*OlioMuse* In Search of Proust’s Music: Recognizing the Musical Motif

Because last time was a sold-out smash-success we had little choice but to once again team up with Groupmuse for our second Oliomuse. So on November 10th, we’re back in the rare book room at The Strand, with another concert-lecture-party-muse that will open up minds, hearts, and maybe a few tear ducts.

Professor Charles Riley presents the idea that Marcel Proust, when writing his titanic and epochal novel In Search of Things Past, was inspired by musical notions of thematic development – especially as embodied in Cesar Franck’s violin sonata – by common consent the greatest violin sonata of the romantic era, and a piece prominently featured in Proust’s great novel.

The Oliomuse will feature a full performance of the masterpiece by two of NYC’s top talents – Julia Glenn on the violin and Mika Sasaki on piano.

Throughout it all, Professor Riley will weave together a tapestry of music, literature, and a vision of old Europe on the precipice of unimaginable change.

Also, SixPoint is sponsoring the evening with free beer! Tickets are $25 — so get them while they’re hot! The tickets, that is, not the beer. The beer will be cold. And free.

Teacher: Charles Riley

“I wondered whether music might not be the unique example of what might have been – if the invention of language, the formation of words, the analysis of ideas had not intervened – the means of communication between souls.”

― Marcel Proust, The Captive & The Fugitive

Charles Riley II, PhD, is an arts journalist, curator and professor at Clarkson University. He is the author of thirty-two books on art, architecture and public policy. Upcoming books include Free as Gods (University Press of New England) and Rodin and his Circle (Chimei Museum, Taiwan).