In a passing remark about Jean Santeuil, and quite unexpectedly, Proust speaks of “those two forces—analogy and difference—that exert such power over our minds.” I could not find a better phrase to define what I have called the thematic challenge. I would even like to emphasize the urgency of this thematic challenge. Every work—but especially every musical work—exists under the dual influence of analogy and difference; without this, and because it unfolds in time, irreversibly, our perception would be unable to grasp it. It is through analogy that we can orient ourselves within the progression of the work; it is through difference that this progression can take place. Every musical form depends entirely on the dialectical relationship between analogy and difference; formal articulation is based on these characteristics.
The thematic challenge involves, above all, the coherence of the musical discourse and, by extension, its comprehensibility. The thematic challenge is the challenge of meaning itself, of the work’s validity. When we speak of coherence, we might first and foremost consider a principle of economy. Economy of means, certainly. How to construct a work without having to perpetually invent “ex nihilo.” What precisely reveals the amateur in what he presents as a work is the non sequitur —the fact that deduction is practically nonexistent or exists only in a rudimentary form. I believe that one recognizes true craftsmanship specifically by the fact that economy of means is taken to its highest level. This does not, in essence, confer value on the ideas. Moreover, there can be an illusory economy of means involving generic ideas that imply a poor economy of means, predictable reasoning, and something profoundly unoriginal: a prefabricated economy of means, used to establish both the theme and its consequences. In this specific case, there is no real stake at all; rather, it is the posthumous exploitation of an economy that proved its worth when it was first invented, but which can function only as a meaningless template outside the context that gave it birth.
This economy of means could be linked, in a trivial form and even in a less trivial form, to another economy: the economy of invention. Must we admit that a creator’s capacity for invention is limited, and that the configuration of their personality imposes limits on their capacity for invention? That the characteristics of their language—even if they expand and are renewed in a sustained, if not spectacular, manner—always bear the hallmarks of their personality, and that the renewal of their inventiveness is therefore confined to a territory whose boundaries are determined by the myriad circumstances of which they are sometimes the master and sometimes the slave? Thus, the theme of a work would be the result of an economy of invention. Valéry spoke of the first line being a gift, all the others being the result of the obstinacy of labor. There has also been talk, in varying proportions, of inspiration and perspiration. These different ways of expressing the idea all converge on a common, central point: finding the theme is a matter of inspiration—the crystallization of an exceptional, irrational moment that is both anticipated and bestowed upon us by chance, a moment we must be ready to embrace at any time, one whose emergence we can foster by putting ourselves in the right frame of mind, yet one over which we have no control. Thus, we must learn to make the most of these rare, privileged moments. The entire thematic challenge essentially consists of knowing how to capitalize on the exceptional—to stretch the privileged moment of a revelation to acceptable temporal dimensions. And yet, if we examine—by chance or out of curiosity—the sketches of great composers, particularly those in which the thematic challenge is most significant in relation to the composition, we can see how much lengthy elaboration was sometimes necessary to arrive at the formulation of a theme, of a thematic principle. We even see at times that it is the economy of the development that has forced the theme to reshape itself. Consequently, this conception of intuition—which, once elaborated, becomes a work—is nothing more than a myth. Schönberg himself, however, fell into this trap; at any rate, he led us to believe so in his writings by stating that when he invents a theme, he knows in advance all its derivations and all its developments, and that the act of creation thus reveals itself, from its very inception, as a divine, omniscient act. We must certainly not downplay the irrational aspect of invention; there are, in fact, many shortcuts unknown to us when we invent figures or form sound combinations capable of further development. Indeed, a certain habituation to our own ideas takes place; and in these ideas, even before we have explored them more thoroughly, we have imbued them with our personality—that is, our characteristics, and thus also our limitations. Thus this “omniscience,” this prescience, often risks being nothing more than our own routine, applying to an object taking on a new aspect a more or less conscious network of parameters we have already used, and which stem from our experience. Of course—as Proust generally says of romantic experience—one might think that we are doomed to repeat the same musical experience eternally, and that the characteristics of our personality compel us each time to follow the same path, even though we regard it as a new one. This applies, in fact, to musical gestures, without which we would not be able to distinguish a musician’s style. But the same gestures can apply to very different musical journeys; it is not the gestures themselves that, strictly speaking, characterize the work’s journey. This journey of the work must be found in the thematic object itself and in the consequences that result from its formulation.
The thematic focus of a work is therefore not necessarily the result of an economy of invention: an involuntary, exceptional moment of extraordinary inspiration, enabling the work and elaboration that would otherwise occur as more extended moments, more dependent on will, and infinitely less privileged. For should we not see in the search for the theme the same kind of work—albeit on a smaller scale—as that which takes place during the development of ideas? In other words, can the theme exist, be present in the composer’s world, without its potential developments? We see, in works or sketches, themes abandoned by composers even though they do not seem any less rich to us than those they did develop. Is this not, in some cases, due to their lack of malleability, their unsuitability for the intended purpose? It seems, in fact, that a theme does not exist in and of itself, but only in relation to a certain development. Development does not necessarily imply length or a spread out over time. It is certain that thematic elaboration is strongly linked to the greater or lesser extent of the development; but, before I turn to this structural link between potential richness and the scope of development, I would like to emphasize that the nature of a theme does not necessarily coincide with the form of development one intends to realize: a mismatch in characteristics and articulation, a mismatch in potential, or a mismatch in individualization or neutrality. In this regard, Wagner provides us with a unique subject of study, because he offers us not only a sketchbook to refer to (as is the case with Beethoven or Webern), but also a body of work in which the development of these themes reveals what, over a period of twenty years, he selected from among all his ideas as the elements most amenable to development. And sometimes these are not, at first glance, the most characteristic ones; but it is always the most malleable ones that were retained—at least, that is how it seems to me. For here too, we must be wary of the reactions we might have today and of the cause-and-effect relationships we believe we can establish; we can no longer know—as the composer knew it at least once, despite Schönberg’s assertions—the thematic figure on its own, stripped of all the developments that followed. Our perspective is biased: we no longer judge thematic figures in and of themselves; we can only judge them in light of their “legacy”—or lack thereof—and on that basis, we form an assessment. But perhaps under different circumstances, had the composer needed a different kind of development, he might have given a figure that remained “unmarried” an enviable legacy. Despite the completed work, our judgment is based on conjecture and speculation.
A theme is already a condensed development that contains potential developments. Our interpretation of the theme is strongly influenced by the relationship between the actual developments and the potential for development that we find in the thematic core. I would say that when we approach a theme to study its consequences, we bring this principle of uncertainty with us, for our approach cannot be naive or objective. We know the actual consequences — the only ones we can know; indeed, these are the only ones we directly link to the thematic figure, the only ones we can define as realized potential. We limit our deductions to what is right before our eyes. In principle! For every inventive composer, when looking at a work, invents precisely the deductions that are not there—and which he will develop for himself. Starting from the visible deductions, he will imagine the possible deductions that have not been explored, or that have been explored only incidentally or in embryonic form. From the real life of a work, an entire imaginary life will unfold, in which the composer will invent—based on existing models and inferences—other models and other inferences. He will apply an inventive analysis, taking into account the lack of naivety that we possess; he knows that objectivity is of no use to him; he will reinvent a naivety of a different order, in order to imagine these deductions of a different order. A predecessor’s thematic challenge can only become his own thematic challenge through this deviation. He does not position himself as the public merely observing the composer’s paths; he will invent his own imaginary paths by accepting this observation—which he certainly cannot reject—but by transgressing it, by rejecting it as a singular and obligatory experience. Our thematic listening exists in relation to development. When we listen to a theme and a theme alone, we know its “history”; we can no longer know it as “initial” material. The inventor’s distinctive trait is to recreate this material as initial material; to accept its “history” and be capable of recreating another one, from which he himself will move forward. This is undoubtedly, in part, what we might call the legacy, and whose thematic stakes are among the principal ones.
P. B.