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1995 d in Helga de la Motte-Haber et Reinhard Kopiez Der Hörer als Interpret (l’auditeur comme
interprète), Peter Lang, Francfort sur Main.

François Delalande

The construction of musical form by the listener

in Debussy's "La Terrasse des Audiences du Clair de Lune"

The ways of listening to music are infinitely variable, according to the listeners, to the
music and even to the moment and circumstances. From this statement, it is often
concluded that it's an impossible enterprise describing musical listening in its diversity.
So, one has recourse to simplifying models. There chiefly are two : the ideal listener
model, over all developed in the field of cognitive sciences or of reception theory, and
what can be called the average listener model, which consists in measuring average
responses, as is generally done in experimental psychology.These two modelisations
lead to smoothing out differences.

On the contrary, one can try to account for differences without losing oneself in the
infinite variation of singular cases. One verifies, in fact, that in a set of observations
made on real reception behaviours, there are convergences which appear, identical
strategies which can be observed in several persons. So all the vectors, in infinite
number, of the geometrical space, can be considered as a combination of only three
basic vectors, in the same way, the infinite variety of individual listening behaviours
can be described, with quite few reductions, as a combination, alternation or conflict of
a few characterised listening strategies that I'll call « listening-types ».

I have especially studied reception behaviours of electroacoustic musics, to isolate

points of view for analysis, but here I shall base myself on a work which is not the latest
one but is about a more familiar piece. It is a piano prelude by Debussy : « La Terrasse
des audiences du clair de lune » performed by Cécile Ousset (1).

A few words about the observation dispositive : only nine subjects , all musicians,
having a professional activity linked to music, fond of Debussy (but not specialists, nor
professional pianists).
- Each of them has been invited, individually, to listen to this prelude three times (in
very good listening conditions).
- After each of the first two listenings, open interview of ten or fifteen minutes was
held, introduced by a question of the type : « How did you listen , what did you hear ?»
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A variation was introduced for the third hearing : the listener could stop the record and
comment when it was in progress.
- Twenty-seven statements have been recorded, transcribed and analysed.

At once, one can see the particularities of such methodological choices.

- Competent listeners, capable of listening attentively and subtly.
- A small number of participants which prevents any statistical utilization of the results.
- Recourse to verbalization, which supposes a part of interpretation, but gives access to
symbolisation inherent in listening.

The aim is not, in fact, to extrapol, pointing out listening types which would have a
certain generality, but only to show that :
- in a given set of statements, various listening types appear,
- and that, according to the chosen type of listening, the object is built, in perception, in
a specific way.

Taxonomical listening

Three caracteristical strategies appeared in our corpus of statements, that I shall

describe successively, putting emphasis on the way the listener, in these three cases,
sees the object.

A first strategy is a consequence of the listener's will to take a synoptic sight at the
piece, and to remember it. For that, he tries to split it into successive parts big enough
so that there are not too many, and for him to have probability of finding in this set an
order, a coherence. The various macro-units are named, in verbal statements, using
sometimes « label-metaphores » which are only an « aide-memoire » to point out a
sequence.

This first listening-type, we shall call it, for ease, « taxonomical listening », because
making an inventory of the constituent elements is characteristic.
Here, this behaviour, in front of this prelude, ends with a feeling of dissatisfaction, even
of failure.

- At the beginning, you don't know where it's going.

I said to myself : I'll find out eventually. I don't know if I did or not.
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- For me this music is difficult to memorize, it is complex and very

intricate.

- You are forced to follow word for word. You have hardly any idea of what's
going to come .

Listeners who are hearing so, complain that they do not succeed in getting a sight of the
set, because the sequences they delimit are too small, and thus too numerous.
- I hear juxtapositions of tiny sequences. You change subject all the time.
- It's rather moments which follow each other.

It is very easy for us, now, to return to the record and score, and to explain why, if
someone adopts this behaviour, music is perceived as "juxtapositions of tiny
sequencies".

If we consider the first two pages of the score, for instance, we can notice that they are
constituted by 8 figures. It's nearly a didactical application of the laws of form. Each of
them has a strong morphological coherence and is opposite to the preceding and the
following ones because of maximum contrast.
(Example 1).

1 : The first figure is all chords,

2 : the second one, on the contrary, purely melodic.
3 : just as this figure is smooth and arhythmic, the following one (3) has a
sawtooth shape and rhythm.
4 : Again a smooth, continued, purely melodic design,
5 : which is opposite to this vertical, all chords succession.
6 : After a strong harmonic break, here is a completely static and motionless figure. It is
a natural resonance : the harmonics 1 to 4 appear first (in their natural disposition in the
spectrum). The harmonics of higher rank intervene only afterwards and disappear first,
according to an acoustical law of a resonance extinction.
7 : And after this motionless sound object, here is, in contrast, an animated sequence, an
oscillation the amplitude of which is growing.

This is how this first minute of music can be split into 8 strongly contrasted figures.

Figurativization
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Now, a change of point of view. We shall adopt another listening behaviour, that we
shall call "figurativization". Why "figurativization" ? Because the listener, this time,
has the tendancy to make music figurative, to find in it the representation of a scene.
This listening-type shows itself, in our statements, in a definite metaphorical
construction, which depends on an opposition through two terms: something inert and
something living. And more precisely, something inert which can be seen by
transparency through something moving.
But that is not all. For, at a second level of simbolization, the opposition through living
and inert is assimilated to opposition through a theatrical character and a back cloth,
and all elements are present for action to take place. So, in that logic, musical form is
interpreted as an action.
A few citations :
Metaphor of the scene :
A space is.outlined, like a box, and the important, living, organic thing goes
on inside. The rest is vegetable or mineral .

A regulated architectural space, something stable (…) There have to be

creatures at liberty in this sound space .

The theme of transparency, of the sight of inert through moving.

- Like an image seen through water, diffracted in layers

- I thought of "choches à travers les feuilles" (bells through the leaves)

because of the foliage you pass through.

At last, form is described like a forward tracking of a camera followed by a backward

tracking.

You approach a point in the image, when there are crescendos, and the
painting, instead of being blurred, becomes very clear (…) and then you step
further away again.

You enter bit by bit into the crux of the subject (like a film camera
advancing through successive rows of trees up to a charming palace in
the films of Walt Disney) : and the end is a gradual distancing .
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Our turn, now, to explain these metaphorical responses, that's to say, very simply, to
find what the subjects may describe with these metaphores.
Explanation of transparency, and more precisely of the inert seen by transparency
through the moving, is based on the analysis of "planes of presence".

A first example, almost at the beginning.

(ex 2)

Here, the same chord can be heard five times, put on the beat, regularly. We may
reasonably suppose that it represents the stable element. It is played pianissimo, in the
medium range, and masked by a set of foreground designs, which move easily from the
bottom to the top tones

A little further, an inert element, again, seen by transparency through a living element.
(ex 3)

The same F, on the middle staff, is repeated eleven times and constitutes a kind of fixed
axis, which passes across five bars, surrounded with moving and animated oscillations.
One can fix one's attention on this F which passes across the whole section, even when
it is in the background. When listened to from this point of view this sequence appears
continuous, even though the same sequence, heard from a taxonomic point of view,
could be analysed as a succession of two opposite figures, the one static, the other very
dynamic.

But let us go on analyzing transparency, planes of presence, and let us try to explain the
tracking foreward metaphor : « like a film-camera advancing through successive rows
of trees up to a charming palace in the films of Walt Disney », thus, the inert element
which is first in the background and progressively comes in the foreground. This
happens a little further (precisely bar nineteen).
(ex 4)

The inert element is in the distance. It is a pedal chord (you can see), repeated six times
but in a second plane, like a background before which is developed a very clear melodic
design, until this repeated C diesis becomes the melody, becomes animated, that's to say
the background becomes the figure, more and more precise and charged.
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You can see how these apparently very far-fetched metaphors show, in reality, a close
listening to planes of presence, and how the Walt Disney like scenario describes a
certain formal construction.

Empathic listening

Let us see a third listening type which supposes another attitude, which is going to
select other features, thus makes apparent other configurations and finally gives the
same piece another form.

I shall call this third hearing « empathic listening », because the subjects who are
listening in this way are attentive to sensations that they say they feel, and it is about
their sensations they speak, as if they physically indulged in the music, in order to feel
better, as by empathy, an effect of musical patterns.

Here, it's about heaviness. But listeners who are hearing in that way do not say that
music is heavy. They tell, for instance :
- I continually see myself in a situation where I'm going to escape from a certain
heaviness, but I'm brought back to it.

- The work of composition consists in expressing this feeling of heaviness

.There is really a physical feeling of fluidity and downward movement.

And when they describe metaphorically the form, it is not in terms of visual pictures but
of sensations and experienced effort.
- This theme didn't seem to me, at the previous hearing, to suggest such a
tiring walk - something physical, experienced physically - towards a peak which is
a relief.

It 'not very difficult to see what they are speaking about.

The feeling of heaviness is not only coming from the fact that, during the first minute of
the piece all the melodic lines are going down.
It's a little more complex. We note two kinds of pattern which can be interpreted as a
down attraction and both have as a base what can be called an « attracting pole » which
is simply a repeated tone.
The first pattern can be called « the fall.» It's a melodic line which is coming to fall on
an attracting pole, that's to say a repeated tone.
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(ex 5)

There are many falls in the first two pages

(ex 6)

The second pattern is like this

(ex 7)

• an attracting pole is first confirmed by repetition

• the melodic line then moves up by a related melodic movement.
• to finally return down

I call that a « lengthening », as if one pulls a string which finally returns to its static
position.
Until bar twelve, we can notice three occurences of this « lengthening », the last of
them is the most developed.
(ex 8)

Listening again to the same passage in this new prospect is an interesting experience.
There is no longer division into two planes of presence (a figure opposite to a
background), but a single line, an attracting pole along which you are moved up and
irresistibly pulled down to it.

One can notice that at the end of the passage, a change appears. At the set of going
down motives a going up motive follows ; an attracting pole (that's to say a repeated
tone) is confirmed at the top which will be used to articulate « lengthenings », but this
time reversed, pulling upwards.
(ex 9)

Polarity is passed to the top, and this until the end, where one can find the opposite of a
fall that's to say upward lines which are coming to die on a high attracting pole.
(ex 10)

Conclusions

Several conclusions can be drawn from these observations.

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The first one is that, according to the type of listening behaviour one adopts, one
doesn’t select the same features, thus one doesn’t make apparent the same
configurations and finally one doesn’t build the same form.

The same passage, according to the listener's attitude, can be divided into two
contrasted sequences, or into two planes of presence, a figure and a background, or to
be seen as a single oscillating line, continually recalled downwards.
(ex 11)

The perception of the global form, is not the same either.

He who practices a taxonomic listening only sees a succession of little figures after each
other.
For he who practises the figurativization, the piece is a great forward then backward
tracking. A remarkable inversion point can be noticed (bar 19), where the background
passes into the foreground.
And finally, for empathic listening, one first feels a heaviness which pulls you down,
then a climbing, but always heavy and at last a relief, a kind of weightlessness, which
has its definite equivalent in the writing and the sound realization. Here again can be
noticed the presence of an inversion point (bar 12), where attraction which was
downward becomes upward, but of course it is not the same one as for the preceeding
listening.
So, each point of view determines a form.

One would also be tempted to draw conclusions about psychological reality of listening
types. On this matter, what can be concluded, what cannot be concluded ?

It is of course impossible to conclude that there are three ways of listening to this
Debussy's prelude and still less that there are three ways of listening to music. It is quite
another methodology which would be employed for studying, on a statistical plane,
what listening behaviours are adopted according to the personality, the culture, the
music.

On the contrary, what is clearly seen to appear, even with a very homogeneous
population of only nine subjects, is that there are different strategies, depending on
different motivations and attitudes.
And it seems, as far as it is possible to trust in a method which is based on verbal
statements analysis, that one can pretty well describe individual listening behaviour as a
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combination of only a few listening types. Anyway, in a certainly less reducing manner
than by using the ideal listener model or the average listener model.

But we can see more. What appears too is that certain listening types are doing better
than others in front of a given music. Here, for instance, taxonomic listening led to a
feeling of failure, while the others two types of listening brought out a very coherent
and satisfactory path for the listener. There is, no doubt, a reciprocal adaptation of
listening and the object, that could be described in terms of assimilation and
accommodation. The listener adapts music to his listening, as much as he adapts his
listening to music, but the music more or less fits, and we can perhaps see there an
explanation of preferences. But these are only leads. Very much is left to be done.

(1) Ref. : EMI, CDC. 7476092.

Methodological aspects of this study are more developed in "La Terrasse des Audiences
du Clair de Lune de Debussy : Essai d'analyse esthésique", Analyse Musicale n°16,
Paris, 1989.