Much of Deadlock centers on the conversations between Miriam and Michael Shatov, so literature and philosophy plays a far larger role that music in the book. However, Miriam has her first experiences of that new home appliance, the gramophone. If you’ve ever heard an antique gramophone or cylinder phonograph, you’ll find Richardson’s description highly accurate:
Miriam waited, breathless; eagerly prepared to accept the coming wonder. A sound like the crackling of burning twigs came out into the silence. She remembered her first attempt to use a telephone, the need for concentrating calmly through the preliminary tumult, on the certainty that intelligible sounds would presently emerge, and listened encouragingly for a voice. The crackling changed to a metallic scraping, labouring steadily round and round, as if it would go on for ever; it ceased and an angry stentorian voice seemed to be struggling, half-smothered, in the neck of the trumpet. Miriam gazed, startled, at the yawning orifice, as the voice suddenly escaped and leapt out across the table with a shout—’Edison-BELL RECord!’ Lightly struck chords tinkled far away, fairy music, sounding clear and distinct on empty space remote from the steady scraping of the machine. Then a song began. The whole machine seemed to sing it; vibrating with effort, sending forth the notes in a jerky staccato, the scarcely touched words clipped and broken to fit the jingling tune; the sustained upper notes at the end of the verse wavered chromatically, as if the machine were using its last efforts to reach the true pitch; it ceased and the far away chords came again, fainter and further away. In the second verse the machine struggled more feebly and slackened its speed, flattened suddenly to a lower key, wavered on, flattening from key to key and collapsed, choking, on a single downward-slurring squeak——
The other major musical reference comes in Chapter XI, when Miriam and Michael attend a performance of Charles Gounod’s opera Faust. Afterward, Miriam reflects somewhat resentfully on the fact that Michael insisted, during the garden scene of the opera, on talking, offering her his personal interpretation of the music and scene. As we’ve come to recognize, few things upset Miriam more than the failure to treat music with a certain reverence.
You can find the playlist from Deadlock on YouTube at:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEuwqhzbsAgtSLWkUb50pgMOGth7AVf4K
- 19 Cléo de Mérode going back sometimes, with just one woman friend, to the little cabarets…. Intense sympathy with that means that one is a sort of adventuress … the Queen can never ride on an omnibus.
- Cléo de Mérode was a French dancer, a star of the Belle Epoque, who was rumored to make a habit of visiting cabarets (and lovers) on her own. This clip shows her performing at the 1900 Paris World Expo.
- 51 “Where did you get that hat? Where did you get that tile?”
- The lines come from “Where Did You Get That Hat,” a comic song originally written and performed by John J. Sullivan, an American vaudeville comedian.
- 96 Miriam gazed, startled, at the yawning orifice, as the voice suddenly escaped and leapt oUt across the table with a shout — ‘Edison-BELL RECord!’
- This clip provides a demonstration of an Edison cylinder phonograph playing a song by Billy Murray, one of the first performers to achieve international fame as a recording artist.
- 99 But Mrs. Thimm broke in with a tray and scattered them all towards the fire. Let’s hear Molly Darling once more she thought in a casual tone.
- “Molly Darling” (originally “Mollie Darling”) was a sentimental song written by Will Hayes, Harry Macdonough, and S. H. Dudley.
- 130 “It is a Russian song with words of Poushkin and music of Rubinstein. Ah but it requires Chaliapin. A most profound bass. There is nothing in singing so profoundly moving as pure basso; you should hear him. He stands alone in Europe.”
- The song is probably “Heard Ye His Voice,” music by Anton Rubinstein and lyrics from apoem by Alexander Pushkin.
- 199 But he assured her that opera was very beautiful, Faust perhaps the most beautiful and charming of all, and drew her attention to the massed voices.
- Faust is an opera in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré’s play Faust et Marguerite. The clip is of the song “Vin ou biére,” a number featuring the soldier’s chorus.
- 200-201 But the whole effect was threatened, as it stood so lovely all about her in the night air, by his insistence upon a personal interpretation, surprising her in the midst of the garden scene and renewed now as they walked, by little attempts to accentuate the relationship of their linked arms.
- The “Garden Scene” from Act III of Faust is considered one of the more romantic moments in the opera.