Essays - On Flaubert and Debussy
On the Embodiment of Form: Polychronic Movement in
Flaubert and Debussy
ABSTRACT
This contribution is born in the essentially dialogic “smithy”
of a piano studio. It examines and gives audible presentation
to categories of signification that are not inscribed in the
linear unfolding of literary and musical discourse.
Poly-chronic construction – the simultaneous activity
of different spatio-temporal orbits intersecting with one-another
– has in Flaubert and Debussy illuminating points of
convergence. Debussy’s aspiration au polychronisme
has been explored by S. Jarocinski; “movement”
as générateur dynamique de toute forme
in his music, by A. Souris; parallel achievements in Flaubert
- images motrices exprimant des mouvements… Un choix
des temps verbaux, des coupes de phrases et de la ponctuation
- have been described by A Schaeffner; a semiotic analysis
of Flaubert’s order of mouvements moteur, des sonorités,
et de lumière, has been done by M. Frier-Wantiez.
Debussy’s statement “je m’efforce d’employer
cahque timbre à l’état de pureté…On
a trop appris à mélanger les timbres; à
les faire ressortir par des ombres ou des masses”
points to “transparency” as the essential category
that sustains his poly-chronic musical design.
Rare are the performances of Debussy’s music which
enable the listener’s ear to perceive the five, or seven,
not contrapuntal “voices”, but different, intersecting
temporal orbits. The performer’s preparation represents
a veritable intertextuality of déchiffrage
and utterance, in an inexhaustible chain of transformations
of visual signs, digital transmission, and aural verifications.
With juxtapositions of Flaubert’s texts and comparisons
of recording, examples are presented that embody and articulate
the forma fluens, and the transparent web of “les
jeux du mouvement pur.”
Version read at the Sixth International Conference ICMS 6
on Music and Signification: Works, Discourse, Society, Aix-en-Provence.,
December 1998.
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