It is difficult to reduce musical invention to a mere inventory of techniques, or to explain the formation of a language by describing a set of resources available to the composer. However, invention exists in a tangible form only through this set of means of transmission; without them, thought remains merely an intention. We know that the network of explanations—whether verbally expressed or implied—that links intuition to the work is both indispensable and irrelevant: indispensable because it is our only method of description, and irrelevant because the profound value of the completed work lies beyond this description.
In past centuries, musical language existed as a common code: it was unthinkable to express oneself outside this recognized, accepted norm. One could speak of communication, functioning according to defined conventions, where personality was exercised in the pursuit of perfection; in the oral tradition, personality even disappears in favor of anonymity.
The current evolution of Western music, in contrast to this past, can increasingly be summarized as a conflict between language and the individual, between collective means of communication and individual means of self-expression, between expressing and expressing oneself. This was reflected at the beginning of this century by the abolition of a general code in favor of a code whose method was still generalizable, but whose results depended almost exclusively on individual choice. Even this method was quickly challenged, and the illusion of having found a new permanence in musical language dissipated swiftly and definitively. Who today would still think of working toward a collective language and taking delight in such a utopia?
Some composers, however, accept the notions of organization, choice, and selection. Language, however individual it may be, is established according to a coordinate system to which one refers in order to grasp the meaning of the work. But imagine that, under an ideological pretext, it is decided that every phenomenon—whether sonic or not, cultural or not—is material, and that there is therefore no obligatory connection between language and material. By the mere fact that language eliminates or rejects its constraints, one accepts, at most, a function of unfolding. It is not easy to challenge these starting points, postulates, or declarations of faith if one positions oneself precisely on the ground of faith or poetic belief. However, one might ask whether the specificity of musical expression does not invalidate such arbitrary decisions.
The relationship between language and the object, between the diagram and the material, between the concept and its realization, cannot exist according to reductive, pre-existing norms; nor can it be eliminated by a mere “poetic” decision. This relationship does not exist in the absolute sense: a work without a final diagram is as unthinkable as a work in which everything is deciphered in the initial diagram. Schematics and catalogs must give way to more concrete notions, directly related both to the act of composing and to the very existence of the material in question.
The first constraint not to be forgotten is the implicit existence of a hierarchy. Not a hierarchy of what is important and what is not; not a hierarchy of recognition and contempt, of the noble and the ignoble. Rather: what is at the center, and what is on the periphery; what is decisive, and what is relative. Much of the validity of the possibilities of musical language coincides with the precision of the territory in which they are situated. Closely correlated with hierarchy is the problem of coherence: the material refers to the structure; conversely, the structure chooses its material.
Hierarchy and coherence point to an inescapable question, whose banality masks its difficulty: what is musical, and what is not?
The musical and the non-musical exist independently, but they exist only in the transitory. No matter what precautions one takes to ensure musical coherence, no matter how much indifference one displays toward this problem, no matter how hostile one may be to even considering this phenomenon a problem, the fact remains that judgment of a work will always implicitly involve a value judgment on something that is not a value.
P. B.