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The Little Phrase

The Little Phrase

Written by: Jim Kelley-Markham
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Music, literature, and the haunting melody at the heart of Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

There's a moment in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time — all seven volumes, 2,200 pages of it — when a man named Swann hears a few notes of a violin sonata at a Paris dinner party, and his entire world shifts. That little phrase of music becomes the anthem of a love story, a thread running through decades of memory, obsession, and loss.

The Little Phrase is a podcast about that thread. Each episode, hosts Eve and Elliot trace how an imaginary piece of music — the fictional Vinteuil Sonata — connects characters across generations in one of literature's greatest novels. We'll bring you readings from Proust, performed by Jane, alongside real music that might have floated through Proust's imagination when he invented Vinteuil: composers like César Franck, Gabriel Fauré, and the world of the 1890s Parisian salon.

Season One follows twelve short episodes — the love story of Charles Swann and Odette de Crécy, and the little phrase that binds them together. Whether you've read all of Proust or none of him, we think you'll find something here that stays with you.

New episodes every week. About eight minutes each. Come listen.

© 2026 Jim Kelley-Markham Art Music
Episodes
  • The Smile of a Sound

    The Smile of a Sound
    Apr 2 2026

    We're in Paris. The salons are full, the music is playing, and Charles Swann — a well-connected man of the world who's spent his life keeping emotions at arm's length — is about to hear something that undoes all of that.

    In this first episode of The Little Phrase, Eve and Elliot introduce Proust's fictional Vinteuil Sonata and the moment the little phrase first appears. Jane reads two passages from In Search of Lost Time — the phrase arriving like a stranger who smiles at you and disappears, and then returning as what Proust calls "the national anthem of their love."

    We also listen to music that may have lived in Proust's imagination when he invented Vinteuil: the opening of the fourth movement of César Franck's Violin Sonata, and a movement from Gabriel Fauré's Violin Sonata in A major, written in the 1870s.

    About eight minutes. A love story is beginning.

    Credits: Proust quotations from In Search of Lost Time (public domain) via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/InSearchOfLostTimeCompleteVolumes · Franck, Violin Sonata in A, 4th mvt. — Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cesar_Franck_-_Sonata_in_A,_4th_movement.ogg — CC BY-SA 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0 — unmodified · Fauré, Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 13 — courtesy Musopen: https://musopen.org/music/599-violin-sonata-no-1-op-13/ (public domain) · Cover art, episode art, theme, voices & script created with AI assistance.
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    8 mins
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