Lovely War

Music is a recurring motif thoughout Lovely War; it brings human connection, solace, and joy. At the parish dance in Poplar, James is drawn to Hazel, “drinking in her music like water and tasting how she dissolved herself in it like a sugar cube” (19). Her beauty is clearly interwoven in the beauty of the music she is creating; James is drawn to her and to her piano piece, and this is the beginning of their decades-long romance. Later, music comforts a heartbroken Hazel after James tells her that he doesn’t want to be with her; she plays Beethoven’s “Pathétique” and “Adagio cantabile,” and “she understood now, in way she never had before, the sorrow and longing wrapped up in Beethoven’s Piano Sonata. […] This was what she’d needed. This salve for her wounded soul” (359).

Music also provides solace for Aubrey. When he and his division travel through France on a freezing night, the band begins to sing together, tapping on the sides of the carriage to add beat and rhythm: “The whole car sang now. Freezing cold, stiff as oak, heading off to war, and terribly far from home. Aubrey felt his cheeks smile and his belly warm. […] No matter what happened, they’d keep on singing” (97). Music also brings Colette and Aubrey together; her singing draws Aubrey into the YMCA hut to discover the owner of the soulful and angelic voice. He writes “Dinant” for her, a piece full of melancholy and tragedy, which moves her to tears. Music remains central in their relationship as they move to New York together to perform and record music.