Virginia Woolf: Music, Sound, Language

301 Pages·2019·1.919 MB·

by  Elicia Clements

VIRGINIA WOOLF: MUSIC, SOUND, LANGUAGE
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ELICIA CLEMENTS
Virginia Woolf: Music,
Sound, Language
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
© University of Toronto Press 2019
Toronto Buffalo London
utorontopress.com
Printed in the U.S.A.
ISBN 978-1-4875-0426-7
♾ Printed on acid-free paper with vegetable-based inks.
____________________________________________________________________
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Clements, Elicia, 1970–, author
Virginia Woolf : music, sound, language / Elicia
Clements.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4875-0426-7 (hardcover)
1.Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941 – Knowledge – Music.
2.Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941– Criticism and interpretation.
3.Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941 – Aesthetics. 4. Music and
literature – History – 20th century. 5. Music in literature.
6.Sound in literature. I. Title.
PR6045.O72Z5633 2019 823’.912 C2018-906430-7
____________________________________________________________________
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.
Funded by the Financé par le
Government gouvernement
of Canada du Canada
For Roz, Terry, and Shaleena
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 3
I Woolf’s Musical Ear 8
II Interdisciplinary Methods 13
III “Hoity te, hoity te, hoity te …”: Tripartite Woolf 18
Part 1 An Emerging Earcon: Woolf’s Singers
1 Finding a Voice 27
I Resonant Beginnings: The Voyage Out 31
II Sonic Networks in Jacob’s Room 36
III Urban and Rural Interrelations in Mrs. Dalloway and
To the Lighthouse 44
2 The Earcon Reproduces 60
I “And what is a cry?”: The Waves 61
II Integrating the Earcon in The Years 66
III Aural Multiplicity in Between the Acts 76
Part 2 Profound Listening and Acousmatics
3 Initial Apperceptions 89
I Materialized Sonics and Listening Subjects in The
Voyage Out 94
viii Contents
II Involuntary, Yet Profound, Listening in Night and Day 100
III International Acousmatics: War and Its Veterans in Jacob’s
Room and Mrs. Dalloway 105
4 Bodies and Voices 117
I To the Lighthouse and Family Acousmatics 118
II The Gender of Listening in The Waves 122
III “Hush! … Somebody’s listening”: The Years 128
IV Heterogeneous Reattachments in Between the Acts 139
Part 3 Music as Performance in Woolf’s Fiction
5 Performing Women 151
I Women at the Piano in the First Three Novels 154
II Performing Personal History in The Years 166
III Historical Reenactments: Between the Acts 174
6 The Performativity of Language: The Waves Musicalized 189
I Word Music: “(The rhythm is the main thing in writing)” 190
II The Case of Ludwig van Beethoven 197
III Transforming Beethoven’s Opus 130 and 133 into Words 209
Coda: A Meditation on Rhythm 227
Notes 235
Works Cited 251
Index 265
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the financial support
of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
I am grateful for their sustained funding. Additionally, the Office of
Research Services at York University, and specifically Janet Friskney,
have been very helpful in securing grants for this project.
I am appreciative of the welcoming and accommodating staff at sev-
eral institutions that have allowed me access to their archives: The Berg
Collection, New York Public Library; the Special Collections of the Sus-
sex University Library for several visits to consult the Monks House
Papers and the Leonard Woolf Archive; the British Library Sound
Archives; and the Special Collections Archives of the Hogarth Press at
the University of Reading. I am grateful to Kirby Smith, Senior Library
Assistant, and Thomas Birkhead, Library Assistant, Penguin Random
House Archive, UK; Sarah Baxter, Contracts Advisor and Literary
Estates, The Society of Authors; and David Plant, the Random House
Project Officer at the Hogarth Press Archives for permission to view
several files at the Archives of the Hogarth Press. Scott Libraries at York
University, especially the RACER Interlibrary Loan staff, have expedi-
tiously helped me with countless hard-to-find materials over the years.
I have also learned more than I can say from several significant and
generous mentors, friends, and colleagues, first and foremost Lesley J.
Higgins, whose guidance, inspiration, and erudition has fed this proj-
ect from its inception. I am fortunate to have had the long-standing
support and encouragement of Marie-Christine Leps, Leslie Sanders,
Gail Vanstone, Lisa Ossowski, Tanya Sweeney, Alison Halsall, Cheryl
Cowdy, Candida Rifkind, and Natalie Neill. A special thank you con-
cerning this publication goes to Natalie for her expert indexing of the
book, and to Kevin Karst for building my perfect writer’s desk. I have
had the good fortune to work with helpful research assistants; Kristen
Ames and Stephen Van Andel did much proverbial legwork and