Angelaki: journal of the theoretical humanities 3:2 1998

boulez/deleuze: a relay of music and philosophy

Timothy S. Murphy
During the night of 4 November 1995, Gilles Deleuze leaped to his death from a window of his apartment in the seventeenth arrondissement of Paris. He had been very ill for several years, but only within the previous year had he been rendered truly "immobile," that is, unable to see friends or to write. In the days following his death, his friends and colleagues, including JeanFranpois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Luc Nancy and Giorgio Agamben, wrote moving homages to him and his thought. On the evenings of 19 and 20 January 1996, Pierre Boulez conducted the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in a concert "en hommage a Gilles Deleuze" which included works by Stravinsky, Mahler, Bartok and Boulez himself. In the notes to that program, Boulez wrote these words: Gilles Deleuze is one of the very rare intellectuals who are profoundly interested in music. In 1978, he participated with Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault in a seminar organized by IRCAM on musical time, while he was himself engaged in the writing of A Thousand Plateaus. In a brilliant presentation he showed the acute and perspicacious manner in which he grasped the problems of musical composition and perception. In remembrance of this striking encounter, but also in homage to his thought - which has made many other territories fruitful - we dedicate this concert to him, our "errant companion" of many years. Boulez's concluding turn of phrase is not mere rhetorical embellishment. His path and Deleuze's crossed many times during the Seventies and Eighties, not only at the IRCAM seminar but also at the funeral of their mutual friend Foucault in June 1984 (where they were photographed together by Liberation). Deleuze refers to Boulez often in his works from 1977 onward, particularly in A Thousand Plateaus and The Fold. In those texts as well as in the essay that follows, Deleuze borrows and

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gilles deleuze BOULEZ, PROUST AND TIME "occupying without counting"

extends Boulez's concepts of smooth and striated space-time, relaying them through his own philosophy. Boulez acknowledged this relay process in an interview: I myself am not educated in philosophy, but I have forced myself to reflect upon compositional practice, and I have tried to arrive at a formulation of my ideas that is general enough to be accessible to others. What I wrote, for example, about the time of Wagner interested Deleuze; in this way my reflections could serve as a point of departure for a philosophical reflection.! The following essay, "Boulez, Proust and Time: 'Occupying Without Counting,"' demonstrates Deleuze's interest in Boulez's writing and music, and takes both as points of departure for a burst of philosophical creation that should itself be called a composition rather than a reflection. Deleuze's essay first appeared in Eclats I Boulez, a volume edited by Claude Samuel and published by the Editions du Centre Pompidou in 1986. It

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is translated and published here by permission of Madame Fanny Deleuze. Daniel W. Smith provided much-needed advice on the translation itself, but any infelicities that remain are mine. account for this alchemy, present throughout the Search,5 and thereby to pay homage to Wagner (even if Vinteuil is assumed to be very different from Wagner). Boulez in turn pays homage to Proust for having understood in a profound manner the autonomous life of the Wagnerian motive, as it passes through variable speeds, moves through free accidentals [alterations], enters into a continuous variation which assumes a new form of time for "musical entities."^ Proust's entire work is constructed in this manner: successive loves, jealousies, periods of sleep, etc., detach themselves so fully from the characters that they themselves become infinitely changing characters, individuations without identity, Jealousy I, Jealousy II, Jealousy III... Such a variable, which is developed in the autonomous dimension of time, will be called a "block of duration," a "ceaselessly varying sonorous block." And the autonomous dimension, which is not pre-existent, and is drawn at the same time as the block varies, is called a diagonal in order to better mark the fact that it is reducible neither to the harmonic vertical nor to the melodic horizontal as pre-existent coordinates.7 Does not the musical act par excellence, according to Boulez, consist in drawing the diagonal, each time in different conditions, from polyphonic combinations, passing through Beethoven's resolutions and Wagner's fusions of harmony and melody to Webern, abolishing every frontier between the horizontal and the vertical, producing sonorous blocks in series, moving them on a diagonal as a unique temporal function that distributes the whole work?* In each case the diagonal is like a vector-block of harmony and melody, a function of temporalization. And the musical composition of the Search, according to Proust, appears in this way: constantly changing blocks of duration, with variable speed and in free alteration, on a diagonal that constitutes the only unity of the work, the transversal of all the parts. The unity of the trip will be neither in the vertical views of the landscape, which are like harmonic cadences, nor in the melodic line of the route, but in the diagonal, "from one window to the other," which allows the succession of points seen and the movement of point of view to dissolve in a block of transformation or duration.9

boulez, proust and time: "occupying without counting"

Gilles Deleuze oulez has often posed the problem of his relationships with writers and poets: Michaux, Char, Mallarme... If it is true that the cut [coupure] is not the opposite of continuity, if the continuous is defined by the cut, one could say that the same gesture constructs the continuity of the literary text and the musical text, and makes the cuts pass between them. There is no general solution: in each case, the relations must be measured according to variable and often irregular measures. But Boulez maintains a wholly other relationship with Proust. Not a more profound relationship, but one of another nature, a tacit, implicit relationship (even if he often cites Proust in his writings). It is as if he knew him by "heart," by will and by chance.2 Boulez has defined a great alternative: counting in order to occupy space-time, or occupying without counting.3 Measuring in order to effect relations, or filling relations without measure. Isn't his link to Proust precisely of this second type: haunting or being haunted ("what do you want of me?"4), occupying or being occupied without counting, without measure? The first thing that Boulez seizes upon in Proust is the manner in which noises and sounds detach themselves from the characters, places and names to which they are first attached in order to form autonomous "motives" that ceaselessly transform themselves in time, diminishing or augmenting, adding or subtracting, varying their speed and their slowness. The motive was first associated with a landscape or a person, somewhat like a placard, but it now becomes the sole landscape, though a varied one, the sole character, though a changing one.. Proust is compelled to invoke Vinteuil's little phrase and music in order to

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The blocks of duration, however, because they pass through speeds and slownesses, augmentations and diminutions, additions and subtractions, are inseparable from metric and chronometric relations which define divisibilities, commensurabilities, and proportionalities: "pulse" is a least common multiple (or a simple multiple), and "tempo" is the inscription of a certain number of units in a determined time. This is a striated space-time, a pulsed time, inasmuch as the cuts in it are determinable, that is to say of a rational type (first aspect of the continuous), and the measures, whether regular or not, are determined as magnitudes between-cuts. The blocks of duration thus follow a striated space-time in which they trace their diagonals according to the speed of their pulses and the variation of their measures. But from the striated a smooth or nonpulsed space-time detaches itself in turn, one which no longer refers to chronometry except in a global fashion: the cuts in it are undetermined, of an irrational type, and measures are replaced by undecomposable distances and proximities which express the density or rarefaction of what appears in them (statistical distribution [repartition] of events). An index of occupation replaces the index of speed.l" It is here that one occupies without counting, instead of counting in order to occupy. Can we not reserve Boulez's term, "time bubbles," for this new figure, distinct from the blocks of duration?!! Number has not disappeared, but has become independent of metric and chronometric relations, it has become cipher, numbering number, nomad or Mallarmean number, musical Nomos and no longer measure, and instead of dividing up [repartir] a closed spacetime in view of the elements which make up a block, on the contrary it distributes in an open space-time the elements circumscribed in a bubble. It's like the passage from one temporalization to another: no longer a Series of time, but an Order of time. This great Boulezian distinction, the striated and the smooth, is less valuable as a separation than it is as a perpetual communication: there is an alternation and superposition of the two space-times, an exchange between the two functions of temporalization, if only in the sense that a homogeneous distribution [repartition] in a striated time gives the impression of a smooth time, while a very unequal distribution in smooth time introduces directions which evoke a striated time by the densification or accumulation of proximities. If we recapitulate the set of differences enunciated by Proust between Vinteuil's sonata and septet, it would contain those which distinguish a closed plane from an open space, a block from a bubble (the septet is bathed in a violet mist which makes a rondo appear as if "inside an opal") ,12 as well as those which relate the little phrase of the sonata to an index of speed, while the phrases of the septet refer to indices of occupation. But more generally, each theme, each character in the Search is systematically susceptible to a double exposition: the first, as a "box" out of which one draws all sorts of variations of speed and alteration of quality, following epochs and hours (chronometry); the second, as a nebula or multiplicity, which has no more than degrees of density and rarefaction, following a statistical distribution (even the two "ways," Meseglise and Guermantes, are presented then as two statistical directions). Albertine is both at once, sometimes striated and sometimes smooth, sometimes a block of transformation, sometimes a nebula of diffusion, but following two distinct temporalizations. And the whole Search must be read smoothly and striatedly, a double reading in accordance with Boulez's distinction. The theme of memory then appears secondary in relation to these more profound motives. Boulez is able to take up Stravinsky's "praise of amnesia" or Desormiere's phrase "I hate remembering" without ceasing to be Proustian in his own manner.13 According to Proust, even involuntary memory occupies a very restricted zone, which art exceeds on all sides, and which has only a conductive role. The problem of art, the correlative problem to creation, is that of perception and not memory: music is pure presence, and claims to enlarge perception to the limits of the universe. Such an enlarged perception is the finality of art (or of philosophy, according to Bergson). But such a goal can be attained only if perception breaks with the identity to which memory rivets it. Music has always had this

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object: individuations without identity, which constitute "musical entities." And no doubt, the tonal language restored a specific principle of identity with the octave or with first-degree harmony. But the system of blocks and bubbles implies a generalized refusal of every identity principle in the variations and distributions which define it. 14 The problem of perception consequently redoubled: how does one perceive these individuals whose variation is incessant and whose speed is unanalysable, or better yet, which escape every point of reference in a smooth milieu?15 The ciphers or numbering numbers, escaping from pulsation as well as from metric relations, do not appear as such in the sonorous phenomenon, although they engender real phenomena, but phenomena that are without identity. Could this imperceptible element, these holes in perception be filled up by writing, and the ear be relayed by a reading eye functioning as "memory"? But the problem rebounds again, for how can one perceive writing "without the obligation to comprehend it"? Boulez will find the answer by defining a third milieu, a third space-time adjacent to those of the smooth and the striated, charged with making writing perceptible: the universe of Fixed Elements [Fizes], which works sometimes by an astonishing simplification, as in Wagner or in Webern's three-note figure, sometimes by suspension, as in Berg's twelve beats, sometimes by an unusual accentuation, as in Beethoven or Webern again, and which is presented in the manner of a gesture leveling out the formal structure, or an envelope isolating a group of constitutive elements. The relation of envelopes among themselves creates the richness of perception and awakens sensibility and memory .16 In Vinteuil's little phrase, the high note held for two measures, "stretched like a curtain of sound to veil the mystery of its incubation,"17 is a privileged example of a Fixed Element. With regard to the septet, Mademoiselle Vinteuil's friend had need of fixed points of reference in order to write the work.18 Clearly the role of involuntary memory in Proust is to constitute envelopes of fixed elements. One should not think that involuntary memory or fixed elements re-establish a principle of identity. Proust, like Joyce or Faulkner, is one of those authors who dismiss every principle of identity in literature. Even in repetition, the fixed element is not defined by the identity of an element that is repeated, but by a quality common to the elements which could not be repeated without it (for example, the famous flavor common to two moments, or a common pitch in music...). The fixed element is not the Same, and does not discover an identity beneath the variation, quite the opposite. It will allow one to identify the variation, which is to say the individuation without identity. This is how it enlarges perception: it renders perceptible the variations in the striated milieu, and the distributions in the smooth milieu. Far from leading the different back to the Same, it allows one to identify the different as such: thus in Proust, the flavor as quality common to two moments identifies Combray as always different from itself.19 In music as well as in literature, the functional game of repetition and difference has replaced the organic game of the identical and the varied. This is why the fixed elements do not imply any permanence, but rather instantaneize [instantaneisent] the variation or dissemination that they force us to perceive. And even the envelopes continuously maintain a "moving relation" among themselves, within a single work, or in the same block, in the same bubble. To enlarge perception means to render sensible, sonorous (or visible), those forces that are ordinarily imperceptible. No doubt these forces are not necessarily time, but they are intertwined and united with those of time. "Time, which is not usually visible..." We perceive easily and sometimes painfully what is in time, we perceive also the form, unities and relations of chronometry, but not time as force, time itself, "a little time in the pure state."20 To make sound the medium which renders time sensible, the Numbers of time perceptible, to organize material in order to capture the forces of time and render it sonorous: this is Messiaen's project, taken up again by Boulez in new conditions (in particular, serial ones). But in certain respects Boulez's musical conditions echo the literary conditions of Proust: rendering sonorous the mute force of

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time. It is by developing functions of temporalization that are exerted on sonorous material that the musician captures and renders sensible the forces of time. The forces of time and the functions of temporalization unite to constitute the Aspects of implicated time. In Boulez as in Proust, these aspects are multiple, and cannot simply be reduced to the opposition "lostregained." There is lost time, which is not a negation but a full function of time: in Boulez, this would be the pulverization of sound, or its extinction, which is a matter of timbre, the extinction of timbres, in the sense that timbre is like love, and repeats its own end rather than its origin. Then there is "time re-explored [le temps re-cherche],n the constitution of blocks of duration, their progression in the diagonal: these are not (harmonic) chords, but veritable hand-to-hand, often rhythmic, sonorous and vocal holds in which one of the wrestlers prevails over the other, each in turn, as in Vinteuil's music; this is the striated force of time. And then there is time regained, time identified, but in the next instant it is the "gesture" of time or the envelope of fixed elements. Finally, "the time of Utopia," Boulez says in homage to Messiaen: it finds itself after having penetrated the secret of Ciphers, haunted the giant time bubbles, confronted the smooth - by discovering, following Proust's analysis, that men occupy "in time ... a very considerable place compared with the restricted one which is allotted to them in space" (or rather which belongs to them when they count), "a place on the contrary prolonged past measure...'^ In his encounter with Proust, Boulez creates a set of fundamental philosophical concepts which arise from his own musical work. Translated by Timothy S. Murphy
2 [Translator's Note] Par vo/ont et par hasard [by will and by chance] is the French title of Clestin Delige's volume of interviews with Boulez (Paris: Seuil, 1975), translated into English as Pierre Boulez: Conversations with Ckstin Delige (London: Eulenberg, 1976). 3 Boulez, Boulez on Music Today (London: Faber, 1971) 94. Translated by Susan Bradshaw and Richard Rodney Bennett. 4 [TN] "Sonate, que me veux-tu?" [Sonata, what do you want of me?] is the title of Boulez's exegesis of his Third Piano Sonata in Points de repre (Paris: Bourgois, 1981, 1985); it is translated by Martin Cooper in Boulez, Orientations (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986) 143-54. 5 [TN] In this translation I follow Richard Howard's lead (in his translation of Deleuze's Proust and Signs [New York: Braziller, 1972] In.) in rendering the title of Proust's work as In Search of Lost Time, rather than Remembrance of Things Past. Happily, the Modern Library, publishers of the standard English translation of Proust, have recently followed suit, though I continue to cite the earlier version of their translation in this translation. 6 Boulez, "Time Re-Explored [Le Temps re-cherch]" in Orientations 260-77 (specifically, 269). 7 On the diagonal and the block, see the articles "Counterpoint" and "Webern" in Boulez's Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991). Also Boulez on Music Today 119, 55 ("a block of duration will thus have been formed, and a diagonal dimension will have been introduced, which cannot be confused with either the vertical or the horizontal dimensions"), and Orientations 151. 8 On Wagner, Orientations 266-69. On Webern, Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship 297, 300-01. 9 The unity of the Search is always presented as a diagonal. Cf. Proust, Remembrance of Things Past [A la recherche du temps perdu], vol. 1 (New York: Modern Library, 1981) 704. Translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff with Terence Kilmartin. 10 On cuts, the striated and the smooth, see Boufez on Music Today 84-95. It seems to us that,

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notes
1 Boulez, "From the Domaine Musical to IRCAM: Pierre Boulez in Conversation with Pierre-Michel Menger" in Perspectives of New Music 28.1 (winter 1990): 9. Translated by Jonathan W. Bernard. This interview originally appeared in Le Dbat 50 (Aug. 1988): 257-66.

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on the one hand, the distinction between irrational and rational cuts according to Dedekind and, on the other hand, the distinction between distances and magnitudes according to Russell agree with the difference between the smooth and the striated according to Boulez. 11 [TN] Boulez, Boulez on Music Today 58. 12 [TN] Proust, vol. Ill, 261; the sonata and septet are contrasted on 250-67. 13 [TN] Deleuze is alluding in both cases to essays by Boulez on musicians who influenced him: "Stravinsky: Style or Idea? In Praise of Amnesia" and "Roger Dsormire: 'I Hate Remembering,'" both of which appear in Orientations. 14 Boulez on Music Today 46: "In the serial system, on the other hand, no function appears identical from one series to another... an object composed of the same absolute elements can, through the evolution of their placing, assume different functions." 15 Boulez on Music Today 42-43, 85; "where partition [coupure] can be effected at will, the ear will lose all landmarks and all absolute cognizance of intervals; this is comparable to the eye's inability to estimate distances on a perfectly smooth surface" (85). 16 Cf. the essential article "L'criture du musicien: le regard du sourd?" in Critique 408 (mai 1981). And on markers in Wagner, Orientations 271 ("stabilizing elements"). 17 [TN] Proust, vol. l, 230. 18 [TN] Proust, vol. lll, 263-65. 19 [TN] Proust, vol. l, 50-51. 20 [TN] Proust, vol. Ill, 905 (trans, modified). 21 Proust, vol. Ill, 1107 (trans, modified). Proust establishes an explicit distinction between this aspect of time and time regained, which is another aspect. (On "utopia," Messiaen and Boulez, cf. Orientations 411-17.)

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Dr Timothy S. Murphy Department of English University of Oklahoma 760 Van Vleet Oval, Room 113 Norman, OK 73019-0240 USA E-mail: murphy@angelaki.demon.co.uk