Comment L’Interprete et L’Auditeur Organisent-Ils La Progression Temporelle D’Une ŒUvre Musicale? (Analyse, Memorisation et Interpretation)

Abstract

[How do the Performer and the Listener Organise the Temporal Progression of a Musical Work? (Analysis, Memorisation and Interpretation)] This article discusses the issue of the deep temporal organisation of a sequence or of a musical work, what might be described as its “motion” in the dynamics of listening and performing. This question is addressed in terms of the concepts of tension and relaxation, as well as in terms of the idea of prolongation as defined in the Generative Theory of Tonal Music. These concepts, however, appear to refer to psychological realities which transcend the bounds of tonal music. For that reason a hypothesis concerning a dynamic macro-structure is put forward; this concept provides a good explanation of the nature of the storage in memory of musical information, of the reconstitution of this information in the course of performance and of aspects of atonal structure otherwise inexplicable within the strict canons of tonal theory. It can therefore be claimed that all musical works originate — in their general cognitive representation as well as in long-term memory — in schemas of temporal order of which the prototype is governed by the alternation of moments of tension and relaxation, truly prolongational structures which are not solely syntactic but also perceptual or sensori-motor in nature. These structures can be shown to account for the dynamic continuity of processes of listening and performance as well as for the continuity of the deep structure of a musical work whether or not it is tonal.