Establishing an order between humans and time

Time, the subject of much philosophical reflection throughout the ages, but particularly that of our own, with Husserl, Heidegger, Bachelard, Gonseth and countless more, is, as we all know, variable. There is objective time, as counted by our watches in seconds, minutes and hours. But there is also experienced time, that of our individual and collective existence, differing according to our circumstances and our psychological behaviour. The past seems short and the future long. A quarter of an hour spent in a sick bed does not last as long as that lived by us at the peak of good health.

The progress of a musical work

The same applies to music, but more subtly. Why does a symphony seem long or short to us? It depends of course on the wealth or poverty of its substance, on the interest it arouses or the boredom it triggers. But also on how it is executed.
It is a problem encountered by every composer when determining the length of their work. It is not consciously raised but the composer has an infallible, relative, or even flawed, sense of it. Bach's St Matthew Passion and his Mass in B minor last a long time in terms of minutes, but seem not to, so inventively rich, inspirational, expressively and dramatically powerful are they, so varied are their styles and technique.

Divine lengths

Not one bar too many or too few in a Mozart Symphony. It is quite miraculous. Schumann would speak of the "divine lengths" of Schubert's great C Major Symphony. It is indeed long, but its charm is so captivating, its inventiveness so natural and spontaneous, that even the numerous repetitions scattered throughout it enrapture the listener. The opposite might be said unkindly of certain works by Reger: it has no beginning, it has no end. It just lasts ..
Each notable composer in fact has his own concept of time. It is part of his personality, and also of the time in which he lived. Some, such as Darius Milhaud, find the flow in Wagner's works unbearable. To gain a real understanding of these immense dramas - Tristan, the Ring, Parsifal - an in-depth study first needs to be undertaken of the text, its allusions, its at times obscure but insightful meaning. And the music lights up this timeless world, imbues it with an extraordinary radiance, infinitely prolongs its meaning. And then, Nietzsche, who attacked it but had grasped it, wrote: “its celebrated artistic process, the endless melody, attempts to break all temporal and physical mathematical symmetry.”

Past and future merge

Generally speaking, the classics, and Beethoven above all, tended towards a goal, this tension, at times dramatic, alternating with periods of rest. The Romantics remained more willingly in the present moment; or indeed past and future blended in the musical instant.
In his bar, Debussy “prefers the uneven line, more vague and more soluble in the air", as recommended by Verlaine. Here, the passage of time is ushered into a magical and static world. Closeness and distance meet. These are musical states.
Stravinsky's conception is altogether different. For him, "the sole purpose of music is to establish an order between humans and time". Drawing on this principle, he creates an objective art where chronometric measurement reigns but where the melodic line is free, which leads to incessant time changes.
At Schönberg's school, and with Webern in particular, the length of a piece is reduced to the extreme, sometimes to a few seconds. This is clearly a reaction against the length of Bruckner's or Mahler's symphonies. As Schönberg writes in his preface to a string quartet piece by Webern: “to express a novel through a single gesture, happiness through a single breath”.

And the performers?

It goes without saying that the problem of experienced time also arises for performers who have to sense, even guess the composer's intentions. Often there is discrimination between one part of the musical discourse and another. Thus, in the slow movement of Bach's Italian concerto, the left hand has to keep strictly to an inexorable beat while the right hand freely plays the melody. This is the real solution provided by the rubato.
For the conductor, it is a question of keeping the musicians absolutely synchronised whilst investing the work with expressive inflections and the necessary accents through the rubato. Here, the right hand keeps time and the left shapes the curve of the piece.
As for the general tempo, it has been remarked that Toscanini accelerated the movement as he grew older. To prove his vitality, his youthfulness of heart? Ansermet, the thoughtful mathematician, retained exactly the same length in Fêtes, the second of Debussy's Nocturnes, in the two recordings made at a distance of twelve years from one another. For his part, Furtwängler slowed the tempo down during the course of his career, but brought the piece all the more alive by a phenomenally forceful internal power.

Henry Gagnebin, 29 November 1970