In our UP CLOSE AND CLASSICAL concerts, we have often quoted Igor Stravinsky’s 1939 book Poetics of Music, especially this phrase:

We shall study the phenomenon of music as a form of speculation in terms of sound and time… This problem of time in the art of music is of capital importance.

In this post, you can read the English translation of an article explaining that quote, written by Pierre Souvtchinsky who collaborated with Stravinsky on Poetics of Music. It is not a short article, so the main points are summed up here:

• Creative talent is not a single quantity but is made of many elements. For composers, the experience of time is a key element.(click for shortcut)
• Every human has a sense of time. The musical experience of time allows to distinguish psychological time from real time, ontological time. The author calls “chronometric” the music that espouses real time, and “chrono-ametric” the music that deviates from it. (shortcut)
• Chronometric music is not invented. It derives from the laws of the art. Chrono-ametric music is laden with psychological meaning. Richard Wagner’s music is the greatest example of chrono-ametric music. Igor Stravinsky is the renovator of chronometric music. (shortcut)
• This renovation was made necessary by Richard Wagner’s lasting influence on modern music. (shortcut)
• Igor Stravinsky’s music is always “a conductor of time”, thus the worthy continuation of the classical conception of time found in Haydn’s and Mozart’s music.(shortcut)
• The importance of chronometric music lays in properly understanding the limits of music, and thus being able to make the best use of it. (shortcut)

Pierre Souvtchinsky’s article “La Notion du temps et la musique: Réflexions sur la typologie de la création musicale” appeared in a special issue of Revue Musicale devoted to Stravinsky in 1939. Stravinsky’s satisfaction with Souvtchinsky’s writings, which advocated his work, is corroborated by his invitation to the Russian intellectual to help him compose the Norton lectures over the spring and summer of 1939. Although the extent of Souvtchinsky’s contribution to the composition of the Poetics of Music was acknowledged publicly only in the 1960s, his name did make an appearance in the text, since the composer revealed that his views on music and time, or on musical time, khronos, are identical with those of his philosopher-friend (Stravinsky 1947, 29–31).

The Notion of Time and Music
(Reflections on the Typology of Musical Creation)

“It’s rather the way in which moments flow together.”
“In short, this famous flow of time is much talked about but rarely seen.”

JEAN-PAUL SARTRE.

Among the multitude of aspects of human activity, the need to express oneself through art and the gifts by which it is realized belong and will always belong to the most obscure and moving problems of anthropology. This is perfectly natural, because in the domain of art, the creative process and creative energy of man are expressed and affirmed with the most obvious realities, and the creative gift of human nature, as well as its capacity to create ex nihilo, will remain, for their part, inexplicable phenomena.

Art and creation seem synonymous, and yet, all human activity, all work, are inconceivable outside of the creative element. Yet, it is in works of art that the specifically creative act is most clearly manifested and, so to speak, justified by itself. Moreover, the gift of creation in the domain of art makes it easier to trace the structural principle itself of the phenomenon of this human gift, or even of this talent.
Human talent cannot be conceived as a quantitative concentration of this or that capacity, of this or that inclination of individuality, but as a system of data, a system of talents in which the elementary gifts mutually supplement, assist, and determine one another around the “essential gift,” forming, through their multiple diversity, one and only image, one and only force, one and only form of the said creative phenomenon¹ . It is precisely this constructive principle of human gift, a principle that defines gift as a system of multiple elements, which can become, in the field of art, a methodological basis for the definition of the typology of creation, or more precisely for the definition of an unforeseen classification of creative types.

Creative systems can be typologically similar and dissimilar; by comparing them, one can establish the role played by the presence or predominance of particular elements, and judge the reciprocal relationships that determined a particular creative type. This type of typological method (which can, undoubtedly, but should not be transformed into an insignificant schema), which simultaneously addresses the study of works of art and creative processes, cannot fail to give rise to interesting conclusions. Above all, these conclusions confirm the multiple diversity of the elements that form any creative nature, the inclination and diversity of the inner experience that stimulates and creates them.
Since these “notes” are limited to musical problems, it would be interesting, above all, to dwell on an exceptional and unexplored element of musical talent, which is the experience of time, an experience that exists and, so to speak, always forms the musical work. The study of the creative type of any great composer can be divided into three essential categories:

1. The theme of the work, which reflects the composer’s fundamental tendency, always specific, limited, and determined;
2. The compositional technique, which is mutually dependent on the work’s main theme; and
3. What one might call the composer’s personal musical experience.

This experience, which is an innate complex of musical intuitions and possibilities, is based above all on a specifically musical experience of time—the khronos—in relation to which music itself plays only the role of functional director.

The sense of time is undoubtedly a quality accessible to all. Everyone knows that time flows differently, that the density and intensity of the temporal process are always different and variable, and that humankind is even capable of simultaneously recognizing itself in time currents of entirely different qualities. Waiting, anguish, pain, suffering, fear, contemplation, pleasure – these are, above all, different categories of time within which human life flows. Now, all this variety of types and modifications of psychological time would be elusive, if at the basis of all this complexity of experience were not the primary, often subconscious sensation of real time, of ontological time.

The peculiarity of the musical notion of time lies precisely in the fact that it arises and flows either outside the categories of psychological time or simultaneously with them, which allows us to consider musical experience as one of the purest forms of the ontological sensation of time² .
Musical art, which contains within itself the possibilities for a most adequate experience of ontological time, does not limit itself to merely reflecting this notion. It is very rare for psychological reflexes not to dominate the creative process; one could even say that their absence in the creative domain marks the presence of a special talent that, in its pure state, is very rarely encountered.
The experience of time, and therefore the quality of the element of time in the work of different musicians, is always different, but their type par excellence—ontological or psychological—can always be defined and, consequently, lend itself to a typological classification.

There is in music a special relationship, a kind of counterpoint, between the flow of time, its inherent duration, and the material and technical means with which this music was expressed and notated.
Either the musical material adequately fills the flow of time, which, so to speak, “conducts” the music and determines its temporary form, or it abandons this flow of time, shortening it, expanding it, or convulsively transforming its normal course.

In the first case, the music can be called chronometric, in the second, chrono-ametric.

In chronometric music, the sense of time is in balance with the musical process; in other words, ontological time evolves completely and uniformly within musical duration. In its primary creative basis, chronometric music is characterized by the absence of emotional and psychological reflexes, which allows it to grasp the process of ontological time and penetrate into it. This music is typical precisely because of a notion of balance, dynamic order, and normal, graded development; in the realm of psychic reaction, it evokes a special feeling of “dynamic calm” and satisfaction. Chronometric music governs hearing and consciousness, thanks to its musical course, which establishes in listeners exactly the same inner order of time that the composer experienced at the moment when his inspiration gave birth to the work.

The nature of chrono-ametric music is always psychological; it is only through it that psychological reflexes can be expressed. This music is, so to speak, a secondary notation of the primary emotional impulses, states and projects of the author. In this music, the centers of attraction and gravity are, in short, displaced. They are not located in the sound instant, nor in the musical data, but are always placed in front or behind (in front for the most part), thus breaking with the normal course of musical time and destroying the predominance of the “musical instant.” Either the music precedes real time, or it remains behind, which establishes a specific interference between the two, and brings about the wearying heaviness and instability of chrono-ametric music. Such music could not be in harmony with a synthetic musical hearing, whose musical receptivity sets aside any accidental reflex of association to perceive it on two different levels: that of sounds and that of a particular speculation.

If we attempt to define certain essential data of creative musical typology, “the problem of time” must ultimately take precedence over all other problems, since it is essentially linked to the definition of primary categories in music.

Just as spatial experience, the principle of perspective and transparency in painting, the sensation of time is for the musician the fundamental element, that is, it is part of a universal conception, which determines the very type and style of his creation.

Despite the infinite quantity and diversity of human gifts, creative genres in art are extremely few, due to the limited number of genres of human consciousness, genres of the notion of what is “me” and “not me,” and genres of coordination of what “is me” with what “is not me,” things which are the basis of all creative intuition. Works of art, different in style and constructive manner, can only be the variety of an identical creative experience, which unites them all.

The problem of time in musical art is interesting precisely because it encourages an original classification of musical works, a classification that transcends an analysis of style or form.
The tendency to grasp real ontological time and translate it into creative categories of art remains at the root of musical intuition. The ancient modes and tetrachords that were transformed into the Gregorian neumes of the early Middle Ages and which served as the basis for the unique and adequate style of church music, the true folk songs with their refrains which, like Gregorian chants, do not sing the words but drag out the vowels (as temporary intonation units devoid of any descriptive intention) are found psychologically related to works as dissimilar at first glance as the polyphonic conceptions of Bach, always conceived in tandem with their temporary course which even seems to reside within them, as the transparent and spontaneous chronometrism of Haydn and Mozart, and as the objective and measured feeling of the most beautiful themes of Verdi, surprising by their musical imagination, but from which all psychological intonations are always excluded. In modern music, it is Igor Stravinsky who has been the renovator and continuer of chronometric music.

In all the musical phenomena described here, we witness an experience analogous to musical time and a concrete intuition of an inner ontological law that governs musical art. This music is not invented; it draws its origins from the laws that govern the order of musical art. The most typical and “greatest” music from a chrono-ametric point of view is that of Wagner. The essence of psychological time in Wagnerian music is determined not only by the form of its developments with endless sequences, gradations, and chromaticisms³, but also by the nature and intonations of the themes, always laden with psychological meaning, a meaning that often deprives them of the element of immanent musical reality. The form of leitmotifs that Wagner chose is also characteristic, for it excludes the gradual, normal, and spontaneous development of musical time. Each leitmotif already has its equivalent in time, which is tirelessly repeated with each return of the phrase, creating purely mechanical combinations of preconceived and sensed states by the listeners. It seems that Wagner chose this form of musical writing precisely because he recognized in himself the absence of a living experience of dynamics and true musical duration.

It would certainly be difficult to find another example of chrono-ametric music in such a pure state. In other musicians, as in Wagner, one can undoubtedly discern the distancing and even forgetting of temporary conceptions in their works, but to a less imperative degree, or else this distancing comes from other sources.

In this regard, it would be interesting to conduct a detailed analysis of the works of Beethoven and Chopin. Despite a deep and conscious sense of time (especially in his late quartets and early symphonies, and notably the Fourth in B-flat), many of Beethoven’s developments, due to his innate penchant for formal and schematic musical constructions—many developments, we say—are conceived outside the process of time and are registered by musical perception only as sequences and oppositions of abstract musical constructions. Beethoven’s music, which very often lacks the fullness of time, is not psychological either, since its pathos and psychological emotionality are not determined so much by the genre or quality of its themes and conceptions, as by the dynamic process of its developments.The construction of Beethoven’s plans seems to develop outside of time; it is musically immanent, although lacking the specific quality of temporary duration and real continuity, that is, the things that constitute the musical essence of Haydn and Mozart, which is all the more evident since, when it comes to the early Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn have deep affinities with him.
As for Chopin, his example is interesting for other reasons: Chopin’s musical substance and his technique, taken separately, can be considered examples of formal and schematic music. However, Chopin’s psychological feeling required, in order to be embodied, entirely different forms and possibilities. Hence arises the particular adaptation of the formal schemata of Chopin’s writing, often imprecise and unstable, to the demands of an emotionality with which his music is filled. This results in an unevenness of style, where formal schematism, devoid of any musical duration, is followed by emotional passages, which always influence the normal continuity of its developments. The particular “pulsation” of Chopin’s music can be defined, among other things, by its plan of modulations, which determines, together with other elements of musical construction, the temporary process of the music and which, in turn, is brought to determine this⁴.

One cannot address the problems of modern music without returning to the Wagnerian question, these problems always being in a dialectical relationship with it. Despite the gradual establishment of Wagnerian conceptions, foreseen by both Wagner’s predecessors and his contemporaries (Meyerbeer, Berlioz, Liszt), and the slow progress of Wagner himself, their power and persuasiveness have seemed to stun music and limit its ontological experience. Musical art, which is the art of similarity, of ontological knowledge of time, and of sonic speculation, was transformed by Wagner into a system of musical transcriptions, of the synchronization of abstract notions, and of emotional reflexes, the nature of which is foreign to music. It was not easy to bring music back into its immanent element of real time, and to reestablish the predominance of the forgotten laws of musical duration and continuity, since Wagnerian principles were extremely adaptable and easily blended with the most varied musical phenomena, being assimilated by musicians as different as César Franck, Rimsky-Korsakoff, Puccini, Vincent d’Indy, not to mention the direct epigones of “Wagnerism.”

With all due respect to Nietzsche, it was not Bizet who was the first Wagnerian antithesis, but Debussy⁵. Debussy’s musical fabric aesthetically opposed to all of Wagner’s conceptions, possessed a surprising conductivity of time, which is to music what transparency is to painting, thanks to which his music, after the false length of Wagner’s, surprised by its real and living duration. But Debussy could not, and perhaps did not want to, overcome his innate penchant for “musical states,” which frequently became static. Debussy’s musical “statics” are inherently immanently musical; his “musical states” constitute, so to speak, a transformation of musical instants into duration. Yet, given the absence of a living dynamism, Debussy was unable to restore to music its synthetic meaning, its fullness of forces and possibilities; this is what Igor Stravinsky did.
Over the two decades of his musical life, Stravinsky restored to music its laws of composition and its immanent experience. This inner and formal restoration of laws and order in musical art took place little by little and was perhaps begun by Stravinsky almost unconsciously.

Historically determined, on the one hand by what was once called French modernism, on the other by the Russian school of Rimsky-Korsakoff, Stravinsky had to undergo the painful ordeal of self-development, both to master the concrete musical fabric and to assimilate himself to true abstract musical speculation, in order to be able, after tearing himself away from his immediate predecessors, to discover within himself musical intuition and the “idea of ​​music,” so that all this would quickly transform for him into a creative declaration of his entire musical existence.

This statement, confirmed by all his works, beginning with Petrushka and ending with the recent Concerto in E-flat, establishes, above all, the principle of musical chronometry. Stravinsky’s creativity, through his sense of musical time, through the means by which his music develops and flows, belongs to classical traditions, to that “great” music, in which time and the musical process are reciprocally determined and do not originate in the sphere of psychological reflex, but in ontological experience. However, having reestablished this tradition, Stravinsky demonstrated its full vitality and proved that it was capable of undergoing a complete inner renewal, which affects not only the musical substance, but also the manner and technique of composition. In Stravinsky’s works, a synthesis is manifested that is rare in art: that of immense reforming force and a keen sense of tradition and preservation.

The first thing that strikes us when we study Stravinsky’s work is his inherent desire to translate any musical theme, any style, or any form into a completely personal and authentic system of perception and self-adaptation. Thus, this constructive conception of Stravinsky’s is typical of him and constitutes the index that characterizes his work in the same way that his polyphonic style and themes are typical of Bach, his symphonic developments of Beethoven, or his melodic plans of Verdi. The multiplicity of Stravinsky’s style, the periodicity of his creative experience in the form of illusory contradictory cycles, his free attitude toward the themes and musical procedures of others—all this is in a dialectical relationship with the unity of his musical principle, a principle that reassembles and “reconstitutes” any given musical affinity. In Stravinsky, this principle leads and results in a unique system of universal conception and understanding, in which all laws are given and not invented; yet this “system of necessity” hardly arouses in Stravinsky any feeling of revolt, but on the contrary forces him to free submission which, in turn, conditions an ever deeper discovery of the laws and conditions of being.

And above all, it is a question of the law of the necessity of time. Time is given, it is insurmountable. The process of its development could not and would not be distorted, neither by psychological inclination, nor by an illusion about its apparent emptiness or its blind elemental power. But time can be organized, translated into infinite aspects and qualities, which are those of its extent, its duration, its flow, and this is the ontological meaning of musical art. However complicated the metrical structure of Stravinsky’s music may be, it is always “a conductor of time”; the course of time possesses it within and, filling this course, it never abandons it and never distorts the order of its movement. This constitutes Stravinsky’s true typological kinship with the classical examples of 18th-century music⁶. Stravinsky relates to these examples through the analogy of his inner conceptions and his musical experience. For these same reasons, over the head of his master Rimsky-Korsakoff, with his music that means nothing and is based on nothing – Stravinsky, in Russian music, feels a predilection for Glinka and Tchaikowsky ⁷.

In the field of musical culture, that is, of musical problems, Stravinsky used his music to pose and resolve a large number of problems. Perhaps the most important of these is that of the “limits of music.” These limits seem, for the most part, vaguely “unlimited” to both musicians and listeners. And yet, Stravinsky’s experience establishes the opposite. “Not everything is permitted” in music, but many things, on the contrary, are forbidden (not in the sense of academic prohibitions, of course); in the experience of spiritual life, there are things that cannot and should not be translated or “expressed” by music⁸ . Music has its own themes, a vocation and experience, both creative and “auditory.” The latter can only be defined partially, as a “re-sensation” of music; in its substance, it must be based on the understanding of the ontological reality of the musical process – that is, on musical time ⁹(9).

To all those who criticize Stravinsky for lacking an emotive principle, one could say only one thing: they must listen to music with an ear that not only perceives music as “sounds,” but also as music “in time.” This means, to paraphrase Wagner, that one can “hear time.” Yet it is precisely this perception that gives rise to the highest musical joy, a joy whose possibilities are contained in the “highest” music and which constitutes its surest quality and most precious characteristic. Only such music can be a bridge connecting us to the being in which we live, but which, at the same time, is not us.

PETER SOUVTCHINSKY.

Translated from French by Hervé Blanquart

1. This constructive principle could well be confirmed by the examples of “failures” of all kinds. However paradoxical it may seem, the typical failure is always endowed with talent, but to achieve it, he lacks additional and indispensable data without which no true creative system can emerge. ↩︎
2. The once common definition of music as an art that “annihilates time” belongs to symbolic notions that define nothing at all. Man is given to feel the principle of time in its various qualities, but there is no “experience of non-time” in the immanent life of man. ↩︎
3. It should be noted that, in relation to the experience of time, diatonicism and chromaticism cannot determine anything: chromatic music can be chronometric, just as diatonic music may not coincide with the process of real time. ↩︎
4. The notion of extension-duration is found in Schumann’s music. His lyricism, always of equal intensity, develops harmoniously and without intercadences, thus creating an extraordinary balance between musical process and content.
   A similar harmony also exists in Brahms, although the equivalence of time and music is determined less by the character of his lyricism than by the genre of his musical speculation: Brahms’s developments are, like some of Beethoven’s developments, entirely conceived in time. ↩︎
5. The case of Mussorgsky, in whom psychological receptivity is adequate to musical intuition and forms with it as a single entity, is a phenomenon apart and would require a special musical and psychological analysis. ↩︎
6. It should not be assumed that all 18th-century music is characterized by the classical conception of time in question here. It was precisely during this period that a large number of ready-made mannerisms and formulas were created, and that a great deal of empty and mediocre music (called “pleasure music”) was written. It is all the more interesting to observe how forms and stylistic conventions came to life among the great musicians of this time, and how they brought to bear both their personal experience and the living technique of their creation. ↩︎
7. Just as Stravinsky’s penchant for the objective lyricism and purely Mozartian richness of Glinka, with the marvelous “adjustment” of his music, is understandable, the esteem in which he holds Tchaikowsky may at first glance seem paradoxical.
   Tchaikowsky’s psychologism was not a creative means; his pathos was a natural quality of his human experience and his musical gifts. Therefore, he never mutilated the constructive bases of his music. As such, Tchaikowsky’s musical art was always based on purely musical conceptions and his music, despite the pathetic tension, always develops harmoniously in time, and is always filled with true musical duration. ↩︎
8. This relegated Scriabin’s music, for example, to a tragic impasse, music burdened with a painful, harmful metaphysics, and at the same time with a feeble naiveté.
   Lacking the dynamism of Wagner and lacking the rich artistic substance that always saved Liszt and Chopin, Scriabin literally drowned his music in his own convulsive emotionality. This submission of music to an alien sphere led Scriabin to a distortion of his musical consciousness and a pitiful conflict between his music and his conceptions, which claimed to be a contemplative philosophy. ↩︎
9. The performer’s musical perception of time is, so to speak, halfway between the temporary perception of the “creator” and the listener. The true gift of the performer, the gift of reconstruction, as well as the feeling of a true contact with the public, are often conditioned by a primary and very particular awareness of the development of music over time that characterizes great and pure artists. ↩︎