OF MUSIC BEFORE EVERYTHING, SÉBASTIEN ARFOUILLOUX
October 23, 2021
Following the publication of Que La Nuit tombe sur l'orchestre : surréalisme et musique1, the Center for Surrealism Research, jointly with the comparative literature research center of the University of Paris 4, organized the conference Le Silence d'or des surréalistes2. Since then, several scientific events have been interested in the question of links between surrealism and music: in 2017, Golden silence : Surrealism at 100 organized by the Schulich School of Music, of Montreal3, then in 2018 the study day Surrealism and music in France, 1924-19524. If surrealism, under André Breton's pen, refused a value to musical expression, complete freedom was left to determine what the components of surrealist music could be. It is to this task that Henri Gonnard's recent work, a musicologist who publishes Musique et surréalisme en France d'Erik Satie à Pierre Boulez5, has set himself.
Thinking about music in the light of surrealism, such is the affirmed project of Henri Gonnard's book, which, starting from Satie's ballet Parade, deals with musical works contemporary with surrealism, such as those of Francis Poulenc, Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, Germaine Tailleferre or André Jolivet, but also of a composer considered as a precursor of surrealism, Maurice Ravel, whose Gaspard de la nuit (1908) largely precedes the creation of the word surrealism by Apollinaire in 1917. The interest here is to carry the investigation on classical repertoire musicians, according to a relatively wide diachronic span, which allows us to consider a set of compositions from the twentieth century. We can salute, in support of the project's coherence, the finesse of musical analyses and the precision of the historical vision of music.
The work aims to group in the same musicological approach works claiming or relating to surrealism in various capacities. Its purpose rests on the idea that "there can exist between artists comparable concerns and modes of functioning that transcend without their knowledge their own territory even the era in which they inscribe themselves. Correspondences at a deep structural level are then revealed between the different fields of expression."6 The study proposes an original light on a priori diverse musical works of which it endeavors to bring out the kinship with surrealism. It summons theoretical elements of various orders, which respond to the challenge of questioning what, in this complex language that is music, relates to surrealism. The work also gives a place to composers' writings, notably those of Poulenc.
Regarding Parade, the author notes the subversive contestation that likens the ballet to Dada, at the level of staging but also of musical treatment. Musical analysis gives as proof of Satie's anti-romanticism and anti-symbolism a study of the treatment of harmony, melody and instrumental ensemble. The work questions Ravel's proximity to surrealism, proposing an analysis of the use of musical motifs highlighted by the expressive possibilities of the instrumental device, which opens up to veritable musical metaphors of the poetic text. For example, the pianist's hands that tighten in the piece "Le Gibet" in Gaspard de la nuit (1908) figure the strangulation of the hanged man, realistically, in a musical piece that results from the composer's attraction to dream and the marvelous.
It is remarkable that the reference to surrealism does not necessarily pass through the contestation of the classical formal heritage, notes Henri Gonnard, regarding, notably, the fidelity to classical tonal writing of Poulenc, Stravinsky and the play on registers of Germaine Tailleferre. The work also analyzes what in André Jolivet's music sets in motion a surrealist conception of the object, allowing the irruption of objective chance, by proposing rhythmic, harmonic and melodic analyses. It finally identifies Messiaen as a surrealist composer by discussing the musician's proximity, who recognizes the influence on him of reading Breton, Éluard and Reverdy, with the surrealist movement despite his Christian faith. This is not the case with Pierre Boulez, whose score of Le Marteau sans maître, seen as a key moment in the composer's journey, is very clearly identified as a desire to distance the text, and the movement, surrealists.
Ultimately, Henri Gonnard's approach is never so interesting as when it addresses the specificities of the musical language of the cited composers and emphasizes how much the forms employed are close to the theories of French surrealists. Nevertheless, as convincing as the analyses of these diverse works remain, the book does not reveal the unity of a common aesthetic project, which would relate to surrealist music.
If no definition of surrealist art excludes music by principle, and if we must well understand that all means of expression are likely to be employed, it remains nonetheless that there is no surrealist conception of music. Starting from there, one could question how the revolutionary criterion, yet constitutive of surrealism, could be weakened by being assimilated through these different compositions more to an artistic current. A composer who could have found his place in this study, François-Bernard Mâche, had already worried about this. According to him, music, which for much longer than the surrealists mixed the real and the imaginary, had not accomplished the surrealist revolution and had the double disadvantage of "cutting the magical grass under the poets' feet, and, while going more easily than them in the same direction, of finally failing to really change the relations of mind and world."7 Does there exist a consubstantial link music surrealism? Ultimately, the question remains open. The interesting incitation to cross approaches proposed by this work invites in any case to prolong the questioning.
1 . Sébastien Arfouilloux, Que la Nuit tombe sur l'orchestre : surréalisme et musique. Paris : Fayard ("Les Chemins de la musique"), 2009, 541 p.
2 . Le Silence d'or des surréalistes / textes réunis et présentés par Sébastien Arfouilloux ; préface d'Henri Béhar. Château-Gontier : Aedam Musicae, 2013, 304 p.
3 . Published in Gli Spazi della musica [Turin]. V. 7 (2018) "Golden Silence". Music and Surrealism, 1917-2017 / under the direction of Jeremy Cox. https://www.ojs.unito.it/index.php/spazidellamusica/issue/view/296
4 . Study day Surrealism and music in France, 1924-1952 : interdisciplinary and international contexts, Institute of modern Languages research, School of advanced Study, University of London, June 8, 2018.
- Henri Gonnard, Musique et surréalisme en France d'Erik Satie à Pierre Boulez / préface de Caroline Potter, Paris : Champion, 2021. 182 p.
6 . Ibid., p. 89.
- François-Bernard Mâche, "Surréalisme et musique, remarques et gloses", La Nouvelle Revue française, n° 264, December 1974, p. 41-42.