Virginia Woolf, Ethel Smyth, and Music: Listening as a Productive Mode of Social Interaction

College Literature, Summer 2005 by Clements, Elicia

Many of the ideas that surface in Between the Acts have their genesis in the relationship between Woolf and Smyth.The comments quoted above suggest that Woolf was thinking of how to build a character based on Smyth when they met and that the notion of a pageant surfaces along side the characterization of Smyth.The letter reveals that even in 1930 Woolf is contemplating employing the scraps and fragments of Smyth's life for an aesthetic purpose.

Woolf was also an avid reader of Smyth's prose, a canon that consists of ten books in total (several autobiographical memoirs, a biography, and collections of essays that include short portraits of people in her life and stories of her escapades). A long-standing admirer of Smyth's first memoir (Impressions that Remained), from the time they met, Woolf read almost all of Smyth's new works before publication, giving her suggestions and in some cases even soliciting for publication particular speeches (Nicolson 1978, 4:214), although this never did transpire. Additionally, Woolf also predicts when they first meet that she will one day adapt aspects of Smyth's writing style. In an excited exchange, Woolf exclaims, "I want to talk and talk and talk-About music.. . .Yes. I think you are a kind woman, besides being such a ... etc etc. Those two happy dodges of yours come in useful on occasion, dot dot, dot-et cetera. I will write your character in that style one of these days" (Nicolson 1978,4:145). Indeed, Woolf does compose a portrait of Smyth in Between the Acts, one that utilizes ellipses as a significant linguistic strategy.8

Musical Impressions

As the exploration of Woolf's correspondence with Smyth discloses, Woolf's understanding of her friend and colleague is intimately tied to her aesthetic contemplations not only about writing but also about music. Woolf develops ideas about music throughout her oeuvre. Although her musical acumen was admittedly limited, she was an avid listener to "classical" music and opera.9 I am not concerned, however, with the accuracy of Woolf's deployment of Western musical form, rather with the effect of that intersection. What was it about music that Woolf found applicable to her own medium? What particular forms did Woolf gravitate toward? And, what was produced from such a collaboration? Lastly, what did questioning the borders between her own art and music contribute to her understanding of language?

Several studies of Woolf's employment of music have occurred primarily in the last 15 years. Nora Eisenberg was one of the first critics to elucidate the importance of Woolf's figurative use of music and its connection to language in Between the Acts and "Anon." Music, she argues, "comes to stand for a variety of non-verbal forms which Woolf hopes might supplement a failing language ... a great, vital force, preceding and overpowering language" (1981,259,261). For Eisenberg, music seems to usurp words in order to transcend them. Conversely, Julie Vandivere asserts that "in Between the Acts, Woolf links music with language to explore the aesthetics of language, using music to empty language of its ability to gesture to something outside of itself and then correlating this linguistic incapacity with our inability to construct subjectivity" (1996, 226-27). Vandivere argues that music is a mechanism by which the verbal domain is divested of its referential capacity. Rather than exceeding linguistic signification, music is interpreted as connoting a lack of meaning, capable of producing the same effect on language. Her interesting article only understands music in terms of its relation to words, however, not as a significant component involved in its own production of meaning. Sonita Sarker also discusses the importance of musical analogy for Woolf, reading music for its ability to produce dissonance: "Given that music is, literally and metaphorically, one of the dominant components in Between the Acts, it is ... worth explicating the formal and functional significance ofWoolf's questioning of center, by comparing it to its parallel innovation in Modernist musicatonality" (1996,161). Barker's essay points toward an understanding of music as a socially constructed art form, rather than a seemingly transparent one because it is devoid of words.