Samuel Beckett, an Irish novelist and dramatist, was an economical writer who believed in less is more, like Ernest Hemingway and Cormac McCarthy. Like those writers, his dismal works tackle existential concerns and the human condition. Beckett uses absurdity, black humor, and tragic comedy more than Hemingway or McCarthy.
The title character from Beckett’s 1953 drama Waiting for Godot never appears on stage or in print since he was an absurdist and minimalist.
His early pieces featured essays on Marcel Proust and James Joyce, whom he met in the late 1920s while teaching English at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He first published a music review, To a Toy Symphony (Haydn), under the pen name John Peel, in the early 1920s. Later works were influenced by playwrights, poets, and philosophers such Dante Allegro, Rene Descartes, and Arnold Geulincx.
Beckett’s existential prose, like Camus’, was breathtakingly austere but ridiculous in its mundanity and depth. Beckett was honored in 1969, whereas Camus tried to decline the 1957 Literature Laureate award.
He was inspired by Joyce, Dante, Descartes, and other writers, but also by his love of classical music.
Posthumously published letter collections show that Beckett was a prolific playwright, novelist, and letter writer. His reviews of classical performances were generally positive or negative.
He wrote that “I feel that Beethoven’s Quartets are a waste of time” because “he needed a piano or an orchestra”, but he was won over by the Busch Quartet’s performance of Beethoven’s Quartet Opus 130, which he wrote that “although it is only his penultimate quartet it has as its finale the last composition we have from I was most impressed by the Cavatina before that Allegro. A calm, intense movement that surpasses anything I’ve heard by Ludwig.
Beckett took piano lessons in Stillorgan, Dublin, as a child. When recalling duetting with Beckett on violin and piano, his cousin Morris Sinclair adds, “Well, with what conviction and elan he would play the last movement of Beethoven’s ‘Pathétique’! His absorption was almost ferocious.”
Music was his lifelong companion. According to his Parisian best friend, artist Avigdor Arikha, “Listening to music was essential to him”. Arikha said it was ritual. His favorite pianists were Yves Nat, Alfred Cortot, Artur Schnabel, Solomon Cutner, and Rudolf Serkin. Beckett attended as many concerts as possible and admired current composers like Debussy, Ravel, and Bartok, as well as ancient composers like Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert.
Later in his career, Beckett would incorporate these hobbies and influences into his work in music, painting, sculpture, and television. Beckett structured Ghost Trio (1977) and Nacht und Träume (1983) with Beethoven and Schubert passages.
Modern composers Pascal Dusapin, Philip Glass, and Heinz Holliger have been inspired by Beckett’s words.
Beckett wrote in his 1962 radio play Words and Music that “music always wins” despite his fame as a writer.