to respond to it. After an original critical
response to both Proust’s novel, and classical works where
themes of memory, lost chances, music and piano predominate, James
Holden moves from the role of literary critic to amateur pianist,
as he describes his first proper return to the keyboard in almost
a decade and his hesitant steps towards the composition of a new
work. This musical experience finally promises to bring out the
psychological mechanisms inherent in the acts of listening to and
playing music.
This highly original and compelling
work represents a significant contribution to literary scholarship.
Hardback ISBN: | 978-1-84519-320-1 |
Hardback Price: | £39.95 / $59.95 |
Release Date: | November 2010 |
Page Extent / Format: | 192 pp. / 229 x 152 mm |
Illustrated: | No |
Series Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgements
The Critical Inventions Series
Textual Engagement
Prelude: Composing Work
Piece Number 1: Vinteuil's Sonata
Interlude: On Deafness
Piece Number 2: Vinteuil's Septet
Coda: Music Regained
Notes
Index
Review Quotes to Follow
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