The Gesamtkunstwerk: Music in To The Lighthouse.

A lover of music, inspired by Wagner, and a prolific writer, Virginia Woolf said in 1940, “I always think of my books as music before I write them.” (Kelley 417)

Thirteen years prior, To the Lighthouse, one of Woolf’s most influential works was published, and described by E.M. Forster in a 1942 issue of The Atlantic as a “novel in sonata form”. Indeed, Wagner was known for his experimentation in artistic unity, believing that he could create a kind of ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, a work of art combining drama and music into a complete piece. Following this line of thought Woolf – who was an avid supporter of Wagner’s work – became interested in how music could become a structural model for the narrative, perhaps prompting Forster’s observation about the novel’s musical analogy. He expands on this observation by weighing up the two harmonising perspectives in which James Ramsay longs for the lighthouse and Lily Briscoe attempts to achieve perfection (Forster). Certainly the novel follows a three-part structure that could be seen to mimic the sonata’s exposition, development, and recapitulation sequence. The prolonged exposition of the characters and their jumbling, chaotic conflicts in ‘The Window’, are undercut by the abrupt development of Mrs. Ramsay’s death in ‘Time Passes’. Finally, ‘The Lighthouse’ seems to mark a period of recovery when the characters slowly collect themselves and find closure. James is finally able to visit the lighthouse, and Lily, while she doesn’t achieve perfection, nevertheless finds her “vision” (Woolf 306).

There is a curious pattern in To The Lighthouse about the ‘sounds’ of things. Mrs. Ramsay notes a pulse in her marriage that rises to what is essentially a harmony: “two different notes, one high, one low” that give each other “solace” (61). What is rather explicitly stated here is that, despite the couple’s personal differences, it is the very variations of character that allow them to mesh so well, and Mrs. Ramsay finds her “solace” in caring for her husband, despite the mental toll it occasionally takes on her. This musical metaphor crops up again later on in the section, in the parallel story of the “Fisherman and his Wife”, to whom Mrs. Ramsay assigns the roles of “bass gently accompanying a tune” (87). To the Lighthouse as a novel thematically portrays very traditional, Victorian attitudes toward marriage, and the ‘harmony’ metaphor therefore perpetuates Mrs. Ramsay’s ideal that in any class of marriage the different gender roles compliment one another in a harmonious union. Contrary to this conventional ideal, Lily Briscoe is seen attempting to “start the tune of Mrs. Ramsay in her head” (76). The idea that there is “the tune” rather than ‘a’ tune, suggests that this is a recurring habit for Lily, harbouring Mrs. Ramsay as a musical abstract in her mind that she can play out to her will. While Mrs. Ramsay lives a heteronormative harmony, Lily listens to a romantic solo melody of her love in her mind. Woolf suggested that “we have lost the sound of the spoken word” (Kelley 432), and indeed we can observe how she imbues her characters with musical definition to breach a gap between what is said and what is meant.

Music also marks the passage of time, and consequently, music has varying impacts depending on the context in which it is played. In the section ‘Time Passes’, the uncomfortable development of Mrs. Ramsay’s death is met with a haunting private performance by Mrs. McNab of an old music hall song. What was once a popular piece in the lively and social setting of the music hall is, from the lips of a creaky, old housekeeper, “robbed of meaning, was like the voice of witlessness, humor, persistency itself” (194). The song is accompanied only by a collection of eerie, ghastly verbs to describe Mrs. McNab’s profile: “clutched”, “hauled”, “rolled”, “lurched” (195), creating a scene of a ghostly, groaning figure forced to persist. What the music hall song represents here is a time when the house that Mrs. McNab cleans was full of life, joy and people. In the absence of Mrs. Ramsay, the song has now been transformed into a symbol of grit as the characters are forced to persevere, rather than live. This scene further demonstrates how music is used in To the Lighthouse to highlight the unsayable, creating a deeper layer of grief to loss in the passage of time.

Works Cited:

Forster, E.M. “The Art of Virginia Woolf” The Atlantic. September 1942. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1942/09/the-art-of-virginia-woolf/657334/ 

Kelley, Joyce E. “VIRGINIA WOOLF AND MUSIC.” The Edinburgh Companion to Virginia Woolf and the Arts, edited by MAGGIE HUMM, Edinburgh University Press, 2010, pp. 417–36. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1g0b0wh.28.  Accessed 23 Apr. 2025.

Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. Penguin. 1927