Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn, Clara Rodriguez’s research for her concert Histoires D’Amour

A four hands alliance

 When Marcel Proust and Reynaldo Hahn meet, in 1894, the first is composing Pleasures and Days, the second is orchestrating his “Dream Island”

Reynaldo Hahn met Marcel Proust at a soiree at “the Empress of roses”, painter Madeleine Lemaire, of whom it was said that only God had painted more flowers; she also invited the two youngsters to her house in the country, a seventeenth-century building that could well have served as a model for the Verdurin summer mansion of Proust’s “In search of lost time”.

Hahn and Proust coincided in their appreciation for literature, painting and music. They discussed dreams of collaborating in the writing of a biography of Chopin and of doing a series of musical and literary Portraits of Painters. Their friendship lasted until the death of Marcel Proust in 1922.

In  an article written by Marcel Proust, he describes Reynaldo Hahn thus: “with his head slightly turned back, melancholy in his mouth, a little disdainful, releasing the rhythmic flow of the most beautiful voice, the saddest and the warmest that ever was, this musical instrument of genius called Reynaldo Hahn touches every heart, moistens every eye, excites a spreading admiration that sets us all trembling and swaying together, like a silent and solemn ripple of wheat in the wind.”

Marcel Proust, The Lilac Courtyard and the Rose Studio: Madeleine Lemaire’s Salon.

Reynaldo was 18 year old and Proust still a student at the Sorbonne, they had defined vocations and they established a loving relationship that would end up becoming a deep friendship. The writer and the composer (whom Proust called “Gentsil”) maintained a rich epistolary exchange that not only reveals details of their private lives, but reflects their artistic as well as their highly cultivated and intellectual sense. Also, an invented “lansgage”, a sort of coded idiom. The pair were the cultural beacons of their generation, but their relationship, known in their refined circle, was to remain secret from the public throughout their lives.

Proust once said: “Everything I have ever done has always been thanks to Reynaldo”.

Marcel Proust gave Reynaldo Hahn his writings to read before he did to anyone else.

In fact, Reynaldo Hahn used his influence to help with the publication of some of Proust’s writings, and was “all ears” in the salons where Proust was being discussed as the possible winner of different literary prizes including, the Prix Goncourt.

Reynaldo Hahn’s friendship is also exemplified in a letter he wrote to his publisher, Heugel:

“I would be grateful if you would like to send 200 francs for me to Mr Marcel Proust, 9, boulevard Malesherbes, but in the following way: In a first envelope you will put the two bank notes, then this first envelope in a second addressed to his concierge: Mr Gustave Clin. The reason for this complication is the following: Marcel Proust does not sleep at night because of violent attacks of nervous asthma that leave him only in the morning; he begins to sleep around 8 or 9 am and only wakes up around 4 or 5 in the afternoon. Now, if the letter is sent directly to him,  the postman will be disturb him… Thanks a thousand times in advance; these two hundred francs will pay the next melody that I will send you.”

Reynaldo Hahn, becomes a Proustian character

Their friendship contained several essential ingredients of Proustian love – necessity of presence, secret codes, jealousy, ruptures, reconciliations – The writer recognised that Reynaldo was permanently in his novels, as “a god in disguise that no mortal will recognise.” 

However, the way of playing, singing and smoking at the same time, makes the Marquis de Poitiers, a snapshot of Reynaldo, as well as another fleeting figure in the book, the Italian composer Daltozzi. As was the character Baldassare in Pleasures and Regrets.

In Marcel Proust’s novel Jean Santeuil, the main character is also inspired by Reynaldo Hahn:

“The woods, the vines, the very stones, were at one with the brightness of the sun and the unblemished sky, and even when the sky grew overcast, the multitude of leaves, as in a sudden change of tone, the earth of the roads, the roofs of the town, seemed as though caught up in the unity of a brand-new world. And all that Jean was feeling seemed without effort to chime with the surrounding oneness, and he was conscious of the perfect joy which is the gift of harmony.”  

Hahn was born in Venezuela, his father was an engineer and business man of German/Jew origin and his mother a Venezuelan lady of the high society, the family moved to Paris when Reynaldo was three years old, he was the youngest of nine children. People at the time thought that the South American exoticism was an advantage in the world that he had to share, well, he also enjoyed having good fortune, seemed to be a spoiled child of the salons and was handsome, elegant, refined and seductive! He used to sit at the piano, play his compositions, make pastiches, sing chamber melodies and opera arias, sometimes provoking vignettes like that night in Venice, with a piano on a gondola when he sang his songs under a bridge. Interestingly enough, even today, Hahn’s music lovers try to re-enact that episode of his life!

Much of Proust’s musical training is due to him, who used to explain Wagner at the keyboard or convince him of the value of Pelléas et Mélisande by Debussy, a work full of intricacies and nothing immediate.

A child prodigy, Reynaldo Hahn was an immensely prolific composer who had become famous at the age of thirteen when he published his song “Si mes vers avaint des ailes”- although he played the piano in concerts in private salons from the age of six and had begun composing at eight, and defying the antipathy of the Paris Conservatoire towards child prodigies, he entered the class of Massenet at the age of ten. He enjoyed great success and was highly regarded in the Parisian “Belle Epoque”. Hahn refined his own literary, writing skills, becoming one of the best critics on music and musicians. His writing, like Proust’s, was characterised by a skill in depicting small details.

According to Jean Yves Tadié the tone used by Proust and Hahn in their correspondence, which has humour and can sometimes be lighthearted, is unique among the writer’s epistolary relationships, even once their love turned to friendship.

 At the beginning of a letter, Proust tells Hahn that he fears a medical note will not be enough to exempt him from military service. World War I had started two months earlier. However, Proust would never have to go to the front, since his health was already precarious in 1914, when he was forty-three. He was declared unfit for combat.

Reynaldo Hahn had taken the French nationality in 1909; when the war came, he chose to enrol in the French army even though he was forty years old and an established composer, he was accepted and served, first as a private, finally reaching the rank of corporal. While at the front he composed a song cycle based on poems by Robert Louis Stevenson.

A postcard from Reynaldo Hahn to Marcel Proust, written in March 1915 on a picture of Hahn in his military uniform, ends the letter with a made-up word ‘Hasouden’.Which could be perhaps translated as “until tomorrow” (à demain). Hahn also describes himself as feeling “Cacachois” , we can speculate that it means “afraid” given the circumstances.

As the war goes on, the pair’s correspondence becomes more somber, and their use of “lansgage” rarer. The presence of the war is also felt in Hahn’s numerous imprecisions, such as the lack of indication of his location, in compliance with the restrictions placed on military correspondence.

Reynaldo Hahn in the trenches

On the 18 Nov. Proust said to his housekeeper, secretary and life-long friend:  “Tomorrow will be the 9th day of my asthma attack, if I get over it I shall show the doctors what I am made of.” During the night he dictated some lines, describing a scene of doctors dancing around a dying Bergott (a fictional character). The day of his death on the 18th, Reynaldo Hahn took on the responsibility of alerting Proust’s friends and spent the night watching over him.

Reynaldo Hahn also suffered the hardship of the Second World War and was forced to leave Paris and hide in Monaco in 1940 during the Nazi occupation, he returned to Paris at the end of the war in 1945 to fulfil his appointment as director of the Paris Opera.

Reynaldo Hahn died in Paris in 1947.

Clara Rodriguez, piano and chamber music concert at the Purcell Room of the Southbank Centre. London. Monday 3rd December 2018 at 7.45 pm. Readers: Timothy Adès and William Roberts.

Violinist: Freya Goldmark; Cellist: Corentin Chassard; Bassist: Leonardo Muller

https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/129381-histoires-damour-clara-rodriguez-piano-2018