Marcel Proust’s series of penetrating psychological novels, À la récherche du temps perdu (translated in English as Remembrance of Things Past, or more accurately, In Search of Lost Time), may not be the most frequently read masterpiece of 20th century literature, but it is justly famous for a pivotal scene early in the first volume, Du côté de chez Swann (Swann’s Way). One winter day, the narrator, Marcel, visits his mother at his childhood home in Combray, where he is served a hot cup of tea and a shell-shaped biscuit called a petite madeleine. Tasting a morsel of the cake with the tea brings on a flood of emotions and associations with his adolescence that sets the premise of the ensuing novels: this is the beginning of Marcel’s attempts to recapture the past. Such a sudden rush of memories and feelings, unexpectedly triggered by a physical sensation, is now widely known as a “Proustian experience,” even by people who have never read his books.
 
Much as the flavor of the tea-soaked madeleine evoked powerful feelings of nostalgia for Marcel, another device is used by Proust to stir up the memories and emotions of the main character, Charles Swann. In the second part of the first book, Un amour de Swann (Swann in Love), a piece of chamber music is introduced to the story. It is a sonata for violin and piano composed by a Combray musician named Vinteuil, which haunts Swann throughout the novel as a leitmotif, reminding him again and again of his troubled, obsessive love for Odette de Crécy. They shared this music as their favorite sonata, and hearing it always brought Odette to Swann’s thoughts instantly, whether she was present or not. Its familiar “little phrase” recurs many times and its subtle changes in expression affect Swann profoundly. Effectively, Vinteuil’s evocative sonata is used by Proust as an analogue of Swann’s interior life, as well as a nearly synesthetic source of revelation.
 

“The year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music played on the piano and violin. At first he had appreciated only the material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the delicate line of the violin-part, slender but robust, compact and commanding, he had suddenly become aware of the mass of the piano-part beginning to emerge in a sort of liquid rippling of sound, multiform but indivisible, smooth yet restless, like the deep blue tumult of the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But then at a certain moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to grasp the phrase or harmony — he did not know which — that had just been played and that had opened and expanded his soul, as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of evening, has the power of dilating one’s nostrils.”

 
Vinteuil the composer was fictional, a minor character, but like many characters in À la récherche du temps perdu, he was a composite — in this case, drawn from several real-life composers Proust admired. Consequently, guessing his identity has led some experts to speculate about the possible “authorship” of the sonata. Whose music did Marcel Proust ponder when he wrote about the “little phrase,” and what piece is the inspiration for the Vinteuil Sonata?

 
We know Proust especially admired the music of Gabriel Fauré, César Franck, and Claude Debussy, so they are at the front of the line as potential matches for Vinteuil. Indeed, Proust was so enraptured by the music of Fauré, he once wrote him a gushing fan letter:
 
“Monsieur, je n’aime, je n’adore pas seulement votre musique, j’en étais, j’en suis encore amoureux.” (Sir, I do not like, I do not just adore your music, I was and still am in love with it.)
 
If the character of Vinteuil was based in part on Gabriel Fauré, as some scholars believe, is it possible that his Violin Sonata No. 1 in A major, Op. 13 was the model for the fictional piece of music?
 
Soovin Kim, violin; Jeremy Denk, piano
Allegro molto
Andante
Allegro vivo
Allegro quasi presto
 
César Franck’s Violin Sonata in A major, M. 8 has also been considered as a possible original for the Vinteuil Sonata. Proust’s admiration for Franck’s chamber music was so great, he even hired professional musicians to play it for him in his cork-lined bedroom, where he secluded himself in his final years as an invalid.
 
Isaac Stern, violin; Alexander Zakin, piano
Allegretto ben moderato
Allegro
Recitativo - Fantasia. Ben moderato
Allegretto poco mosso
 
 
Or was Claude Debussy’s Violin Sonata, L. 140 the inspiration? Some readers might buy the notion, but it can’t be credited, simply because it was composed too late. Proust certainly loved Debussy’s music and may have developed Vinteuil from some aspects of his character, but Du côté de chez Swann was published in 1913, well before the appearance of Debussy’s sonata, which dates between 1916 and 1917. Still, it’s a pleasant piece of music and well worth hearing since it has a certain Proustian refinement and ambience.
 
Pinchas Zuckerman, violin; Marc Neikrug, piano
Allegro vivo
Intermède
 
 
The Venezuelan-born composer Reynaldo Hahn (left), Proust’s onetime lover and longtime friend and confidant, was the most significant musician in the author’s personal life, and his opinions were highly valued. As a measure of Proust’s esteem, he regarded Hahn as something close to an alter-ego, and trusted him in many day-to-day matters. For his part, Hahn liked to introduce his favorite compositions to Proust and hoped to guide him in matters of taste. As is evident in his own works, Hahn was fairly conservative and inclined to look back to the Classical era for his ideals, particularly to the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. He did not share Proust’s enthusiasm for the advanced style of Fauré and Debussy, but preferred the more restrained music of Camille Saint-Saëns (below, right).
 
At a recital given for Madame Madeleine Lemaire (one of several real-life models for the novel’s Madame Verdurin), both men heard a performance of Saint-Saëns’ Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 75. After this event, Proust asked Hahn to play it for him on several occasions, saying that he wanted to hear, “That bit I like…the little phrase.” Is this anecdotal evidence sufficient to say that this is the sonata that played in Proust’s imagination and preyed on Swann’s emotions as the Vinteuil Sonata? In the novel, one excerpt seems particularly enlightening:
 

“…He contemplated the little phrase less in its own light — in what it might express to a musician who knew nothing of the existence of him and Odette when he had composed it, and to all those who would hear it in centuries to come — than as a pledge, a token of his love…so that (whimsically entreated by Odette) he had abandoned the idea of getting a ‘professional’ to play over to him the whole sonata, of which he still knew no more than this one passage. ‘Why do you want the rest?’ she had asked him. ‘Our little bit; that’s all we need.’”

 
Some of the mystery about the Vinteuil Sonata may be cleared up — or perhaps even compounded! — by examining an inscription Proust wrote in a copy of Du côté de chez Swann for his friend, the French author Jacques de Lacretelle. In it, he listed five compositions as sources of inspiration for the Vinteuil Sonata, including two excerpts by Richard Wagner — the “Good Friday Music” from Parsifal and the Prelude to Lohengrin — as well as the Ballade in F sharp major for piano and orchestra, Op. 19 by Fauré, Franck’s Violin Sonata, and above all, the Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor by Saint-Saëns:
 
Chee Yun, violin; Akira Eguchi, piano
Allegro agitato
Adagio
Allegretto moderato
Allegro molto
 
This puts us at a slight disadvantage, for how can we tell which passages of the orchestral music were singled out by Proust, which of them were similar in effect to the sonatas, or even whether some of these works merely suggested a rarefied mood for him? Or were some of these titles just red herrings, slyly tossed out by Proust to keep people guessing? By relying on his comments to Hahn, as well as his prominent listing of Saint-Saëns’ Violin Sonata No. 1 in D minor in the Lacretelle inscription, it seems reasonable to assume that Proust’s inspiration was primarily taken from that work, though not excluding other pieces that stimulated him, to greater or lesser degrees, into creating one of the most enticing musical mysteries in literature.
 
So, who wrote the Vinteuil Sonata? Vinteuil did! One might as well ask who is buried in Grant’s Tomb. Still, if we are free to imagine a fictitious composer, then why not let any of the pieces — or any part of them we like — stand in for Vinteuil’s celebrated and non-existent work? In the end, it really doesn’t matter which piece of classical music inspired Proust, since we’ll never be absolutely sure. But it is certainly worthwhile to explore all the possibilities, and worth even more to hear some of the great French violin sonatas of the Belle Époque. They are indeed the past recaptured.