Music in Samuel Beckett’s radio play Embers: ‘I shouldn’t be hearing that!’

Abstract

Abstract This article explores how Samuel Beckett’s use of music in his 1957 radio play Embers is linked to our understanding of the experience of memory and storytelling. It reconsiders how Beckett’s use of the radio medium both informs and is informed by his lifelong interest in music. Beckett’s well-known attitudes towards storytelling – his struggle to express, interest in ambiguity, and resistance to neat conclusions – are revisited with close attention paid to his attempt to express the ineffable. The article argues that Beckett’s simultaneous need for and resistance to storytelling finds its voice in the impossibility of describing music. It suggests that this implicit tension is essential not only in terms of listening to Embers, but also becomes an increasingly central and knotty element of Beckett’s creative process. Hence, the article claims that Beckett can be read alongside twentieth-century composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Paul Hindemith. In its use of Theodor Adorno and Vladimir Jankélévitch, the analysis employs musicological readings of Beckett’s radio play to demonstrate how Beckett’s use of music complicates, rather than facilitates, our experience of memory and storytelling.