Our last article on Akira Mizubayashi's novel, Âme brisée will deal with the relations between music and language as well as the relations between music and text. To make music one of the central elements of his story, the author develops various strategies. We shall explore some of them. The novel is made up of four parts. Each of these parts gets its title from one of the four movements of Schubert's Rosamunde quartet. Thus, the first part of the book is entitled “Allegro ma non troppo”, the second “Andante”, the third “Menuetto: Allegretto” and the fourth “Allegro moderato”. Here's a remarkable phenomenon: the novel contains two extracts from the score. The theme from the “Andante” appears in the first part, at a moment when Yu, Rei's father, and the Chinese musicians are in rehearsal (p. 49). The theme from the “Allegro ma non troppo” appears in the last part of the novel, at a moment when Jacques and Hélène are attending a performance of the quartet at
Bilingual blog on music and literature. We review the presence of music in fiction.