Noval Square

Belinda Cannone, in her book Musique et littérature au XVIII^e siècle (Music and Literature in the 18th Century, 1998: 17), asserts that “la musique a un sens, à n’en point douter, il faut qu’elle en ait un si elle veut prétendre à l’attention et au respect. Et même il faudrait que ce sens soit le plus précis possible… Mais comment produit-elle son sens ?” (“music has meaning, undoubtedly, it must have meaning if it is to claim attention and respect. And even, this meaning should be as precise as possible… But how does it produce its meaning?” [our translation]). The most obvious answer would be to say that music produces meaning through imitation (musical figuralism). This is the principle of mimesis developed in the first chapter of Aristotle’s Poetics. Baroque musical literature is thus imbued with an imitative rhetoric. According to Diderot, imitation consists of “la représentation artificielle d’un objet” (“the artificial representation of an object” [our translation], article “Imitation” from L’Encyclopédie). Diderot specifies that “la nature aveugle n’imite point ; c’est l’art qui imite. Si l’art imite par des voix articulées, l’imitation s’appelle discours, & le discours est oratoire ou poétique. S’il imite par des sons, l’imitation s’appelle musique” (“blind nature does not imitate; it is art that imitates. If art imitates through articulated voices, the imitation is called speech, and speech is oratorical or poetic. If it imitates through sounds, the imitation is called music” [our translation]). One of the most famous examples of musical imitation is Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (1723-1725). Each of the four concertos that constitute the work functions as a musical illustration of a season. Spring thus offers an imitation of birdsong performed by the first violin solos. The birdsong is metaphorically reproduced by the high register and trills of the violin. The composer himself clarifies this process of sound metaphors by noting above the first violin solos: “Il canto degli uccelli”, “the birdsong”.

One also thinks of the French Impressionist music of the late 19th century, notably Debussy’s La Mer (1905).

However, this imitative rhetoric is not the most widespread in musical literature.

If we want to better grasp the semantic component specific to music and define the “meaning” conveyed by a musical work, we can turn to the notion of “substance du contenu” (“substance of content”) proposed by Louis Hjelmslev (1971), and, following this notion, to the categories of noetic and thymic.

Gilles Deleuze, in his lecture “Pensée et cinéma” (“Thought and Cinema”, 19/03/1985) defines the substance of content as being “la matière non langagièrement formée, non linguistiquement formée” (“material not formed in terms of language, not formed linguistically” [our translation]). Georges Molinié uses this notion profitably in the context of his theory of art and defines it more precisely as “le contenu idéologique, et en même temps l’investissement individuel de chaque producteur de discours. Pour reprendre un exemple fameux (topique), on dira que la substance du contenu des contes de Voltaire, c’est la pensée de Voltaire” (“the ideological content, and at the same time the individual investment of each discourse producer. To take a famous (topical) example, one would say that the substance of the content of Voltaire’s tales is Voltaire’s thought” [our translation]) (1998 : 12).

What about in musical art? We agree with Georges Molinié that there is “une différence spécifique, inaltérable, irréfragable, infranchissable, qu’aucune homologie ni même analogie ne saurait jamais combler, entre le traitement des sémioses non-verbales et celui de la sémiose verbale” (“a specific, unalterable, irrefutable, insurmountable difference that no homology or even analogy could ever bridge between the treatment of non-verbal semioses and that of verbal semiosis” [our translation]): it is that “la sémiose verbale, et elle seule, sert de méta-sémiose pour toutes les autres ; et cette relation n’est pas réversible” (“verbal semiosis, and it alone, serves as meta-semiosis for all others; and this relationship is not reversible” [our translation]) (Ibid. : 17). This position leads us to admit that “s’il existe de la substance du contenu intégrée dans le tout sémiotique mis en œuvre dans les pratiques des arts non-verbaux, celle-ci est particulièrement instable, et [qu’] elle ne saurait trouver, à la limite, d’autre manifestation que verbale” (“if there is any substance of content integrated into the overall semiotic system at work in non-verbal arts practices, it is particularly unstable, and [that] it could ultimately find no other manifestation than verbal” [our translation]) (Ibid.: 18). In other words, while there is indeed substance of content in musical language, it could only be expressed through words, sentences, a discourse^[1]. This is true, but Georges Molinié surpasses this apparent aporia of the absence of a semantic component in non-verbal arts by rethinking the substance of content as “une sorte de spectre qui serait balisé par deux pôles : le noétique et le thymique” (“a kind of spectrum that would be marked by two poles: the noetic and the thymic” [our translation]) (Ibid.: 21). The noetic is a cognitive component “qui a en charge l’ensemble des processus de la médiation symbolique optimale, celle qui aboutit à la catégorisation affichée du mondain” (“that is in charge of the entire process of optimal symbolic mediation, which leads to the displayed categorization of the worldly” [our translation]), that is, the world represented by language (Id.). The noetic covers imitative musical rhetoric but also every product of the analogy between a sound and the world around us. It is constitutive of an intellection process and is complementary to the thymic, “composante qui gouverne l’ensemble des affects ; on y rangera l’émotif au sens large, ainsi que le champ du ressentiment moral” (“a component that governs all affects; it includes the emotional in the broad sense, as well as the field of moral feeling” [our translation]) (Id.), which the Aristotelian tradition categorizes under ethics (ethos) and the pathetic (pathos).

Therefore, the substance of content can be considered outside of, or upstream of, the verbal and would correspond to “à la gestion de ce double ensemble, le noétique et le thymique” (“the management of this dual set, the noetic and the thymic” [our translation]) (Ibid.: 22). Verbal art is “primordialement et spécifiquement noétique” (“primarily and specifically noetic” [our translation]), because “seul le langage verbal élabore du sens” (“only verbal language develops meaning” [our translation]) related to words (Ibid.: 23), whereas non-verbal arts, including musical art, are specifically thymic. The substance of content of these arts “[relève] primordialement du thymique, c’est-à-dire du pôle exactement non ratio-conceptuel de la substance du contenu” (“[falls under] primarily the thymic, that is, the exactly non ratio-conceptual pole of the substance of content” [our translation]) (Id.), and of “l’émotif ou supra-conceptuel, du passionnel au moral ; c’est le domaine du ressentiment, qui englobe la sensation, la réaction, les variétés de sentiment et de disposition, du plus psychologique au plus axiologique, en passant par le psycho-sémantique […]. Une telle substance du contenu est incontestablement bien plus forte, bien plus suggestive, bien plus exaltante – bien plus émouvante que ne le sera jamais quelque traitement formel ou expressif du noétique” (“the emotive or supra-conceptual, from the passionate to the moral; it’s the domain of feeling, which encompasses sensation, reaction, the varieties of feeling and disposition, from the most psychological to the most axiological, including the psycho-semantic […]. Such substance of content is undeniably much stronger, much more suggestive, much more exhilarating – much more moving than any formal or expressive treatment of the noetic will ever be” [our translation]) (Ibid.: 25-26). The thymic is part of the musical rhetoric whose fundamental aim is to touch, and it allows us to better understand that the scope of the semiotic functioning of music is that of a value (Ibid.: 27) and not that of a meaning, which it has the dual purpose of indicating and expressing, and not of signifying.

Far from devaluing non-verbal arts, reserving the meaning-semantics pair for verbal art is both “méthodologiquement prudent” (“methodologically prudent”) (Ibid.: 23) and theoretically fruitful, because it allows us to think about the relationships between verbal language and musical language outside of any metaphor.

To conclude briefly on the question of meaning in musical discourse, we can say that although it is devoid of semantics, musical discourse conveys a value – indicating the world and expressing the worldly little or not categorized^[2]– which can be expressed by words and thus create, through the mediation of language, a meaning. In François Rastier’s words, musical discourse “crée un monde qui pointe vers le monde réel” (“creates a world that points towards the real world” [our translation]) (Rastier, 1996: 17).

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[1] See profane discourses such as: “this music delights me”, “it triggers various feelings in me”, “it transports me to a state of exaltation”, or conversely “it bristles me”.

[2] Georges Molinié (2005: 23) makes a distinction between world and worldly: “Ou l’on pense que le langage est contrôlé, voire vérifié par le monde ; ou l’on pense que, le monde restant le monde et, comme tel, demeurant inaccessible (et pour le moins indicible), le langage construit le mondain” (“Either one thinks that language is controlled, even verified by the world; or one thinks that, the world remaining the world and, as such, remaining inaccessible (and at least unspeakable), language constructs the worldly” [our translation]).

Bibliography

ARISTOTE, 1990, Poétique, traduction de M. Magnien, Paris, LGF.

CANNONE Belinda, 1998, Musique et littérature au XVIII^e siècle, Paris, PUF, collection « Que sais-je ? ».

DELEUZE Gilles, « Pensée et cinéma, cours 82 du 19/03/1985 », Université Paris 8. 

URL : http://www2.univ-paris8.fr/deleuze/article.php3?id_article=314

DIDEROT Denis et ALEMBERT Jean Le Rond d’, 1751-1772, Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Paris, Le Breton, Durand, Briasson et David.

HJELMSLEV Louis, 1971, Prolégomènes à une théorie du langage, Paris, Minuit.

MOLINIÉ Georges, 2005, Hermès mutilé. Vers une herméneutique matérielle. Essai de philosophie du langage, Paris, Champion.

MOLINIÉ Georges, 1998, Sémiostylistique. L’effet de l’art, Paris, PUF.

RASTIER François, 1996, « Pour une sémantique des textes – questions d’épistémologie », dans F. Rastier (dir.), Textes et Sens, Paris, Didier Érudition, p. 9-35.