If music theory as it is practiced in traditional music is indeed the means of notating musical ideas as much as translating these ideas into sounds, oral training reveals the basic direction of this discipline: to obtain from an instrument sounds that correspond to symbols, in the sense of prose composition. The most deeply rooted way of doing this, the instrument that belongs to everyone, is the voice. It seems natural to think that the limits of the sol-fa are those of the sight reader’s voice, the voice being the only instrument common to all musical civilizations, even if each civilization uses it differently and develops or ignores certain aspects of its potential.
If we take into account humming and gestures just as much as the harmonium or the manuscript paper of theory classes, we will reach a better understanding of the origins of a musical tradition and of a fundamental deconditioning process. A wonderful music, which in the space of a few centuries leads to such a paring down, to twelve notes that are finally tempered, to time signatures and a space where the beginner’s fist and the teacher’s finger prefigure the conductor’s baton—all to the rhythm of a few basic pulsations: two-time, three-time, and several tempos: marching, the heartbeat, breathing, dancing.
Where the felicitous expansion of the musical domain, the progressive selection of sources, and progress in performance are concerned, the combinatory power of a reliable notation has been surprisingly efficient, beyond even what might have been expected from the extremely dry and ultimately incomplete analysis of elementary musical criteria it provides. If we compare classical and contemporary works, we observe that, for the former, theory enables an analytical representation of the work, which gives an account of it while leaving a certain degree of latitude for performance; for the latter the notations belonging to the same theory express less and less what is essential to music and tend to be valid exclusively on the operative level, which is itself more and more overloaded and persnickety. But as long as we keep to “prose composition” for the most modern musics and rely on traditional instruments, hardly anyone feels the need to change their habits: instruments being what they are, the notes on a staff faithfully transmit orders to the instrumentalist. The interpreters’ training guarantees the precision of this. With this state of affairs—that is, as long as we keep to prose composition—a working score that avoids any misunderstanding is obviously better than a possible analytical score that would give a better account of a content, but where the symbols, all still to be discovered and systematized, would give no guarantee in performance.
But the need for musical signs that would communicate the real function of objects more directly is becoming urgent for composers. Given the growing importance of sounds that are more, less, or something other than notes, we now lack a link between musical thought and its realization. So composers improvise more or less adequate and communicable personal systems, which are intermediaries between the out-of-date symbols of traditional notation and the real content of music: exactly what a generalized music theory is looking for.
This critique of traditional notation, already outlined in section 28.5, links up with what we have already observed in relation to some needs of present-day music: if the composer is, in fact, working with “concrete” or electronic sounds, he has a choice between an intentions score based on the objects or structures he intends to bring to listeners’ ears and a performance score representing the acoustic or electronic operations that are the means to achieve this. Now, whereas the old notation ensures that there is an adequate correlation between the symbol and the musical sign, it is impossible to say as much for most of the new procedures; these relationships are only roughly sketched out and are often crude. The gap between making and listening remains considerable, much more than it ever was in the musical tradition. Therefore, until such a new experience can crystallize, we cannot escape the need to consider the possibility of two scores without risking falling into the most serious ambiguities: one score, essential, for musical description and the other, operational, for performance.
As this work is a treatise neither on instrumentation nor electronic or acoustic composition, but first and foremost an attempt to describe the most general musical object possible, it will come as no surprise if we turn our attention to a theory of music in which the concepts must, above all, take into consideration general functions rather than the individual performance of objects.
So music theory, entrusting all the meaning to the symbols of notation and leaving the responsibility for reading them and transforming them into sound objects to the orchestra, necessarily obliges the composer to think in terms of these symbols. The composer is in the same position as the writer. He has an idea in his head, just as a proposition obsesses the philosopher or a situation tempts the novelist, and he can only take hold of this idea, as his colleagues can of theirs, once it is down in black and white: notated. How many of these thoughts have vanished or been totally transformed in the process of expression? And to what extent have the means of notation reworked themes, often giving them an almost unrecognizable structure, so different from the one imagined?
Hence the obstinate demand of musicians faced with any new source of sounds or any new way of modeling or assembling them: where is the notation? A naive question. There is no notation, and for the time being, there should not be any: any premature notation is not only impossible but disastrous. We will illustrate these two important points.
Impossible: the history of music shows that notation is not a starting point but an end point. It is not because for several centuries music has been learned through the shortcut of theory that we can hope for new musics devised a priori (as an extension or at the margin of tradition). If these musics are radically different from the music based only on pitches because they turn to other fundamental relationships, first we must discover these relationships, and a great deal of time will go by before a notation can emerge from such experiments, which are all, or nearly all, yet to be done.
Moreover, the disastrous aspect of any notation (including traditional notation) is that it prejudges relationships between musical objects: it is tendentious. If we use traditional notation, we express our ideas in terms of stereotypes. As this notation is the notation of pitch, when we use it, we are bound to bring everything back to, and try to explain everything in terms of, that dimension.
Nor let us go back over the use of the parameter score, even worse than the traditional score. A score such as this evades musicality for two reasons, one of which alone would be enough: it is stripped of its instrumental structures, the guardians of a permanence of characteristics and the perception of values. Everything is ultimately naively brought back to a persnickety pitch, notated in frequency, which no longer bears any relationship to what is heard. Finding one’s way from a map that is wrong is the same as being lost.
If the composer came to ask himself what precisely the structure of the work he wishes to compose is based on, most of the time he would be very hard put to find an answer. Over and above school formulae, on the one hand, and skill in manipulating the Western orchestra, on the other, he is, generally speaking, attempting an experiment just to hear. Furthermore, we must clarify the meaning of the expression structure of the work. Normally it denotes the relationships between the parts and the schema for the general layout. We have said again and again that we did not wish to tackle the problem of music at this level while the problem of the object had not been discussed.
In effect, every macrostructure implies a choice of basic materials and structures, that is, the functions of these objects. In traditional music these materials are the notes of the orchestra; their values, already categorized, guarantee their functions in more highly organized structures. These structures are themselves conditioned by reference structures. Not so long ago this was the scale and its tonal interactions. In atonal music it is the atonal series with its directions for use. In a music that is no longer atonal, that itself rejects the permutation of the twelve sounds, what is it? Various suggestions are put forward: repetitions, series, if it is still a logical music. If it is an aleatoric music, it will be distributions: clouds of notes, velocities of glissandi, and so forth. So in all this must we infer pitches, which our composers happily combine with precisely determined durations and intensities?
The question this raises is very disturbing. Are those pitches, those durations and those intensities we see notated on the score, structural elements or simply reference points? Are the suggested arrangements of them manufacturing techniques or structures perceived or perceptible in reality? Do we, as in the past, group orchestral notes in sequences or in separate chords? Or do we assemble them and weld them into macrostructures, which are new objects and must be heard as units? Finally, if it is the case that pitches are still perceived, what precisely is their role? If they are no longer perceived because they are so convoluted or so close together, or because of their accumulation or their variations, and so forth, what do we perceive? What is this music made of, and through what do we ultimately hear it? This is the aim of the music theory, before any notation.
The wildest, as well as the most calculated, works of contemporary music ultimately raise the same question as the one we are discussing with regard to the generality of musical objects, and the two approaches are two sides of the same coin. It would be just as much a mistake to believe that we can discover music by simply analyzing collections of sounds as it would be to believe that we can go on composing with an inadequate music theory. Describing materials and then experimenting on ways of assembling them in studies with objects must come before the discovery of new forms of music.
For those who are not convinced of this, we have only to look for a moment at the adventure of modern architecture. Architecture, just as much as language, could have been our model. Here we are not talking about some “slab of sensation,” a piece of sound cut out of its three dimensions of time, frequencies, and amplitude.1 It is a far cry from an object in space, with three homogeneous dimensions, an object of our vision, to an object with three heterogeneous dimensions, an object of our hearing. What is more likely to justify the instinctive parallel that we are tempted to draw between architecture and music is the very powerful and probably reasonable feeling that in architecture as in music there is an appropriateness of the material to the way it is organized—in other words, that the microstructure informs the macrostructure.
It is not so much a question of the physical makeup of construction materials. It is already more to do with their function in an assemblage, their formal role. Indeed, the architect must certainly continue with his own struggles between the visual forms he provides and the network of forces to which they owe their existence. Everyone has his own problems at this level: phonetic materials for the linguist, sound materials for the musician; everyone comes up against the resistance of the material, and it is here that drawing parallels, so often attempted, so often tempting, is ultimately so deceptive. If we recall the apparently theoretical distinction between the perception of structures and perceptual structures, we will hold the key to these comparisons: it is pointless to compare the objects of perception themselves, such different, always original, human ways of taking hold of various aspects of the world; but where the parallel remains valid is where we compare man’s methods of classifying, assembling, giving meaning to these objects.
Thus, when we admire the fact that brick leads on to brickwork, dressed stone to intrados, and prestressed concrete makes possible the towering heights of paraboloids, we are admiring two things at once and rediscovering the subtle and often irritating point of intersection between what we usually call matter and spirit. If we operate with the same ease in this field of objects for seeing, constructing, and hearing, it is because our inner workings are the same. Everything—words, bricks, notes—then takes on structure, following the same chain of relationships discussed in chapter 16. We should therefore not be surprised by the connections that can be made quite naturally among these domains. We sum these up by saying that a work of architecture is informed by its material just as a piece of music is. But the diversity of architectural materials has brought this phenomenon much more to the forefront. Music, which is also language, ultimately endeavors to conceal the disparity of its own materials. This is probably where the interest of comparison lies, in establishing this gradation: language rejects its material once it has been used; architecture lives in it; music forgets some of it, retains some. It is speaking architecture.
This comparison with music’s two neighbors is therefore only fruitful in relation to the activities of the individual and not the properties of the materials. This is what corroborates our method of approach to a music theory.
Contrary to the precepts of the good Danhauser,2 we have no intention of basing it on a particular physical property of sound, any more than a particular physical property of the ear. We have to be realistic (i.e., indeterminist) from the point of view of both the object to be heard and the structures through which it will be heard. Without going back over the reasoning in book 4, we will simply apply Qthe conclusions of its final chapter—we will therefore refer to figure 24 in chapter 21—bringing a new descriptive approach to them.
Since, as we have said, figure 24 sums up four structuring procedures going step by step from the most general sound to what is most universally musical, we will of course find there the four musicianship procedures with a preliminary stage and a conclusion.
We will summarize them in turn before discussing them in the sections below.
(a) Preliminary stage (sectors I and II). We experiment on very diverse sounding bodies to discover many different factures. We record them and (except for the label, which is very useful later) we forget all about the origins of these sounds.
(b) First procedure: typology (sector 2). We identify sound objects in any sound context, and independently of their sources, using the articulation-stress rule. In addition, owing to the presence of criteria that are already morphological, we sort through the objects, enabling us to determine their type.
(c) Second procedure: morphology (sector 3). Once the sound objects are identified and classified through typology, we compare their contexture. This amounts to both identifying component sound criteria and describing the sound objects as structures of these criteria. The perceptual rule used is the form-matter pair. It allows us to determine the class of the object in relation to any one of its morphological criteria.
(d) Third procedure: characterology (sectors I and II, again). Before going on to the scope of the criteria, we should point out that in reality no sound comes from just one of them. In order not to cover up this important aspect of the experiment and to make clear both the ill-assorted nature of other criteria and the combinations formed by groups of some of them, we have to go back to the specific nature of the sounds on which we are experimenting. This return to the concrete aspect of sound tells us the genre of the sound we are dealing with in relation to the sound bodies in sector I and the factures in sector II. But whereas in traditional music these references were causal, here they are only indicative, labeling the causality of the sounds whose character we are about to analyze.
(e) Fourth procedure: musical analysis (sector 4). In the knowledge that the experiment will always be clogged up with disparate, undesirable criteria, we must go on to compare and contrast criteria-bearing objects with the aim of using these to explore the properties of the perceptual field. As in theory these objects have been identified at the morphological stage, this will involve evaluating the site and caliber of a particular criterion—that is, the structures in the perceptual field that could lend themselves to ordinal or cardinal calibrations.
(f) Epilogue—Synthesis of musical structures: Music theory and instrumentarium in sector I. We will now compare these last two procedures: on the one hand, we know the character of the sounds and what sources produce them; on the other hand, we have deciphered the perceptual structures for the criteria despite the disparity of the other criteria. So all that remains to be done is to make syntheses, the aim of which is consistently to draw out a particular music from a particular instrumentarium or, again, to link a theory of musical structures to a practice in timbres and registers. Here we are no longer dealing with instrumental variations in the traditional orchestra, which all more or less conform to the timbre-pitch relationship; the question is to make a particular sort of music based on a fundamental relationship correlate with a particular sort of instrumental means (tablature). Our desire to mix everything together, different means and disparate musics, comes from a wish to aim for a generalized, polymorphic music.
We do not have the ambition to take the reader all the way. Just as we have been reserved about the preliminary stages, so we will be about the epilogue. It is already important that we have caught a glimpse of it. We do not at present have enough results to be sure about anything concerning possible or desirable syntheses.
We should say finally that even if this treatise seems to be borne out by experimental results where sound is concerned, what it is attempting to achieve musically is still only a rough draft. In other words, even if the conclusions of the first two procedures can be presented with confidence, the aims of the next two are presented much more at the stage of working hypotheses. We do not think we need to apologize for this. It will take decades or centuries. . . . The important thing for other researchers is to have the benefit of a method.
We notice that we have transformed the most concrete section, where there were only specific sounds, into an extremely abstract classification system. In fact, except for the two typological classification criteria we do not need to know anything else about these sounds. The only pertinent or distinctive identification features at this level are sustainment and intonation.
We did, however, go a little further. At the level of typology we not only separated objects out, but we categorized them using a method of classification for which we retained important, already morphological, criteria. So it will be no surprise that when describing objects we must state their type.
These were briefly mentioned in chapter 22, insofar as these concepts were already going to play a part in typology: criteria of matter (section 22.8), form and sustainment (section 22.9), and development (section 22.10). In the last section we pointed out the difficulty of studying evolving sounds, which do not at all lend themselves to an analysis based on matter and form and which, in any case, it would be wishful thinking to try to describe using the combination of criteria that emerge from a study of deponent sounds.
This difficulty will continue to weigh on the whole of the music theory, just as it has influenced the evolution of all music; thus, the traditional system manifestly tends to eliminate these criteria, which resist all classification. How can we who reject such convenient solutions classify them without falling back into the error of the mathematicians of music, who with no compunction lump together now elementary stimuli, now formal values?
The reader will allow that our position is more subtle:
• By taking deponent examples chosen from a sufficiently large range of sounds, we are already considerably extending a mode of description that until now was reduced to identifying physical parameters or the three values recognized by the conservatories.
• While mentally recombining certain fundamental criteria, we keep constantly in mind that this synthesis will be valid only after it has been verified. This is probably the case with the slowly evolving sounds mentioned in chapter 14.
• Then, considering the criteria either as they have been recombined into characteristics or through testing them in the perceptual field against disparate criteria, we consistently call on a specific musical and sound experience, which alone will have the last word.
Finally, by keeping the aim to create syntheses as an “epilogue,” we are showing that nothing in the absolute can be deduced from the analytical approach; it merely gives the elements for a prognosis.
With these reservations made and kept in mind, the way is now clear for us to draw out the main morphological criteria for a music theory of extreme examples.
(a) Criterion of matter: mass.
Formless sounds, which remain the same from one end of their duration to the other, have no dynamics and no variation of matter (X or Hx sounds on fig. 34). Clearly, for the study of such sounds, which exclude all sorts of other musical values or characteristics, we will refer to the criteria of mass (and grain).
(b) Criterion of form.
As soon as we move on to sounds that have a form in duration, we are immediately dealing with a far greater number of objects. We could initially limit ourselves to the forms of the masses that remain relatively fixed in the tessitura—that is, a study of the criterion of dynamic forms (including the study of allure).
(c) Criterion of sustainment.
Sustainment links form and matter at every moment. It gives the object original features: grain and allure, which could just as well be perceived as criteria of matter and form respectively.
(d) Criterion of variation.
Overall, musical objects may present variations of the above criteria, in particular a variation of mass in the tessitura, most often in association with a dynamic form.
The next step, therefore, in light of these essential morphological criteria, is to attempt the following sequence, which prefigures the sequence in the next chapters:
(a) Theory of homogeneous sounds, analyzed through the criterion of mass (chap. 30).
(b) Theory of sounds with fixed mass, but which have a form that comes under a dynamic criterion (chap. 31).
(c) Theory of sustainment, that is, the features that link form and matter: criterion of grain and allure (chap. 32).
(d) Theory of sounds that do not fit into the preceding simplified categories (a) and (b), through a specific study of the criteria of variation (chap. 33).
(e) Recapitulation of findings and examination of criteria applicable to the analysis of the musical object in its most general form (chap. 34).
We still need to clarify our definition of criterion, since until now we have relied on examples and comparisons to explain this term.
We should start by making clear that these criteria are properties of the perceived sound object, the correlate of reduced listening, and not measurable properties of physical sound. Our experiments on the perception of pitch compared to frequencies, duration compared to time, and intensities in contrast with levels are enough to remind us that these two domains must not be confused.3
It should also be noted that some of the criteria we have defined do not correspond to any simple acoustic parameter: this is the case with grain, thickness, volume, and allure, which, however, it is easy to isolate and bring to the attention of a listener. We must give these a place in the theory: an acoulogy, which must not be confused with the study of the physical object or of the pertinent features of conventional musical structures.
We will now focus on this latter distinction between criterion and value.
Values, as we have seen, are immediately obvious to the musical mind, to the point of appearing as absolute properties of objects. In reality they only appear as such if certain conditions are fulfilled, that is, if the objects are part of a musical structure, which itself presupposes permanence of characteristics between comparable objects, as well as differentiation of values. Conversely, criteria seem to be apparent only after a whole labor of abstraction and when attention is deliberately turned toward a particular quality of the object that would otherwise not have been immediately obvious to perception. The mind and the memory are therefore necessary to identify the same property in very different contexts.
Is this contrast clear-cut, however? Surely the fact that a criterion can be identified in different sound contexts implies a permanence-variation dialectic comparable to the one that gives rise to values? Our sample of grains goes from the coarse to the velvety; our sounds are more or less thick, our allures more or less close together. And more naturally still, surely it is the variation of a criterion occurring in the duration of a single object that guides us in our perception of it? Will grain dominate from one end of a sound to the other? Will that allure be maintained, or will it relax? That thickness become wider or narrower?
At this point we come back to a mode of perception that is still analytical but just as spontaneous as in classical structures. This is hardly surprising: we have already pointed out that an isolated object can be analyzed in contexture. Then it forms a microstructure, which has its own unity, its own continuity, and its own time envelope, and it is in relation to this structure that criteria are then identified, just as values were earlier in relation to the context of a group of objects.
Even if these criteria, which vary in the course of the duration of an object, rarely appear in traditional music, they are just as much part of it.
In what space do they vary? Within the dimensions of a perceptual field, the seat of the musical mind, which we have mentioned several times and which it is now time to explain.
We return to the paradox of the invariant mentioned in section 21.7. Listen to an object as classical as a fairly slow violin glissando. What is the dominant criterion at every moment of the sound? Pitch. What varies? Pitch again. Within what space does it vary? In the pitch field. These are the two meanings defined in section 21.14: pitch as the criterion that describes a sound and pitch as a dimension of the sound field. Surely this example would be disturbing only if it were the only one. In that case people would thank us for sparing them a concept, rather than complicating things. But the same is true of a profile and for the rhythm of the pulsations in a grain or an allure. The loudness of a sound, the criterion of intensity, evolves in the dynamic field, just as a grain or an allure, which are modulations of duration, can evolve in duration. So here we have three uncouplings of the qualities of sound, depending on whether they are present as an identification criterion or a dimension of the variation of the sound. But there are more complex criteria where the distinction will stand out even more. A thick sound does, indeed, present a distinct criterion—that is, the perception of an original quality so independent of the criterion of pitch that it is precisely the criterion of thickness that prevents the sound being heard as tonic. But then if we manage to describe the thickness (which is by no means certain), surely it will be referred back to the pitch field? If the thickness becomes wider or narrower in duration, or if it remains the same and evolves toward the low or high register, surely we will still be obliged to situate its variation in the pitch field?
So we can see two ways of comparing and contrasting criteria, depending on whether the experiment will be done in the discontinuity of a context or the continuity of a contexture—that is, whether the criteria are artificially put into a structure or naturally form a structure.
(a) Structure of calibrations of criteria in the field of discrete sound objects
Comparing the different states of the same criterion in various objects, we try to make “experimental reels” that may lead to calibrations. We would then be tempted to say that we are returning to the values-characteristics formula, where the criterion does, indeed, play the part of shared characteristic and where its different modules illustrate the values it takes on. We have just seen the difference. It is in one sense a musical structure, but it is one that is no longer spontaneously perceived; this structure is observed deliberately for the purposes of analysis, valid for an acoulogy but not transferable into music as it stands. The “module-criterion” relationship is therefore infinitely more fragile and unstable than the value-characteristic formula. Conversely, values, like characteristics, are not “acoulogically” simple: they are musically balanced “bundles of criteria.”
(b) Perception of a criterion varying in the contexture of a single object
This involves a listening mode that is less artificial, although still part of an analytical description. But it is only valid for varying criteria. If this is not the case, the comparison of different states of a criterion can only be made as above.
In conclusion, it seems to us to be possible, ultimately, to link together the two sorts of results. Then we discover seven main criteria that differ in their variants of class and type. Opposite them, giving them a field of variation, it seems to us that there are only three musical dimensions, which once more must not be confused with acoustic parameters. We cannot, however, deny the very strong correlation between the perceptual field and the physical dimensions of sound, in other words, the objective powers of the ear. Yet we must repeat that the perceptual dimensions, even if they are reduced to the three types of evaluation—pitch, duration, and intensity—do not coincide either fundamentally or numerically with the reference trihedron of acoustics: frequency, time, and level. Finally, we cannot prejudge musical effect by recombining criteria. Music, in its largely unpredictable structures, is ultimately an art of perceiving.
In our eagerness to investigate the sound field, which ultimately brings together all the potentialities of music, we have neglected one of the four procedures involved in the theory defined in section 29.6. We had said, however, that before conducting these two sorts of experiments—perception of a structure of criteria in the discontinuity of a collection of objects and perception of the variations of a criterion in the continuity of a single object—we would first need to know what genre of sound we were dealing with. For the analysis of this field, the field of sector 4, to be carried out under the best conditions, we would, in fact, need a better understanding of what bundles, in real sounds, form the criteria to which the criterion under study belongs; in other words, we would need to know the characterology of the real sounds (sector I). This is far from being the case. The contents of the higher sectors can only develop through a series of approximations. So we can only refer to our practical knowledge of sound bodies (sector I) and factures (sector II) to give a crude description of the links between criteria through what we know about morphologies; thus, an attack, and a continuous sustainment on a particular sound body with known acoustic properties, will unfailingly link the mass of the sound to its sustainment, the dynamic to the melodic profiles, and so forth. Without these reference points our analysis would be unrealistic, as our attempts at abstraction need to rest on a well-stocked sound bank.
After deciding the type and class of the sound with which we are dealing, the theory will therefore concentrate on determining the genre of the sound from the main examples of combined criteria in sound and musical reality. It is only once this third theoretical procedure has been completed that we can move on to evaluating individual species.
With regard to this analysis, in sector 4 we come across the same two questions that were raised in the traditional sector IV about describing values musically. Situating a criterion is one thing, calibrating it quite another.
We have already pointed out the difference between these two sorts of evaluation, one precise, the other vague, rather like the perception of color. The very complex diagram in chapter 34 will summarize these four ways of classifying sounds, by type, class, genre, and species.4
We could indeed find this method austere and ultimately very empirical, since we have already admitted that the sound references we will give illustrate not only genres of sound but also types of factures, classes of criteria, and the way they occur in or can be calibrated into particular species. Yes, but at least we will not be going outside the domain of music as we pursue a more and more rigorous strategy of comparing and contrasting, a structural discipline.
Might there be other, less laborious, more straightforward, ways of tackling the description of sound and the musical? By using analogy, for example, as we do every day to talk about sounds. What do we say, for example, about a voice? That it is “clipped,” “piercing,” “harsh,” “shrill,” “dull,” “drab,” “caustic,” “strained,” “flat,” “metallic.” . . . The adjectives referring to a “vocal color” are a little less trivial: “colorful,” “clear,” “dark,” “monotonous.” . . . Then there are the tautologies: “with tone,” “without tone” . . ., the metaphors: “piping,” “ringing,” “incisive” . . ., images from physics: “warm,” “cold” . . ., from dimensions: “large,” “small,” “tiny,” “thin,” and so on.
In reality, going back to analogy is a sign of defeat. It simply shows our basic inability to describe an object in itself, separate from any structure. If we refuse to refer this sound or that voice to other sound objects, the only solution is to go and find references elsewhere, in other domains of perception or thought: sight, the kinesthetic sense, thought, and so forth. We will not entirely reject this vocabulary, although it is irremediably imprecise. But it is important for us to point out the alternatives: talking indirectly about the sound (analogy); talking about the sound itself, through comparison (collections, structures, calibrations).
We should note in passing that the physicist uses analogy as well. He is quick to talk about the “form,” the “amplitude,” the “height,” the “volume,” the “density” of a sound, ideas that he nevertheless intends to isolate from the object as absolute qualities or quantities. Then he also compares sounds with one another: when he draws curves, when he makes measurements, he also is doing nothing other than forming analytical structures for the purpose of calibrating a perception that has been as simplified as possible. . . . It was perhaps not pointless to remind the reader of this role played by all vocabularies, including the vocabulary of physics: they are simply men of straw.
Finally, in the verbal fireworks display of artistic or scientific analogical words, we can recognize three of our four procedural pathways:
1. We do not, of course, find typological terms, which involve a quite artificial abstraction of sound. But we have ourselves chosen analogical terms for abstract concepts: cell, sample, accumulation, and so forth.
2. Round, sharp, large, small, tiny, thin are all morphological terms, as are tense and flat. They denote forms just as much as “factures,” specified as incisive, stressed, piercing, and so on.
3. Metallic, ringing, shrill, like the tautology “tone-toneless,” suggest genres of sound, emphasizing the allusion to instruments.
4. Light and dark, like warm and cold, are of course analogies that, as in sector 4, find an equivalent to musical dimensions in the registers of color or temperature. In the same way, physicists’ height and level are also spatial analogies; intensity and strength kinesthetic analogies.
The difficulties we have in agreeing on a metalanguage are not confined to us. They apparently occur in all fundamental research. Therefore, the words we choose will not be more important than the symbols of traditional theory: what counts is not so much the contents of each word as the experiential field it delineates in relation to other words. This vocabulary is a mode of classification, and its only aim is to guide particular types of comparisons between musical objects, possibly to give rise to others. Its relevance will not be judged through reading or ideological dissension but through listening. The words in every theory are checks, which only our experience of sounds can fund.