The Semiotical Moment
Historicity of Musicological Approaches, Historicity of Musical Works

Raphaël Brunner

Abstract of the Communication presented the 11. of September 1997 at the Vth International Symposium on Systematic and Comparative Musicology, Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung, Berlin.

[En français]

Musicology remains traditionally bound to hermeneutics. That last area was sharply suspected by structuralism during the fifties, but it took until post-structuralism for the musicological approach to become modified. Parallely, the logical impossibilities that striked the hermeneutical approach to musicology contributed not only to reinforce the artefact of the immanence of the musical work, but also to take the musicologist away from the musical dynamic, his attention being focused on the reconstruction of production strategies or on the reception of the musical work.

The aesthetic of reception defended the contradictions mentioned earlier, but it remained nevertheless inoperative when applied to the music composed during the period after the Second World War, because of the lack of a reception that could truly be held as relevant. As for the new genetical critique, it examined the intention of the work itself and not the creative intention dear to hermeneutics (rather than to focus on the apprehension of the listening or composing subject, the interpretation comes from the reading of a formal and languagial proceeding within the musical work); now, at the moment when it opens some promising ways concerning the approach to the musical production of the 50’s-60’s, the doubt occurs that the foretexts may disappear, that the proceeding may settle in the work.

Today, the problem that the approach to the musical fact faces could be expressed in the following manner — and it questions the epistemological status of musical semiotics : the decipherable content of the work would not only become so by the use of the two lateral approaches that I have just mentioned — that is, being in one case validated by a reception that would actualize a potential meaning and being in the other case validated by reference to an always potentially active matrix —, but it would become decipherable in the work itself. The musical meaning would not have been deferred by the genesis or with a view to reception, but it would rather act in the work, by the predetermination of the « utteranciation » or by the fold on the utterance. If, from the hermeneutical point of view, music was not supposed to go as far as the text, even if it may do so, if, from the genetical point of view, the sketch, the acoustical material were not supposed to head for the work, even if they may do it, the situation would be about to reverse : the work would integrate its own frame, its own meaning.

There are works that reveal such an historical moment, of course at various degrees of symbolisation. So is it the case for Helmut Lachenmann’s work, which gives us the opportunity to listen to the critical point where the inaudible calls the audible, and a content that magnificently protects itself well from a listening folded on the utterance. So is it the case for Marc-André Dalbavie’s work, and more specifically for Seuils (1991-93), which gives us the opportunity to listen to the emergence of meaning in the heart of music itself (interpolation between instrumental sounds and vocal sounds allows to reach the linguistic meaning, at the risk of reaching it in the work itself and not in its reception).

The approach to the music composed during the after 1945 period can guide the musicological reflection in a critical way by bringing its proposals back to an acceptable threshold of tolerance.

Musical Sources

LACHENMANN, Helmut, temA für Flöte, Stimme (Mezzosopran) und Violoncello (1968), Spielpartitur BG 737 (Köln, Musikverlag Hans Gerig, © 1971), Wiesbaden-Leipzig-Paris, Bärenreiter, 1980.
temA, Particell, Basel, Paul Sacher Stiftung, fonds “Helmut Lachenmann”.
temA, ensemble Recherche, Paris, Montaigne, S.D.

DALBAVIE, Marc-André, Seuils pour soprano, ensemble instrumental et électronique (1991), deuxième partie du cycle Logos, Paris, Jobert, 1991.
Seuils, Diadièmes, ensemble InterContemporain, dir. Pierre Boulez, Paris, Ircam/Centre G. Pompidou, coll. “Compositeurs d’aujourd’hui”, 1995.

Short Bibliography

ADORNO, Theodor W., Philosophie der neuen Musik, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 1958 (traduction française : Philosophie de la nouvelle musique, Paris, Gallimard, 1962).
Quasi una fantasia, Fankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 1963 (traduction française : Paris, Gallimard, 1982).

BARTHES, Roland, « Le grain de la voix » in L’Obvie et l’Obtus. Essais critiques III, Paris, Seuil (coll. “Points/Essais”), 1982, pp. 236-242.

BRUNNER, Raphaël, « L’“Improvisation III sur Mallarmé” de Pierre Boulez. Éléments pour une mise en perspective » in Dissonanz/Dissonance Nr 50, Zürich, November/novembre 1996, pp. 4-14.
— « Universaux de genèse, universaux de réception : une interaction finalisée » in Actes du “IVth International Congress on Musical Signification”, (= Revue d’esthétique), Paris, Jean-Michel Place [en cours de publication].
— « “La musique devient ce qu’elle est”. Dynamique musicale et traces matérielles » in Actes du IIe Congrès d’ontologie. Le rationnel et le réel, Université de San-Sebastian [en cours de publication].

DAHLHAUS, Carl, Abkehr vom Materialdenken ? » in Darmstädter Beiträge zur Neuen Musik, Bd. XIX (= 31. Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik, 1980), Schott, Mainz, 1982 (traduction française : « Rejet de la pensée du matériau ? » in Musiques en création, revue Contrechamps éditée à l’occasion du Festival d’automne 1989 à Paris, Paris, Maulde et Renou, 1989, pp. 173-183).

GENETTE, Gérard, Seuils, Paris, Seuil (collection “Poétique”), 1987.

HINZ, Klaus-Michael, « Espaces de la jouissance » in Helmut Lachenmann, programme du Festival d’automne à Paris, Paris, Festival d’automne à Paris, 1993, pp. 20-21.

JAUSS, Hans R., Literaturgeschichte als Provokation, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 1974 (traduction française : Pour une esthétique de la réception, Paris, Gallimard, 1990).

LELONG, Guy, « Musique in situ » in Espaces (= Les Cahiers de l’Ircam n° 5), Paris, Ircam/Centre G. Pompidou, 1993.
— « Le stade de l’intégration » in Musique : Texte (= Les Cahiers de l’Ircam n° 6), Paris, Ircam/Centre G. Pompidou, 1994.
— « Le sens du contexte » in Marc-André Dalbavie (= Les Cahiers de l’Ircam. Compositeurs aujourd’hui n° 2), Paris, Ircam/Centre G. Pompidou, 1992.

LYOTARD, Jean-François, Le Postmoderne expliqué aux enfants, Paris, Galilée, 1988.

SZENDY, Peter (éd), Écritures musicales aujourd’hui (= Genesis n° 4), Paris, Jean-Michel Place, 1993.

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