DLS: Music
Jun. 6th, 2003 10:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyPrevious DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, and Ralph Lynn, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson, the media, Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1 & 2, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings, Have His Carcase 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7, Murder Must Advertise.
Think about literature as a shameless way to avoid ... thinking about literature.
Some days I suspect that my life is ever so slightly fucked up.
In any event, this is the post about music in the canon. I don't know that I have any great insights to come to, but we shall see. Canon-wide spoilers.
Peter is a musician. We learn that in Whose Body?, when he plays Scarlatti for Parker; we also learn that playing piano brings out his best characteristics:
The piano seems, even in the early novels, to divest Peter of his affectations and masks. In The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club he plays for himself (UBC 22), showing that the piano, while a site of performance, is not a site of acting. (I think that's the only time in the canon that DLS mentions Peter playing not in front of an audience, but I think this is because she avoids describing Peter's music from his PoV, not because he doesn't play when he's alone.) Miss Murchison observes in Strong Poison: "He played well, and gave a curious impression of controlled power, which, in a man so slight and fantastical in manner, was unexpected and even a little disquieting" (SP 124). Peter's music is one sign that, even from the beginning, DLS meant her detective to have greater depth than he chose to reveal.
This post grew out of a comment I made about Have His Carcase, which is that music in HHC belongs to the world of Wilvercombe, in which it is not so much an art form in itself as something to dance to, or something to be frustrated by when attempting to get information out of Leila Garland. It is an expression of the community; to the best of my recollection, there are no individual performers in HHC, only members of an orchestra. Music is a job, and while DLS does not suggest that art cannot also be one's work (a stance which it would be both silly and hypocritical of her to take), in Wilvercombe, I think it is the wrong kind of work. I would like to be able to get at what I mean better than I have managed, but I think it's bound up somehow with the gigolos. Love and music are both for sale in Wilvercombe, and as Peter says to Harriet in Gaudy Night, "... the worst sin--perhaps the only sin--passion can commit, is to be joyless" (GN 465). And that's what's wrong with Wilvercombe: passion is a commodity. Even Alexis's silly Imperial fantasies are merely a tool for his murderers. Wilvercombe denies that there is joy in the world at all, much less that it has any truck with passion.
This is quite the reverse of The Nine Tailors, in which the bell-ringing, while not "music" by all standards, is nevertheless a well of passion and dedication for the Rev. Venables and his bellringers. It reaches across class boundaries in a way that almost nothing else in Sayers does (except shared experiences in war); the inarticulate East Anglian villagers are every bit as serious about their bell-ringing as the Rector is. And The Nine Tailors is also where the narrative itself becomes passionate:
It is true that this passion has its macabre underside, but it is not in any way ironic. This is one of the most amazing passages of prose in DLS, and it's the music that lets it free.
DLS never in any of her stories makes Peter's musical ability a vital plot point (unlike his palate), which suggests the seriousness with which author and character regard it. It doesn't need justification for its existence; it simply is. The concert at the end of Gaudy Night--aside from the dig at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--shows, I think, that Peter's music is something outside the scope of these novels. Harriet can't follow him there, and we as readers can't either:
Music is a mystery, in the ancient sense of the word. These lesser examples of a different meaning pay homage, but do not attempt to intrude.
Onward, then, to The Nine Tailors.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. 1936. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, n.d.
---. The Nine Tailors. 1934. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., n.d.
---. Strong Poison. 1930. New York: Perennial Library-Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987.
---. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. 1928. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1995.
---. Whose Body? 1923. New York: Avon Books, 1961.
Think about literature as a shameless way to avoid ... thinking about literature.
Some days I suspect that my life is ever so slightly fucked up.
In any event, this is the post about music in the canon. I don't know that I have any great insights to come to, but we shall see. Canon-wide spoilers.
Peter is a musician. We learn that in Whose Body?, when he plays Scarlatti for Parker; we also learn that playing piano brings out his best characteristics:
Lord Peter finished a Scarlatti sonata, and sat looking thoughtfully at his own hands. The fingers were long and muscular, with wide, flat joints and square tips. When he was playing, his rather hard grey eyes softened, and his long, indeterminate mouth hardened in compensation. At no other time had he any pretensions to good looks, and at all times he was spoilt by a long, narrow chin, and a long, receding forehead, accentuated by the brushed-back sleekness of his tow-coloured hair. Labour papers, softening down the chin, caricatured him as a typical aristocrat.
(WB? 33)
The piano seems, even in the early novels, to divest Peter of his affectations and masks. In The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club he plays for himself (UBC 22), showing that the piano, while a site of performance, is not a site of acting. (I think that's the only time in the canon that DLS mentions Peter playing not in front of an audience, but I think this is because she avoids describing Peter's music from his PoV, not because he doesn't play when he's alone.) Miss Murchison observes in Strong Poison: "He played well, and gave a curious impression of controlled power, which, in a man so slight and fantastical in manner, was unexpected and even a little disquieting" (SP 124). Peter's music is one sign that, even from the beginning, DLS meant her detective to have greater depth than he chose to reveal.
This post grew out of a comment I made about Have His Carcase, which is that music in HHC belongs to the world of Wilvercombe, in which it is not so much an art form in itself as something to dance to, or something to be frustrated by when attempting to get information out of Leila Garland. It is an expression of the community; to the best of my recollection, there are no individual performers in HHC, only members of an orchestra. Music is a job, and while DLS does not suggest that art cannot also be one's work (a stance which it would be both silly and hypocritical of her to take), in Wilvercombe, I think it is the wrong kind of work. I would like to be able to get at what I mean better than I have managed, but I think it's bound up somehow with the gigolos. Love and music are both for sale in Wilvercombe, and as Peter says to Harriet in Gaudy Night, "... the worst sin--perhaps the only sin--passion can commit, is to be joyless" (GN 465). And that's what's wrong with Wilvercombe: passion is a commodity. Even Alexis's silly Imperial fantasies are merely a tool for his murderers. Wilvercombe denies that there is joy in the world at all, much less that it has any truck with passion.
This is quite the reverse of The Nine Tailors, in which the bell-ringing, while not "music" by all standards, is nevertheless a well of passion and dedication for the Rev. Venables and his bellringers. It reaches across class boundaries in a way that almost nothing else in Sayers does (except shared experiences in war); the inarticulate East Anglian villagers are every bit as serious about their bell-ringing as the Rector is. And The Nine Tailors is also where the narrative itself becomes passionate:
The bells gave tongue: Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul, rioting and exulting high up in the dark tower, wide mouths rising and falling, brazen tongues clamouring, huge wheels turning to the dance of the leaping ropes. Tin tan din dan bim bam bom bo--tan tin din dan bam bim bo bom--tan dan tin bam din bo bim bom--every bell in her place striking tuneably, hunting up, hunting down, dodging, snapping, laying her blows behind, making her thirds and fourths, working down to lead the dance again. Out over the flat, white wastes of fen, over the spear-straight, steel-dark dykes and the wind-bent, groaning poplar trees, bursting from the snow-choked louvres of the belfry, whirled away southward and westward in gusty blasts of clamour to the sleeping counties went the music of the bells--little Gaude, silver Sabaoth, strong John and Jericho, glad Jubilee, sweet Dimity and old Batty Thomas, with great Tailor Paul bawling and striding like a giant in the midst of them. Up and down went the shadows of the ringers upon the walls, up and down went the scarlet sallies flickering roofwards and floorwards, and up and down, hunting in their courses, went the bells of Fenchurch St. Paul.
(T9T 26)
It is true that this passion has its macabre underside, but it is not in any way ironic. This is one of the most amazing passages of prose in DLS, and it's the music that lets it free.
DLS never in any of her stories makes Peter's musical ability a vital plot point (unlike his palate), which suggests the seriousness with which author and character regard it. It doesn't need justification for its existence; it simply is. The concert at the end of Gaudy Night--aside from the dig at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle--shows, I think, that Peter's music is something outside the scope of these novels. Harriet can't follow him there, and we as readers can't either:
She knew enough, herself, to read the sounds a little with her brains, laboriously unwinding the twisted chains of melody link by link. Peter, she felt sure, could hear the whole intricate pattern, every part separately and simultaneously, each independent and equal, separate but inseparable, moving over and under and through, ravishing heart and mind together.
(GN 467-8)
Music is a mystery, in the ancient sense of the word. These lesser examples of a different meaning pay homage, but do not attempt to intrude.
Onward, then, to The Nine Tailors.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. 1936. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, n.d.
---. The Nine Tailors. 1934. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., n.d.
---. Strong Poison. 1930. New York: Perennial Library-Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987.
---. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. 1928. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1995.
---. Whose Body? 1923. New York: Avon Books, 1961.
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-06 09:47 am (UTC)I agree. I can't imagine that he wouldn't play while he was alone, for himself. In a more mundane sense, he'd have to practice at least occasionally to keep up the standard DLS describes.
Miss Murchison observes in Strong Poison: "He played well, and gave a curious impression of controlled power, which, in a man so slight and fantastical in manner, was unexpected and even a little disquieting" (SP 124). Peter's music is one sign that, even from the beginning, DLS meant her detective to have greater depth than he chose to reveal.
Spot on! I love Sayers' word choice: "disquieting."
This is quite the reverse of The Nine Tailors, in which the bell-ringing, while not "music" by all standards, is nevertheless a well of passion and dedication for the Rev. Venables and his bellringers. It reaches across class boundaries in a way that almost nothing else in Sayers does (except shared experiences in war)...
VERY good point.
Peter, she felt sure, could hear the whole intricate pattern, every part separately and simultaneously, each independent and equal, separate but inseparable, moving over and under and through, ravishing heart and mind together.
This is my personal favorite description of music in the novels--makes me think DLS, too, knew how to listen.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-06 04:26 pm (UTC)