tarasti_21_03_06

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Eero Tarasti:

Existential and Transcendental Analysis of Music

In the last decade I have launched a new theoretical project to renew the so-called classical semiotic approach and to rethink its epistemological basis. So far I have published the monograph Existential Semiotics (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press 2000) on this topic in addition to articles in various journals and anthologies. The Belgian review DEGRES published a special issue on Sémiotique existentielle in 2003, with some international reactions to these new theories.

These theoretical and philosophical reflections have started from the hypothesis that semiotics cannot stay forever as Peirce, Saussure, Greimas, Lotman, Sebeok and others have established it. Semiotics is in flux and reflects new epistemic choices in the situation of sciences in the twenty-first century. With existential semiotics, I by no means attempt any kind of return to ‘existentialism’ or to earlier historic thinkers such as Hegel, Kierkegaard, Sartre or Heidegger, but I have felt entitled to search for inspiration in these philosophers due to the relevance of their ideas in the new context.

Existential semiotics aims to discover the life of signs from ‘within’. Unlike most previous semiotics, which investigates only the conditions of such particular meanings, existential semiotics studies unique phenomena. It studies signs in movement and flux, in other words signs becoming signs, which I have portrayed in terms of presigns, actsigns and postsigns (Tarasti 2000:33). It sees signs fluctuating between ‘Being-there’ (our world with subjects and objects, for which I have employed the German term Dasein) and transcendence. Completely new sign categories emerge in this tension between reality and being beyond it. We have to make a new list of categories in addition to those suggested by Peirce.

Nevertheless, I was aware from the beginning of this project that one day I would attempt to apply its new findings to music analysis as one of its test fields of experimentation. Indeed, without the levels of methodology and epistemology behind the musical facts, it is hardly possible to be a significant musicologist: Adorno is still considered relevant due to his philosophical background (even in cases in which he makes colossal misunderstandings and errors). Thinkers such as Kurth, Schenker and Asafiev, who share a dynamic conception of musical form, have a common epistemological foundation in the idea of music as energy, which is a very Bergsonian idea. So it was clear to me that likewise existential semiotics had to be tested in the face of musical texts of a complex nature. Since its models were supposed to reflect more faithfully our musical experiences of structurally many-sided and ambiguous works, it was inconceivable to address only simple musical texts in the hope that theory would later be able to deal with more difficult ones. In this essay I try to gather some temporary results of such applications, expecting to be able to complete such models into a full-size theory of existential and transcendental analysis of music.

The crucial problem in musical semiotics is whether music is a semantic or asemantic art. It is not, in other words, quite clear that the basic idea of musical semiotics of music as sign is shared by all scholars in the field of musicology. When thinking of how little the classics of semiotics have said about musical signs from Peirce and Saussure to Lotman,

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Greimas, Sebeok and Eco, one may even wonder whether music is a sign at all.

Also in the history of Western musical aesthetics the school once founded by Eduard Hanslick on music as tönend bewegte Formen (aurally moving sounds, Hanslick 1854) has had its supporters from Igor Stravinsky to Claude Lévi-Strauss (‘Music is a language without sense’, Lévi-Strauss 1971: 579).

Even such an eminent music semiotician as David Lidov has said that music can be conceived either as Design or as Grammar (Lidov 1980:55). The first conception certainly approaches music as aural stimuli forming ‘Gestalts’, which are perceived by our senses and then interpreted in our cognition. But this can well happen without any mention of meaning. The grammar certainly refers to meaning but even there we can study only the syntax of music - as is done in the paradigmatic method used by Nattiez and Chomskyan inspired generativists. Again, one may ask, where is the level of content or meaning?

The problem becomes even more complicated when we note that musical meaning can refer to at least three cases: 1) music represents, 2) music signifies, 3) music expresses.

If music represents then it is at least thought to be a sign in the medieval sense as aliquid stat pro aliquo. But how does such a representation take place? There are two major theories: either it happens between elements A and B because they are somehow similar or isomorphic; or, as Peirce suggests, there must be a third element which unites A and B, one alone would never represent anything. Perhaps the most typical theory of representation in music is that developed Vladimir Karbusicky in his Grundriss der musikalischen Semantik (Karbusicky 1986).

But can music signify at all? We have plenty of historical evidence of music’s signifying capabilities, in that it has been understood as a signifying practice from baroque to Viennese classicism through to romanticism and modernism. Such practices have been studied and elevated on the theoretical level by many in the forty-odd years of musical semiotics. The viewpoint that music neither represents nor signifies but only expresses is already an anti-semiotical view if expression is understood as something more vague and milder than the other two cases. Roger Scruton says that all signification in music is only due to its verbal titles: change the titles and the meaning is different (Scruton 1997), and this view suggests that there are no inherent significations in music itself, only those added there later, or before composition. This view explicitly denies the possibility of so-called ‘structural semantics’.

In my own previous theory of musical semiotics (Tarasti 1994: 27, 38-43) I came to the conclusion that the most important way in which music signifies comes from its modalities. Modalities, as we know, were taken into semiotics by Greimas in the 1970s, and this notion has remained since then probably the most durable and innovative aspect of the Paris school. The modalities of ‘becoming’ (the essential temporal nature of music as it unfolds through time), ‘being’ and ‘doing’ (which either retard or accelerate ‘becoming’) and the other modalities of ‘will’, ‘can’, ‘know’, ‘must’ and ‘believe’, seem to fit well to musical realities. That is something which I have particularly wanted to save from the ‘older’ theory. Music is, one might say, ‘semanticized’ via modalities. What is important here is that modalities are a dynamic, processual concept. If we consider them the fundamental feature of musical process, then the most urgent problem of analysis is not the segmentation, the cutting of the continuity into fragments and pieces but rather the

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presence and intensity of modalities, which then manifest themselves as actorial, spatial and temporal articulations. In this respect, as to the problem which is first: modalities or actor/time/place, I am rejecting my previous theory in which the latter was considered the primary, observable issue whereas the modalities were only a kind of colouring. Roland Barthes in his famous Lecon inaugurale also thought the modalities were only the colouring of the factual statements in language, but in my new theory I am tempted to allot a much more foundational role to the modalities.

However, all the classical semiotics, like Greimas with his modalities remains valid within the Dasein of the following model:

Diagram 1.

Yet, we have to notice that there is something beyond the concrete reality in which we live, namely that which is called ‘transcendence’. The easiest definition of this intriguing notion, which not all semioticians would wish welcome to semiotic theory, might be the following: anything which is absent but present in our minds is transcendent.

Furthermore, a ‘new’ element is introduced in the model, namely the subject. There is a subject dwelling in the Dasein, who feels it somehow deficient, not satisfactory, and so negates it. This is what Jean-Paul Sartre called néantisation (Sartre 1943: 44-45), the lack of the existence which forces the subject to search for something else and more. But there are two transcendental acts in the model, first negation and then affirmation. As the result we have the ‘existential style’ in the Dasein ‘x’. That is what has also been called ‘existential move’.

One might have already wondered what this has to do with the theory of signs, but, from a semiotic perspective, what these notions mean is that signs are in constant movement between transcendence and Dasein. Depending on their distance to Dasein - whether they are approaching it or moving away from it - we get new types of signs.

First of all we have pre-signs, in other words musical ideas of a composer which have not yet become concrete signs in the score or performance. Such signs are virtual. When they become manifest as notation or as performance they become act-signs - music written, played and heard. Moreover when they exercise their impact upon listeners they become post-signs. In their virtual, potential state as transcendental entities, they can be called transsigns.

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Ultimately this is an axiological problem of the existence of values. In the Saussurean tradition values are relative: they are determined only in their context as opposed to other values by the linguistic community. In my theory values are transcendental but become signs via the activities of the subject. In the field of aesthetics, such a view is of course problematic. How can we say that the ‘value’ of, say, a Beethoven sonata existed before its creation? Was it looming somewhere and waiting for its actualisation in the Dasein? We may say that transcendental values do not become a manifest reality without an agent who actualises them.

When this occurs, such presigns can also become something different to what they were thought to be before (as mere presigns). Without the help of other modalities – ‘know’, ‘can’, ‘must’, and ‘will’ - they are never concretised. Signs can be also classified as endo- and exosigns: either something internal to our subject’s world or external to it.

The traffic between these instances of signs - between transcendence and existence - is taken care of by ‘metamodalities’ as I have called them. Signs have, in the end, their situations, an aspect that Kofi Agawu finds essential in the existential approach to music in his review of Signs of Music (see Agawu 2004; Tarasti 2002:65-87).

One more new scientific paradigm which enters into existential semiotics, perhaps paradoxically to some minds, is the biosemiotics. Biosemiotics is one of the new schools which have emerged in recent twenty years within general semiotics, thanks to writings of Thomas A. Sebeok, and above all to the discovery of the founder of this doctrine, the Estonian Jakob v. Uexküll.(see a.o. Uexküll 1940). Firstly, the surprise is that this does not mean that semiotic, symbolic processes and forms are reduced into something biological, as they are in sociobiological theories which say that society in the end is nothing but biology.

It is, in fact, the other way around: biology and vital processes are shown to be semioses. The son of Jakob, Thure v Uexküll, has said that his father’s doctrine is particularly well compatible with Peircean semiotics (Th. Uexküll et alia 1993), but nothing prevents us from using it in other conceptual frameworks as well. In order to illustrate how such semiosis functions within an organism Uexküll uses musical metaphors; he says that every organism surrounded by its Umwelt possesses its codes or something like a score, which determines which signs it accepts from Umwelt, and which it rejects. This principle is called Ich-Ton, or in English, Me-Tone (see in music Tarasti 2002: 98, 109). Thure von Uexküll calls this process endosemiosis, in which signs intrude upon the organism and function within it on various levels, from molecules to cells. On this basis we can speak of two kinds of signs: endo-signs and exosigns that represent these two states of being either in or out (Tarasti 2000: 37-56).

I have tried to bring the wonderful idea of Me-Tone back to music by arguing that every composer, every composition also has its Me-Tone which determines its characteristics (this is not the same as Clynes’s idea of sentics! cf. Clynes 1976). In this new framework of existential semiotics, with its fundamental notions of Dasein and transcendence, we can interpret Ich-Ton through Kantian categories of subject(actor)-time-space, when some transcendental idea is filtered into Dasein. The following diagram tries to illustrate the situation, to which one could also add ‘as-if’-signs - signs which must not be taken quite literally in the Dasein, but rather as a kind of metaphor (see the theory of metaphor by

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Michael Spitzer):

Transcendence (all the previous intonations, style periods, ideas…)

Soi = that part of the intonation store which was taught to Beethoven, i.e. what he has heard and learned from Bach, Mozart, Händel, Albrechtsberger, Gluck…

Moi: the inner identity of Beethoven, his kinetiv, khoratic “ego”, “Me-Tone”

filtering into:

filtering into:

diagram 2

In addition, I have spoken about two further types of signs: pheno- and genosigns. This has nothing to do with Julia Kristeva’s geno- and phenotext (Kristeva 1969), nor with Barthes’s pheno- and genosong (Barthes 1977: 182). Phenosigns are simply traditional signs which refer to, or stand for something else - the sign remains what it is, only a tool or a window onto the world of signified. In the case of genosign, however, the entire process of signs becoming signs is included: the whole generation of the sign with various phases is vividly evoked by the appearance of such a sign. For instance, when we listen for the first time the overture to Parsifal by Richard Wagner, it launches with a motif raising from the depths, as something solemn, sad, appealing, longing for something. It is a phenosign which by its mere musical qualities evokes certain modal content, ‘will’, ‘can’ etc. If one is a perfect Wagnerian one may recognize it as the Abendmal motif, referring to Amfortas. However, this motif, when heard at the end of the six hours long opera, gets a turn into E flat major with a cadence, has become a genosign. We feel that it contains the whole growth of Parsifal from a young ignorant foolish into the ‘redemptor’ of the Grail knights, Kundry included. It carries the whole story in it. Here again the essential is that signs are nothing fixed, they are always in the movement of becoming something else.

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The Abendmal motif as a phenosign in Parsifal

The Abendmal motif as a genosign

Example 1. Wagner, Overture to Parsifal, “Abendmal” motive, as phenosign at the beginning, as genosign at the end.

Subject reconsideredI next want to present some further reflections which perhaps make the above premises more concrete in respect of their consequences for music analysis. There has been much talk about subjects and subjectivity in many neighbouring areas of semiotics, such as psychoanalysis, gender theories and, of course, the new musicology. However, without a more articulated vision of how subject appears in the musical enunciation such theoretical views remain only half-way to their goals, as laudable as their efforts as such might be.

We also have to notice that present-day semiotics, which I cannot any longer call any ‘post’ phenomenon (we do not live any longer in poststructuralism, postmodernism etc.), but in a state of something radically new. Therefore I would rather call the semiotics of our time neosemiotics. In neosemiotics the analysis never considers only the text but all its conditions, its whole Umwelt, its process of becoming a text, the whole act of enunciation. This holds also for music. Therefore most urgent task is to look again at the very concept of subject.

In order to do so I need to make a short excursion to the roots of existential semiotics which means going back to the logic of Hegel. For some semioticians Hegel is mere ‘conceptual poetry’, or is only acceptable after a ‘Marxist turn-around’, but to others, like Hannah Arendt, he was the most central thinker of Western philosophy, who had compiled the phenomena of nature and history as a homogeneous construction. Even if

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one did not know whether this construction was a prison or a palace (Arendt 2000: 111), to Arendt, Hegel was the last word on Western philosophy, and all that came after him either imitation or rebellion against him. Her contemporaries - Husserl, Heidegger and Jaspers - were the epigones of Hegel; they all tried to reconstruct the unity of thinking and being without reaching a balance at which they either privileged matter (materialism) or mind (idealism).

It may be that Arendt was right. I do believe that even the semiotic thought is indebted to Hegel, whose traces we can follow both in Peirce and Royce as well as in French structuralists, the Tartu cultural semioticians - and particularly in existential semiotics. Of course the other great thinker behind semiotic scene is Kant. But it would be useless to reduce the discussion on their concepts and systems only to a historical question of ‘who is better, Kant or Hegel?’ We are interested in their thought in 2005 since they have said things which interest us, and not because we feel nostalgia for the situation of 1805.

Moreover, Arendt emphasizes what Hugo v. Hofmansthal said in his farewell letter to Stefan George, namely that the mystery of reality lies in small things rather than in the big phrases (Arendt op. cit. 114-115). Arendt declares the centrality of small issues to be the principle of phenomenologists with the Husserlian words zu den Sachen. We would say: the details contain the truth and reality.

Therefore I take as my starting point only one detail from Hegelian logic, the principle by which we further construct our theory of subject, namely through the categories of an-sich-sein (being-in-itself) and für-sich-sein (being-for-itself). In the Hegel dictionary edited by Michael Inwood there is an entry In, for, and in and for, itself, himself etc. (Inwood 1992:133-136). The third person reflexive pronoun in German is sich. It is both singular and plural, and covers all three genders. It thus means ‘one- him-, her-, itself; themselves; each other. It can be either accusative or dative, but not nominative or genitive. It accompanies German’s numerous reflexive verbs, and can also be preceded by several prepositions. For example für sich (literally ‘for oneself’ etc.) occurs in such contexts as ‘He needs a room for himself’, ‘She lives by herself’ and ‘That is a problem in itself, viz., apart from its connections with other matters. In ordinary usage an sich (‘in itself’ etc.) often differs little from für sich: to consider a matter an sich is also to consider it apart from its connections with anything else, and if something is certain an sich, its certainty is immediate, and not dependent on anything else. In both these contexts an und für sich is simply a more emphatic equivalent of an sich.

In ordinary German such expressions do not usually have a single well-defined use, but a range of uses overlapping with that of other expressions. The only one that had acquired a settled philosophical use by Hegel’s day was an sich. It meant in Plato for instance the form or idea; the form of e.g. beauty is ‘the beautiful itself or an sich. For Kant a thing an sich a thing apart from its relation to our cognition and the way it appears to us. Thus an sich contrasts not with für sich but with in uns or für uns.

Hegel used the terms an sich and für sich in their ordinary senses, but also provided them with contrasting meaning. As finite a thing has a determinate nature only in virtue of its relation with other things, is negation of, and by, them.. This is true not only of items within the world, but also of Kant’s thing-in-itself, since it, too, is cut off from our cognition. Thus a thing as it is an sich has no overt determinate character: at most it has potential character which will be actualized only by its relations to other things. An infant,

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for example, is an sich rational potentially, not actually; a tailor is a tailor an sich in the sense of having certain internal skills that suit him for this role and of having certain overt features which distinguish him from, say, a sailor. Being a tailor, or musician, thus involves an interplay between being an sich and being for another. But a person is not simply a role occupant. he is also an individual ‘I’, and as such can distance himself from his role and think of himself just as me or I. When he does this, he is no longer for others, but for himself. For instance, a bus driver has already left but notices one person still running to the stop. Against the rules he stops and takes the passenger since he feels compassion for him. Although his self-consciousness may presuppose recognition by others, an ‘I’ is not one of a system of contrasting roles: everyone is an I.

Furthermore the idea that if something is for itself, it is aware of itself, leads to the further idea that an entity may have in itself certain characteristics that are not for itself. A slave is, as a man, free in himself, but he may not be free for himself. The student is future doctor and professor, but he does not know it. Finally the terms an sich and für sich start to mean potential and actual, and may be applied to the development. When a person becomes for himself what he is in himself, he usually recognizes his identity: he becomes meaningful to himself, to use semiotic vocabulary.

This linguistic excursion was probably necessary in order to understand the next reasoning, in which we proceed towards a theory of individual subjectivity. But before we make an ‘existential-semiotic turn-around’ of Hegel let us look at what Sören Kierkegaard did with the notions of an sich and für sich, which he turned into subjective and objective being. In his chapter ‘Becoming a subject’ in his treatise Unscientific ending postscript (Kierkegaard 1993, the original in Danish Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift 1846), Kierkegaard speaks about an individual who is said to be a subject, or such an individual ‘who is what he is because he has become like it’. In existential semiotics such a subject who has become himself, could be considered a genosign. The advent of a subject from ‘an sich’ being to ‘für sich’ being, corresponds to his becoming a sign to himself, or the emergence of his identity. Kierkegaard says that the task of a subject is to cast off his subjectivity and become more and more objective. The objective being is the same as observing and being observed. This observation in his theory has to be, however, of an ethical nature.

The next careful reader of Hegel - as well as of Kierkegaard - was Jean-Paul Sartre, whose L’Être et le néant was to a great extent based upon Hegelian concepts of an sich and für sich or: être-en-soi and être-pour-soi. According to Sartre being only is and cannot but be. But it has as its potentiality the fact that it becomes aware of itself via act of negation. In other words - in Kierkegaardian terms, the being becomes an observer of itself and hence it is shifted into ‘being-for-itself’ - this is transcending. The pour-soi, as the outburst of negation, forms the basis for identity; it appears as a lack. This is, according to Sartre, the beginning of transcendence: human reality strives for something which it lacks (Sartre 1943: 124-125). Man starts to exist when he realizes the incompleteness of his being and via this effort value enters human life. ‘Being-in-itself’ precedes every consciousness, ‘Being-in-itself’ is the same as what ‘Being-for-itself’ was earlier. The essential change in Sartre’s theory regarding Hegel, is the movement between these two categories, and a kind of subjectivisation of them considering the existence.

We still need one further ‘modernisation’ of Hegel and his categories, which has been offered by Jacques Fontanille in his study Soma et séma. Figures du corps (Fontanille s.d.).

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In fact it deals with corporeal semiotics, but presents the distinction between categories of Moi and Soi in a fresh manner.

As a Greimasian semiotician, Fontanille starts from actant and his/her body, distinguishing between body and form. We speak of body as such or ‘flesh’ (chair), which is the center of all, the material resistance or impulse to semiotic processes. Body is the sensorial motor fulcrum of a semiotic experience (Fontanille op. cit. p. 22). Yet, on the other hand there is a body in the proper sense which constitutes the identity and directional principle of the body. Body is the carrier of the ‘me’, Moi, whereas the proper body supports the ‘self’ or Soi. (Fontanille op. cit. p. 22-23). The Soi or ‘self’ builds itself in discursive activity - it is that part of ourselves, which me, Moi, projects out of itself in order to create itself in its activity. The Moi is that part of ourselves to which the Soi refers when establishing itself, providing the Soi with impulse and resistance whereby it can become something. Again the Soi furnishes the Moi with a reflexivity which it needs in order to keep within its limits when it changes. The Moi resists and forces the Soi to meet its own alterity, hence they are inseparable.

Although Fontanille is a semiotician - and albeit he quotes here Paul Ricoeur - his reasoning fits well to the above mentioned Hegelian categories. What is involved is a new interpretation to an sich and für sich, the first one corresponding to bodily ego and the latter its stability, identity and its aspiration outwards - or the Sartrean negation. The self or the Soi functions as a kind of memory of the body or Moi, it yields the form to those traces of tensions and needs which have been inserted in the flesh of the ‘me’ or Moi.

In the light of Fontanille’s concepts we could in fact change the Hegelian Being-in-itself or Being-for-itself, the an-sich-sein and für-sich-sein into an-mich-sein and für-mich-sein, ‘Being-in-myself ‘ and ‘Being-for- myself’. Nevertheless, before we ponder what consequences this has in our existential semiotics, we can scrutinize the principles of Moi and Soi as such and in music particularly. Then anything belonging to the category of mich, me, concerns the subject as an individual entity, whereas the concept of sich has to be reserved for the social aspect of this subject.

If we revisit Uexküll’s principle of Me-Tone, which determines the identity and individuality of an organism, we can distinguish in it two aspects: Moi and Soi. In ‘me’ the subject appears as such, as a bundle of sensations, and in the ‘self’, Soi, the subject appears as observed by others or socially determined. These concepts, which I shall next apply to music, constitute the existential and social aspect of the subject and its role as an individual and in the community.

Me (Moi) and Self (Soi) in Music

Matter has two dimensions, as Fontanille notices in his semiotics of body: matter as energy and matter as extension (op. cit. p. 24). Energy is articulated and appears in us and for us as modalities, whereas extension manifests in the principles of actor-time-space or, as Greimas said, in the phase of ‘discursivisation’ of the generation - which is nothing but the Kantian categories of subject-time-space. But the new point here is that the transcendental threshold of Kant occurs now between the Moi and Soi. Is for instance the streaming and moving of the Moi in music different and going in another direction than the unfolding and gesticulation of the Soi? The gestures can be either expression of the Moi or coded into social topics i.e. manifesting the Soi (this brings us to the core of

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theory of musical gestures).

Now we could sketch a new program of analysis which would proceed via the following stages:

1. Phenomenological stage: one picks up from a composition its most important points of attraction. When we look at a painting, certain points are foregrounded, we pay our attention first to them; the same holds for music. Such points are passages in which the meaning of a work appears as marked, foregrounded. They are ruptures, climaxes or otherwise distinguishable moments, differences from which we can enter the world of the piece.

2. The points of attraction are situated in their discursive coordinates or spatio-temporal-actorial dimensions. Those points are surrounded here by their characteristic Umwelt which enables their life. Umwelt can also extend until the transcendence, in other words the meaning effects of the work emerge via something absent, which serves either as a pre-sign of the act-sign under question, or as its post-sign. The attraction point can thus be also some element not heard or perceived in the work itself, i.e. it can be a transcendent. The work creates its signification by its negation of something in the Umwelt which surrounds it.

3. The search for modalities: the impact of attraction points are examined from the point of view of modalities which we have of two kinds: interoceptive and exteroceptive. Interoceptive or endogenic modalities reveal the inner organic life of the work, its Moi, being-in-myself, whereas the exteroceptive or exogenic modalities reveal its outer shape, social nature, Soi, being-in-itself, i.e. those topics into which these modalities can be crystalized. A struggle always prevails in a work between these two aspects.

The inner modalities are above all ‘will’ (the internal kinetic energy of a work) and ‘can’ - the ability to employ the right means in order to make an impact and fulfil the ‘will’. ‘Know’, on the other hand, is an exteroceptive or exotactic modality in so far as the information stems from outside of the work, although there is also inner ‘know’ which takes shape during the piece. ‘Must’ is always external, an exomodality, activity of the Soi. Thus modalities also support the corporeality of the work and guarantee its continuation outside its boundaries. Ultimately modalities also bring the work into its transcendence (via particular ‘metamodalities’ see Tarasti 2000: 25-27 ).

Energy appears to us and in us as modalities, whereas the extensional space is articulated as time, space and actors. This means that a work is preceded by an energetic field, which takes shape as modalities. Modalities again are articulated as deep-level figures, which can be portrayed just as Schenker did with his typical forms of Urlinie and Bass Brechung: the curves of ‘will’ and ‘can’ etc. These figures determine the fate of a musical organism, they constitute its Schicksalsanalyse. It is the same as Ich-Ton. Thereafter these modal figures and narratives manifest or they are actualized in spatio-temporal-actorial situations. These are already empirical reality - they can be fixed by a musical notation. There has never, on the other hand, been a notation for the energetic field, although musical sign language probably was born from accents and intonations of spoken words, from the ‘musicalization of the syllables’ as Vincent d’Indy once put it (d-Indy 1897-1900:31) . Neumes emerged in this manner (see Leo Treitler 2003), but even in Neume writing we find red or black notes in order to describe hemiolas, which was obviously an effort to

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describe the change of kinetic energy. Various modalities could, then, be indicated by different colours if we want to provide them with a notation: ‘will’ with red, ‘can’ with green, ‘know’ with yellow, ‘must’ with blue and ‘believe’ with brown.

When the work has been notated or its spatio-temporal-actorial manifestation has been fixed into act-signs or score, it must get a performer who re-modalizes it i.e. finds a correlation between this sign world and its kinetic energy. Music cannot just be mechanically reproduced but finds a modalisation through an interpreter. Music appears as a realized post-sign only at the point when a listener hears it, so the interpretation is something between act-sign and post-sign. Music again meets kinetic energy in the Moi of the listener and the auditive analysis of music has aimed for finding a proper notation for this (see Lasse Thoresen 1987, Francois Delalande 1998).

The implication model by L.B. Meyer is fine, but its order should be reversed: musical movement is not provided by melodic archetypes, which represent music in space, as manifest and actualized, but what is primary is the kinetic movement behind them which only is channelled to those forms of ‘axis’ , triad’ ‘gap and fill’ etc. Thus Wagner’s Tristan overture or Beethoven’s Les Adieux do not unfold due to ‘gap and fill’ archetypes, but their kinetic energy has chosen this particular melodic implication for its actualisation. Thus the essential problem when studying a score is to get behind the notes, to see the hierarchies looming in them. Schenker was pioneer in this sense.

What is essential here is to find a new type of notation which would make the modal phases concrete and comprehensible to a musician (in this sense the logical symbols used by Greimas are not satisfactory, albeit correct as such). If the Schenkerian Urlinie ^3-^2-^1 projects the Greimasian modalities of ‘want-to-be’ (vouloir-être) whilst ^3 and ^5 project ‘want-to-do’, then we have to indicate the movement of Ich-Ton with its own co-ordinates (and Ur-concepts such as Ur-Raum, Ur-Zeit and Ur-Actor). Hence Ich-Ton should not be identified with the mere actoriality, because it occurs in all Kantian-Greimasian categories. The Greimasian modalities have been compared to the Schenkerian linear-harmonic processes by the young British musicologist Tom Pankhurst in his recent thesis (Pankhurst 2004).

When we go through, say, all the sonatas of Beethoven we notice that their attraction points pull our attention to certain situations typical to each sonata, and to the modalities, figures and narratives behind them. Such figures can be found at the surface, middle and deep levels.

These articulations form the particular Ich-Ton of the work and composer, which regulates its relationship towards its surrounding reality. Ich-Ton filters the signs which are either accepted or rejected in and from the work. Ich-Ton likewise ‘modalizes’ all the intruding elements, exosigns, which via modalisation become endosigns, and the endosigns, which emerge in the mind of the composer, strive for manifesting as perceivable reality or exosigns.

4. The distinction of the aspects of Moi/Soi comprises the existential analysis of the work. The structure of signification is uncovered in this phase along with its structures of communication (Tarasti 1994:16 ).

5. The last phase is the transcendental analysis, in which the Ich-Ton is examined in

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relation to the transcendental idea and values, which for a subject (composer) are virtual potentialities, either achieved or not-achieved. There the singularity of the Ich-Ton is studied regarding its universality. One clarifies whether from the modalities of the work the so-called metamodalities would emerge, which would guarantee its immortality also outside its historico-social Umwelt in its later Daseins.

If in all art there is Moi or the artist’s proper existential ego, and Soi his/her social, community self, how do these aspects filter and regulate all Otherness in relation to this me/self? Insofar as the Other is another artist, composer, even he/she has his/her Moi and Soi.

The interaction between these two composers can happen as follows:

Ich-Ton Dich-Ton

Moi MoiSoi Soi

Organism 1 = Same:(le Même) Organismi 2 = Other (l’Autre):

diagram 3.

In this model the Sois of the organism 1 and 2 partly overlap, i.e. they have in that level something common, since what is involved is the social aspect of their egos in the sense of pre-coded signs systems, The Sois form a bridge from one Ich-Ton to another Dich-Ton, which is experienced by the first mentioned of course as its Other, and in an extreme case as transcendent. In this respect of strangeness the term of transcendence is also a political notion: we move to transcendence what we do not conceive and hence dislike.

Can then the Moi of a musical organism be in a direct communication with another composer’s Moi - without intervening levels of Soi in both cases? Yes, since there are composers, who are soul-mates without influencing in any way each other in the stylistic level. Correspondingly, there can be stylistic influence, i.e. recognizably similar styles, strategies and topics (see Hatten 1994:30 and Monelle 2000:14-63), but nothing common in the inner sense. Thus the impact of the Umwelt upon a composition is a complicated situation of interaction. The distinction Moi/Soi may also evoke the theory of musical competence by Gino Stefani (1982: 26) so that “opus” would equal to Moi and “general codes” and “social practises” to Soi; yet, rather Moi would also appear as “general codes” of a subject, i.e. his/her “universal” psyche.

Let us take the example of a fugue. Certainly to write a fugue means the principle of Soi in composition: a strictly coded musical technique. Therefore fugues are mostly written by a) young musicians in order to learn the skill of composing, i.e. in the phase in which the principles of the musical Soi have to be learned and adopted; b) peripheral composers, i.e. musicians not living in the center of musical canon, in order to prove their belonging to the Great Tradition; then to write a fugue can mean subordination to musically dominant

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forces, c) women who want by this prove that they can write as good and professional music as men. Fugues are, simply, in such circumstances written by marginal composers in the hope of being accepted. Fugue is purely structure of communication. But can a fugue ever be existential? Can it ever express the side of the Moi? In the rules of fugue lied-like melodic turns are forbidden in its themes. However, as early when Mozart writes a fugue in the overture of Magic Flute fugue is conceived as more than mere technique: it represents the Sublime. The same in Handel fugue in F minor, at the end the fugue becomes melodic and thus suddenly opens a flash of the Moi of the composer. Equally even Brahms, the classicist cannot avoid the temptation of the melodiousness at the closing fugue of his Handel variations.

Again in the Viennese-classical sonata form theme actors of the exposition are mostly in their correct places according to the rules of Soi . But in the development they are left to dwell freely an so it becomes the struggle place of Moi. In turn when Wagner writes the art of continuing transition (Übergang) he starts directly from the continuous development, the sphere of Moi without any external form stemming from exosigns.

Further questions: is the Moi in music the same as the organic, and the Soi the same as inorganic, arbitrary and conventional? Yes. Does Moi always appear through Soi? For instance is it so that a composer has to write in some form or genre accepted by the musical community in order to become understood? Or are there forms originating directly from the Moi? Some know how to combine them: when Sibelius writes in his First symphony in a Tchaikovskian manner, he simultaneously listens to the voice of Moi and Soi: ‘There is much in that man that I recognize in myself’ (Tawaststjerna 1976:209).

The distinction own/alien, Moi/Soi also manifests in musical gestures. The problem is how to distinguish between conventional gestural topics and the spontaneous gesticulation of the musical organism reflecting its Moi. For instance the Wagnerian leitmotifs are often gestural when indicating some protagonist; it is embarrassing if the singer on stage in addition repeats such gestures with his body - as was done in the Cosima Wagner period of Bayreuth stagings. The gestures are already in music, as was pointed out by Richard Strauss in connection with Salome: the actors need not rush back and forth on stage, that happens already in his music. Hence there is the body representing the Moi and the body representing the Soi. Manneristic gestures make the realm of the Soi conspicuous sometimes in a weird manner. The Mois of performer and composer should be united into an ideal musical performance, in the enunciation as a particular transcendental subject.

From modalities to metamodalities

The Moi of the composer is the pure source of ideas, but we can also say that the transcendence lives within a man. The Moi is surrounded by the sphere of the Soi., that part of the ego which is social, coded, community bound and not existential; together they form the phenomenon called ‘the semiotic self’ (see Thomas A. Sebeok 1979 ), a concept determined by the physical and virtual body. Some identify the semiotic moment either with social codes (the Saussurean tradition) or with the kinetic energy of the ego (Julia Kristeva), and these theories have their supporters also in musical semiotics.

Raymond Monelle adheres to the former when he says that the semiotic appears particularly well in the socially codified form of eighteenth century music (Monelle 1992:5), whilst

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the new musicologist Richard Taruskin leans towards the latter when he suggests that the undulating gestures of Polovetsian girls in Borodin might represent a typically Kristevan ‘semiotics’ of music (Taruskin 1997: 152).

In my theory they are both necessary: they together form the Ich-Ton of an organism, surrounded by the Other. Insofar as this Other is another subject organism, one can presume that it is construed in the same manner of Moi and Soi. Then the point and surface in which one Ich-Ton touches the other or Dich-Ton and its organism, is of course the sphere of Soi. Only in this level the language functions as a codified set of rules, which enables the communication in the proper sense between these organisms.

I asked above whether one’s Moi can directly communicate with other’s Moi, to which one has to answer, mostly no. Moi must first transform into Soi within one’s organism, I must become Me, in the sense of G.H. Mead before a subject reaches another one.

But correspondingly if the Sois were only communicating between themselves, we could never be sure about whether what the other expresses via his/her gestures, words, really represents what he/she intends in his/her noemas. The intention always covers both Moi and Soi.

Now to return to the problem of the composer, who he is surrounded by transcendence that extends even beyond the intonation store of his Dasein. He can be in connection with this transcendence - to all previously produced musical ideas in the historic sense and to the timeless ideas and principles of composing, its universals - only insofar as they are transformed and filtered to form a part of his own intonation store or the already codified and modalized set of ideas, techniques and topics.

Only via this sphere, can ideas be filtered through from musical transcendence. But at the same time the composer has his own ‘inner’ transcendence which seems to dictate him new ideas and from where new thoughts and innovations dive up as if from a bottomless unconscious source. Writers and composers can feel as if they, so to speak, create directly from this source: this is like the automatic writing of the surrealists.

The compositions of Friedrich Nietzsche were born as if directly offered by the Moi: he was even astonished himself when he later examined from the point of view of his own rational discursive Soi what he had produced. That is why it is interesting to study composers like the Finnish Sibelius, the Lithuanian Mikalojus Ciurlionis and the amateur Nietzsche who create as it were outside the tradition. From the standpoint of the Soi their music can be unacceptable, because it speaks in the direct voice of Moi.

The primus motor of the music history is the becoming of Moi from Soi or rather the constant rebellion of the Moi against the community, the conventional world of the Soi. In sonata form the appearance of the Moi was first only permitted in the domain of the development and its chaos. Wagner then elevated the principle of continuous transition into the constructive principle of his opera or their Soi. From this one shifted to atonality and serialism or total dominance of the Soi. Yet even this was negated since it is impossible to repress the Moi. The sphere of Soi forms the perpetual resistance to the being of the Moi. Correspondingly the existence of Moi prevents the communication from ever becoming the mere domain of the Soi, exclusive langue - something warned against even as early as Lacan.

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However, it is paradoxical that if the Moi is left to freely realize itself the results are not the flourishing of modalities but their scarcity and suppression. In Nietzsche’s compositions ‘will’, ‘know’ and ‘can’ do not develop into anything, since they do not find the forms codified by the Soi. Only through these forms can one create a hierarchical, structural work. Nietzsche’s tremendous inner will is evidenced by the German performance indications strewn across his compositions, his resorting to extra-musical programs (as in Ermanarich) and by the emphasis on the principle of will in his speeches. However, his ‘will’ does not develop to its climax, nor similarly his ‘know’ and ‘can’ - they lack the ‘must’ of the Soi. Modalities favored by the Soi are, in descending order of priority, ‘must’, ‘know’, ‘can’ and ‘will’ – a hierarchy of modalities that is reversed in the case of the Moi.

To deal in more detail with the modalities of the Moi, ‘will’ is the most important; it conveys the inner pressure of the movement or stability of the composition, ‘will’ does not necessarily appear as something want-to-do, but also as want-to-be or want-not-to-do or want-not-to-be (this holds true also for the other). The second most important for the Moi, is ‘can’, the often even corporeally important category of power. Thereafter ‘knowing’ is essential, since it concerns the memory of the Moi, a kind of ‘profound ego’ (le moi profond) in the Bergsonian sense. The concept of ‘intellectual effort’ (see Kristian Bankov 2000) is interesting since it seems to be based upon ‘know’ but at the same time ‘do’ and ‘can’ modalities. For instance a composition delivers information only via an effort, not by itself. With the help of the memory of the Moi, the composition as an organism, so to speak, remembers its earlier solutions in the enunciation. Finally one can think that even the Moi possesses its own inner obligation, its ‘must’ - one cannot break against the laws of Moi. Who does so, subdues his expression.

The most important modality for the Soi is ‘must’, representing normative forms and structures of communication: styles, techniques and topics. If the composer provides his work with the title such as sonata, symphony or fugue, he commits himself to certain ‘must’ of the Soi. Second most important for the Soi is the ‘know’, or the penetration of the elements of the intonation store (Eco would say: of the encyclopaedia of knowledge), the transcendence to the work. For instance the beginning of the last piano sonata by Beethoven op 111 concerns not only the topics of Sturm und Drang but the French overture of baroque, with its dotted rhythms (cf. the first movement of Handel’s suite in G minor).

Therefore when we say that the Ich-Ton of a composition determines which elements it accepts from its surrounding, transforming them into endosemiotic entities within its organism – this involves the modality of ‘know’. The third most important modality for the Soi is ‘can’, the adoption of certain techniques and resources, whereby the aforementioned ‘must’ and ‘will’ can be realized. The least important is ‘will’ but even this appears as a kind of collective wanting in music, for instance when a composer expresses the voice of his community, like when Clara Schumann writes variations on the Emperor hymn or Wagner writes Mastersingers in the atmosphere of the Prusso-franco war. The ‘will’ of the Soi is thus of collective origin.

These reflections can be put into the next model which has three circles:

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transcendence

moi

soi

digram 4

In it the transcendence is filtered via Soi to the sphere of Moi.

Yet after all, is composing more an affair of the Moi or Soi? If one writes a fugue, it is an event of Soi, without doubt. If one provides it with a little tinge of expressivity in the as do the line of composers Mozart-Beethoven-Franck-Brahms it has a little bit of Moi as well. But if one writes a fantasy or an aleatoric work, it is certainly already more an activity of the Moi. Left alone, the Moi is most often helpless as is shown by improvisation. When one gives a full freedom as in performance, the result is often outworn clichés and mannerisms, either as techniques stemming directly from the unconscious of the Soi, or such forms of the Moi that our subject supposes the audience wants to listen to. What is involved is the artistic das Man: man schreibt so, man malt so, man komponiert so....

Could the model be changed so that it would also contain the sphere of the inner transcendence of the Moi? Let us think of the case of Beethoven:

Transcendence (all the previous intonations, style periods, ideas…)

Soi = that part of the intonation store which was taught to Beethoven, i.e. what he has heard and learned from Bach, Mozart, Händel, Albrechtsberger, Gluck…

Moi: the inner identity of Beethoven, his kinetiv, khoratic “ego”, “Me-Tone”

filtering into:

filtering into:

diagram 5.

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Some Theoretical ResultsAlthough there is much still to do in the project of existential semiotics, I am now in a position to put together the most important ideas of this essay. My intention was to develop the concept of being, first in terms of new categories drawn from Kant and Hegel, moving through Kierkegaard to Sartre and Fontanille. When one aims for more subtle tools in semiotics, one can still find basic innovations in the classics of the philosophy. The ‘Being-in-itself’ and ‘Being-for-itself’ were turned into ‘Being-in-and -for-myself’ in existential semiotics. When these notions are combined in the Greimasian semiotic square, one gets the following cases:

being-in-myself being-for-myselfêtre-en-moi être-pour-moian-mich-sein für-mich-sein(‘will’) (‘can’)

für-sich-sein an-sich-seinêtre-pour-soi être-en-soibeing-for-itself being-in-itself(‘know’) (‘must’)

diagram 6

They can be interpreted in the following ways:

1) Being-in-myself represents our bodily ego, which appears as kinetic energy, ‘khora’,desire, gestures, intonations, Peirce’s ‘first’. Our ego is not yet in anyway conscious of itself but rests in the naive Firstness of its being. The principal modality is the endotactic ‘will’.

2) Being-for-myself corresponds to Kierkegaard’s attitude of an ‘observer’. Sartre’s negation in which the mere being shifts to transcendence, notices the lack of its existence and hence becomes aware of itself and transcendence. The mere being of the subject becomes existing. This corresponds to the transcendental acts of my previous model, negation and affirmation. Ego discovers its identity, reaches a certain kind of stability, permanent corporeality via habit. The principal modality is the endotactic ‘can’.

3) Being-in-itself is a transcendental category. It refers to norms, ideas and values, which are purely conceptual and virtual, they are potentialities of a subject, which he can either actualize or not actualize. What is involved are abstract units and categories. The principal modality is the exotactic ‘must’.

4) Being-for-itself means the aforementioned norms, ideas and values as realized by the conduct of our subject in his Dasein. Those abstract entities appear here as ‘distinctions’, applied values, choices, realizations which often well be far away from original transcendental entities The principal modality is the exotactic ‘know’.

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The essential aspect of the model is that it combines the spheres of the Moi and the Soi, the individual and collective subjectivities. It portrays semiosis not only as a movement of the collective Hegelian spirit, but adds to the ‘Being-in-and-for-itself’ the presence of a subject via ‘Being-in-and-for-myself’. It is not only the distinction of these four logical cases that is crucial, but also the movement among them, the transformation of a chaotic corporeal ego into its identity, the becoming of ego into a sign to itself; furthermore, the impact of such a stable and completely responsible ego on the actualisation of transcendental values, in which the ego becomes a sign to other subjects. In this phase the being-in-and-for-myself meets the you or Being-in-and-for-yourself, Others. Behind thus created social field looms yet the realm of transcendental ,virtual values and norms, signs which have not yet become signs to anyone.

In the classical sense, the semiotic sphere consists only of fields of Being-for-myself and Being-for-itself. The extremities of the semiotic square are the field of pre-signs, which surround from two sides the semiosis in the proper sense. However, this semiosis, the process of act-signs cannot be understood without going outside of it, to the transcendence. The existential analysis hence becomes a Kantian transcendental analytics in these two phases.

Ultimately we can formulate our semiotic square in music as follows:

primary kinetic energy musical identitykhora , gestuality certain kinetic forms(‘will’) (‘can’)

topics, norms, forms as exemplification of topics,individual solutions abstract, virtual categories applications, strategies styles norms, topics, styles (‘know’) (‘must’)

diagram 7

(distinction between style/strategy in the sense of Robert Hatten, see 1994:30)

In the final part of this essay, I will present an analysis of the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata in E flat major op. 7, but at this point I want to note briefly the way in which musical form is articulated in terms of the above semiotic squares. At the beginning of the first movement of the sonata we hear only a pulsating triplet rhythm and short motifs, which can be understood as a phase of ‘want-to-do’ - kinetic energy as such without stability (see example 15 below). This is the moment of ‘Being-in-myself’ in all of its immediacy. In bar 5 (see example 17) there enters a melodic element in the upper part: the triplet pulsation continues but it is provided with form by this motivic idea, at which point we reach the moment of ‘Being-for-myself’. As discussed in the more detailed analysis below, from bar 25 the modalities of ‘will’ and ‘can’ culminate in what Raymond Monelle would describe as a topic of ‘galloping horses’ (see Monelle 2000: 63-65), but the music continues and, after a spatial disengagement when the ‘will’ and ‘can’ values decrease, we hear another topic, that of ‘chorale’. These topics allude to ‘Being-for-itself’. The ideal

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types of ‘galloping horse’ rhythm or Lutheran chorale can be inferred from the texture as its ‘Being-in-itself’.

Observations on the Beethovenian DiscourseBeethoven’s musical texts are characterised by an extremely varied and rich level of discursivisation (in the Greimassian sense of this term). His musical discourse never simply goes forth as expected, but is maximally entropic and surprising. No musical idea or topic is allowed to continue as such until it is already ‘negated’ in the Hegelian sense. In this sense, I agree with Adorno’s views on the philosophy of Beethoven. There is no idea or musical entity that constitutes a permanent strategy, that establishes a ‘norm’ for the duration of the work; rather, the universe of style and norm is rejected and, under the level of Soi, the realm of the Moi emerges. In fact opposition of Moi/Soi to large extent corresponds to Adorno’s juxtaposition of Ich und Gesellschaft – Me and Society. This revelation of the Moi , its breaking out from the cover of the Soi, can be realized as:

- a sudden shift between isotopies- a change of function (in the sense of musical form)- an unexpected growth into sublime or grotesque scale- as the evaporation, immaterialisation of a text

We shall soon see how these techniques function, but it was a piano recital by Antti Siirala, the young Finnish winner of various Beethoven competitions, that inspired me to investigate the chameleon-like variations in Beethoven’s piano textures. What particularly struck me was the way in which Siirala performed the E major Sonata, op. 14 nr. 1. In the first movement the texture always changes after one periodic unit, as illustrated in the examples below:

music example 2 : bars 1-4: sonatine-like opening with a rudimentary gap-type melody, raising movement.

music example 3 : bars 5-6: filling of the gap with broken thirds, miniature ‘virtuoso’

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texture

music example 4 : bars 7-8: string quartet like polyphonic texture

music example 5 : bars 9-12: polyphonic ‘learned’ texture with chromatic elements as a negation of the open fourths of the bars 1-4.

This last negation only balances the affirmation of the beginning and creates a closed twelve-bar logical and coherent entity, notwithstanding the variation in discourse types.

This balanced world, with its gracious rococo gestures and learned topos, makes reference to the sonatine, and perhaps even more particularly to the practice of domestic German chamber music. However, this established world of the Soi is quickly broken in the next period, which is already a miniature Durchführung of previous elements. The first motif is transformed into dissonant aggressive sforzati which, with much pain, prepare the V/V chord of the secondary theme. Here the Beethovenian ‘temperament appears, the Moi which is ready to negate the already established order of things. This violent gesture is repeated at the end of the exposition (bars 46-49 and 54-55).

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music example 6

Hermeneutically, this evokes the anecdote about Goethe and Beethoven’s encounter with the Grand Duke and his spouse on a walk in the gardens at Weimar. Whereas Goethe bowed venerably and moved to the side of the path, Beethoven pulled his hat over his eyes, buttoned his coat, and continued walking so that the court were forced to make way – Dukes have to go aside when such artists as we appear he later admonished Goethe. This anecdote also relates well to the particular strategies of Moi/Soi in the level of musical enunciate: the topics and galant gestures have to yield the abrupt emanations of the Moi of the composer. A continuous rebellion of Moi against Soi prevails in Beethoven’s music.

The only moments in which this continuous struggle and war calms down are the ‘narrative’ sections in which music suddenly stabilizes into a narrative texture. Often in such circumstances it modulates to the subdominant or mediant field for a while - backwards around the circle of fifths. When one looks backwards, the musical flow is stopped, the direction of the signs is turned into a counter stream. It is possible to find such passages in each sonata, clearly distinguished from other textures.

Often this function is fulfilled by the secondary theme, as in the first movement of Beethoven’s Sonata op. 2 nr. 3 in C, where bars 27-38 modulate to G minor, and bars 47-60 to G major.

music example 7

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In the A major Adagio movement of the same sonata, the middle section moves into E minor, whilst the Trio of the C Major Scherzo is set in A minor. In the final movement of op. 2 nr. 3 the F major passage in bars 104-167 fulfils this same backwards-looking function.

In the E flat major op. 7 sonata, there is a narrative interlude in the development of the first movement from bar 173-185 where the music moves briefly through A minor.

music example 8

Even more typical is an example from the Largo of the E flat major sonata, where, in the A flat major section in bars 25-36, the accompaniment adopts the narrative ‘gesture’ by imitating the touching of the strings of guitar in a serenade. There is a prototype for this in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, in which the serenade within the opera institutes a ‘secondary’ narration.

music example 9

A further example can be found in the F major sonata op. 10 nr. 2 where the development moves to D minor in bars 77-94.

music example 10

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The Pathétique (op. 13) yields a final example of this a flatwards-leaning passage fulfilling this ‘narrative’ function in the form of the passage in bars 37-50 of the Adagio cantabile, in which the music modulates to the tonic minor.

music example 11

Gradually a set of special narrative figures starts to take shape, which Beethoven uses as inner topics, not-socially determined by the Soi, but as recurrent figures displaying the identity of the Moi. These are Beethoven’s ‘manners’, his Peircean ‘habits’.

One such figure is very important, since it is based on the shift between the organic and the metaphysical. This figure is manifested in two musical gestures for which I will borrow terms from the existential philosophy of Jean Wahl: trans-ascendance and trans-descendance. The former appears as a special figure in which music is elevated, lightened, immaterialised - raised into transcendence as in the codas from the slow movement of op. 7 or the Allegretto from op. 14.

music example 12

This figure often occurs in the codas, but it, so to speak, mitigates against the closural effect of linear-harmonic procedures, the reaching of the ^1 in the Schenkerian sense. Incidentally, it could be argued that all these narrative figures of Beethovenian Moi are there in order to retard and obstruct the ‘necessary’ normative Schenkerian descent from ^5 to ^1. The mechanisms of the discoursive level would thus fight against and question the predetermined tonal motion. The counter stream of signs, the Adornian ‘negation’, would thus be given to the discoursive level to be enacted; these narrative figures would display their own ‘Will’ against the ‘Must’ of the normative Schenkerian linear-harmonic structures. Thus the trans-ascendance would appear as the evanescence of musical texture, its transfiguration.

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The opposite ‘gesture’, then, would be the figure of trans-descendance, which signifies a journey towards the Nothingness, sinking, plunging down, Sturz towards darkness, heaviness. Two hundred years later this can be found in the düstere Abblendung des Klanges of the Viennese school, to borrow Adorno’s formulation, but in Beethoven it appears as harmonic device towards darker flattened chordal values, darker tinges, the increase of anguish, the negation of the affirmation. An example might be bars 65-75 from the slow movement of Beethoven’s D major Sonata op. 10 nr. 3.

music example 13

The slow movement of Sonata op. 2 nr. 3 similarly descends into the depths in bars 26-64.

music example 14

An even more striking example can be found in bars 11-15 of the Maestoso that opens Sonata op. 111; the heavy downwards accents invoke the aesthetic category of the tragic particularly as played by Charles Rosen.

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music example 15

This is typical trans-descendance: it is the realm of negation which is accepted and affirmed. The opening bars are a typical illustration of how Beethoven can put two topics of the Soi to fight with each other: Sturm und Drang and the baroque French overture. These figures representing two opposed incompatible topics are used by a higher level of enunciative subject, the Beethovenian ‘transcendental ego’, Moi which is this uncompromising ‘esprit contestataire’.

These two gestures, or narrative figures, of trans-ascendance and trans-descendance have metaphysical consequences at the level of musical enunciation or performance, representing as they do the corporealisation of music’ s inner modal forces. The school of piano playing created by the Parisian piano pedagogue Jules Gentil was based on the idea of ‘science of gestures’ of which he determined two basic types: pousser (to push) and tirer (to pull). The former meant the movement ‘down’ the attack of the keyboard whereas the latter corresponded to the movement ‘up’, the detension of the hand. These two gestures of keyboard playing were analogous, of course, to the bowing of string instruments and to the exhalation and inhalation of singers. Through these two gestures the music was made to breathe like an organism. This type of gesturalisation or concretisation of the musical utterance into a corporeal technique serves as a crucial phase on the level of performing subject: the pure musical structure of a musical utterance is provided with the techniques of the Moi of the performer. That which appears in a Beethoven sonata to create the almost metaphysical narrative figure of trans-ascendance or trans-descendance is by this technique of the Moi made into something organic:

organic metaphysical‘down’ pousser‘up’ tirer

trans-descendancetrans-ascendance

Table 1.

Later in music history we can see how these principles cause something organic to become metaphysical, which is the most essential musical and philosophical problem of the entire Tristan by Wagner!

(NOTE: When speaking about the performer’s role and subjectivity I believe we can apply the previous model of being-in-myself/being-for-myself etc. i.e. the semiotic square of those four cases also in his/her case. Firstly every performer has his/her body with its particularly physical, kinetic properties as such ‘being-in-myself’; this ‘body’ of the performer is mere potentiality, as such it is not yet a performing body at all. A person may have a ‘voice’, but in order to become a singer much more is needed. Likewise, someone

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may have good lungs or long fingers, but that is not enough to become a wind player or a pianist. First the body has to become conscious of its capacities, the inherent modalities of ‘can’, by training itself into certain permanent habits. This is the phase of developing certain corporeal techniques, it is the inner side of technical training. Etudes as such are already ‘being-for-itself’ (i.e. socially coded, external activities), by being-for-myself, we mean the adaptation of the body to these external demands and, on the other hand, the organization of the inner kinetic energies of a certain performer’s identity, which is characteristic and unique to that performer alone.

In that case we have two types of beings referring to the social world: ‘being-for-itself’, and ‘being-in-itself’. The former is represented by certain schools and traditions of performance. These traditions as they relate to the violin, piano, horn or voice have to be integrated into the performer’s ‘being-for-myself’ or they would remain externally learned habits, not anything individually corporeal. The latter (‘being-in-itself’) is represented by style, by topics of music itself seen through the aspect of performance (i.e. musical enunciation). Such acts of enunciation are already taken into account by the composer when writing the score. They may be embedded there as particular playing figures, Spielfiguren, or sometimes just by adapting to the modality of ‘can’ in the musical texture. Often composers write music thinking of a certain performer and his performing body - his ‘being-in-myself’, and ‘being-for-myself.

Note that, as in the previous application of the semiotic square to a composer’s situation, we are dwelling within the subjectivity of one subject i.e. the performer, seeing all these aspects in his/her position:

being-in-myself(performer’s primary body)

being-in-myself(performer’s corporeal identity)

being-for-itself(the performer’s body deter-mined by some “school”, i.e. socially codified and accept-ed manner of énonciation)

being-in-itself(the performer’s body already embedded in the musical texture, score, music making as its Spielfiguren, énoncée)

diagram 8

So we have here also elements for a theory of musical performance.)

We have already spoken in the previous studies about the existential semiotic categories of negation and affirmation , and we should remind ourselves here of the logical possibilities of the various cases:

1) negation of affirmation of the Dasein2) either negation or affirmation the emptiness of the Nothingness3) either negation or affirmation of the “Dasein”4) either negation or affirmation of the Plenitude

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5) either negation or affirmation of the ‘X’ i.e. the unknown Otherness.

So the subject has, in all phases of his transcendental journeys, the possibility of accepting or rejecting them; he can set him/herself into ‘counter-stream’ or counter-clockwise movement. (see Tarasti 2000, Existential Semiotics p. 30 32), but what does this mean in musical terms in the Beethovenian discourse?

Music begins by introducing, presenting or stating something. We must have first ‘something’ - a motif, a theme or a beginning - and thereafter this ‘something’ either is negated or affirmed. Negation means transformation or variation: we hear after the opening motif (‘a’) something else (‘b’). If, on the other hand, ‘a’ is affirmed, we hear the repetition of the same motif or ‘a´’. Now we can add to this initial situation the Greimassian aspectual semes of sufficient and insufficient, which go in two directions: either we have something sufficiently and then excessively (i.e. ‘too much’) or we have it insufficiently and then deficiently (‘too little’). The presentation of a motif as such - as ‘something’ present - is a neutral statement, after which any initial repetition adds sufficiency. If the ‘something’ is repeated again, it is now too much but, if on the other hand we immediately hear something else after the opening statement, the impression is one of insufficiency. In the latter case, the Moi of the composition is not yet established: it would require at least one repetition in order to establish a more permanent identity. But if, after this first negation, we hear yet another variation (‘a’, ‘b’ ‘c’) with no return or engagement back to ‘a’, what emerges is the aspectual seme of ‘deficiency’ (atonal music can operate like this in the sense that any repetition is forbidden, creating a permanent state of insufficiency in the listener throughout the piece). In such a composition the Moi is not established, it does not find its Me-Tone.

We could illustrate using the following diagram:

neutral 0

statement

sufficient +

1st affirmation

1st negation

insufficient – 2nd negation

deficient – –

excessive ++

2nd affirmation

diagram 9

In this discoursive logic we can return in every phase back to the initial situation; in the last phase i.e. 2nd affirmation and 2nd negation we have to go back or into something else, the music cannot continue any longer along this path. However, if we do so, we meet in the first case the aesthetic category of the Sublime, das Erhabene (in the term’s original sense of transgressing something sub-lime) or as Überschreiten; in the second

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case of negation, we meet the category of the Grotesque. Again it would be interesting to note how later in Wagner the principle of abundance, overwhelming, transgressive and excessive is much used partly for theatrical and dramatic purposes, which equates to the old German saying, Lieber etwas gutes und dafür ein Bisschen mehr!

When a topos is introduced into this discoursive musical logic - which as it is sketched here seems to correspond to the logic of the Moi - it always entails a reference to the social, external world of the work, the Soi there penetrates into the domain of the Moi, to the proper identity of a single work. Yet, as we saw above, the Moi can be either weakened or strengthened by this logic. The introduction of a topos of some codified musical gesture to this autonomous and self-organizing musical logic often seems to a listener like the appearance of some familiar element, a secure point of reference is offered which for a while stops the passional course and process of the Moi. It saves the listener for a moment from the play of passions which Schopenhauer considered the most characteristic element of Beethoven’s music.

“Werfen wir jetzt einen Blick auf die blosse Instrumentalmusik; so zeigt uns eine Beethovensche Symphonie die grösste Verwirrung, welcher doch die vollkommenste Ordnung zum Grunde liegt, den heftigsten Kampf, der sich im nächsten Augenblick zur schönsten Eintracht gestaltet: es ist rerum concordia discors, ein treues und vollkommenes Abbild des Wesens der Welt, welche dahin rollt, im unübersehbaren Gewirre zahlloser Gestalten und durch stete Zerstörung sich selbst erhält. Zugleich nun aber sprechen aus dieser Symphonie alle menschlichen Leidenschaften und Affekte: die Freude, die Trauer, die Liebe, der Hass, der Schrecken die Hoffnung, u.s.w. in zahllosen Nüancen jedoch alle gleichsam nur in abstracto und ohne alle Besonderung: es ist ihre blosse Form, ohne den Stoff, wie eine blosse Geisterwelt, ohne Materie. Allerdings haben wir die Hang, sie, beim Zuhören, zu realisieren, sie in der Phantasie, mit Fleisch und Bein zu bekleiden und allerhand Scenen des lebens, und der Natur darin zu sehn.....” (Schopenhauer Zur Metaphysik der Musik p. 585, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung Band 2 1987 Stuttgart:Reclam)

But also this realm of the Soi falls under the ‘organic’ logic of music, even it is not given to us as a definite ‘map’ for our musical journey. When the topos, or the Soi, has penetrated into the universe of the work, it is allowed to prevail for a while, but thereafter it has to give way to the Moi, or the proper Hegelian course of music. We could of course imagine a completely academic style (e.g. Adler) and a sonata following it in which all the themes, motifs, developments and harmonies procedures are in their proper places, without manifesting anything original. In such a case it is as if the composer’s Moi was not present at all. Thus the Moi is the guarantee of originality, even it cannot do without the realm of the Soi.

How then the Moi proceeds following its own logic - which could be well paralleled to psychoanalysis and its strategies of the psyche in the sense of a Freudian dream work or else - is in Beethoven’s case the same as the principle of Durchführung, or as Schoenberg put it, the developing variation, the Wagnerian Kunst des Überganges.

Beethoven: Sonata op. 7 E flat major, 1st Movement - An Exercise in Existential AnalysisIn bars 1-4 we hear only the pulsating triplet rhythm and short motifs (‘a’), discussed above in terms of the ‘want-to-do’ of kinetic energy without stability.

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Bars 1-2: motif ‘a’ (with two semes: the triple rhythm and melodic-harmonic triad on the tonic)

music example 16

Bars 3-4: motif ‘a´’ (or: the repetition of the ‘a’: its 1st affirmation)

music example 17

Bars 5-17: motif ‘b’

music example 18

In bar 5, a new melodic element is launched which is the negation of ‘a’ but at the same time the affirmation of rhythmic triple figure; this ‘b’ motif then recurs three times (excessively), after which we still hear it in the bass. Beethoven wants to show that music cannot continue thereafter in the same direction, it has to shift into something new or return to motif ‘a’. The ‘a’ motif does in fact return in a way in the discant register as the

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inversion of the melodic-triadic motif of the opening. The pulsation from ‘a’ continues but it is provided with form by the ‘b’ motif - we now reach the moment of ‘Being-for-myself’.

In bars 17-24, the affirmation of the rhythmic seme of motif ‘a’ is such that the melodic element now turns into a mere scale passage, which constitutes a neutral material. In other words, the triadic melody of the opening and neighbour note melody from bars 5-15 are both abandoned; they are negated but no other more cogent motif is brought into play.

Altogether the narrative program of these bars is characterised by their attraction point, the above mentioned triplet rhythm is the only seme which appears throughout this universe. The music has now come to a situation, due to the inner logic of the Moi, from which there is no other exit than through the appearance of the Soi as a bringing to order. One would say that the musical khora is now ripe to adopt a patriarchal order which enters apparently unexpectedly, but in fact already prepared and anticipated in the inner sense. The dynamics are here fortissimo: we have the moment of the Barthesian ‘geno-play’ in which it is the body that is beating, providing accents.

Bars 25-32 sees first occurrence of the topic ‘galloping horses’ as defined by Raymond Monelle (see Monelle 2000: 63-65), which is introduced by the dissonant chordal pillars at the beginning of bars 25 and 27. This topic is not at all detached from the Moi, but its galloping triplet figure above has already, so to speak, prepared the entrance of this motif, in that the plain triplet figuration with eighth notes now turns into galloping iambic figures. Melodically this is in complete opposition to motif ‘a’ which opens the work, but how does this element of the topical Soi behave in this musical Umwelt that is saturated by triplet figuration?

It soon softens into a pastoral figuration in bars 33-38 when we have heard the dissonant accentuated chordal pillars which opened this galloping topic both sufficiently and excessively (i.e. three times).

What follows in bars 38-58 is the development of the already-introduced elements by the permanent triplet figure. In other words, the accentuated arpeggiated seventh has been derived from the seventh chords of the beginning of the gallop, and the arpeggiated triadic figuration from the galloping motif itself. These too are brought into their limits or the aspectual seme is ‘excessive’ when the musical Moi cannot any longer continue coherently from here without an intervening new element of the Soi - which signifies the emergence of a new topos as a normative, social entity in the musical text. The above-mentioned arpeggiated seventh motif is first repeated or affirmed, but then it is repeated but now expanded into a very large leap, which, of course, following the principle of ‘gap- and fill’, needs its completion. This completion occurs next at the end of new chorale motif and in its last motif (i.e. in the ‘b’ of the phase ‘aab’).

In any case, we see here how also the topos is subordinated to the same logic, which dominates in the sphere of Moi in this music. Beethoven does not leave conventions and norms outside his principle of development, he does not accept any ‘ready’ entity from the patriarchal canon, but thinks that the Hegelian processual logic of negation/affirmation by which his musical subject operates, also concerns it. In this sense Beethoven is revolutionary and subversive: no topic is so sacred that it would set itself over the logic of the Moi.

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In bars 59-81 a new topos emerges, ‘chorale’ - i.e. a melody which has been harmonized so that each stressed non-melismatic tone has its own chord. Such a chorale topos always contains a tinge of the Sublime. Even this topic of the form ‘aab’ is repeated but an element from the universe of the Moi dives up again in the bass, which, as it were, ultimately destroys this occurrence of the chorale topic by silencing it.

music example 19

In general the patriarchal order means the entrance of the logos with all its authority. These are moments in which music does speak and does not only pretend to speak (quasi parlando), it is clearly uttering something, arguing something, even declaring something. But this emergence of authority does not succeed in suffocating those elements of the Moi which it tries to dominate. Instead the rebellion of the Moi emerges, at first almost unnoticed, in its shadow - in this case as a triplet figure, whose descending second serves as a prototype of a supplying gesture (inherited in instrumental music from Italian opera). This supplying triplet figure starts to unfold and grow and dominates the whole scene bars ending up with a catatonic outburst at bars 79-80, a kind of furious negation of the chorale. At the same time we have come far away from the tonic into C-major or V/V/V in relation to the E flat tonic.

In bars 81-92, the chorale motif returns but is now completely changed – all that remains is the idea of stressed chords on every note of the melody, and the section ends with the nonchalant return of the galloping motif. Here the topic of the galloping horses subdues the second choral topos and almost makes fun of it with its careless cadencing movement into the dominant in bars 89-91.

music example 20

In bars 93-136 we hear a closing theme that fulfils the expectations of first movement

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sonata form with rising octaves on the B major tonic. The gaps created by it are then filled a virtuosic scale. In this section again das Spielerische is foregrounded as a particular Beethovenian figure, representing Besseler’s Spielfiguren by arpeggiated octaves, scales and then arpeggiated triads. The modality of ‘can’ is here marked, and, as is known, the modality of ‘know’ in these cases withdraws into the background. When the instrumentality or vocality of music becomes marked, then ‘must’ and ‘know’ are silent - virtuoso music is, in this sense, un-intellectual and unemotional. Yet even in this field of the modality of ‘can’, the logic of affirmation prevails, and the negation of the Moi occurs. Everything in this sonata seems to develop through phases of neutral-sufficient-excessive (i.e. to the limits of expression). Here we test the limits of the subject in almost every section. Even the long arpeggiated figuration in bars 111-127 is extremely and excessively long as a virtuoso passage to be continued in the same dimension and therefore bars 127-136 provide it with a solution that is very informative, namely the return of topic of ‘galloping horses’. Hence this topos wins the struggle between the two topics on the level of the Soi. We can notice all the way through this section the syncopated accents in which the Barthesian body is beating and becomes beaten.

The most surprising feature of the development is that there is in fact virtually no development. Is it so that this particular preserve of the Moi within the framework of the sonata form has already been realized in the exposition? Has the very intensive activity of the Moi reached its limits and its exhausted it energy, so that nothing remains here to be said? In the Durchführung in bars137-187, unlike Beethoven’s usual practice, nothing radically new is introduced. The development passes through various tonal isotopies - 1) the chordal seme of the opening, 2) the triplet figure of the beginning, 3) the triumphant topos of galloping horses - but they all lead into an unexpected mini-narrative which is a figure of its own in Beethoven and which was already discussed above in relation to music example 8. It is, in other words, a kind of Rückblick, a looking backwards or a return – in this case to A minor, the minor dominant of the E flat III. What returns in fact is the mocking ironic and careless motif from the ‘galloping horses’ but now transformed into a nostalgically backwards-looking reminiscence. This motif does not seem to be jubilant about its victory, it is as if the Moi has subdued the Soi but is now regretting it, almost accusing itself of it. Yet its remembrances are rather brutally interrupted by the chordal pillars from the beginning, which are thus provided with a double or excessive affirmation. In any case, the melodically backwards-looking passage in A/D minor, signifies in the existential or Hegelian logic of the piece as it were a glance backwards to the previous musical Dasein: the musical subject refuses to go forwards, it resists, although the chordal pillars are almost forcing it to do so.

In its basic mood this is all like the negation of affirmation (i.e. negation of negation of the ‘chorale’ topos) which is here experienced as a new affirmative quality, as a longing. In this short moment, the drama of the first Dasein is recalled – ‘galloping horses’, ‘chorale’ and the silencing of the ‘chorale’ followed by the victory of the Moi. However, this triumph is not celebrated but rather regretted. The modalized minor variant of the ‘galloping horses’ is longing after the world of the ‘chorale’; it is searching in it for a haven of peace. It seems to find a positive solution to the issue through the abandoning of the all-pervading triplet gallops, since the chordal pillars which have previously instigated this galloping rhythm suddenly go silent. As these chordal pillars reduce in dynamic, they first invoke the aspectual seme of insufficiency (piano, in bars 185-86) and then deficiency (pianissimo, in bars 187-188).

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The truncation of the development here is the enigma of this sonata, since no development follows but instead one returns astonished into the recapitulation, in which everything is repeated as before. The exception is bars 312-319, where we hear the combination of the galloping motif and the chordal pillars – a glorification of the strangely cadencing section. It definitely declares the union and synthesis of the galloping topics and the pulsating rhythm of the Soi. Moi is blended together with the Soi, declaims with the voice of Soi its triumph. Or, if we look more carefully at it from the point of view of the Soi, it has succeeded in completely persuading the Moi on to its side, coaxing it into stepping into the role and clothing offered to it by the Soi. Nevertheless, the question of why a true development is missing in this sonata remains to perplex the mind.

This short analysis now gives us reason for further more general comments on what the position and role of various discoursive elements on different levels is in the Beethovenian musical Dasein. We have, thus:

- the realm of the Moi, or the kinetic energy of a composition as such, something which is offered us as given, as Firstness, which has a certain quality. In this sonata this ‘Being-in-myself’ might be represented by the themes in their first occurrences.

- when this musical das Ding an sich is repeated it gains immediately a more stable identity. It is recalled, and becomes a figure whose strength depends on the fact of how often it recurs and how clearly identical it is. As the result, figures and gestures (‘Being-for-myself’) emerge. These figures follow the Hegelian-existential logic of affirmation and negation and often they just originate the impact of this logic on the energy of the Moi (rhythmic, melodic, chordal and timbral).

- the sphere of Moi. (i.e. kinetic energy) is penetrated by gestures and topics that are recognized by the musical society and community and arrive from the sphere of the Soi. These are the social element much exploited by the Classical style (i.e. pastoral, hunting motifs, chorals, learned style, Storm and Stress etc.). But these topics encounter a subject in the musical universe who is either ready to affirm them or to negate them. The logic of Moi is thus not subordinated to the logic of the Soi, which has its established and codified rules. This encounter of Moi and Soi is always an unpredictable event - we cannot know in advance what might be brought about as its consequence. It may be that in some work the Soi seems to repress totally the Moi , for example the fugues in the late sonatas. Notice, however, that even in op. 110 in A flat major, the liberation of the subject from the straight jacket of the fugue at the end represents trans-ascendance - liberation also from the desires of Moi towards transcendence. Sometimes Moi and Soi live in peaceful cohabitation, sometimes they blend into each other (i.e. both accept the other mutually and they are in peace); sometime the Soi masks itself into Moi (like the lied theme of the last movement of the E major sonata op 109, which is in fact a sarabande or the opening motif of op. 111 which is, in reality, a baroque French overture); or the Moi does the same appearing as a pseudo-Soi (as in the telescoping techniques in transition from development into recapitulation of the first movement in the F major sonata op. 10 nr. 2).

- music also has its level of the norms of the Soi as a kind of Legisign, or type. The technical (e.g. fugue) and stylistic (e.g. sonata) norms of a musical culture, which composers recognize as a commonly accepted encyclopaedia of musical knowledge

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of the period, live outside the musical organism (i.e. compositions) in a kind of social ‘transcendence’. These norms are filtered into the micro-organic life according to the Me-Tone of each individual composer (there are also composers who have not found their Me-Tone and hence can come into schematic and internally contradictory solutions as composing strategies).

There are moreover spheres of narration that are regions within the aforementioned musical organism or Dasein, during which the Hegelian existential logic is stopped. They are not topics in the proper sense, neither are they sections dominated by the Moi, but they constitute a kind of shift into a metalevel in which the normal temporal logic of music is stopped - just as we stop to listen to a story and forget for a moment the caring about our everyday life, our Heideggerian Sorge.

Question: does the existential logic of affirmation and negation serve as a kind of superlogic in the Beethovenian discourse which rules over both Moi and Soi? Yes, but it is of course at its purest in the sphere of the Moi, since it is the logic of the subjectivity of the composition, on the basis of which the utterance itself unfolds, but also it represents the logic of the act of enunciation in composing, listening or performing. Moreover we have the logic which arrives as a tectonic stabilizing formal language from the sphere of the Soi, and which our musical subject either accepts or refuses.

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