Continuity and discontinuity in Claude Debussy’s music: Two perspectives on listening attention proposed by Vladimir Jankélévitch

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Continuity and discontinuity in Claude Debussy’s

music: Two perspectives on listening attention

proposed by Vladimir Jankélévitch

Supervisor: prof. dr. J.J.E. (Julia) Kursell

Second reader: dhr. dr. M. (Maarten) Beirens

Ana Álvarez Calleja

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Abstract

Vladimir Jankélévitch articulates a musical critique on Claude Debussy in Debussy

et le mystère and La vie et la mort dans la musique de Debussy. This thesis studies these

two books to describe Jankélévitch’s idea of listening to Debussy’s music. To begin with, this thesis analyses the listening and discursive influences developed in France between the early and the mid-20th_{century that triggered these writings. To support the analysis of}

Jankélévitch’s writings, the thesis also proposes a musical analysis of Debussy’s work

Reflets dans l’eau. Jankélévitch presents two main ideas in his writings: the symbolic idea

of Debussy’s listening to nature and the idea of variability in the focus extent of an attentive listening. The first idea considers that Debussy’s music was not inspired by his personal feelings, whilst the second entails that the same musical feature is qualified either as continuous or discontinuous. A more outstanding finding is that, in his critique on Debussy, Jankélévitch coins presence-absence, which is studied as a new concept that represents the two previously mentioned ideas.

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Introduction

Vladimir Jankélévitch was a Russian philosopher and musicologist who moved to France in his early life and so his writings are embedded in French scholarship. He wrote critique on different composers’ music between the 1940s and the 1960s although he always avoided commenting on German composers due to his Jewish origins. His philosophy of music, which is concerned with topics such as decadence, death and the moment, was highly influenced by Henri Bergson’s concept of durée.

Jankélévitch’s discourse is an example of critique in French philosophy of music that was developed before 1968. This was a key moment of change in French scholarship. By 1968, Bergson’s philosophy was partially abandoned and Debussy’s studies had just been revisited five years before in the international meeting Debussy et la evolution de la

musique au XXe siècle. This revision included a musicological discourse which presents

symbolist language and musical analyses that consider musical characteristics such as discontinuity in music.1_{Jankélévitch’s discourse also contains symbolist language and}

articulates the concepts of continuity and discontinuity to describe musical features.

1 Édith Weber and Colloques internationaux du Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Sciences humaines, Debussy et l'Évolution de la Musique au XXe Siècle: Paris 24-31 Octobre

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Therefore, Jankélévitch’s texts on Debussy show a general tendency in musicological discourses during the mid-20th_{century in France. Consequently, the study of Jankélévitch’s}

writings on Debussy is relevant because they are an example of the coexistent musicological discourses in France between the 1950s and the 1960s reflecting upon music listening.

This thesis focuses on the study of Jankélévitch’s writings on Debussy, Debussy et

le mystère (1949)2_{and La vie et la mort dans la musique de Debussy (1968)}3_{as primary}

sources to draw Jankélévitch’s music listening perspectives. The meaning of the concepts he articulates in his books in comparison to their meaning in other musicological discourses and the results from a music analysis of Debussy’s work Reflets dans l’eau is determinant to understand his perspective of an attentive music listening.

The thesis is organised in three chapters. The first chapter examines discursive and listening practices that influenced Jankélévitch’s texts. It explores factors that have triggered attentiveness in listening in France since the late 18th_{century and French music}

critique and musicological traditions which articulate the concepts that Jankélévitch applies to describe Debussy’s music. The second chapter focuses on the variability of attentiveness in listening within Jankélévitch’s texts referring to concepts which he presents in relation to music. The third chapter deduces variability of listening attention from an analysis of

Reflets dans l’eau as an example of Debussy’s works. It proposes a new analysis of this

work and compares the results to the relations that Jankélévitch and other scholars’ analyses establish between musical characteristics and the concepts of continuity and discontinuity.

The following texts have been employed to understand the conditions of music listening that influence Jankélévitch’s writings on Debussy. In Listening in Paris, J. H. Johnson explains that attentive listening has been a common practice in France since the late 18th_{century. In addition, Jonathan Crary}4_{in Suspensions of perception: attention,}

spectacle and modern culture and Benjamin Steege in Helmholtz and the modern listener 5

reflect the increase of attentiveness in science and, in particular, in sound sciences. Furthermore, sensation was frequently used for describing musical experiences in

2 Vladimir Jankélévitch, Debussy et le Mystère (Neuchâtel: Baconnière, 1949).

3 Vladimir Jankélévitch, La Vie et la Mort dans la Musique de Debussy (Neuchâtel: Baconnière, 1968).

4 Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999).

5 Benjamin Steege, Helmholtz and the Modern Listener (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

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musicological writings. These three scholars account different meanings of sensation in socio-historical and physiological studies in musicology. For this reason, the meaning of sensation in Jankélévitch’s texts is minimally misleading.

Jankélévitch applies different concepts to describe Claude Debussy’s music such as musical immediacy, discontinuity and presence-absence. Whereas some concepts are encountered in Debussy’s music critique by a group of French critics named Debussyists

such as Pierre Lalo, Louis Laloy and Jean Marnold6_{and in Debussy’s text Monsieur}

Croche Antidilettante,7_{produced in the early 20}th_{century, others appear in music analysis}

that arose in the 1950s. The term of immediacy was articulated in the former whereas continuity and discontinuity appeared in the latter. Contemporary musicological sources analyse these terminological influences on Jankélévitch’s texts. In current musicology, Alexandra Kieffer and Marianne Wheeldon provide a description and analysis of Debussyists’ discourse and the concept of immediacy. They portray a compositional ideal based on listening to nature which symbolically represents an aesthetic conception of composition. In addition, in current research on Debussy, Jann Pasler, Marianne Wheeldon and Keith Waters comment and analyse musical features of Debussy’s music in relation to the concepts discontinuity and continuity. Marianne Wheeldon puts forward an explanation of discontinuity in melodic development in Debussy’s music, whereas, in contrast, Keith Waters defines melodic continuity. These scholars also discuss formal continuity in Debussy’s music and recall Jean Barraqué’s ideas in relation to continuity and discontinuity. He derived these ideas from an analytical study of Debussy’s work. Temporally, Barraqué and Jankélévitch produced their texts in a similar context. In fact, they also propose similar statements in relation to formal discontinuity; however, whereas Barraqué offers a detailed explanation of discontinuous musical features, Jankélévitch describes them superficially. The concepts of continuity and discontinuity will be interpreted according to analytical writings of Barraqué, Waters, Wheeldon and Pasler. Furthermore, Jankélévitch coins a new term in his books which he relates to Debussy’s human agency and to music itself: presence-absence. Julian Johnson and Carolyn Abbate provide an analysis of presence-absence in relation to Debussy’s musical works with text. The interpretation of presence-absence will be particularly supported by a new proposal of analysis of Debussy’s music in chapter III. All in all, the analysis of written sources which

6 Christian Goubault, La Critique Musicale dans la Presse Française de 1870 à 1914 (Genève etc.: Slatkine, 1984).

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articulate the same concepts that appear in Jankélévitch’s texts on Debussy will serve to draw characteristics of Jankélévitch’s listening proposal.

The analysis of Jankélévitch’s text requires the interpretation of concepts according to other discourses and listening practices. This thesis considers the enumerated written sources as the main texts for the analysis of the meaning of the concepts. This is particularly important because Jankélévitch’s discourse applies certain terms to describe Debussy’s music symbolically or metaphorically; that is to say, their significance is not literal but ambiguous to a certain extent. Symbolic terms or ideas use natural objects or facts to indirectly refer to abstract reality. Metaphors do not define music directly, instead they portray musical characteristics using comparisons to other realities. For this reason, observing the articulation of the terms in these written sources is fundamental for the analysis of Jankélévitch’s texts.

Jankélévitch’s critique on Debussy becomes contradictory at certain points because he connects the concept of immediacy and discontinuity. His text not only defines Debussy’s music as continuous or discontinuous but also points out music characteristics such as immediacy and objectivity. Discontinuity concerns a listening to Debussy’s music where sound events are understood as isolated entities. Instead, immediacy and objectivity refer to a characteristic of Debussy’s compositional procedure, implying that he avoids portraying his feelings in music. This occurs due to the fact that Jankélévitch connects ideas from a tradition of thought in music analysis and French music critique on Debussy. He maintains this connection between immediacy and discontinuity until the final part of

La vie et la mort dans la musique de Debussy (1968), where there is a shift on

Jankélévitch’s perspective on Debussy’s music that affords ambiguity in the identification of continuity and discontinuity in musical features. In this shift,8_{Jankélévitch admits that}

musical features can be either continuous or discontinuous depending on the listening perspective. As a result, the incongruence between discontinuity and immediacy disappears because discontinuity becomes ambiguous.

From this thesis, it is deduced that Jankélévitch’s texts suggests two ideas. He openly defends the idea that Debussy listened to nature as a part of his compositional process but the real meaning of this is that his personal feelings do not inspire his music. The other idea supports that listening to Debussy’s music produces two attentive listening perspectives. Depending on the perspective (narrow or wide), musical characteristics are defined as continuous or discontinuous and they present a different degree of presence.

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I. Characteristics of written music critique and music analysis in

France in the 1950s

Jankélévitch was a scholar who wrote philosophical and musicological texts in French scholarship between the late 1930s and the 1980s. The books which will be analysed in this thesis were published after the Second World War. His Russian-Jewish origins entailed the influence of socio-political conditions in his personality and philosophy, which reflects on death and decadence. In addition, the musicological content of his books presents characteristics of musicology in his time. On the one hand, Jankélévitch’s contemporary musicology in France depicted Debussy’s music by using symbolic and metaphorical language. This part of the musicological discourse can be traced back to the first years of the 20th_{century and constituted Debussyism (Debussysme)}

as a critical current. On the other hand, another part of the musicological discourse is influenced by musical analyses developed in the 1950s that identify discontinuity in Debussy’s music. The conference on Debussy organised by the Centre National de

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Recherche Scientifique9_{in October of 1962 exemplifies the coexistence of these discourses}

in French musicology at the time.

In this chapter, I will analyse listening and discursive practices conditioning

Vladimir Jankélévitch’s discourse on Debussy in his books Debussy et le mystère (1949)10

and La vie et la mort dans la musique de Debussy (1968).11_{One of the practices I want to}

look at is attentive music listening, which was a common practice in Jankélévitch’s time in

France. This custom has developed in France since the mid-18th_{century. Furthermore,}

symbolist language and the concept of discontinuity to describe Debussy’s music characterise Jankélévitch’s writing style. Symbolism flourished in France in the early 20th

century, affecting Debussyists’ discourse. Since then, discontinuity has thrived as a concept to describe musical features. The different sections of this chapter examine the characteristics of an attentive listening and Debussyist and music-analytical discourses as influences on Jankélévitch’s writings.

The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section briefly reviews discourses on attentive listening in France and Germany in the 19th_{and 20}th_centuries.

Particularly, it regards how the meaning of sensation varied according to factors that also determined listening. The second section moves on to study Symbolism as a critical current that affected Debussyists’ terminology and the symbolic ideal of listening to nature in music critique. The third section analyses the concepts of continuity and discontinuity articulated to describe musical features in philosophical and music-analytical discourses.

Some of the written sources that portray these listening and discursive conditions

include Claude Debussy’s text Monsieur Croche Antidillettante12_{and some sections of}

Jean Barraqué’s thesis on Debussy’s music (compiled in Écrits13_{and Debussy et la}

evolution de la musique au XXe _siècle14_{). Debussy’s text Monsieur Croche and French}

critique, compiled by Christian Goubault,15_{present symbolic language. In addition, in the}

mid-20th_{century, French composers began applying the concept of discontinuity to their}

writings on music. These composers’ writings include their ideas on composition and also musical analyses of other composers’ works. In particular, Jean Barraqué, who was

9 The conference presentations are collected in Debussy et l’évolution de la musique au XXe siècle as part of Colloques Internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

10 Jankélévitch, Debussy et le Mystère. 11 Jankélévitch, La Vie et la Mort.

12 Debussy, Monsieur Croche, Antidilettante.

13 Jean Barraqué, Écrits (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2001), 603.

14 Weber and Colloques internationaux du CNRS, Sciences humaines, Debussy au XXe Siècle. 15 Christian Goubault, La Critique Musicale dans la Presse Française de 1870 à 1914 (Genève etc.: Slatkine, 1984).

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involved in the CNRS, analysed Debussy’s work La mer as part of his thesis. Similarly, Pierre Boulez explained his ideas on musical time related to the concepts of continuity and discontinuity in Penser à la musique d’ajourd’hui (1963).16_{Boulez’s writings are not}

directly connected to Jankélévitch’s texts, however, they are an example of a written source that shows a concern with the concepts of continuity and discontinuity in music in France in the 1960s.

Likewise, written sources explain socio-historical and scientific factors that triggered attention in music listening in France. François-Joseph Fétis, as one of the first musicologists, had already addressed an attentive listening practice in Parisian opera and concert halls in the 19th_century.17_{Furthermore, perceptual processes had generally become}

more attentive since the Scientific Revolution.18_{Concerning listening, Benjamin Steege}

points out how sound experiments undertaken in the 1860s by German scholars such as Hermann von Helmholtz required a higher level of listening attention.19_{In particular,}

Alexandra Kieffer signs to sound experimentation as a particular influence on French critique.20_{In this chapter, written sources provide historical discourses to trace}

Jankélévitch’s writing style and show factors that determine an attentive music listening completely established in Debussy’s and Jankélévitch’s times.

Vladimir Jankélévitch’s discourse was produced in a context where attentive music listening was a common practice. His discourse is also an example of convergence of music critique which was developed in the early 20th_{century and music-analytical}

discourse that arose around the 1950s in France. The discourse comprises the use of symbolic and metaphorical language and the articulation of continuity and discontinuity according to music analysis. All in all, the listening and discursive conditions analysed in this chapter determined Jankélévitch’s writings on Debussy.

1. Attentive music listening

At this point, it is important to consider that audiences actively practiced an attentive music listening in Debussy’s times. In Monsieur Croche, Antidilettante, Debussy

16 Pierre Boulez, Penser la Musique Aujourd'Hui, [Réimpr.] ed. (Paris: Denoël/Gonthier, 1977). 17 James H. Johnson, Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (Berkeley etc.: University of California Press, 1995).

18 Crary, Suspensions of Perception.

19 Steege, Helmholtz and the Modern Listener.

20 Alexandra Kieffer, "Riemann in France: Jean Marnold and the “Modern” Music-Theoretical Ear," Music Theory Spectrum 38, no. 1 (2016), 1-15.; Alexandra Kieffer, "The Debussyist Ear. Listening, Representation, and French Musical Modernism," 19th-Century Music 39, no. 1 (2015), 56-79.

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describes Parisian audiences as attentive ears (oreilles attentives).21_{According to}

Alexandra Kieffer, for Debussy, listening was based on ‘heightened acuity and aliveness’. However, this had been a general practice in Western European musical culture since

Romanticism.22_{Indeed, James H. Johnson locates the shift towards an attentive listening}

in French opera around the 1770s. Since then, the degree of attentiveness in listening progressively increased as a result of different historical facts.

An attentive music listening was predominant in France in the 19th_{century and}

early 20th_{century due to socio-political issues and the reception of theories which resulted}

from sound experimentation in Germany. The basis of this development occurred when new social attitudes and the access of the bourgeoisie triggered new habits of listening in opera. ‘The artistic considerations of sight lines and sound were a growing preoccupation among spectators in the closing decades of the [18th_{] century. [...] Spectators in the 1770s}

reported something new in audiences’ behaviour: genuine attentiveness’.23_{This was the}

initial step in an attentive listening practice, which was also encouraged by the birth of public concerts of instrumental music. Thereafter, the experimental results of Hermann von Helmholtz and Hugo Riemann on sound became known in France in the early 20th

century,24_{when translations in French of some of their writings were completed. Attentive}

listening was a requirement for sound experimentation. In order to obtain valid deductions from experimentation, it was necessary to apply a high degree of attention to the studied

sonic event.25_{French audiences knew about Helmholtz’s ideas through the compilation of}

his theories in newspapers and magazines.26_{Hence, attentive listening had been rising in}

France as a result of socio-political conditions but it was also encouraged by new listening requirements for scientific experimentation developed in Germany.

On this basis, it can be concluded that listening attention in music was a practice developed in France towards the late 18th_{century. Listening practices in opera and concert}

halls in France conceived a certain degree of attention that significantly grew towards the end of the 19th_{century. The interest of the bourgeoisie in witnessing the musical}

atmosphere, which was previously preserved for the nobility, made listening attention thrive. In addition, the increase of experimentation in science also required a higher degree of attentiveness to obtain valid results. At the same time, it produced a discourse which

21 Debussy, Monsieur Croche, Antidilettante, 57. 22 Kieffer, "The Debussyist Ear," 56.

23 Johnson, Listening in Paris, 55-59. 24 Kieffer, "The Debussyist Ear," 56-79.

25 Steege, Helmholtz and the Modern Listener, 48-49. 26 Ibid.

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could influence the articulation of terms such as impression and sensation in musicological writings.

1.1. The concept of sensation in Debussyists and experimentalists’ discourses

Jonathan Crary explains that, as an increasing concern in experimentation, listening attentiveness also influenced the meaning of sensation. ‘The model of an attentive human observer that dominated the empirical sciences from the 1880s on, was also inseparable from a radically transformed notion of what constitutes sensation for a human subject’.27_In

general, sensation had been related to feelings located in the inner self until the 18th

century. However, Helmholtz deduced a new meaning of sensation in relation to sound experimentation results.28_{Helmholtz’s meaning of sensation entails the most external part}

of the human perception system, the ear, which is understood as a machine. Consequently, he proposed that perception of a sound event (musical or not) depends on the human’s perceptive system so that listening is subjective.

In particular, in French musical thought the meaning of sensation varied between the 18th_{and the 19}th_{century from referring to the inner self and closer to the French term}

sensibility (sensibilité)29_{to depending on perception of the outer world. The latter}

significance is observed in Debussyists’ critique and in Jankélévitch’s books on Debussy. According to Alexandra Kieffer, Debussyism (Debussysme) as ‘musical-historical

phenomenon’ or critique current was developed between 1901 and 1910.30_{It involved}

French critics, Debussyists, who eagerly discussed Debussy’s music. Marianne Wheeldon explains that Debussyists included Debussy and his supporters,31_{however, Kieffer asserts}

that some of them occasionally criticised him. For instance, Louis Laloy and Jean Marnold generally defended Debussy’s compositional style. Similarly, Jankélévitch praises Debussy’s figure as a composer. On the other hand, Pierre Lalo, for example, was more critical, especially after the publication of Debussy’s work La mer in 1905.32_{This thesis}

mainly considers the arguments of Laloy, Marnold and Lalo among Debussyists. In particular, Louis Laloy uses sensation as a mediator between nature and the subject

27 Crary, Suspensions of Perception, 26.

28 Steege, Helmholtz and the Modern Listener, 77. 29 Ibid.; Kieffer, "The Debussyist Ear," 59. 30 Kieffer, "The Debussyist Ear," 58.

31 Marianne Wheeldon, "Anti-Debussyism and the Formation of French Neoclassicism," Journal

of the American Musicological Society 70, no. 2 (2017), 433.

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listener.33_{Pierre Lalo also portrays this meaning of sensation in his critique of Debussy’s}

work La mer.34_{As in Jankélévitch’s books, these critiques do not clarify the state of the}

sonic material although they agree on situating sensation between a listening act to the outer world and the musical result in Debussy’s composition.

Furthermore, Alexandra Kieffer suggests the influence of Helmholtz’s definition of sensation in Debussyists’ critique. She argues that there are historical sources that evidence the spread of Helmholtz’s discourse within French scholarship since around 1900.35

Helmholtz proposed a distinction between the spiritual ear, which designates the human’s body region of the mind and relates to sound perception, and the material ear, which regards the ear as an organ. Taking into account this distinction, sensation is what the

sound becomes in the material ear when a sound wave is processed in the cochlear nerve.36

Indeed, the introduction of Helmholtz and Riemann’s ideas in France in the first years of the 1900s could have been a factor that supported Debussyists’ articulation of the terms sensation and impression. Helmholtz’s definition of immediate impressions could have affected Debussyists’ articulation of the term.37_{In addition, the Debussyist Jean Marnold}

translated Helmholtz’s formulation of the German term Klang for resonance (résonance).38

However, neither did Debussyists nor Jankélévitch reflect this definition in their writings. Moreover, the figurative use of the term sensation in Debussyists’ discourse prevents from assuming that they shared Helmholtz’s definition of sensation. All in all, certain ideas developed by German experimentalists in early sound physiology and psychology could promote the use of the terms sensation and impression in Debussyists’ music critique but, in any case, the meaning of these terms is not equally precise in both discourses.

The articulation of sensation and impression is one of the discursive commonalities between Jankélévitch’s and Debussyists’ critique on Debussy. Likewise, Debussyists and also Jankélévitch convey Debussy’s ideal of listening to nature. This is a symbolic articulation of a new practice of composition focused on the outer world instead of personal feelings which is explained further in the following section.

2. Symbolism

2.1. Debussy’s listening to nature as a symbolic ideal

33 Ibid.

34 Goubault, La Critique Musicale dans la Presse Française, 366. 35 Ibid.

36 Steege, Helmholtz and the Modern Listener, 62-72. 37 Kieffer, "Riemann in France," 10.

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In Monsieur Croche Antidilettante,39_{Debussy illustrates a listening perspective}

which asserts attentiveness in the experience of listening to nature. Apart from being a composer, Debussy himself was a prolific music critic. He showed his ideas on musical composition as an aesthetic process and proposed critique on others composers’ music in this book. It is not possible to deduce if he considered himself as a symbolist composer, however, he explains a particular idea of listening. It consists on adopting an attentive listening to the sounds in nature.40_{Debussy contemplates this listening perspective as an}

essential part of the compositional procedure. He insisted on defending the compositional ideal of ‘write only what you hear’. ‘Musicians do not listen to anything else than music written by dextrous hands, they never listen to music inscribed in nature’.41_{This shows that}

the ideal of listening to nature is a symbolic expression of his idea of composition. The ideal of listening to nature, to the outer world, as an inspirational step in composition was a way to express the idea that refuses internal feelings as a musical inspiration.42

French critique rapidly incorporated Debussy’s ideal of listening to nature. The

origin of the ideal took place in the early 20th_{century and was affected by Symbolism}

critique, but it appeared in scholarship at least until the 1960s in French critique.43_{This is}

an important remark because it indicates that Jankélévitch knew about this ideal, which is compiled in his books on Debussy.

In fact, symbolist critique influenced music critique, including Debussyism, in France during the first years of the 20th_{century. Jean Moréas launched the symbolist}

manifesto in 1886. Symbolism lasted until around the 1890s, however, scholars also showed symbolic features in their writings, especially in France, during the following years. Symbolism initially was a literary current but it spread as a tool for reflecting upon diverse artistic disciplines such as music, literature and painting. Nevertheless, Symbolists were interested in portraying their ideas in formats such as newspapers and magazines rather than books. According to Erin M. Williams, this was possible since a new law on publishing became more permissive in France, which was a determinant factor for the

39 Debussy, Monsieur Croche, Antidilettante. 40 Ibid.

41 ‘Les musiciens n’écoutent que la musique écrite par des mains adroites, jamais celle qui est inscrite dans la nature.’

Ibid.

Translations from French of quotes and citations of Vladimir Jankélévitch’ and Henri Bergson’s texts are my own unless otherwise stated.

42 Kieffer, "The Debussyist Ear," 56-79.

43 Weber and Colloques internationaux du CNRS, Sciences humaines, Debussy au XXe Siècle, 193.

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thriving of Symbolism as a current of thought. Precisely, the newspaper Mercure de

France was conceived as a medium to transmit the meaning of art works such as paintings

and compositions to the audience.44_{The edition of this newspaper showed Symbolists’}

enthusiasm for a collaboration between the arts. ‘Their [Symbolists’] efforts to provide a philosophical explanation for Symbolist aesthetics across diverse media was a large part of the journal’s early success and signed a changed role for the critic at the fin-de-siècle’.45

Considering a similar idea, Louis Laloy launched the Mercure musical in 1902, following the Mercure de France. This publication became an essential medium to communicate music critique, especially on Debussy.46

The articulation of language in Symbolists’ texts derives from their refusal of the empirical world. Symbolists’ main idea is the rejection of the mimetic role of the arts. In other words, the purpose of the arts is to depict transcendental or spiritual entities through suggestive images, sounds, et cetera.47_{Arts cannot imitate tangible objects of the reality.}

Instead, they refer to abstract ideas by their association to imagined perceptions of natural objects or facts. This results in an epistemological concern regarding the meaning of

certain concepts.48_{Generally, concepts have an associated significance which, although}

arbitrary, is highly concrete. However, Symbolists were looking for a lower degree of concretion of significance than the usual one. As a result, the meaning of the terms that they used for describing a transcendental reality is not literal; it grants certain freedom of interpretation.

Symbolists’ epistemological concern influenced the discourse of Debussyists and Jankélévitch. Regarding the use of language, there are similarities between their discourse on Debussy and Symbolists’ discourse on other arts. This epistemological characteristic of Jankélévitch’s discourse on Debussy requires interpretation of certain terminology to understand his descriptions of musical features and, consequently, deduce characteristics of his listening to Debussy’s music. It is possible to interpret the meaning of these terms by understanding the associations that he establishes between symbolically used terms and musical features.

44 Erin M. Williams, "Signs of Anarchy: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Symbolist Critic at the Mercure De France, 1890- 95," French Forum 29, no. 1 (2004), 45-47.

45 Ibid.

46 Kieffer, "The Debussyist Ear," 58.

47 Jennifer L. Shaw, 'Symbolism', New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Vol. 5, (Gale Virtual Reference Library, 2005), 2278.

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All in all, Jankélévitch’s discourse shows a combination of symbolist language originated in Debussyists’ discourse and more concise terminology from music-analytical discourses. Whereas he symbolically articulates the expression of listening to nature and the terms immediacy and objectivity to refer to Debussy’s musical features, continuity and discontinuity respond to a more concrete significance that is also presented in music analysis.

Jankélévitch associates discontinuity to particular musical features that are encountered in Debussy’s music such as harmonic stasis and prelude as form. He relates harmonic stasis to particular dispositions of chords. Prelude as form presents a significance that shows coincidence with Jean Barraqué’s idea of open form (forme ouverte) in his analysis of Debussy’s music. Whilst symbolic language derives from music critique, music analysis and philosophical currents of French thought present the concept of discontinuity.

3. Continuity and discontinuity in philosophy and music analysis in France

The discussion on continuity and discontinuity has taken place in French philosophy of music since the first half of the 20th_{century. These terms have been}

articulated or indirectly recalled by Henri Bergson and Ivan Wyschnegradsky in the early 20th_{century and Pierre Boulez and Jean Barraqué in the mid-20}th_{century. In the musical}

treaty La loi de la pansonorité (1924),49_{the composer Ivan Wyschnegradsky stated that}

continuity and discontinuity are characteristics which are attributed to frequency, intensity and duration. In the musical treaty Penser à la musique d’aujourd’hui (1963),50_the

composer Pierre Boulez explains the terms of smooth and striated, which he associates to continuity and discontinuity respectively. Nevertheless, only the writings by Bergson and Barraqué present similar ideas on these terms to Jankélévitch’s ideas. In any case, the concepts of continuity and discontinuity were commonly articulated in French scholarship in relation to music in the 20th_{century and present several relations and ideas that vary}

within philosophy and music analysis.

Henri Bergson’s Essai sur les données immédiats de la conscience (1913) presented in philosophy the terms continuity and discontinuity in association to time as a magnitude. Bergson connects continuity to duration (durée) whereas discontinuity refers to a fragment of duration.51_{In fact, Jankélévitch exclusively relies on Bergson’s concept of durée to}

portray the meaning of continuity and discontinuity. Nevertheless, discontinuity was

49 Ivan Wyschnegradsky, La Loi de la Pansonorité, ed. Franck Jedrzejewski and Pascale Citron (Genève: Éditions Contrechamps, 1996).

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specifically introduced in musical discourses to describe musical features, such as Barraqué’s music analyses. Due to the common relations that Jankélévitch and Barraqué establish between discontinuity and particular musical features, Barraqué’s explanations of continuity and discontinuity are valid in understanding the meaning of these terms in Jankélévitch’s discourse.

Regarding musical features and the concepts of continuity and discontinuity, Jean Barraqué’s idea of note-sound (note-son) outlines the characteristic of a note apart from its pitch height. One of the purposes of his analysis of Debussy’s music was to define the hierarchical relationships between tones. In his analysis he described two types of notes, note-tone (note-ton) and note-sound (note-son). The first refers to the hierarchical position of the note in a musical scale, as a grade or tone, whilst the latter points to other parameters of the note contributing to its sonority, such as timbre.52_{The premise of this classification}

is to understand notes as independent entities; that is to say, outside their intervallic functions. The new consideration of note-sound regarded other of its characteristics rather

than pitch height and tonal function.53_{Although Barraqué assumes that the concepts of}

note-tone and note-sound are accurate to describe serialist music, he recognises that these terms cannot be adopted to describe Debussy’s music in every situation. All in all, his reflection to deduce the terms portrays an analysis of Debussy’s music in a micro-level according to the concept of discontinuity.

Considering a music work from a broad perspective, in a macro-level, Barraqué articulated the idea of open form (forme ouverte) in relation to discontinuity. This idea of form comprises a particular combination of elements in a micro-level that was based on discontinuity. ‘A thorough study of a Debussyist work demonstrates the impossibility of existence on itself maintained by a linear and continuous development of one of the musical parameters’.54_{This statement shows that he conceived Debussy’s works as a}

combination of discontinuities of different musical parameters individually observed.55

Similarly, Jankélévitch supports prelude as a form which, as Barraqué’s idea of open form, rejects exposition and development as contrasting parts of the musical

51 Henri Bergson, Essai sur les Données Immédiates de la Conscience, 23e éd. (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1924).

52 Weber and Colloques internationaux du CNRS, Sciences humaines, Debussy au XXe Siècle, 93. 53 Bill Hopkins, "Barraqué and the Serial Idea," Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 105 (1978), 16.

54 ’Une étude approfondie de l’ouvre debussyste démontre l’impossibilité d’existence “en soi”, maintenue par développement linéaire et continu, d’un des paramètres musicaux’. Barraqué, Écrits, 280.

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structure. Traditionally, the relation between exposition and development in sonata form implied a progressive order. Barraqué’s idea of form in Debussy’s music does not create a discursive interpretation of the work in a macro-level. ‘In Debussy’s music, form cannot be

understood anymore like a succession or a progressive acquisition by a chain of ideas’.56

Barraqué identifies this conception of form in the fusion between the development and exposition of La mer.57_{The following chapter presents Jankélévitch’s idea of form, which}

is similar to Barraqué’s.

In conclusion, according to historical conditions, an attentive music listening determines Jankélévitch’s critique on Debussy. His discourse is articulated by symbolist language and terms such as discontinuity and stasis, which appear in the discourses of Debussyists and music analysts respectively. Debussyism was the origin of Debussy’s music critique, which was developed in France in the early 20th_{century and influenced by}

the parallel development of Symbolism as a literary and critique current of thought. In contrast, in the 1950s, music analysis and musical thought introduced the concept of discontinuity to describe musical features. As a result, Jankélévitch’s discourse is triggered by an attentive listening and influenced by Debussyists’ critique and French music analysis.

Listening attention was triggered among operatic audiences in France since the 1770s. In addition, the flourishing of sound experimentation and the translation of experimental results into French reinforced attentiveness in listening in the early 20th

century in France. As a result, music listening was highly attentive in Debussy’s time. Helmholtz’s sound experiments proposed a new conception of sensation that considered the ear as a main agent in sound perception whereas the study of the mind was partially dismissed. In comparison, first Debussy’s critics, Debussyists, adopted a conception of sensation which also avoided references to the human’s mind agency in perceptive processes in composition. Nevertheless, there are several differences between the concept of sensation triggered in sound experimentation by Helmholtz and Debussyists’ conception. Firstly, Helmholtz shows a clear definition of the term whereas Debussyists apply it non-literally. Secondly, whilst Helmholtz considers listening as a subjective process, depending on the subject’s ear capacities, Debussyists are not

56‘Chez Debussy, la forme ne peux plus être comprise comme une succession ou une acquisition progressive par enchaînement d’idées’. Barraqué, Écrits, 280.

57 Weber and Colloques internationaux du CNRS, Sciences humaines, Debussy au XXe Siècle, 130.

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concerned by this aspect. All in all, the concept of sensation shifts in France from referring to personal feelings to a sort of knowledge triggered by the perception of the outer world.

The findings of this chapter indicate that Jankélévitch’s texts require interpretation and the meaning of its language cannot be literally considered. Symbolism influenced Debussyists’ discourse and, consequently, Jankélévitch’s. Firstly, due to its epistemological particularity, symbolist language requires interpretation to grasp its whole meaning. In Jankélévitch’s discourse not all the specified terms are symbolically articulated to the same degree. In particular, the articulation of ideas such as Debussy’s listening to nature or musical immediacy require interpretation. According to Debussyists’ discourse, this idea and term symbolically portray an ideal of Debussy’s compositional process that avoids personal feelings as an inspiration for composition.

Jankélévitch portrays this ideal of Debussy’s compositional processes through symbolically articulated terms such as immediacy and objectivity that were originated in Debussyism. In addition, he applies continuity and discontinuity and stasis to describe music, which are concepts encountered in music analysis. In particular, Barraqué’s explanations of discontinuity will serve to understand Jankélévitch’s use of the term and analyse his perspective on attentiveness in listening.

II. Variability in the boundaries of attention in listening

Jankélévitch’s texts on Claude Debussy present us with a historical source that unfolds two fundamental ideas. One of them considers variability of the focus of attention in music listening. The other regards an ideal of Debussy’s compositional process where he neglects personal feelings as an inspirational source. Jankélévitch does not directly imply these thoughts but they can be deduced from the analysis of the concepts that he coins in his writings in relation to Debussy’s music. The previous chapter, which examines discourses that articulate these terms, supports the analysis of Jankélévitch’s texts in this second chapter. The first idea, which constitutes the focus of this thesis, depends on the classification of musical features as continuous or discontinuous. Discontinuity appears in Jean Barraqué’s music analysis of Debussy’s music and is also applied by Jankélévitch in relation to musical features such as harmony, melody and form. Whereas Barraqué classifies most of Debussy’s musical features as discontinuous, Jankélévitch accepts that the same musical feature can be continuous or discontinuous depending on the focus extent of an attentive listening.

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The second idea is symbolically articulated by the term of musical immediacy and the expression of listening to nature. Musical immediacy and listening to nature were coined as a symbolic term and expression respectively in Debussyists’ musical critique in

the early 20th_{century. According to Debussyism, musical immediacy and the ideal of}

listening to nature explain a compositional process in which the composer avoids inspiring his music in the knowledge originated in their inner self such as personal thoughts or feelings. Additionally, Jankélévitch coins his own term, presence-absence, to convey his view on variability of an attentive listening and the idea of a compositional process that avoids personal feelings as inspirational source. This chapter also includes the analysis of presence-absence in Debussy’s music accomplished by Carolyn Abbate and Julian Johnson although they specifically refer to music with text. All in all, this chapter presents these two main thoughts as a result from an interpretation of Jankélévitch’s books Debussy et le

mystère (1949) and La vie et la mort dans la musique de Debussy (1968) in accordance to

the meaning of discontinuity, immediacy and listening to nature in musicological written sources that were explored in chapter I.

In Debussy et le mystère and La vie et la mort dans la musique de Debussy Jankélévitch presents a critique on Claude Debussy and his music. He describes musical features by relating descriptions of sonic events of the real world expressed in a poetic style to particular musical examples. These descriptions are dismissed in the thesis because they require symbolic interpretation. Furthermore, Jankélévitch articulates an array of concepts in different sections that include musical immediacy (l’immédiat), objectivity (l’objectivité), instant (l’instant en instance), stasis (stagnance), continuity (continuité), discontinuity (discontinuité) and presence-absence (présence-absence) in reference to Debussy’s music. Nonetheless, Jankélévitch does not define these terms and their articulation is sometimes symbolic or metaphorical. Whereas musical immediacy and objectivity are symbolically articulated and instant is metaphorically applied, stasis, continuity and discontinuity relate to Debussy’s music more concisely. Presence-absence is particularly unique because it has a symbolic meaning similar to the ideal of listening to nature and, at the same time, literally refers to the state of being of sound in music. For this reason, it is necessary to provide an interpretation of the concepts in relation to other discourses to grasp their meaning and deduce Jankélévitch’s idea of listening to Debussy’s music.

This chapter analyses selected sections of these two books written by Vladimir Jankélévitch. Both books have three chapters with different sections, introducing terms that

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Jankélévitch relates to Debussy’s music. Some of them, which appear in the former book, such as musical immediacy and objectivity, are revisited in La vie et la mort dans la

musique de Debussy. However, only in the second book Jankélévitch provides a section

that portrays his understanding of discontinuity. In particular, the content of the second chapter, Le mystère de midi of Debussy et le mystère (1949) provides the foundation for understanding Jankélévitch’s critique on Debussy. The concepts and ideas discussed in this chapter are displayed again in the first and second chapters of the second book, La vie et la

mort dans la musique de Debussy (1968). This content is the object of analysis of this

chapter. In addition, both books present a third chapter that contains Jankélévitch’s descriptions of certain passages of Debussy’s works. In particular, Jankélévitch’s statements on Reflets dans l’eau, which are presented in the third chapter of La vie et la

mort dans la musique de Debussy, exemplify how discontinuity is related to musical

features depending on the focus of attentiveness in listening. This part of the second book is object of analysis of the third chapter of the thesis, which looks at this book section in relation to a new proposal of music analysis of Reflets dans l’eau.

My analysis of the books, provided here, disentangles the meaning of Jankélévitch’s concepts to derive his ideas on Debussy’s music composition and listening procedures. This chapter is organised in different sections that analyse the meaning of each term in the same order in which Jankélévitch presents them in the books. Additionally, the first section introduces Jankélévitch’s conception of Debussy as a composer by taking into account how he articulates sensation, which was analysed in chapter I. Subsequent sections convey the meaning of the concepts. The first of Jankélévitch's addressed concepts is immediacy, which alludes to a characteristic of a compositional process in which the composer’s personal feelings are not imprinted in music. The second is objectivity, which explains Debussy’s avoidance of symbolic significance in composition so that music remains inspired only by the outer world. The third is instant, which is an indivisible segment of time in comparison to Henri Bergson’s view on durée. Instant is compared to discontinuity, which implies the idea of indivisibility in different musical features. In relation to musical harmony and form, stasis refers to a discontinuous harmonic passage and prelude is a discontinuous musical form. Lastly, presence-absence concerns physical or figurative state of being of the subject or sounds in music.

According to the main point of the thesis, the aim of the chapter is to analyse Jankélévitch’s text to infer characteristics of an attentive listening to Debussy’s music. Chapter I demonstrated that attentive music listening was a common practice among

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audiences in France in Jankélévitch and Debussy’s times. Besides, a reading of Jankélévitch’s text implies conditions of listening to Debussy’s music according to the interpretation of discontinuity and harmonic stasis that regards their meaning in discourses analysed in chapter I. The analysis of Jankélévitch’s discourse on musical immediacy and the ideal of listening to nature support his view on Debussy as a composer but it does not explain characteristics of listening. All in all, the analysis of the concepts of discontinuity and presence-absence entails variants of an attentive listening to Debussy’s music.

The interpretation of discontinuity and presence-absence reflects the possibility of different boundaries of attention in listening. Stasis, continuity and discontinuity literally point features of Debussy’s music such as melody, harmony and form. Although Jankélévitch vaguely relates discontinuity to features of Debussy’s music in Debussy et le

mystère, he specifically states that melody, harmony and form are discontinuous in

Debussy’s music in the second chapter of La vie et la mort dans la musique de Debussy. Moreover, at the end of the second book, Jankélévitch admits that qualifying a musical feature as continuous or discontinuous depends on the point of view, that is, on the listening perspective of the subject. A musical feature is defined as continuous or discontinuous depending on the boundaries of the listener’s attention. Similarly, presence-absence of sound acquires a certain degree of significance depending on listening attention. In compound form, presence-absence means physicality of sound. In any case, discontinuity and continuity and presence-absence describe sound events which vary on the boundaries of listening attention. As a result, Jankélévitch presents a double perspective of listening attention.

The analysis of Jankélévitch’s text suggests an attentively narrow perspective of listening to Debussy’s music and an attentively broad perspective. The former is related to the identification of discontinuity in musical features and bears a higher degree of freedom of musical interpretation. The latter is based on the interpretation of musical features within continuity. The concept of presence-absence also responds to this double perspective. A narrow perspective of listening provides variable degrees of presence against a broad listening focused on identifying comparisons between music elements that sustain a discursive interpretation. Consequently, a broad attentive listening results in an interpretation constituted in a flow of ideas whereas a narrow perspective affords a fixed musical idea.

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Jankélévitch considers the reduction of Debussy’s human agency in music as a precondition in his compositional process. Jankélévitch’s description of Debussy’s aesthetic agency as a listener and composer is imprecise. He basically describes Debussy as a mere intermediary between physical reality or physical presence of sound and music. He states that ‘Debussy affirms: music is not made for the paper but for the ear, it is not a graphic abstraction, it is an aural reality’.58_{This quote refers to Debussy’s statement}

portrayed in chapter I59_{where he affirms that composers should only ‘write only what they}

hear’. This shows that Jankélévitch supports that Debussy’s intention in composition was to portray in music what he listened to in the world. Musical immediacy and objectivity also express this conception. Before the analysis of these terms, Jankélévitch’s use of sensation is observed because it reveals a similar concern regarding inspiration in composition.

The articulation of the concept of sensation in the texts of Jankélévitch and Debussyists points to the outer world as object of inspiration for composition. The meaning of sensation in Jankélévitch’s discourse is vague but presents similarities to Debussyists’

use of the term, which was presented in chapter I.60_{According to Debussyists, sensation}

refers to the state of sound between nature and the musical result that it inspires. In the transcription process of sensation, the human mind has a reduced action, that is to say, the composer’s agency is reduced. Likewise, Jankélévitch frequently uses the term sensation to define the state of sonic material perceived by Debussy when listening to the world that inspires his works. This is deduced from Debussyists’ discourse due to the fact that Jankélévitch does not explain the meaning of sensation. Nevertheless, it is true that he gives some hints on the mental processes that occur in composition which are accomplished by the hearing sense (sensorium), which interpretation understands Debussy’s composition process as presented below.

Firstly, Debussy listens to sounds of the natural world. Sound sensations are triggered in this listening. He uses data carried by these sensations as a source of inspiration for composition. Jankélévitch assumes that Debussy knows how to distinguish between sound sensation and personal thought. ‘Debussy has an innate extra-lucid sense by which the hale of irrationality that surrounds the person’s presence and the existence of

58 ‘Debussy affirme: la musique n’est pas faite pour le papier, mais pour l’oreille; ce n’est pas une abstraction graphique, c’est une réalité auditive.’

Jankélévitch, La Vie et la Mort, 88. 59 See page 14.

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physique things becomes perceptible for him’.61_{After that, aesthetics act between the}

hearing sense (sensorium) and sensation (qualité sensoriel). Likewise, sensations are

organised by the human mind in music according to a measured order.62_{The role of the}

human mind in a supposed listening to nature is reduced; however, it is active in the aesthetic process of composition.

2. Concepts that symbolically reflect Debussy’s compositional ideal

The following paragraphs of this chapter interpret the meaning of the following concepts: musical immediacy, objectivity and absence of Debussy’s voice in music. Jankélévitch employs these concepts to explain his ideal of Debussy’s compositional procedure. The language articulated by Jankélévitch to explain this is significantly implicit. But the appliance of musical immediacy in other written sources clarifies the interpretation of his ideas. As a result, musical immediacy, objectivity and absence of the human voice in music entail the idea that Debussy’s music displays information inspired in sounds of the real world instead of the composer’s personal thoughts.

2.1. Absence of Debussy’s voice in music

The concept of absence explains the idea that Debussy does not depict his personal thought in music. The assumptions on Debussy’s compositional procedure crystallise in Jankélévitch’s statement on the absence of Debussy’s voice in music. In Debussy’s music, ‘things are physically present, [...] – but the incarnated man [sic] is absent’.63_{Jankélévitch}

figuratively states that Debussy is absent in music. Figuratively or non-literally, the incarnated man refers to Debussy and this quote means that he avoids reflecting his personal thought in music. In other words, there are no traces of Debussy’s human agency in his music because he accomplishes composition by a mere transcription of his sensations from his listening to nature into music.

Julian Johnson’s analysis of presence-absence in Debussy’s early songs shows a similar interpretation of absence. According to Johnson, absence pertains to an erasure of the subject in music whereas presence points the emergence of the lyric subject in the sonic

61 ‘Debussy possède de naissance le sensorium extra-lucide grâce auquel le cerne de irrationnel qui entoure la présence de la personne et l’existence des choses physiques lui déviant perceptible.’ Jankélévitch, Debussy et le Mystère, 13.

62 Jankélévitch, Debussy et le Mystère, 74.

63 ‘Les choses son physiquement présents, [...] – mais l’homme incarné est absent.’ Jankélévitch, La Vie et la Mort, 98.

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landscape. Likewise, Johnson’s interpretation of the meaning of absence agrees with Jankélévitch’s statement on absence. However, Johnson proposes a significance of the concept of presence which is not encountered in Jankélévitch’s text. This is because Johnson’s interpretation of presence relies on the appearance of the subject in the music lyrics and Jankélévitch does not specifically address presence-absence in musical works with text.64_{Hence, from Johnson’s interpretation of presence-absence, only the meaning of}

absence is similar to Jankélévitch’s. 2.2. Musical immediacy

Musical immediacy symbolically entails that Debussy neglects personal thoughts as inspiration for composition. With regard to immediacy, Jankélévitch expresses the possibility of accessing Debussy’s sensations by listening to his music. In addition, in the section under the title the immediate (l’immédiat) Jankélévitch remarks: ‘the contact with the real is even more direct when the man [sic] is absent’.65_{Whilst Debussy is absent in}

music, his music renders a more direct listening; that is, an immediate listening. Indeed, according to Jankélévitch, musical immediacy procures absence of the human mind and access to sensation, which relate to the portrayal of the outer world in music instead of the inner self.

Musical immediacy presents a similar meaning in musical critique written by French 20th_{century critics such as Pierre Lalo. He states that Debussy’s music is: ‘music of}

immediacy, music that gives direct access to the whole of things’.66_{This shows that}

Debussy’s listening and composition processes were conceived by both Lalo and Jankélévitch as adequate for allowing the listener to grasp the sounds of the real world that inspired Debussy’s music.

Jankélévitch supports musical immediacy by rejecting Debussy’s use of symbolic mediation in composition. ‘Evocation of reality is not, in Debussy’s music, a subjective transportation of reality [...] the lower noises of total presence are transmitted through this music almost directly; that is, without symbolic mediation’.67_{Jankélévitch explains,}

64 Julian Johnson, "Present Absence: Debussy, Song, and the Art of (Dis)Appearing," Nineteenth

Century Music 40, no. 3 (2017), 242-244.

65 ‘le contact avec le réel est plus direct encore en absence de l’homme’ Jankélévitch, La Vie et la Mort, 91.

66 Alexandra Kieffer, "The Debussyist Ear," 60. 67 Jankélévitch, La Vie et la Mort, 87.

‘L’évocation de la réalité n’est pas, chez Debussy, une transposition subjective de cette réalité [...] les moindres bruits de la présence totale nous sont transmis dans cette musique presque

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symbols are ‘things that are beyond themselves and which are not all what they signify’.68

He understands that symbols afford the addition of significance to their meaning, carrying unchangeable significance only to a certain extent. Due to the fact that Debussy’s process of composition, according to Jankélévitch, does not involve symbolic significance, only information deduced from sensations is used to evoke the real world in music. This explanation proposes a definition of symbol and, at the same time, reinforces Jankélévitch’s idea of Debussy’s compositional procedure music inspired in the outer world and refuses knowledge originated within the composer’s mind.

2.3. Objectivity

Besides being immediate, Jankélévitch supports that Debussy’s management of sonic material and sensation in composition is objective. Jankélévitch considers that the apprehended knowledge from the outer world is objective whereas one’s inner mind’s thoughts are subjective knowledge. This is the reason why he qualifies Debussy’s listening to the world and composition process as objective. Nevertheless, according to Helmholtz’s conception of the material ear, which analyses sound perception by focusing on the connection between the outer world and the subject, listening is subjective.69_{This means}

that the meaning of objectivity does not imply that Debussy’s perception of the outer world is truthful. In any case, the relevant aspect of Jankélévitch’s conception of objectivity refers to the absence of Debussy’s thoughts as inspiration to compose music.

Musical immediacy and objectivity support the idea that Debussy inspires his musical compositions by listening to the world so that the listener of his music can approach Debussy’s sensations. Chapter I explains the origin of this ideal portrayed in critique on Debussy and points towards the influence of Symbolism. This implies that this idea has a symbolic meaning that requires interpretation to grasp its literal meaning. Its significance does not literally imply that a listener to Debussy’s music can access Debussy’s sensation produced by his listening to the outer world. Instead, this means that critics and musicologists, including Jankélévitch, defended that listening to Debussy’s music did not trigger significance related to personal feelings.

Whereas the first part of the analysis of Jankélévitch’s texts concerns one of the two derived ideas and reflects a transmitted discourse in Debussy’s critique, the second part of the analysis considers concepts that directly relate to musical features. This second part of

68 ‘choses qui sont chacun au delà d’elle-même et qui ne sont pas tout c’est qu’elles signifient.’ Jankélévitch, Debussy et le Mystère, 14.

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the chapter includes Jankélévitch’s descriptions of musical features of Debussy’s music in relation to continuity and discontinuity.

3. Concepts that describe musical features in music analysis 3.1. Instant, continuity and discontinuity

Jankélévitch presents instant and stasis in the second chapter of Debussy et le

mystère and discontinuity in La vie et la mort dans la musique de Debussy to describe a

similar aspect. These three terms refer to musical features with a different degree of metaphorical meaning. The concept of instant frequently presents a metaphorical use in Jankélévitch’s musical descriptions. In comparison, discontinuity and stasis literally refer to musical features. The following paragraph explains the meaning of these three terms, which qualify musical features as immobile and isolated entities in a more or less metaphorical way.

In La vie et la mort dans la musique de Debussy, Jankélévitch relates discontinuity to the idea of instant, which is deduced from Henri Bergson’s concept of durée. ‘Pure

durée is the form that the succession of our conscience’s states adopts when it rejects

establishing a separation between present and past states’.70_{This is Bergson’s definition of}

durée and it involves the human conscious’ conception of time. Since the human conscious

cannot divide time into different entities, durée is continuous time. On the other hand, Jankélévitch defines instant metaphorically. He defines noon as an example of instant. Noon is the moment when the subject observes the decline of the day and, simultaneously, it has not occurred yet.71_{Likewise, an instant is a moment of time from which future is}

looked at by the subject but has not yet been addressed. Consequently, Bergson’s definition of durée and Jankélévitch’s conception of instant have opposite significance. Whilst durée implies an unmeasurable time flow, instant conveys immobility or fragmented time. As a result, considering durée as continuous time or continuity, Jankélévitch conceives an instant as an opposite of continuity; that is to say, as a discontinuity.

Instant relates to stasis as a harmonic or formal characteristic in Debussy’s music. Jankélévitch states, ‘Each Debussyist image is like an instant72_{and static view on total}

70 ‘La durée toute pure est la forme que prend la succession de nos états de conscience quand il s’abstient d’établir une séparation entre l’état présent et les états antérieurs.’

Henri Bergson, Données Immédiates de la Conscience, 76-77.

71 Jankélévitch, Debussy et le Mystère, 76-78.; Jankélévitch, La Vie et la Mort, 62-64. 72 Instant as an adjective

Continuity and discontinuity in Claude Debussy’s music: Two perspectives on listening attention proposed by Vladimir Jankélévitch