In this talk, Dr. Klein argues that Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu offers a model of time and memory that can enrich narrative readings of Debussy’s music. The primary work for discussion is Debussy’s Reflets dans l’eau. Throughout Proust’s Search, Marcel experiences involuntary memories involving a cognitive effort to regain an ecstatic past. Having regained the past, though, Marcel feels regret that he will not live long enough to record his impressions. Deleuze has configured this trajectory as the “three machines of the Search”: memory, eternity, and crisis. Klein traces these machines in Debussy’s music and conclude with a brief discussion of the end of temporality after modernism.

Michael Klein is an Assistant Professor of Music Theory at Temple University.