… fuga …a novel The Musicalisation of …fuga: how music influenced and shaped the …an exegesis writing of a novel By Gillian Britton Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Discipline of English and Creative Writing School of Humanities The University of Adelaide January, 2012 Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………….. ii Statement of Originality……………………………………………………… iii Acknowledgements............................................................................................ iv … fuga…………………………………………………………………………. 1 The Musicalisation of … fuga: how music influenced and shaped the writing of a novel………………………………………………………………. 180 Introduction…………………………………………………………………… 181 Chapter One Music and Words – a theoretical framework for musicalisation…………....... 185 Chapter Two The Berg Violin Concerto – using real music for narrative purposes………… 197 Chapter Three The Artifice of Fugue – narrative form and meaning………………………. 213 Chapter Four Limina – fictional music as a voice for the fiction…………………………… 230 Chapter Five Sing me a song to make death tolerable - verbal music as a vehicle for grief... 241 The Speechless Full Moon Comes Out Now (a musical conclusion)……….. 254 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………… 255 i ABSTRACT Eva Byrne is twenty-five years old, a gifted violinist forging a career in London, when her life begins to unravel in the wake of traumatic events. Ostensibly a novel about music, … fuga equally explores the territory of loss, identity, memory and place. Eva’s close first person journal dissembles and reconstructs the personal narrative that has shaped her life and her choices, interweaving past and present in a destabilised interior monologue that is frequently at odds with the more public dialogue offered through interspersed letters, interviews, reviews and blogs. In Part One, Eva finds herself on the remote Orkney island of Hoy. Offered sanctuary at the home of her good friend, the eminent composer, Fergus Cunningham, she attempts to grapple with the recent events that have sparked her spiral into a not unfamiliar pattern of self-destruction. Part Two sees Eva returning to Australia, attempting to reconcile with more distant events that she has spent nine years in London trying to forget. The exegetical essay, ‘The Musicalisation of … fuga: how music influenced and shaped the writing of a novel’, explores the idea of ‘musicalisation’: how the metaphoric appropriation of musical ideas and strategies within a novelistic narrative helped to shape the novel’s ideas and form. Beginning with a theoretical introduction to the idea of musicalisation, and incorporating a broader literary and theoretical context, each subsequent chapter of the exegesis then uses a key work of music, or a key musical idea relevant to the writing of … fuga, to further elucidate the ideas regarding musicalisation that the writing of the novel generated, and which in turn inspired both the theoretical research and the ongoing creative work. It is as much an exploration of my development as a writer as it is an exploration of the novel that eventually emerged from this development. In a broader sense it is an exploration of the art of the novel – what a novel is, and what a novel does – since, as a first-time novelist, this was the question central to my process. ii STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY I, Gillian Britton, certify that this work contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university of other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. I give consent to this copy of my thesis, when deposited in the University Library, being made available for loan and photocopying, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I also give permission for the digital version of my thesis to be made available on the web, via the University’s digital research repository, the Library catalogue and also through web search engines, unless permission has been granted by the University to restrict access for a period of time iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my supervisors at the University of Adelaide for their valuable insight and support during the development of this work. Most particularly, I wish to thank Dr Mandy Treagus, Dr Anne Bartlett, Prof Nicholas Jose and Dr Jan Harrow. iv … fuga by Gillian Britton Submitted as part of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Discipline of English and Creative Writing School of Humanities The University of Adelaide January, 2012 On Eating My Own Words by Gordon Fenton I know I have a reputation for honesty bordering on cruelty but I am also more than willing to eat humble pie on those (rare) occasions when I am proven wrong. Today’s story is one such occasion. Many years ago, I wrote an article about a teenage British-Australian violinist called Eva Byrne, daughter of the much more famous violinist, Timothy Byrne. I doubt that you’ll remember, but she performed at the Proms that year. I can’t recall what she played, but I do remember writing a scathing attack of her lacklustre performance, a prime example of the classical music industry’s decline into pop culture commercialisation, saccharine repertoire to satisfy the masses, and reviews which were more focussed on the finery of the performer’s evening dress than the standard of her actual performance. This young lady, I predicted, would make one or two CDs with airbrushed pouty covers, sticking to the lightweight repertoire within her range, and within a few years would vanish from the public eye, replaced by a younger version of herself. Pity she was not more like her father, who had done a spectacular London debut when he was a mere teenager himself (Beethoven – and I remember it vividly to this day). But all the advantages bestowed by the famous, connected father were wasted on this young woman – the talent simply wasn’t there. I wrote my column and forgot about the forgettable Eva Byrne. Then last week I chanced upon an articulate, acerbic blog by the afore-mentioned and took the time to follow the link through to her website. Contrary to what I had predicted Eva Byrne did not waste her time capitalising on early media attention. In fact, she did the opposite – she removed herself from the public eye and worked. Two years ago, at the age of twenty-three, she completed postgraduate studies at the RAM (Royal Academy of Music), where she had also completed her undergraduate studies, with a year in Vienna in between. She’s done a Wigmore Hall debut and collected a number of prizes along the way. 1 For all of this, and despite the famous father, no managers or recording contracts were waiting in the wings when she graduated. As she states in one of her blogs, and we know this to be true, our young performers are expected to go a long way on their own these days – managers and record companies come calling only when you’ve proved yourself a sure thing. After all, how many superlative solo violinists per generation can the music industry support, particularly when those of the previous generation, Eva Byrne’s father included, remain prominent? According to Byrne’s blog, of all the gifted and technically skilled violinists she started out with as an undergraduate at the RAM she is the only one still ‘mad enough’ (her words) to be trying for a solo career. And not, by her own admission, because she is any more likely to succeed. She persists out of pure obtuseness, she suggests. Stubbornness. She professes herself to be useless in the rank and file, temperamentally better suited to situations that allow her to keep creative control. A glance at her Wigmore debut program gives some insight – works for solo violin by fellow Australians Peter Sculthorpe and Brett Dean, interspersed with a number of Bach’s works for solo violin and, rather controversially (although favourably received, at least in the couple of reviews posted on her website) her own improvisations on these works. I was curious after reading all of this to hear for myself how (or indeed whether) the forgettable Ms Byrne had managed to transform herself into something quite other. A glance at her hectic performance schedule tells me she’s been much in demand these past few months and will continue to be well into next year. Most prominent in the schedule was an upcoming Edinburgh performance of the Berg Violin Concerto with the Scottish Philharmonia: this to coincide with the launch of her first CD, made independently, sans contract, which is a story in its own right. Stubborn indeed, to take on such an ambitious project as an independent recording – one wonders what the orchestral fees alone must have cost. Byrne’s rationale of course is that recording is the way to be heard – a successful recording will launch her career and bring her to 2 the attention of managers and recording labels. She has worked resolutely over a couple of years (including plenty of hours in the rank and file of many of our better and lesser known orchestras) and also gained sponsorship from the RAM and other corporate sources to raise what must have amounted to many tens of thousands of dollars in order to fund her venture. A vanity project you might say, but there is clearly more to it than that. Her descriptions of the music and the recording process are infused with passion and reveal both her depth of knowledge about the works she performs and her fastidious attention to detail. Berg’s Violin Concerto having been a passion of hers since she studied with George Behrendt in Vienna, this was an obvious choice for a first recording.