deleuze gilles boulez proust and time occupying without counting

Angelaki: journal of the theoretical humanities 3:2 1998

boulez/deleuze: a relay of musicand philosophy

Timothy S. Murphy

During the night of 4 November 1995, GillesDeleuze leaped to his death from a window of hisapartment in the seventeenth arrondissement ofParis. He had been very ill for several years, butonly within the previous year had he been ren-dered truly "immobile," that is, unable to seefriends or to write. In the days following hisdeath, his friends and colleagues, including Jean-Franpois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Jean-LucNancy and Giorgio Agamben, wrote movinghomages to him and his thought. On the eveningsof 19 and 20 January 1996, Pierre Boulez con-ducted the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in aconcert "en hommage a Gilles Deleuze" whichincluded works by Stravinsky, Mahler, Bartokand Boulez himself. In the notes to that program,Boulez wrote these words:

Gilles Deleuze is one of the very rare intellec-tuals who are profoundly interested in music.In 1978, he participated with Roland Barthesand Michel Foucault in a seminar organizedby IRCAM on musical time, while he washimself engaged in the writing of AThousand Plateaus. In a brilliant presenta-tion he showed the acute and perspicaciousmanner in which he grasped the problems ofmusical composition and perception. Inremembrance of this striking encounter, butalso in homage to his thought - which hasmade many other territories fruitful - we ded-icate this concert to him, our "errant com-panion" of many years.

Boulez's concluding turn of phrase is not mererhetorical embellishment. His path and Deleuze'scrossed many times during the Seventies andEighties, not only at the IRCAM seminar but alsoat the funeral of their mutual friend Foucault inJune 1984 (where they were photographedtogether by Liberation).

Deleuze refers to Boulez often in his worksfrom 1977 onward, particularly in A ThousandPlateaus and The Fold. In those texts as well asin the essay that follows, Deleuze borrows and

gilles deleuze

BOULEZ, PROUSTAND TIME"occupying without counting"

extends Boulez's concepts of smooth and striatedspace-time, relaying them through his own phi-losophy. Boulez acknowledged this relay processin an interview:

I myself am not educated in philosophy, but Ihave forced myself to reflect upon composi-tional practice, and I have tried to arrive at aformulation of my ideas that is general enoughto be accessible to others. What I wrote, forexample, about the time of Wagner interestedDeleuze; in this way my reflections could serveas a point of departure for a philosophicalreflection.!

The following essay, "Boulez, Proust and Time:'Occupying Without Counting,"' demonstratesDeleuze's interest in Boulez's writing and music,and takes both as points of departure for a burstof philosophical creation that should itself becalled a composition rather than a reflection.Deleuze's essay first appeared in Eclats I Boulez, avolume edited by Claude Samuel and publishedby the Editions du Centre Pompidou in 1986. It

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occupying without counting

is translated and published here by permission ofMadame Fanny Deleuze. Daniel W. Smith pro-vided much-needed advice on the translationitself, but any infelicities that remain are mine.

boulez, proust and time: "occupyingwithout counting"

Gilles Deleuze

Boulez has often posed the problem of hisrelationships with writers and poets:

Michaux, Char, Mallarme... If it is true that thecut [coupure] is not the opposite of continuity, ifthe continuous is defined by the cut, one couldsay that the same gesture constructs the continu-ity of the literary text and the musical text, andmakes the cuts pass between them. There is nogeneral solution: in each case, the relations mustbe measured according to variable and oftenirregular measures. But Boulez maintains a whol-ly other relationship with Proust. Not a moreprofound relationship, but one of another nature,a tacit, implicit relationship (even if he often citesProust in his writings). It is as if he knew him by"heart," by will and by chance.2 Boulez hasdefined a great alternative: counting in order tooccupy space-time, or occupying without count-ing.3 Measuring in order to effect relations, orfilling relations without measure. Isn't his link toProust precisely of this second type: haunting orbeing haunted ("what do you want of me?"4),occupying or being occupied without counting,without measure?

The first thing that Boulez seizes upon inProust is the manner in which noises and soundsdetach themselves from the characters, places andnames to which they are first attached in order toform autonomous "motives" that ceaselessly trans-form themselves in time, diminishing or augment-ing, adding or subtracting, varying their speed andtheir slowness. The motive was first associatedwith a landscape or a person, somewhat like a plac-ard, but it now becomes the sole landscape,though a varied one, the sole character, though achanging one.. Proust is compelled to invokeVinteuil's little phrase and music in order to

account for this alchemy, present throughout theSearch,5 and thereby to pay homage to Wagner(even if Vinteuil is assumed to be very differentfrom Wagner). Boulez in turn pays homage toProust for having understood in a profound man-ner the autonomous life of the Wagnerian motive,as it passes through variable speeds, movesthrough free accidentals [alterations], enters intoa continuous variation which assumes a new formof time for "musical entities."^ Proust's entirework is constructed in this manner: successiveloves, jealousies, periods of sleep, etc., detachthemselves so fully from the characters that theythemselves become infinitely changing characters,individuations without identity, Jealousy I,Jealousy II, Jealousy III... Such a variable, whichis developed in the autonomous dimension oftime, will be called a "block of duration," a "cease-lessly varying sonorous block." And theautonomous dimension, which is not pre-existent,and is drawn at the same time as the block varies,is called a diagonal in order to better mark thefact that it is reducible neither to the harmonicvertical nor to the melodic horizontal as pre-exis-tent coordinates.7 Does not the musical act parexcellence, according to Boulez, consist in drawingthe diagonal, each time in different conditions,from polyphonic combinations, passing throughBeethoven's resolutions and Wagner's fusions ofharmony and melody to Webern, abolishing everyfrontier between the horizontal and the vertical,producing sonorous blocks in series, moving themon a diagonal as a unique temporal function thatdistributes the whole work?* In each case the diag-onal is like a vector-block of harmony and melody,a function of temporalization. And the musicalcomposition of the Search, according to Proust,appears in this way: constantly changing blocks ofduration, with variable speed and in free alter-ation, on a diagonal that constitutes the only unityof the work, the transversal of all the parts. Theunity of the trip will be neither in the verticalviews of the landscape, which are like harmoniccadences, nor in the melodic line of the route, butin the diagonal, "from one window to the other,"which allows the succession of points seen and themovement of point of view to dissolve in a blockof transformation or duration.9

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The blocks of duration, however, because theypass through speeds and slownesses, augmenta-tions and diminutions, additions and subtrac-tions, are inseparable from metric and chrono-metric relations which define divisibilities, com-mensurabilities, and proportionalities: "pulse" isa least common multiple (or a simple multiple),and "tempo" is the inscription of a certain num-ber of units in a determined time. This is a stri-ated space-time, a pulsed time, inasmuch as thecuts in it are determinable, that is to say of arational type (first aspect of the continuous), andthe measures, whether regular or not, are deter-mined as magnitudes between-cuts. The blocks ofduration thus follow a striated space-time inwhich they trace their diagonals according to thespeed of their pulses and the variation of theirmeasures. But from the striated a smooth or non-pulsed space-time detaches itself in turn, onewhich no longer refers to chronometry except ina global fashion: the cuts in it are undetermined,of an irrational type, and measures are replacedby undecomposable distances and proximitieswhich express the density or rarefaction of whatappears in them (statistical distribution [reparti-tion] of events). An index of occupation replacesthe index of speed.l" It is here that one occupieswithout counting, instead of counting in order tooccupy. Can we not reserve Boulez's term, "timebubbles," for this new figure, distinct from theblocks of duration?!! Number has not disap-peared, but has become independent of metricand chronometric relations, it has become cipher,numbering number, nomad or Mallarmean num-ber, musical Nomos and no longer measure, andinstead of dividing up [repartir] a closed space-time in view of the elements which make up ablock, on the contrary it distributes in an openspace-time the elements circumscribed in a bub-ble. It's like the passage from one temporaliza-tion to another: no longer a Series of time, but anOrder of time. This great Boulezian distinction,the striated and the smooth, is less valuable as aseparation than it is as a perpetual communica-tion: there is an alternation and superposition ofthe two space-times, an exchange between thetwo functions of temporalization, if only in thesense that a homogeneous distribution [reparti-

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gilles deleuze

tion] in a striated time gives the impression of asmooth time, while a very unequal distribution insmooth time introduces directions which evoke astriated time by the densification or accumula-tion of proximities. If we recapitulate the set ofdifferences enunciated by Proust betweenVinteuil's sonata and septet, it would containthose which distinguish a closed plane from anopen space, a block from a bubble (the septet isbathed in a violet mist which makes a rondoappear as if "inside an opal") ,12 as well as thosewhich relate the little phrase of the sonata to anindex of speed, while the phrases of the septetrefer to indices of occupation. But more general-ly, each theme, each character in the Search issystematically susceptible to a double exposition:the first, as a "box" out of which one draws allsorts of variations of speed and alteration of qual-ity, following epochs and hours (chronometry);the second, as a nebula or multiplicity, which hasno more than degrees of density and rarefaction,following a statistical distribution (even the two"ways," Meseglise and Guermantes, are present-ed then as two statistical directions). Albertine isboth at once, sometimes striated and sometimessmooth, sometimes a block of transformation,sometimes a nebula of diffusion, but followingtwo distinct temporalizations. And the wholeSearch must be read smoothly and striatedly, adouble reading in accordance with Boulez's dis-tinction.

The theme of memory then appears secondaryin relation to these more profound motives.Boulez is able to take up Stravinsky's "praise ofamnesia" or Desormiere's phrase "I hate remem-bering" without ceasing to be Proustian in hisown manner.13 According to Proust, even invol-untary memory occupies a very restricted zone,which art exceeds on all sides, and which has onlya conductive role. The problem of art, the cor-relative problem to creation, is that of perceptionand not memory: music is pure presence, andclaims to enlarge perception to the limits of theuniverse. Such an enlarged perception is thefinality of art (or of philosophy, according toBergson). But such a goal can be attained only ifperception breaks with the identity to whichmemory rivets it. Music has always had this



object: individuations without identity, whichconstitute "musical entities." And no doubt, thetonal language restored a specific principle ofidentity with the octave or with first-degree har-mony. But the system of blocks and bubblesimplies a generalized refusal of every identityprinciple in the variations and distributionswhich define it.14 The problem of perceptionconsequently redoubled: how does one perceivethese individuals whose variation is incessant andwhose speed is unanalysable, or better yet, whichescape every point of reference in a smoothmilieu?15 The ciphers or numbering numbers,escaping from pulsation as well as from metricrelations, do not appear as such in the sonorousphenomenon, although they engender real phe-nomena, but phenomena that are without identi-ty. Could this imperceptible element, these holesin perception be filled up by writing, and the earbe relayed by a reading eye functioning as "mem-ory"? But the problem rebounds again, for howcan one perceive writing "without the obligationto comprehend it"? Boulez will find the answerby defining a third milieu, a third space-timeadjacent to those of the smooth and the striated,charged with making writing perceptible: the uni-verse of Fixed Elements [Fizes], which workssometimes by an astonishing simplification, as inWagner or in Webern's three-note figure, some-times by suspension, as in Berg's twelve beats,sometimes by an unusual accentuation, as inBeethoven or Webern again, and which is pre-sented in the manner of a gesture leveling out theformal structure, or an envelope isolating a groupof constitutive elements. The relation ofenvelopes among themselves creates the richnessof perception and awakens sensibility and mem-ory .16 In Vinteuil's little phrase, the high noteheld for two measures, "stretched like a curtainof sound to veil the mystery of its incubation,"17

is a privileged example of a Fixed Element. Withregard to the septet, Mademoiselle Vinteuil'sfriend had need of fixed points of reference inorder to write the work.18 Clearly the role ofinvoluntary memory in Proust is to constituteenvelopes of fixed elements.

One should not think that involuntary memo-ry or fixed elements re-establish a principle of

identity. Proust, like Joyce or Faulkner, is one ofthose authors who dismiss every principle ofidentity in literature. Even in repetition, thefixed element is not defined by the identity of anelement that is repeated, but by a quality com-mon to the elements which could not be repeat-ed without it (for example, the famous flavorcommon to two moments, or a common pitch inmusic...). The fixed element is not the Same, anddoes not discover an identity beneath the varia-tion, quite the opposite. It will allow one to iden-tify the variation, which is to say the individua-tion without identity. This is how it enlarges per-ception: it renders perceptible the variations inthe striated milieu, and the distributions in thesmooth milieu. Far from leading the differentback to the Same, it allows one to identify the dif-ferent as such: thus in Proust, the flavor as qual-ity common to two moments identifies Combrayas always different from itself.19 In music as wellas in literature, the functional game of repetitionand difference has replaced the organic game ofthe identical and the varied. This is why the fixedelements do not imply any permanence, butrather instantaneize [instantaneisent] the varia-tion or dissemination that they force us to per-ceive. And even the envelopes continuouslymaintain a "moving relation" among themselves,within a single work, or in the same block, in thesame bubble.

To enlarge perception means to render sensi-ble, sonorous (or visible), those forces that areordinarily imperceptible. No doubt these forcesare not necessarily time, but they are intertwinedand united with those of time. "Time, which isnot usually visible..." We perceive easily andsometimes painfully what is in time, we perceivealso the form, unities and relations of chronome-try, but not time as force, time itself, "a littletime in the pure state."20 To make sound themedium which renders time sensible, theNumbers of time perceptible, to organize mater-ial in order to capture the forces of time and ren-der it sonorous: this is Messiaen's project, takenup again by Boulez in new conditions (in partic-ular, serial ones). But in certain respects Boulez'smusical conditions echo the literary conditions ofProust: rendering sonorous the mute force of

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time. It is by developing functions of temporal-ization that are exerted on sonorous material thatthe musician captures and renders sensible theforces of time. The forces of time and the func-tions of temporalization unite to constitute theAspects of implicated time. In Boulez as inProust, these aspects are multiple, and cannotsimply be reduced to the opposition "lost-regained." There is lost time, which is not a nega-tion but a full function of time: in Boulez, thiswould be the pulverization of sound, or its extinc-tion, which is a matter of timbre, the extinctionof timbres, in the sense that timbre is like love,and repeats its own end rather than its origin.Then there is "time re-explored [le temps re-cher-che],n the constitution of blocks of duration,their progression in the diagonal: these are not(harmonic) chords, but veritable hand-to-hand,often rhythmic, sonorous and vocal holds inwhich one of the wrestlers prevails over theother, each in turn, as in Vinteuil's music; this isthe striated force of time. And then there is timeregained, time identified, but in the next instantit is the "gesture" of time or the envelope offixed elements. Finally, "the time of Utopia,"Boulez says in homage to Messiaen: it finds itselfafter having penetrated the secret of Ciphers,haunted the giant time bubbles, confronted thesmooth - by discovering, following Proust'sanalysis, that men occupy "in time ... a very con-siderable place compared with the restricted onewhich is allotted to them in space" (or ratherwhich belongs to them when they count), "aplace on the contrary prolonged past mea-sure... '^ In his encounter with Proust, Boulezcreates a set of fundamental philosoph-ical concepts which arise from his ownmusical work.

Translated by Timothy S. Murphy

notes1 Boulez, "From the Domaine Musical to IRCAM:

Pierre Boulez in Conversation with Pierre-Michel

Menger" in Perspectives of New Music 28.1 (winter

1990): 9. Translated by Jonathan W. Bernard. This

interview originally appeared in Le Débat 50 (Aug.

1988): 257-66.

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gilles deleuze

2 [Translator's Note] Par vo/onté et par hasard [by

will and by chance] is the French title of Célestin

Deliège's volume of interviews with Boulez (Paris:

Seuil, 1975), translated into English as Pierre Boulez:

Conversations with Cékstin Deliège (London:

Eulenberg, 1976).

3 Boulez, Boulez on Music Today (London: Faber,

1971) 94. Translated by Susan Bradshaw and

Richard Rodney Bennett.

4 [TN] "Sonate, que me veux-tu?" [Sonata, what

do you want of me?] is the title of Boulez's exege-

sis of his Third Piano Sonata in Points de repère

(Paris: Bourgois, 1981, 1985); it is translated by

Martin Cooper in Boulez, Orientations (Cambridge:

Harvard UP, 1986) 143-54.

5 [TN] In this translation I follow Richard

Howard's lead (in his translation of Deleuze's

Proust and Signs [New York: Braziller, 1972] In.) in

rendering the title of Proust's work as In Search of

Lost Time, rather than Remembrance of Things Past.

Happily, the Modern Library, publishers of the

standard English translation of Proust, have recent-

ly followed suit, though I continue to cite the earli-

er version of their translation in this translation.

6 Boulez, "Time Re-Explored [Le Temps re-cher-

ché]" in Orientations 260-77 (specifically, 269).

7 On the diagonal and the block, see the articles

"Counterpoint" and "Webern" in Boulez's

Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship (Oxford:

Clarendon, 1991). Also Boulez on Music Today 119,

55 ("a block of duration will thus have been

formed, and a diagonal dimension will have been

introduced, which cannot be confused with either

the vertical or the horizontal dimensions"), and

Orientations 151.

8 On Wagner, Orientations 266-69. On Webern,

Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship 297, 300-01.

9 The unity of the Search is always presented as a

diagonal. Cf. Proust, Remembrance of Things Past [A

la recherche du temps perdu], vol. 1 (New York:

Modern Library, 1981) 704. Translated by C.K.

Scott Moncrieff with Terence Kilmartin.

10 On cuts, the striated and the smooth, see

Boufez on Music Today 84-95. It seems to us that,



on the one hand, the distinction between irra-

tional and rational cuts according to Dedekind

and, on the other hand, the distinction between

distances and magnitudes according to Russell

agree with the difference between the smooth and

the striated according to Boulez.

11 [TN] Boulez, Boulez on Music Today 58.

12 [TN] Proust, vol. Ill, 261; the sonata and septet

are contrasted on 250-67.

13 [TN] Deleuze is alluding in both cases to essays

by Boulez on musicians who influenced him:

"Stravinsky: Style or Idea? — In Praise of Amnesia"

and "Roger Désormière: 'I Hate Remembering,'"

both of which appear in Orientations.

14 Boulez on Music Today 46: "In the serial system,

on the other hand, no function appears identical

from one series to another... an object composed

of the same absolute elements can, through the

evolution of their placing, assume different func-

tions."

15 Boulez on Music Today 42-43, 85; "where parti-

tion [coupure] can be effected at will, the ear will

lose all landmarks and all absolute cognizance of

intervals; this is comparable to the eye's inability

to estimate distances on a perfectly smooth sur-

face" (85).

16 Cf. the essential article "L'écriture du musicien:

le regard du sourd?" in Critique 408 (mai 1981).

And on markers in Wagner, Orientations 271 ("sta-

bilizing elements").

17 [TN] Proust, vol. l, 230.

18 [TN] Proust, vol. lll, 263-65.

19 [TN] Proust, vol. l, 50-51.

20 [TN] Proust, vol. Ill, 905 (trans, modified).

21 Proust, vol. Ill, 1107 (trans, modified). Proust

establishes an explicit distinction between this

aspect of time and time regained, which is anoth-

er aspect. (On "utopia," Messiaen and Boulez, cf.

Orientations 411-17.)

Dr Timothy S. MurphyDepartment of EnglishUniversity of Oklahoma760 Van Vleet Oval, Room 113Norman, OK 73019-0240USAE-mail: [email protected]


deleuze gilles boulez proust and time occupying without counting

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