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Musicae Scientiae © 2008 by ESCOM European Society

Special issue 2008, 129-146 for the Cognitive Sciences of Music

Narrative, splintered temporalities

and the unconscious in 20th century music

MICHEL IMBERTY
Centre de Recherche en Psychologie et Musicologie systématique
Université Paris X — Nanterre

• ABSTRACT
Narrative structures the human experience of time, but does it also organise our
musical experience? Behind this question lies another one, which concerns the
narrative process itself: does it belong solely to the time of consciousness or does
it manifest itself through other forms of temporal organisation in the unconscious
mind? Psychologists have identified a structure of the experience of time that
precedes narrative itself, which can be called “proto-narrative form” and which
organises the coherence and unfolding of narrative, as it does perhaps the
unfolding of musical form. It may be characterised by its linearity and a strong
directionality, implying a clearly perceptible and temporally oriented line of
dramatic tension. However, during the 20th century, directionality and linearity
have progressively given way to a-directional or poly-directional fragmented forms,
implying discontinuities of the temporal flux and the superimposition of multiple
lines of dramatic tension that have neither the same progressions nor the same
endings. What sense can we give to these new splintered forms of time? We
attempt to answer this question from a psychoanalytic perspective.

Keywords: time, tonality, linearity, narrative, unconscious.

In the first volume of his book Temps et récit Paul Ricœur (1983) develops the idea
of a “pre-narrative structure of experience”. He writes: “[…] the correlation that
exists between the activity of narrating a story and the temporal character of human
experience is not merely accidental, but rather, represents a form of transcultural
necessity” (p. 105, own translation). Thus, according to the author, the time of
narration is deeply embedded in the human experience of time and narration
expresses the “time-boundness” of human experience. Our awareness of time, our
awareness of the time-boundness of our lives, finds expression first and foremost in
the telling of time, in the narrative of our life experience. “[…] time becomes human
in as much as it is articulated within a narrative form”, writes Ricoeur, and “[…] a
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story attains its full-blown meaning when it becomes a condition of temporal

experience” (1983, Vol. I, p. 105, own translation).
Could narrative, which lends structure to the human experience of time, also be
that which organises our experience of music? Could music, by virtue of its
temporality, be a form of narrative?
But these questions summon another question concerning narrative itself. Does
it belong solely to the time of consciousness or is it also manifest, through other
forms of temporal organisation, in the unconscious mind? In other words, if
narrative contributes to structure human life at its beginnings — as many studies on
the intersubjective communication between mother and baby tend to show — is the
particular way in which it relates to the time it defines confined to conscious
processes? Does it not emerge at the same time as consciousness, consciousness being
what creates a distance between the immediacy of lived experience and its
representation in the mind?

1. STRUCTURE OF EXPERIENCE AND PROTO-NARRATIVE ENVELOPE

Let us introduce an initial idea. To think about time, but also to feel time as a
substrate of our internal experience, is first and foremost to have a sense of
connectedness: not only of the connectedness of past, present and future weaving an
orientation within which our lives are projected, but also of the connectedness of our
emotions, our feelings, our experiences that tie together the threads of our personal
story as they do those of others with whom we interact. In short, a connectedness
that consecrates the unity of self as the locus of a changing psychological subject.
Many philosophers have evoked what has been called the “thickness of the
present”, the extension of the present moment into the temporality of subjective
feeling. Saint Augustine was among the first to make a distinction between objective
and subjective time units that dilate as a function of inner experience in such a way
that one can talk of the past of the present, the present of the present and the future
of the present. “Time is a distension of the soul” (Saint Augustine, 1964, p. 275, own
translation), the future is merely the expectation of the future, the past no more than
the recollection of the past, whilst the present is that very expectation focused on an
object which is not yet and which in the space of an instant will be no more.
Saint Augustine’s philosophy poses this same problem of meaning, not only of
the directionality of time and of the subject’s experience of it, but indeed also of
“where it is going” in terms of an intentionality of sensations, perceptions, acts and
representations. The present moves toward something because an awareness of time
is an awareness of something in time, an awareness of some end that must be
reached: this is something Husserl has clearly described. Time then provides unity,
and duration constitutes the connection between feelings beyond their heterogeneity,
it is co-substantial with the emergence of self. What is this connection? This leads
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further to the question of how we can have temporal representations. The infant’s
ability to detect coherence in an interpersonal world is connected with her ability to
experience the connection between her actions and her resulting feelings of pleasure
or displeasure. In other words, actions embody an intrinsic motivation — which is
not given as a conscious aim, pleasure and displeasure being themselves immediate
experiences — which holds the energy needed for action. All self-excitatory
behaviour is based on this mechanism. The behaviour of a mother too relies on and
attunes to this mechanism. Thus, the “experience of doing” takes on directionality
— acquires an aim — so that after the event the experience is endowed with
coherence through a precise temporal delineation: doing in order to experience
pleasure, then gradually to respond to the other, to share with her. But as soon as this
particular goal is attained, action is focused again on the next sequence, whilst the
earlier one is referred to the past and temporarily forgotten. It is this sending back
into the past that lends coherence to the sequence after the event, giving it a time-
bound form, and a beginning, a middle and an end.
This is what D. Stern (1985) calls the “proto-narrative envelope”. Indeed, the
narrative form constructs the unity of time, parses the reality of human becoming,
for a world of language and signs that the infant will only access later. The temporal
aftermath is thus a semiotisation of action, or to be more precise, it is what enables
the semiotisation to develop through a lasting time (durée), so that something takes
form and acquires sense through time.
The proto-narrative envelope is then a contouring of sensations, perceptions,
affective and cognitive feelings distributed in time with the coherence of a quasi-plot:
“The basic idea”, writes Daniel Stern, “is that continuous interpersonal experience is
parsed through a capacity for narrative thinking. We suppose that narrative thought
is a universal means by which people, including newborns, perceive and think about
human behaviour” (1998, p. 182, own translation). The proto-narrative envelope is
based on two interdependent elements: the plot, that is the unity which connects the
“who, where, why and how” of human activity — which bears upon the perception
of human activity as motivated and oriented towards a goal — and “the line of
dramatic tension […] (which) is the contour of feelings as they emerge in the
moment” (1998, p. 182, own translation). Through the putting into action of an
intention-motivation (orientation to a goal), the proto-narrative envelope defines a
portion of time within which the baby senses his own coherence; that is, relates the
sensations of his needs, perceptions and feelings to his self. But, below the hard
surface of language, this coherence of feeling-related-to-self remains above all a line
of intuitive dramatic tension oriented toward the future. It is thus a proto-semiotic
form of the internal experience of time, a matrix of the narrative of tensions and
releases connected with the plot (or “quasi-plot”) of the search for satisfaction. It is
what gives experience its global unity, however complex it may be.

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2. THE MUSICALITY OF THE PROTO-NARRATIVE ENVELOPE

The qualities of voice and dynamics of vocal exchange between mother and infant
play a fundamental role in the construction of proto-narrative structure. As Colwyn
Trevarthen and Maya Gratier (2005) wrote in a remarkable text:

“A person gives voice to chains of purposefulness and the anticipation of experience. The
voice can imagine a story of intention, or reflect on past experiences by reproducing the
‘narrative’ of agency. That is how members of a group share their experiences of a common
world and of their purposeful activity within it. And much more than any other social
species, the human story is elaborated into a narrative of particular invented or remembered
hopes and memories, likes and dislikes, fears and fantasies — a dramatic enactment of
mimetic metaphors for imagined personalities taking roles in imagined places and imagined
times. Thus is created the syntactic foundation for linguistic forms, a grammar of
meaningful expression for myths and legends, for all the temporal arts, and for speech and
writing.”

The voice, with its prosodic contours which are not yet language, draws the lines
of our personal and intimate histories, which only later will be put into words, but
without which we could not create or recount stories.
The proto-narrative envelope is thus fundamentally musical because it is in
substance sound and rhythm, accent and expressive modulation. But it is also built
on this tension-towards-a-goal which, once attained, is resolved through closure of
the episode and a recasting as past of present material. “The protonarrative envelope
is thus a time envelope as well as an event envelope” (D. Stern, 1995, p. 91), it
contains events only to the extent that it gives them sense and unity for the subject.
And one must undoubtedly admit that this proto-narrative configuration of
experience is co-extensive with the emergence of what could be called a primary
diffuse consciousness of time through the sensing and feeling of affects related to self.
The neurobiologist Antonio R. Damasio (1999) refers perhaps to the same sort
of thing when he talks of the awareness of a core-self as a non verbal consciousness
that organises a temporality of proto-narrative forms of experience. When, for
example, we remember an object, the images which surface in the mind are not
merely the ones which pertain to the physical aspects of the object, they are also
diverse adaptations of the organism at the time at which the object was discovered,
whether it be motor engagement, or particular feelings or emotions associated with
the mental or physical state. The object thus remembered is no longer the external
physical object, it takes on a form through “somato-sensory maps”, plans of action
and actions that have been or can be called upon at the moment of its evocation. All
of these elements are connected within a consciousness that remembers in order to
constitute an organised and coherent image of the object, one that can be embedded
in a broader horizon of experience. According to A.R. Damasio, this is the basis of a
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MICHEL IMBERTY

non verbal narrative: “I do not mean narrative or story in the sense of putting
together words or signs in phrases and sentences. I do mean telling a narrative or
story in the sense of creating a nonlanguaged map of logically related events” (1999,
p. 184-5).
Damasio goes further still. For him, telling stories without words is a perfectly
natural endeavour and it is probably not confined to the human species. Language
is subsequent to telling, and it is in fact clear that it is not a requirement for it. If this
is the case, it is because the feeling of self does not exist without a narrative of self,
which is the result of a coordination of images related to and produced by the brain.
The narrative of self, says Damasio, manifests itself in images and not in verbal
form. One should probably add, in images and sounds, or audible images. The
verbalisation of narrative must involve the setting into melody of voice, even before
words begin to tell and to express. “The entire construction of knowledge, from
simple to complex, from nonverbal imagetic [and non verbal sounds] to verbal
literary, depends on the ability to map what happens over time, inside our organism,
around our organism, to and with our organism, one thing followed by another
thing, causing another thing, endlessly.” (Damario, 1999, p. 189, italics in original).
It is thus possible to talk of the narrative character of cerebral functioning.
It is not surprising then that we find proto-narrative structure in all aspects
concerned with human activity, and in particular in musical activity. Proto-narrative
can be defined as an oriented temporality that organises emotional and cognitive
states. And music can then be seen as a privileged form of time-bound experience
related to an awareness of a core-self. Affects and proto-narrative structures must in
fact be connected by what Daniel Stern (1999) calls “vitality contours”. This idea is
essential because it gives rise to the communicability of intimate experience between
persons beyond language and signs, to the intelligibility of behaviour in interactive
situations and to the expressive creativity of individuals imaginatively involved in
social or private activities. And this idea also gives rise to the immense expressive
powers of music while at the same time turning it into a sort of universal pre-
language of “refiguration” 1 of the experience of art, art “beyond language” that so
many artists dreamed of as an ideal prototype.

(1) Ricœur, P. La critique et la conviction, op. cit. p. 260: « […] configuration […] is the capacity,
for language, to configure itself within its own space and refiguration […] the capacity for a work
of art to restructure the world of the reader by jolting him, contesting his knowledge, reshaping his
expectations […] it is in this sense that we talk of the creativity of art: art penetrating the world of
everyday experience to rework it from the inside. » (See also Temps et Récit, I — L’intrigue et le
récit historique, les trois mimèsis et la dialectique de la configuration et de la refiguration du temps
dans l’intrigue (chapter 3).
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3. MUSICAL TIME AND NARRATIVE TIME

We will now examine this issue from a musical perspective. In a recent paper,
J. Kramer (2002) revisits the question of the linearity and non-linearity of musical
time. According to him, if music is basically experienced in terms of “moment-
by-moment” succession, this succession also creates the various sorts of continuities
and discontinuities of musical time. The most usual experience, the one which
corresponds to the immediate experience of any listener but also to the most general
and most superficial description of a piece, is that of linear continuity, in other words
of something like a becoming. Audible events occur in time, that is, in a flux that
means they follow one another in a more or less homogeneous fashion. This
specifically musical time must be distinguished from the “absolute” time in which
the musical work itself unfolds. Within this musical time, linearity can be defined as
“the determination of one or more musical characteristics according to implications
derived from preceding musical events”. (J. Kramer, 2002, p. 145, own translation).
This is in fact a reformulation in more general terms of models of auditory analysis
proposed by various researchers such as E. Narmour (1990) or, before him, L.B. Meyer
(1973), according to which every musical event in a sequence has “implications”,
that is virtual and limited possible entailments which coincide with the listener’s
psychological expectations. For instance, as I listen to a certain sequence of tonal
music, the formal process of its unfolding makes me expect certain outcomes and not
others among which the composer will have made his choices. These formal or virtual
expectations are based, according to Narmour, on innate psychological abilities
which he connects with certain a priori schemas or structural patterns described by
Gestalt theory. Thus, linearity and continuity have certain privileged orientations. It
is indeed the reason why, according to Kramer,

“The quintessence of the expression of musical linearity is the tonal system. Tonality is one
of the greatest accomplishments of western civilisation, and its development is not merely
due to chance. For a very long time western culture was essentially linear, and its music has
embodied a refined system of linearity.”
(J. Kramer, 2002, p. 146, own translation).

However, in the course of the 20th century, the importance of this directional
linearity has gradually diminished. Already some of Brahms’ or Wolf ’s lieder
displayed structures that were no longer clearly based on the structural expectations
and implications of the tonal system. There are even examples such as the beginning
of Beethoven’s quartet no 16 which, as Kramer argues in a previous book, opposes
the time of the movement as a whole to the time of the gesture, that highlight the
fact that the very notion of linearity is already a complex reality within the continuity
of tonal music. And it is quite clear that Schoenberg introduced a discontinuity that
pertains first and foremost to this linearity. But other factors are also involved, factors
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that are not strictly musical, such as the growing influence on composers of concepts
of time from the Orient. Debussy was the first to adhere to these influences, but
others too developed musical forms whose linearity was no longer unidirectional.
This implies that, at a certain point in a musical discourse, events are not necessarily
directly determined by previous ones. Thus, Jeux by Debussy, as I will argue in the
folowing paragraphs, contains many passages in which new events emerge whose
origin or direction may not even exist in the score, but only in a virtual musical time
that is merely evoked, sketched out, left to the imagination of the listener or in
reference to his knowledge.
Beyond the influence of extra-European musical cultures, Kramer cites also the
impact of recording and reproduction technologies on the listener’s listening habits,
as well as on the musician’s playing habits. The fragmented listening that recorded
music permits, with the possibility it offers of returning again and again to hear
certain passages considered to be more pleasing or more important, and the practice
of “bridging” during recording sessions, deeply modify people’s relation to music.
But does this entail that discontinuity should have a hold on music to the point
that no listening or creation can be rooted in time and in a process of becoming? To
the point that narrative becomes impossible or continuously contradicted?
In fact, the intuitive linear “logic” of proto-narrative is probably not the only
basis for creating connections and for the psychological process that imparts
coherence to events in time. Other forms might create, in turn, another type of
coherence, one that is not based on directionality and linearity. We must then try to
understand how the landscapes of musical or psychological “feeling forms” can at
times provide an experience of strong directionality implying integration, continuity
and (proto-) narrative with a line of dramatic tension oriented towards the goal or
end of an episode and, at other times, on the contrary, can give rise to an experience
of a-directional or poly-directional fragmentation, implying discontinuities of the
temporal flux and the superimposition of multiple lines of dramatic tension that
have neither the same evolution, nor the same length, nor the same affect-inducing
strength, nor the same ending, and that can thus antagonise each other through
proto-narrative forms experienced as incoherent or incompatible.
We now turn to psychoanalysis to examine these splintered forms of time.

4. MUSICAL TIME AND THE “TIME OF THE UNCONSCIOUS”

It is a well-known fact that for Freud unconscious phenomena have little to do with
time. In his book Le temps éclaté, André Green (2000) shows, however, that if the
unconscious knows nothing of time, it is also because “the unconscious knows
nothing of contradiction” (2000, p. 57, own translation), in other words knows
nothing of the possibility that a statement, a truth or a thought can be contradicted
in or through time. Generally speaking, meaning is wrought from connections made
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between events or states in time, or from an “extension” (in the Augustinian sense)
of the present into the past and into the future. This connection is neither some
abstract relation, nor a thing; it is a dynamic process that renders the existence of
successive moments, states or things, compatible with what it communicates from
one to the other in order to connect them.
Now, if unconscious phenomena seem to the analyst to exist out of time, it is first
and foremost because they appear fixed, rigid, lacking a possible outcome in the
subject’s story. They become “encysted” in a “becoming-time” without being
integrated into the continuous flux of a lasting time and they preserve all of their
emotional and symbolic charge without any possible solution for change or continuity
within an intimate unfolding of experience. Remo Bodeï (2002) formulates this
hypothesis based on Freud’s work. And it is particularly relevant for my argument.
The author begins his analysis with the text of a letter to Fliess, dating back to 1896,
in which Freud imagines that the structure of the mind — and in particular of
memory — is built around a “stratification process”. Engrams in memory are
reorganised once in a while in relation to more recent events, they are in some sense
periodically submitted to “transcription”. Freud’s hypothesis then is that memory
takes on multiple forms, that it is made of superimposed layers belonging to different
periods and times, and that memories and traces of the past must be transcribed or
re-translated in order to be integrated with the various successive strata that time
accumulates in one being. In an even more suggestive manner, Freud adds that the
“successive recordings represent the mental realisation of successive epochs in a life-
time. At the edge of each of these epochs, a re-translation of mental content must
take place.” 2
R. Bodeï gains important insights from this text. He suggests that the time of the
unconscious is different in kind from the temporality that governs conscious
experience, as suggested in the analysis of proto-narrative. His first simple and
powerful insight is that individual existence, in its psychological development, does
not occur in linear time, it is the story we make of it which builds its linearity. But
for Freud, the events of the first phases of life have such an emotional and affective
hold that they are not easily re-translated into thoughts and symbols. The events
have a strong tendency to become encysted (this very apt term is taken from Bodeï)
in the normal evolution of successive phases without taking part in the psychological
recasting that this evolution requires. When they cannot be integrated they are
repressed, in other words they are forgotten but not lost — as though temporarily
suspended — written into the lines of memory but without any meaning being
found in them, that is without connection to the new context of arrangements and

(2) Freud, S. Aus den Anfängen der Psychoanalysde. Briefe an Wilhelm Fliess. Abhandlungen und
Notizen aus den Jahren 1887-1902. French Transl. in BERMAN A., La naissance de la psychanalyse,
Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1956, pp. 153-6. Cit. by BODEÏ R., in Logiques du délire,
op. cit., p. 18.
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orders in which they are submerged but not absorbed. They are, says R. Bodeï
(2002), like those fueros that, in certain regions of Spain, constitute enclaves of time
through ancestral customs and ancient laws, maintaining feudal privileges, all the
while cohabitating with, living alongside but never adapting to, the current Law. In
such cases, society works at two levels that do not communicate, according to two
sets of “logical” rules that ignore each other and create insurmountable conflicts
because they cannot indeed be transcribed within a common regulating system and
code. The repressed past is then both a buried past and an unthinkable present, one
which cannot be symbolised. It is the past merely by virtue of being encysted in the
present in the sense that it is not the past — that is, antecedent — of the current
lapse of time. And this is why this “past” that one tries to re-translate into the
present, runs aground and takes on the form of madness for an outside observer.
“Repression, says R. Bodeï, […] is a source of living anachronism, of suffering, for
individuals who are imprisoned in cells that do not communicate with the present
and who try to escape through ancient galleries that do not lead anywhere.” (2002,
p. 24, own translation).
We have arrived at the heart of the problem that time poses both to psychoanalysis
and for music. But first, R. Bodeï’s hypotheses have a very direct implication: beyond
consciousness, beyond the pre-conscious mind where continuity is established, there
is a fundamental discontinuity, which ceaselessly requires smoothing over, requires a
weaving together and recasting of experience. And, going along with R. Bodeï, we
discover that the time of the unconscious mind is not the time of the conscious mind
and that, if the temporal discontinuity of the unconscious mind is not constitutive
of the continuity of lived experience within consciousness, it can nonetheless
interfere with it and disturb it. And I do mean the time of the unconscious, which
is made up of of parallel or superimposed strata and currents as when in a mass of
water surface currents and groundswell interfere and produce eddies and whirlpools.
The hypothesis I put forward here is that time in the unconscious and time in
consciousness are related neither by virtue of the one preceding the other nor by
virtue of the one giving rise to the other. I am talking about two distinct realities that
can interfere and be in conflict with one another within the temporal experience of
a subject. Indeed, rather than maintain the topical distinctions of Freud’s tripartite
mind (Id, Ego and Superego), R. Bodeï proposes a description of the unconscious in
terms of “regimes”, that is in terms of the various types of relations and interferences
that its components entertain with each other. In the first regime, the encysted
experiences of the past are incessantly reinterpreted. Because the past doesn’t “pass”,
this reinterpretation process continuously dregs up reformulated possible meanings
that are always temporary and unsatisfactory. A translation or transcription cannot
be found for these inert, repressed events within a living and lived-through present.
The second regime on the contrary “has the interminable job of cutting windows of
defined meaning out of the background textures of the first regime, to write off its
debts to the past through a process of mutual consenting.” (2002, p. 20, own
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translation) and to restore to the coherence of discourse and reason, all that can thus
be pinpointed and fixed within a well-established logical and social system. This
second regime forces the encysted past out of its unfinished hermeneutic and gives
it a meaning of the past, written into the (his-)story of the subject, thus finding its
place within a proto-narrative envelope of signs.
Thus, we can understand that the “logic of narrative” is not the only one at stake,
and that other “logics” appear, as much in the representations of experience and in
the conscious or unconscious individual’s constructions of temporality, as in art and
in music. These are logics rooted in the unconscious, but that become much more
abstract and formal as soon as they are involved and embodied in artistic creations.
There are, between art, madness and reason, strange correspondences and encounters
showing that the temporal envelopes of the unconscious are not, by nature, proto-
narrative.

5. DEBUSSY ’S JEUX AS EXAMPLE

Debussy’s last large-scale composition for orchestra, Jeux, written in 1913, provides
a compelling example of this problem of narrative non-linearity. The fractioned
writing of the piece closely follows/matches the ballet argument provided by
Diaghilev. The bouncing of tennis balls is reflected in the melodic and rhythmic
micro-structures that transform as they collide, producing a sort of polyphonia and
polyrhythmia that had not been heard before. The music is more than ever before
unstable and fleeting, and the discontinuity of its audible fabric (no longer just the
discontinuity of its temporal form) reaches new limits. Jean Barraqué (1962) suggests
that Debussy plays on what could be called “absent developments”, “as if the music
had been played ‘elsewhere’, according to a deductive logic that had been stripped
away through interruption, into slices of forgetting.” (Barraqué, 1962, p. 214, own
translation). Perhaps never before has contemporary music gone so far in the
imagination of temporal forms. Proliferating virtual times take shape through the
discontinuity of the musical matter, re-establishing a sort of unconscious “alternative
continuity” (Barraqué, 1962) in the suggestion of brevity sketched by motifs that run
across successive timbral strata in fractions of seconds. The compositional principle
is probably that of the ephemeral beginning and of the permanently unending. Each
motif is never achieved in the immediate moment of its appearance, but endlessly
summons some unpredictable future moment of the unfolding piece, or some past
that is out of bounds, “forgotten” or unactualised. An example will help understand
this. One of the main motifs in Jeux, which will serve to establish the ternary base
rhythm starting from number 10 on the Durand score (Figure 1), is presented 6 bars
before 8 by the divided cellos, all of a sudden, unexpectedly and with the omission
of the first bar (in fact a repetition of the second bar in the extended presentation).

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Figure 1.
Example 1. Debussy, Jeux. Bars 6 and 7 before no 8. The whole theme contains the repetition
of the first bar and is continued by a more developed melodic figure, not shown here. (Editions
Durand).
Note: Examples 1, 2 and 3, taken from Jeux, are reproduced here with the gracious permission
of “Editions Durand: © 1914 by Durand S.A. Editions Musicales 8958, Paris”.

The motif, thus, doesn’t begin. It is, rather, the continuation of a movement
initiated outside the listener’s presence who, having just about “recognised” it in a
false sense of familiarity, looses it at once in the tingling of trills and tremolos by the
strings. Before it is even heard, it is a reminiscence whose origin is inaudible,
repressed, unheard of. This same motif reappears intact from number 10 on with the
violins, divided into 4 parts. But its duplication, which starts at number 11, is
sketched out 4 bars before 11 (Figures 2 and 3), only to end 2 bars later where the
great flutes’ trill gives the simultaneous impression that the movement is suspended
and that it is about to get going again. Sketch, “esquisse”, disclosure, suspension,
endlessless non-fulfilment.
The same situation can be found at number 12. There are many examples of this
here. In this sense, Jeux is truly an “open piece”, probably the first of its kind in the
20th century. But it is also a polychronic work that inaugurates the breakdown of
proto-narrative structure within our intimate experiences of time. Jeux is also a game
of forgetfulness and reminiscence between the time of the unconscious mind and the
intimate feeling of time awareness, with all of its affects.
With this work, Debussy definitively moves away from narrative temporal forms
to arrive at a more and more polymorphous heterochronia of superimposed temporal
threads, and at a greater and greater fragmentation of the audible matter. The
fragmentary contents of the musical temporal envelope of the piece hold it together
through an internal juxtaposition process (fragmented surface events are juxtaposed
in the semiotic envelope implied by the reading and interpretation of the piece),
while at the same time this envelope conjures up meaning taken from the surface
events that are yet related to the overall dynamic. The double connection brings
about a certain degree of confusion and an ambiguity of relations between
the emotional contents and the temporal unfolding of form. This also enables
communication and movement between conscious and unconscious experiences of
time, and contamination from one to the other.

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Figure 2.
Example 2. Debussy, Jeux, no 10, bars 1 to 8 (Editions Durand).

6. CONCLUSION

Thus, we have considered in this account two different psychological time realities:
on the one hand the continuity and linearity of proto-narrative structure, and on the
other hand the fractures and “encystments” of the past in the present of
consciousness, those fractures and “encystments” pertaining at the same time not to
the past but to the process of repression into the unconscious. The predominance
and organising power of narrative as a fundamental structure of the human
experience of time may explain why listeners felt so deeply taken aback by the
musical inventions of the first half of the 20th century, and why after that composers
tended to go back to forms of continuity closer to linear time. But what we suggest
is that they tried above all to reconstruct and restore the architectures of the
unconscious within the time of consciousness. They did this because unconscious
structures generate representations of time that are different from those of individual
and historical consciousness; that is, fantastical representations able to interfere with
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Narrative, splintered temporalities and the unconscious in 20th century music

MICHEL IMBERTY

Figure 3.
Example 3. Debussy, Jeux, bars following no 11 (Editions Durand).

and modify or underhandedly pervert the first kinds of representations, and give the
subject a richer, more complex palette of possibilities in order to place in time the
events of her life and their expression in music and art. The “logic”, so to speak, of
narrative is not the only thing at stake here, since a work of art too is a construction,
both rational and fantastical, of relations between intertwined conscious and
unconscious representations. There arises from the initial chaos of artistic matter a
wealth of unheard and unseen forms of coherence, and these are the forms we can
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also observe in an “emerging logic” found in delirium, as described by R. Bodeï. The

dividing line between artistic creation and dream, between artistic creation and
fantasy, between artistic creation and madness can be such a fine one that
“connections of thought” developing between object representations and represented
fantasies may bring about an upheaval in the relation between subject and reality and
between art and reality.
Should we then conclude that the archaic forms of “time in the unconscious” take
over all 20th century musical thought and creation, in the same way that they take
over “time in consciousness” and destroy proto-narrative structures and continuities?
From the end of the 19th century, art — music, painting, literature — enters a new
era out of which emerges the world of today, before its technological revolutions.
This era is characterised by a transformation of both individual and collective
unconscious problems, whose trace appears only in post-freudian psychoanalytic
writing, principally in the work of Melanie Klein and Wilfred R. Bion. And these
problems are perhaps at the root of most of the innovations in today’s music. Other
issues in Freud’s day and with the dying romanticism to which he was an heir fed
into dreams, symptoms and works of art. If mental structures appear nowadays as
more heterogeneous, as A. Green (2000) has suggested, or if they are made of
“temporal hybridisation” as Bodeï would have it, it is precisely this heterogeneity and
these hybridisations that prevail in the unconscious undercurrents of this century’s
culture. Is it the “discontent” of western civilisation that tends toward such a return
to the chasms of the unconsious? Or is it this regression of the mind that entails the
discontent? These are probably not the questions to ask. After all, Freud described
the people around him in order to understand and relieve their suffering. Nothing
more. All I can do then is to note and to describe the new forms of time in
20th century music, and perhaps underline some coincidence or correspondence with
more regressive unconscious problems which were not to be found in the art of the
19th century. That’s all, and something is attained if at any rate these observations are
seen as not being overly imprecise, incomplete or subjective!

Address for correspondence:

Michel Imberty
Centre de Recherche en Psychologie et Musicologie systématique
Université Paris X — Nanterre
200 avenue de la République
Maison Max Weber (Bâtiment K)
92001 Nanterre Cedex
France
e-mail: mimberty@club-internet.fr
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Narrative, splintered temporalities and the unconscious in 20th century music

MICHEL IMBERTY

• REFERENCES

Barraqué, J. (1962). Debussy. Paris, Seuil.

Bodeï, R. (2000). Logiche del delirio. Ragione, affetti, follia. Bari, Laterza. (French transl.: Paris:
Aubier Philosophie, 2002.)
Damasio, A. R. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body, emotion and the making of consciousness.
London: Heinemann.
Green, A. (2000). Le temps éclaté. Paris: Editions de Minuit.
Imberty, M. (2005). La Musique creuse le temps. De wagner à Boulez: Musique, psychologie,
psychanalyse. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Kramer, J. D. (2002). Il tempo musicale. In J.J. Nattiez, M. Bent, R. Dalmonte, & M. Baroni
(eds), Enciclopedia della musica. II — Il sapere musicale (pp. 143-70). Torino: Giulio
Einaudi. (French transl., Musiques. II — Les savoirs musicaux. Paris: Actes Sud, 2004,
pp. 189-218)
Narmour, E. (1990). The analysis and cognition of basic melodic structures. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Ricœur, P. (1983). Temps et récit. Vol. I, L’intrigue et le récit, Vol. II, La configuration dans le récit de
fiction, Vol. III, Le temps raconté. Paris: Seuil, Collection Points Seuil, historique.
Ricœur, P. (1995/2001). La critique et la conviction. Entretien avec François Azouvi et Marc de
Lunay. Paris: Hachette Littératures.
Saint-Agustine (1716/1964). Confessions (Livre XIo, chap. XX.). Paris: Garnier-Flammarion.
Stern, D.N. (1985/1989). Le monde interpersonnel du nourrisson. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France (French tr., A. Lazartigues et D. Cupa-Pérard.)
Stern, D.N. (1995). The motherhood constellation. Basic Books: New York.
Stern, D.N. (1998). Aspects temporels de l’expérience quotidienne d’un nouveau-né: quelques
réflexions concernant la musique (pp. 167-89). In E. Darbellay (ed), Le temps et la forme.
Pour une épistémologie de la connaissance musicale. Genève: Droz.
Stern D.N. (1999). Vitality contours: The temporal contour of feelings as a basic unit for
constructing the infant’s social experience. In P. Rochat (ed), Early social cognition:
Understanding others in the first months of life (pp. 67-90). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Trevarthen, C., & Gratier, M. (2005). Voix et musicalité: nature, émotion, relation et culture. In
Castarède, M.F. & Konopczynski, G. (eds), Au commencement était la voix (pp. 105-16).
Ramonville Saint-Agne: Erès.

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• Narración, fragmentaciones temporales y subconsciente

en la música del siglo XX

La narración estructura la experiencia humana del tiempo, pero, ¿organiza también

nuestra experiencia? Detrás de esta cuestión subyace otra, concerniente al proceso
narrativo mismo: ¿pertenece solamente al tiempo de la conciencia o se manifiesta
en la mente subconsciente a través de otras formas de organización temporal? Los
psicólogos han identificado una estructura de la experiencia del tiempo que precede
a la propiamente narrativa, que se puede denominar “forma proto-narrativa” y que
organiza la coherencia y el desarrollo de la narración, como, quizás, también el
despliegue de la forma musical. Puede ser caracterizada por su linearidad y fuerte
direccionalidad, que implica una línea de tensión dramática, claramente perceptible
y orientada temporalmente. Sin embargo, durante el siglo XX direccionalidad y
linearidad han dado forma progresivamente a formas fragmentadas a-direccionales
o poli-direccionales, que implican discontinuidades del flujo temporal y la super-
imposición de múltiples líneas de tensión dramática que no tienen ni las mismas
progresiones ni el mismo fin. ¿Qué sentido podemos dar a estas nuevas formas
fragmentarias de tiempo? Intentamos responder a esta pregunta desde una
perspectiva psicoanalítica.

• Narratività, temporalità scisse e inconscio

nella musica del ventesimo secolo

La narratività struttura l’esperienza umana del tempo, ma organizza anche la nostra

esperienza musicale? E dietro questa domanda se ne trova un’altra, che investe lo
stesso processo narrativo: esso appartiene solo al tempo della coscienza, o si
manifesta attraverso altre forme di organizzazione temporale nella mente
inconscia? Gli psicologi hanno identificato una struttura dell’esperienza temporale
che precede la stessa narratività: essa si può chiamare “forma proto-narrativa” e
organizza la coerenza e lo svolgimento della narrazione, come accade forse per lo
svolgimento della forma musicale. Essa può essere caratterizzata dalla sua linearità
e forte direzionalità, implicando una linea di tensione drammatica chiaramente
percettibile e temporalmente orientata. Tuttavia, durante il ventesimo secolo
direzionalità e linearità hanno progressivamente ceduto il passo a forme
frammentate a-direzionali o poli-direzionali, implicando discontinuità del flusso
temporale e sovrapposizione di linee multiple di tensione drammatica che non
hanno né le stesse progressioni né le stesse conclusioni. Che senso possiamo dare
a queste nuove forme scisse di tempo? Cerchiamo di dare una risposta a tale
interrogativo da una prospettiva psicoanalitica.

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• Narrativité, temporalité éclatées et inconscient

dans la musique du XXe siècle

La narrativité, structure de l’expérience humaine du temps, est-elle aussi ce qui

organise notre expérience musicale? En littérature, on peut identifier une structure
de l’expérience du temps, antérieure au récit lui-même, que l’on peut dire proto-
narrative, et qui organise en alternances successives de tensions et de détentes, de
répétitions et de variations, de temps pleins et denses et de temps vides ou morts,
d’attentes, de surprises et de satisfactions, la cohérence et le déroulement du récit.
Or, selon J. Kramer, si la musique est ressentie fondamentalement comme une
succession « d’instant-après-instant » , cette succession crée aussi les diverses
sortes de continuités et discontinuités du temps musical. La plus commune, celle qui
correspond au sentiment immédiat de tout auditeur mais aussi à la description la
plus générale de la musique, est celle de la continuité linéaire, c’est-à-dire quelque
chose comme le devenir. Cependant, au cours du XXe siècle, cette linéarité
directionnelle a perdu peu à peu de son importance, et il est clair que Schoenberg
introduit une discontinuité qui atteint cette linéarité. Mais d’autres compositeurs
s’affranchissent aussi de cette proto-narrativité linéaire: par exemple, Jeux de
Debussy comporte de nombreux passages dans lesquels surgissent des événements
dont l’origine ou la direction ne se trouvent peut-être même pas dans la partition,
mais seulement dans un temps musical virtuel esquissé. Il faut donc tenter
de comprendre comment la musique peut tantôt donner le sentiment d’une
directionnalité forte impliquant une structure proto-narrative avec une ligne de
tension dramatique orientée, tantôt au contraire donner le sentiment d’une
fragmentation a-directionnelle ou poly-directionnelle, impliquant discontinuité du
flux temporel et superposition de plusieurs lignes de tension dramatique qui n’ont
ni la même évolution, ni la même clôture. Ces formes éclatées du temps, c’est au
travers de la psychanalyse qu’on se propose d’en rechercher le sens.

• Narrative, brüchige Zeitverläufe und das Unbewusste

in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts

Durch das Narrative wird die menschliche Erfahrung von Zeit strukturiert. Gilt dies
auch für die Strukturierung unserer musikalischen Erfahrung? Hinter dieser Frage
steckt noch eine andere, die den narrativen Prozess selbst betrifft: Findet er
ausschließlich in Zeiten vollen Bewusstseins statt, oder manifestiert er sich selbst
auch durch andere Formen zeitlicher Organisation im Unbewussten? Psychologen
haben eine Erfahrungsstruktur der Zeit identifiziert, die vor dem Narrativen liegt
und „proto-narrative Form“ genannt wird. Diese Struktur bewirkt die Kohärenz
und das Sich-Entfalten des Narrativen, wie es vielleicht auch das Sich-Entfalten der
musikalischen Form bewirkt. Diese Erfahrungsstruktur kann durch ihre Linearität
und starke Direktionalität charakterisiert werden, was eine deutlich wahrnehmbare
und zeitlich orientierte dramatische Spannungslinie impliziert. Trotzdem verschwand
im Laufe des 20. Jahrhunderts die Direktionalität und Linearität zugunsten
von adirektionalen oder polydirektionalen fragmentierten Formen. Dies impliziert
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Diskontinuitäten im zeitlichen Wandel und eine Überlagerung multipler dramatischer

Spannungslinien, die weder die gleichen Fortgänge noch die gleichen Ziele haben.
Welchen Sinn können wir diesen neuen brüchigen Zeitformen verleihen? Wir
versuchen diese Frage aus psychoanalytischer Perspektive zu beantworten.

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