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Saturday, September 16, 2023

D’un musicien l’autre – de Céline à Beethoven By Yannick Gomez


 

 

From One Musician to Another

A review

 

D’un musicien l’autre – de Céline à Beethoven

By Yannick Gomez

With a preface by Michael Donley

Éditions La Nouvelle Libraire

 

The approach of Yannick Gomez to both Céline and Beethoven is stated right from the very beginning, and it is both commendable and rare, and especially so, these days.

“Il faut lire Beethoven et écouter Céline; et bien entendu l’inverse; c’est l’approche rieuse est sérieuse á la fois que nous voulons partager ici.”  (p.20)[1]

It is the verb partager which must be underlined here as it has such a warmer connotation than share in English, il faut partager/ you must share! We share pleasures, of course. Such is the association. What is enjoyment otherwise, one comes to learn. You could say that sharing is among the greatest acts of communicating with another human being, and particularly so when it comes to one’s passions and interests, such as the music of Beethoven and the literature of one of the most controversial and now seldom read French writers, particularly during these so very curious times, Louis Ferdinand Céline.

I consider myself extremely fortunate to be able to read him in the original French, particularly now that the treasure throve of manuscripts Guerre ( 2022), Londres ( 2022), La Volonté Du Roi Krogold ( 2023), all published by Gallimard, have almost miraculously appeared having been ‘lost’ since 1944. And it is while researching all things Céline that I discovered Yannick Gomez’s book. I first discovered both Céline and Beethoven in France when I lived there as a young man in the nineties, and now that I have reached my middle years, let us call them, both artists, as artists is what they are, great artists that is, have become even more important to me as the years have advanced. So, to come across Yannick Gomez’s study, only recently published along with the previous mentioned bullion, is rather like hitting the proverbial jackpot.

Before I continue to the study itself, I should say a few words about its author as he is a very interesting and unusual man being both pianist and composer[2], writer and essayist[3]. Another thing that is most unusual about him, and this is very rare these days indeed, while having obtained a doctorate he is deliberately not writing, as we can see from the quote above, for a purely academic readership, but, as he says above, he wrote the present work to share his passion and interest for these two remarkable artists and it is in exactly the same way that I enter into the spirit of reviewing his study.    

Almost immediately, Gomez attempts to trace the origins of the French writer’s appreciation of music and in order to do so, he consults numerous other studies that have been made, though none on them sharing the very particular correspondence between the Master of Bonn and the Hermit of Meudon that Yannick Gomez has undertaken. For example, Micheal Donley who writes the short preface to D’un musicien l’autre, which is a play on the title of the very first instalment of the German Trilogy D’un chateau l’autre ( 1957) that Céline wrote chronicling his time on the run from recently liberated France, is the author of a text Céline musicien ( Nizet, 2000) and which Gomez refers to quite frequently. But it is but one source which the author taps into. Gomez’s knowledge of both artists, this is what is so pleasurable about this short study, is really quite impressive. There are works written by Céline, for example, that are cited and which are totally unfamiliar to me. For example, the play Progrés ( Cahiers Céline 8, Gallimard, 1988) is referenced early on and which dates from 1927, and in which the piano figures quite prominently. Apparently, Céline’s maternal grandmother is the source of the French master’s penchant for music which was to last throughout his life. Of course, it must also be remembered that the three women who were romantically attached to Céline were all professional dancers. This is also a very interesting factor to consider and which Gomez also singles out.

Of course, playing the piano at the time, be it in France or any where else for that matter, was a very bourgeois activity. Progrés, which is a short play, gently mocks the whole ‘urban satire’, as Gomez points out. I must say, I had a smile on my face trying to imagine Céline in such a setting. I myself was subjected to the same horror in the late seventies in middle class Ireland. I am reminded now of a line by Beckett in his radio play Embers ( 1959) when the main character Henry, looking back over his family life with his dead partner Ada, and thinking about their daughter, says the following, “ It was not enough to drag her into the world, now she must play the piano.”[4] In the first chapter of the study Céline Au Piano, Gomez presents us with a portrait of the author seen through the eyes of a number of other Céline studies which are strictly focused on the musical qualities of the writer, and there are a quite a considerable number too, though what makes Gomez’s particular study, what distinguishes his monograph from all the other studies, of course, is that he is trying to explore, and very successfully too, the many correspondences between these two seminal artists Beethoven and Céline. Gomez actually uses the Baudelairean term correspondence ( p.46) in relation to the two artists and I will gladly use it here too by confining myself to referring to just a couple of them which Gomez makes in his work and which struck me the most.

For example, as a musician and a composer and writer, Gomez is very good at pointing out the onomatopoeic qualities at work in Céline particularly in the post Voyage novels and which he very interestingly finds a correspondence with the heroic period in Beethoven’s work. This is absolutely fascinating stuff. Gomez refers to the ‘répétitions abusives caressent le grotesque et le pompeux.’ ( p.47) referring particularly to the 5th symphony op.67 and the pathetic sonata op.13. Correspondingly, Gomez singles out Guignol’s band and very generously mentions another study by Michael Ferrier in which Ferrier single out Bizet’s Carmen, particularly  the dances which are a kind of parody and play a large role in the French ‘opéra comique francais’, which Céline was also a great fan of too. All of which makes complete and utter sense, when you think about it, but this is just the thing about this study. Unless you are a musician/composer like Yannick Gomez, you probably have not even thought about these so very natural correspondences. Throughout the work, the author weaves and Ariadne thread between the two very subtle worlds of classical music and contemporary literature, in other words here is an author who is solely interested in analysing form, both musical and literary, and who is also interested in fleshing out, and concretely so, the very many similitudes between these two great arts and who is not at all interested in creating divisions. How novel!

Les premières pages de Guignol’s band I sont revelatrice : « C’est pas

terminé la musique, un autre archange nous assaisonne… C’est la

musique du grand carnage ! » ( p.48)

 

The term music, Gomez points out, is mentioned twice in the space of six lines which for him shows ‘la pénétration sonore, le ‘relief sonore’ voulu par Céline’.

In the same chapter ( Symphonie Vocale ), Gomez goes on to talk about the use of oxymorons which were so ‘cher à Céline’ ( p.49) and which correspondingly he sees playing out in the works of Beethoven in the composer’s use of agogic accents in his work. An agogic accent is an emphatic structure obtained by playing notes of longer duration. It is but one of four, the other three accents being dynamic, stress and tonic. For a writer, like myself, who is unversed in the terms and structure, the grammar as it were, of musical composition, I found this particular chapter highly revealing as the author explains very clearly the musical terms, and then, as a writer, he is also able to find the corresponding structure in literature. So, Yannick Gomez acts as a kind of Virgil to the reader, gently guiding them through the content of both the writings of Louis Ferdinand Céline and the musical compositions of Ludwig Van Beethoven and he is able to show very practically parallels in the structural dynamics of the compositions of both artists which I find, quite frankly, such a welcome relief from the usual monotony one reads these days, confined as it usually is to the artists personality or what is perhaps even worse, living habits.

The thirty two piano sonatas by Beethoven are singled out by Gomez, in respect to agogic accents, and once again very generously referring to another musical study on Beethoven by Lucien Rebatet[5] in which the latter makes the claim that Beethoven, when writing the sonatas and quartets, his most personal and some of his most innovative music, he was writing in a way like a great novelist, like Céline, Gomez signals, would live through his fictional characters. Then taking this idea by Rebatet, Gomez illustrates what he perhaps means by referencing The Tempest op.31, and commenting on the contrast of force that is created by the agogic stress, ‘par ces accentuations, par les successions d’episodes orchestraux, virtuoses et déchaînés, puis d’épisodes de solos récitatifs témoignant de l’habileté de Beethoven pour l’improvisation.’ (p.50). Then, in an attempt at finding a correspondence in the work of Céline, Gomez does an extraordinary thing.

 

Nous retrouvons là l’equivalent du procédé célinien dont l’écriture

tend à se faire musique. Ce chiasme des expressions n’est pas

chose nouvelle si l’on considère que les polyphonies médiévales

étaient déjà des mots mis en musique. ( p.51)

 

So after tracing the very clear and tangible link of origin between modern musical composition and literature in the polyphonic music of medieval Europe, he then goes on to speak of the emergence of the piano as an instrument to chart human emotion, and of course one thinks of Beethoven and the emergence of the great 19th century romantic tradition and which Beethoven, the Master of Bonn, is to such a great extent the central figure of. And, of course, when one thinks of the term emotion is not this one word the word most famously used, when referring to his style, by the Hermit of Meudon?

I could go on and single out many more reasons why Yannick Gomez’s study on Beethoven and Céline is such a welcome publication, but rather instead I would merely tell you to go and procure a copy for yourself and enjoy it and when you have finished share it! After all, is it not one of life’s greatest pleasures!

 

What follows is a translation of an extract from La Volonté Du Roi Krogold ( it is the very first page) and which was published by Gallimard earlier this year. I offer it up here to Yannick as a mark of my appreciation for his book D’un musicien l’autre, De Céline à Beethoven, Éditions La Nouvelle Libraire, 2023.

 

 

 https://www.amazon.fr/Dun-musicien-lautre-C%C3%A9line-Beethoven/dp/2493898796


 

 

At the end of the day, victory was granted to the king. You could still see out on the horizon the royal calvary battling through the country, the great whirlpool of lances chasing the last runaways into the forests.

The army of the disbanded Prince, dispersed, were cut down like lambs. All night, the clamour of combat, the shouts of the melee turned into and enormous and heavy moan. Then the silence was taken by the suffocating night and all about cries and wailing became more and more weak, more and more deaf.

The Scythian legions, ardent, raging, feline in combat but light on the terrain, had only just endured three assaults, three terrible charges by the Poznan calvary. They were swept away by the hurricane.

On the other side of the  river shadows, mounting presently in the valley, recovered everything. An enormous wave of clamours and groans broke out across the fields, the immense agony of an army. Victors and vanquished at the same time gave up their souls as best they could and with great suffering.



[1]You must read Beethoven and listen to Céline; and the inverse of course; it’s both the humorous and serious approach that we would like to share here.

[3] He is currently engaged on a text about Philippe Sollers, another obsession, and he has also written fictional prose. 

[4] Beckett, Samuel: The Complete Dramatic Works, First paperback edition, Faber and Faber, London, 1990, p.259.

Of course, there are many points of convergence when it comes to Beckett, Beethoven and Céline. A recent study of the two authors has just been published.

Loisel, Yoann: Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Samuel Beckett,  Un abécédaire d’agonie, MJW Fédition, Paris, 2023. 

 Beckett was immensely struck by the style of Voyage au bout de la nuit ( Knowlson, 1996) during the early thirties like most writers at the time and I am pretty sure that D’un chateau l’autre, a work of singular orality and so music which was published four years before Beckett’s monumental take on the epic Comment C’est ( 1961), How It Is ( 1964) and like Céline’s late masterpiece is also a remarkably oral book, was also to have left a profound mark on him. I hope to expand more on this subject in a latter study.  As for Beckett’s fascination with Beethoven, it is well known, particularly in respect to the composers use of silence and pause for dramatic emphasis. Beckett’s whole life work has come to be synonymous with silence, it being the author’s most desired state and Beethoven too was the first composer to rupture the classical strains of Haydan and Mozart with great pauses creating an incredible musical and so emotional intensity, which is Gomez’s whole point of comparison between Céline and Beethoven as music/literature ( Art) for both men was emotion.

[5] Lucien Rebatet ( 1903-1972) was a contemporary of Céline’s who shared a very similar fate to Céline by finding himself in Sigmaringen also in 1944 due to his clinks with the Vichy government, which was in exile in Germany while France was being liberated by the Allies. Rebatet was a fellow novelist, also published by Gallimard, Céline’s publisher in France, and he was also a journalist after the war. He happened, again like Céline, to avoid the hangman and went on to publishing, as well as his novels, a history of music and which Gomez references in his study.