In a sentence from Jean Santeuil, and quite unexpectedly, Proust speaks of "those two prestiges of analogy and difference that have so much power over our minds". I couldn't think of a better phrase to define what I've called the thematic stakes. I'd even like to insist on the urgency of the thematic challenge. Every work, but especially every musical work, lives under the double sign of analogy and difference; without which, and because it unfolds in irreversible time, our perception would be unable to apprehend it. It is thanks to analogy that we can find our bearings in the work's progression, and it is thanks to difference that this progression can be accomplished. Every musical form depends absolutely on the dialectical relationship between analogy and difference, and it is on these characteristics that formal articulation is based.
The thematic challenge implies, first and foremost, the coherence of musical discourse and, by itself, its comprehensibility. The thematic issue is the issue of meaning itself, of the validity of the work. If we speak of coherence, we can think first and foremost of a principle of economy. Economy of means, certainly. How to build a work without having to invent perpetually "ex nihilo". The very thing that identifies the amateur in what he presents as a work of art is non-sequitur ; the fact that the deduction practically doesn't exist, or exists only in a rudimentary state. I think you can recognize the craft when, specifically, the economy of means is taken to its highest level. This does not essentially give value to ideas. In fact, there can be a trompe-l'œil economy with boilerplate ideas that imply a poor economy, a predictable deduction, something profoundly unoriginal: a prefabricated economy, used both to establish the theme and its consequences. In this case, there's nothing at stake at all, but rather the posthumous exploitation of an economy that proved its worth when it was invented, but which can only act as a meaningless schema outside the context that gave it birth.
This economy of means could be linked, in a trivial and even in a less trivial form, to another economy, the economy of invention. Must we admit that a creator's capacity for invention is limited, and that the configuration of his personality imposes limits on his capacity for invention? That the characteristics of his language - even if they expand, if they renew themselves in a sustained, if not spectacular, way - always bear the characteristics of his personality, that the renewal of his invention is therefore circumscribed in a territory whose boundaries are due to the multiple circumstances of which he is sometimes the master, and sometimes the slave? So, the theme of a work is due to an economy of invention. Valéry spoke of the first line that is given, all the others being due to the obstinacy of labor. We have also spoken, in varying percentages, of inspiration and perspiration. These different ways of expressing oneself come back to a common, central point: finding the theme is due to inspiration, to the crystallization of an exceptional, irrational moment, which is expected, and which is given to us by chance, which we must be ready to welcome at any moment, which we can encourage to blossom by putting ourselves in the right dispositions, but which we don't have. So we need to know how to exploit these rare, privileged moments. The whole thematic challenge consists essentially in knowing how to take advantage of the exception, to be able to stretch to acceptable temporal dimensions the privileged moment of a revelation. And yet, if we consult, by chance or out of curiosity, the sketches of the great composers, those in particular where the thematic challenge is the most important in relation to the composition, we can observe how long an elaboration was sometimes necessary to arrive at the formulation of a theme, a thematic principle. We can even see that sometimes it was the economics of development that forced the theme to be reshaped. It is, therefore, nothing more than a myth, this conception of intuition which, once elaborated, becomes a work of art. Schönberg himself, however, has been guilty of this; in any case, he has given us to believe it in his writings, saying that when he invents a theme, he knows in advance all its deductions and developments, and that the act of creation is thus revealed, from its very embryo, as a divine, omniscient act. The irrational aspect of invention should not be underestimated; there are, in fact, many short-circuits that are unknown to us when we invent figures, or form sound assemblies susceptible of development. In fact, we become accustomed to our own ideas, and in these ideas, even before we've exploited them to the full, we've put our personality - that is, our characteristics, and also our limits - into them. So this "omniscience", this prescience, often runs the risk of being no more than a routine of ourselves applying to an object with a novel aspect, a more or less conscious network of parameters we've already used, and which are due to our experience. Of course - and this is what Proust says in general about the experience of love - we might think that we're condemned to eternally repeat the same musical experience, and that the characteristics of our personality force us to take the same route every time, even though we see it as a new one. The same applies to musical gestures , without which we wouldn't be able to distinguish a musician's profile. But the same gestures can be applied to very different journeys; it's not the same gestures that characterize the journey of the work. The path taken by the work is to be found in the thematic object itself, and in the consequences resulting from its formulation.
The thematic challenge of a work is not necessarily the result of an economy of invention: an involuntary, exceptional moment of exceptional inspiration, allowing for work and elaboration that would be situated as more extended moments, more dependent on the will, moments infinitely less privileged. For shouldn't the search for a theme be seen as the same kind of work, in reduction, as that which takes place during the development of ideas? In other words, can the theme exist, be present in the composer's world, without potential developments? We see, in works or sketches, themes abandoned by composers even though they seem to us no less rich than those they have exploited. Is it not, in some cases, because of their lack of malleability, their unsuitability for the object at hand? Indeed, it seems that a theme does not exist in itself , but only in relation to a certain development. And development doesn't necessarily mean length and spread over time. Of course, thematic elaboration is strongly linked to the greater or lesser extension of development; but, while I'm waiting to focus on this structural link between potential richness and extension of development, I'd like to stress that the gift of a theme does not necessarily coincide with the form of development one intends to achieve: inadequacy of characteristics and articulations, inadequacy of potential, inadequacy of individualization or neutrality. In this respect, Wagner provides us with a unique object of study, because he doesn't just offer us a sketchbook to refer to (as is the case with Beethoven or Webern), but he offers us a work in which the exploitation of these themes will reveal what, over a period of twenty years, he has selected from all his discoveries as the objects most likely to be developed. And sometimes these are not the most characteristic at first, but it's always the most ductile that have been retained; at least, that's what it seems to me. We can no longer know - as the composer knew at least once, despite Schönberg's assertions - the thematic figure alone, free of all subsequent developments. Our view is one-sided: we no longer judge thematic figures in and for themselves, we can only judge them with their "posterity" or lack thereof; and from this, we make an estimate. But perhaps in other circumstances, the composer needing a different kind of development, he might have given a figure left "unmarried" an enviable posterity. Despite the work accomplished, our judgment is based on conjecture and conjecture.
A theme is already a reduced development that contains potential developments. Our reading of the theme is strongly influenced by the relationship between actual developments and the potential for development we find in the thematic core. I would say that when we approach a theme to study its consequences, we bring this principle of uncertainty to bear, because our approach cannot be naïve or objective. We know the real consequences , the only ones we can know; indeed, they're the only ones we can link directly to the thematic figure, the only ones we can define as realized potential. We limit deduction to what's in front of our eyes. In principle! Because every inventive composer, when he looks at a work, invents precisely those deductions that are not there, and which he will develop for himself. From the deductions that are visible, he imagines possible deductions that have not been exploited, or have been exploited only incidentally, only embryonically. From the real life of a work, a whole imaginary life develops, in which the composer invents other models and deductions, based on existing models and deductions. He will apply an inventive analysis, taking into account the absence of naivety that we have; he knows that objectivity is of no use to him; he will reinvent a naivety of another order, to imagine these deductions of another order. The thematic stakes of a predecessor can only become his own thematic stakes thanks to this deviation. He doesn't set himself up as a public passing by the observation of the composer's itineraries; he will invent his imaginary itineraries by accepting this observation, which he certainly can't refuse, but by transgressing it, by refusing it as a unique and obligatory experience. Our thematic listening exists as a function of development. When we listen to a theme and a theme only, we know its "history"; we can no longer know it as "initial" material. The inventor's task is to recreate this material as initial material; to accept its "history" and be able to recreate another, from which he himself will progress. This is undoubtedly part of what we can call inheritance, and the thematic issue is one of the main stakes.
P. B.