In 1940, Virginia Woolf wrote, ‘I think of all my books as music before I write them’.
But which music is which book? And why did she come to both love and hate Wagner with such passion?
Virginia Woolf’s musical expertise has been dismissed over the years. Both her nephew Quentin Bell, and her husband, Leonard Woolf claimed she had no technical knowledge. But, Virginia Woolf was sight reading Beethoven sonatas at the age of eleven, and playing fugues with her sister, Vanessa, at the age of seventeen. This, in addition to listening to music every day, either on the wireless, the gramophone or at a concert. Music was such a huge part of her life that she wrote in a letter to a friend, ‘The only thing in this world is music—music and books and one or two pictures’.
Using Leonard Woolf’s Diary of Music Listened To, author Emma Sutton is able to attach specific pieces of music to specific novels. She finds a strong connection between Woolf and Wagner. For instance, Virginia Woolf’s most experimental novel, The Waves, can be read as a response to Richard Wagner’s epic opera cycle The Ring of the Nibelung. Added to this The Voyage Out, one of Virginia Woolf’s early works, features characters and themes from Tristan and Isolde. But what could Virginia do when Wagner became the composer of choice for the Nazi party?
For both Leonard and Virginia Woolf it was a time of great catastrophe—but it was also an era which produced this encounter between some of the twentieth century’s greatest writing and the most well known music in the Western canon.
Listen to the program here …
Guests
Dr Emma Sutton—Senior Lecturer English – University of St Andrews
Professor Sarah Wilson—Deputy Head, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences – Melbourne University
Karen Watson—Senior Archive Assistant – The Keep: University of Sussex
Publications
Title—Virginia Woolf and Classical Music: Politics, Aesthetics, Form
Author—Emma Sutton
Publisher—Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2013
Homepage—www.eupublishing.com
ISBN—978-0-7486-3787-4
Title—Leonard Woolf: A Life
Author—Victoria Glendinning
Publisher—Pocket Books, London, 2007
Homepage—www.simonsays.co.uk
ISBN—978-1-4165-2607-0
Further Information
Mind, Music and Wellbeing Centre
Credits
Sound Engineer—John Jacobs
Producer—Lyn Gallacher
Actors—Richard Piper / Fiona Macleod
© 2014—Lyn Gallacher & ABC RN