Richard Pinhas - Conference on the Musical World,

IRCAM. January 1978

Why us non-musicians ?
Trans. Wanyoung Kim, May 2014

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The method used by Pierre Boulez has selected five musical works. The relations between
these works are not relations of filiation or dependence; there is no progression or
evolution from one to another in the works. It is rather like the five works were
half-randomly selected, forming a cycle in which they enter a reaction in relation to the
others . So a set of virtual relations is woven, one which could take a particular profile of
musical time that only applies to the five works. We might well conceive that Boulez chose
four or five other works which would have another cycle , other reactions and
relationships, and a unique profile of musical time , or other variable of some time. It is a
method of generalization. It is not about, for example in other works, rising to an abstract
concept of time of which you could say "this is musical time." It is, determined under
certain conditions, from restricted cycles, of extracting individual profiles of time, with
the freedom, right away, to overlay these profiles, to make a real mapping of variables.
This method applies to music, but may also concern a thousand other things.

In the specific case of the cycle chosen by Boulez, the particular time profile was not
intended to exhaust the question of musical time in general. We see that a pulsed time, a
number of times not pulsed with the freedom of time, returns to a new form of time
pulsation. The work No. 1 (Ligeti) shows that through some pulsation, it was supported
by a non-pulsed time; numbers 2, 3 and 4 show the developing or different aspects of that
non-pulsed time; the last work, No. 5, as Carter shows from a non-pulsed time, one
discovers a new form of the original pulsation, very particular, very new.

Pulsed time and non-pulsed time are entirely musical, but also something else. The
question would be what exactly this non-pulsed time is. This kind of floating time,
corresponds somewhat to what Proust called "a little time in its pure state." The most
obvious character, the most immediate, is that a certain time said to be not-pulsed, is a
duration; it is a time released from the measure, whether it is regular or irregular, simple
or complex. A non-pulsed time puts us first and foremost in the presence of a multiplicity
of heterochronic, qualitatively mismatched durations. How does one articulate this, since
we are obviously deprived of the most general and classical solution that consists in
conveying the spirit of carefully setting a common measure or measuring cadence onto all
vital durations? From the beginning, this is a buffered solution.

If you shall allow me the freedom to digress, I think that these days, when biologists speak
of rhythms, they find similar questions. They, too, have given up believing that one can
articulate heterogeneous rhythms coming under the rule of a unifying way . Of the joints
between life rhythms , for example 24-hour (circadian) rhythms , they do not see an
explanation of the aspect of a superior form shaped to unify them , or the aspect of a
regular sequence of elementary processes. In fact they look elsewhere , to a sub - vital ,
infra- vital level , in what is called a population of molecular oscillators capable of crossing
heterogeneous systems, in coupled oscillating sound molecules which then traverse
disparate sets and durations. The joint does not depend on unifiable or unified form,
meter, or rhythm, or any regular or irregular meter, but on the action of certain
molecular partners launched through different layers and different rhythmicities. It is no
mere metaphor which can speak of such a seminal discovery in music; rather it is the
sound molecules , not notes or pure tones. The coupled sound molecules are capable of
crossing rhythmicity layers , layers made of heterogeneous durations. This is the first
determination of a non-pulsed time.

There is a certain kind of individuation that does not establish itself in a subject ( the ego/
I ) , or a combination of form and matter. A landscape , event, time of day , a life , or a
fragment of life ... come differently. I have the feeling that the problem of individuation in
music, which is certainly very complicated, is rather the type of those second paradoxical
individuations. What is called the individuation of a sentence, a small phrase in music? I
wish from the easiest apparently most rudimentary level . It happens that reminds us of a
music landscape. Thus the celebrated case of Swan, in Proust : the Bois de Boulogne and
the little phrase Vinteuil . It also happens that the sounds evoke colors, either by
association or by phenomena called synaesthesia . It happens, in short, that the motifs for
the operas are linked to people , such as a Wagnerian theme is said to designate a
character. One way to listen well is not null or uninteresting, perhaps a certain level of
distraction you have to go out there, but everyone knows that is not enough. Is that a
tense level , the sound is not referring to a landscape, but it involves a proper music
soundscape that is inside ( and Liszt ) . We could say another goal for the notion of color,
and consider durations , rhythms, timbres fortiori, are themselves colored , colors, proper
sound , which are superimposed on the visible colors , and do not have the same speeds
and the same steps of the visible colors. Similarly it goes for the third notion , that of
character . We can look at the opera certain times in association with a character: but the
reasons Wagner not only associated with a foreign character , transform , have an
independent life in a floating non-pulsed time which become themselves and for
themselves interiors characters to music.

These three different notions of soundscapes, audible colors, rhythmic characters

then appear as the aspects under which a non-pulsed time produces a very particular
kind of individuation.

We are led, everywhere, I believe, to no longer think in terms of matter and form . To the
extent that we have stopped believing in all domains in the hierarchy that go from simple
to complex, life - spirit - matter . We think that life would be rather a simplification of
matter; can you believe that vital rhythms do not find their unification in a spiritual force ,
but rather in the molecular links. This whole matter-form hierarchy , a more or less
rudimentary matter, and a sound field, more or less of sound, , more or less erudite , is it
not this to which we have stopped listening , and which composers have stopped
producing ? The constitution is a very elaborate sound material, but yet not a rudimentary
material that would receive a form .. And the link is made between the elaborate sound
material, and forms, that by themselves, are not sound , but which become audible sound,
or material that becomes noticeable. So we hear in Debussys Dialogue of the Wind and
the Sea. The material is there to back audible force which would not be audible by itself ,
namely the time , duration and still intensity. A couple of matter-form is replaced by the
couple of material - forces.

Boulez : pop. All the very elaborate sound material, with the extinction of sounds, is made
to return two sensible and audible sonorous rhythms - one defined in general as the time
of production and the other in general as the time of meditation .

Then it follows that the pair of simple-form and material couples that would inform this
matter, is replaced by a pair between an elaborate item, and imperceptible forces that
become perceptible only by this material. Music, then, is not simply the matter of the
musicians to the extent that it does not have the exclusive and fundamental element of
sound. Its element is the conjunction of all the forces that do not sound, which the sound
material produced by the composer will make noticeable, so you may perceive the
differences between these forces , all the differential plays between these forces.

We all face similar tasks. In philosophy, classical philosophy gives itself a kind of
rudimentary thinking stuff, a kind of flow, which tries to subdue given concepts or
categories. But increasingly, philosophers have sought to develop a very complex thought
material to make sensible the forces that are unthinkable for themselves.

There is no perfect pitch; it is the problem of having an impossible sound ---returning

audible forces that are not audible for philosophers. In philosophy, this is an impossible
thought, and it is said to be a conceivable return to very complex thinking, which concerns
unthinkable forces .