Whether “the little phrase” from Vinteuil’s sonata, which Charles Swann and Odette de Crécy became the “national anthem of their love”, really comes from César Franck’s violin sonata will forever remain unclear.

In a letter dated April 20, 1918, Marcel Proust had let it be known that he had been inspired by several role models for that fatefully happy sonata in his novel In Search of Lost Time: by Franck as well as by Camille Saint- Saëns (whom he didn't like at all);

and "the little theme" itself goes back "to a delightful piano piece by Gabriel Fauré".

But even this letter can be the maneuver of an author who wants to cover the traces of foreign inspiration.

Jan Brachmann

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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Because Franck's influence on Proust is immense.

And like the influence of Richard Wagner's leitmotif technique on Thomas Mann's writing, Franck's influence on Proust is less one of material than one of process, namely creating a cyclical form through memory traces.

There are profound studies in musicology, for example by Wolfgang Rathert on "Form and Time in the String Quartet of César Franck".

And Christine Strucken-Paland dedicated an enlightening essay to the "reminiscence technique in the cyclical instrumental works of César Franck", which describes how Franck countered the finalistic goal tension in Ludwig van Beethoven through the concept of the "cyclical sonata": "With his cyclical principle, Franck tries ,

to break through the principle of teleological development through thematic revisits and, as it were, to annul it;

his works thus realize an 'epic' formal concept rather than a dramatic one, which is based less on forward-looking thematic work and development and more on a network of musical references and memories”.

This wordless network of references and memories excited Proust.

With the most subtle techniques of allusion, of transformation, of stronger and weaker conciseness, Franck creates moments of intuition, of slipping away and finding oneself again in the flow of time, especially in his late work.

The Frankfurt-based Eliot Quartet and pianist Dmitry Ablogin have named their new chamber music album “Le temps retrouvé” (Time found again).

They are rightly picking up on the last part of Proust's novel and thus commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Proust's death and the two hundredth birthday of Franck.

The CD contains Franck's string quartet and piano quintet, both of which follow the principle of the "cyclical sonata", i.e. linking movements across movements through thematic traces of memory.

Anna-Barbara Schmidt mentions in the booklet that Proust, during a writer's block, summoned the Quatuor Poulet to his apartment to have Franck's quartet played to him.