Introduction

Abstract ‘A book could be written on the significance of music in the work of Proust’, wrote Samuel Beckett in his 1931 study of Proust. Over sixty years later, it seemed to me that Beckett’s writing had supplied a similar proposition: namely that a book could-indeed should-be written on the significance of music in the work of Beckett. That the experience of music was profoundly important to Beckett was clear to those who knew him, including several amongst the contributors to this volume. The artist Avigdor Arikha spent many hours listening to music with Beckett and asserts that ‘Listening to music was essential to him.’ Although Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn, and Brahms featured prominently, they also listened, during the 19 50s, to twentiethcentury serialist music. Indeed, although Beckett’s interest in dodecaphonic music is not generally recognized, his correspondence with Thomas MacGreevy reveals a positive response to Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern as early as 1949.