MAPPING MYSTERY: BRELET, JANKÉLÉVITCH, AND PHENOMENOLOGIES OF MUSIC IN POST-WORLD WAR II FRANCE by Benjamin M. McBrayer B.A. in Music, University of Dayton, 2003 M.M. in Music History, University of Cincinnati, 2008 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2017 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Benjamin M. McBrayer It was defended on March 20, 2017 and approved by Giuseppina Mecchia, Professor, Department of French/Italian Studies Eric Moe, Andrew W. Mellon Professor, Department of Music Robert Fallon, Visiting Scholar, Department of Music, Duquesne University Dissertation Advisor: Anna Nisnevich, Assistant Professor, Department of Music Dissertation Advisor: Deane L. Root, Professor, Department of Music ii Copyright © by Benjamin M. McBrayer 2017 iii MAPPING MYSTERY: BRELET, JANKÉLÉVITCH, AND PHENOMENOLOGIES OF MUSIC IN POST-WORLD WAR II FRANCE Benjamin M. McBrayer, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2017 This dissertation examines the revival of interest in interplay of music and mystery in post-1945 France, revisiting but also reconfiguring recent debates on the merits of the ineffable in music. The framework of my project brings into focus, amidst post-WWII French philosophies of music, what can be seen as two polar regions of mysteriology. At one end, there is the musicologist Gisèle Brelet, who employs the conventional terms of epistemology constructing what amounts to a metaphysics of music. At the other, there is the philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch, who seeks to expose at every turn the ultimate metaphoricity of any such metaphysics, advocating a radical re-creation of his subject matter in the process of reflecting on it. As I show, however dissimilar, these approaches subsisted on, as well as marked the limits of, a broader intellectual milieu—that of an existential phenomenology committed to studying the intentionality of conscious experience. The Introduction discusses contemporaneous philosophical, and Chapter 1 traces historical, underpinnings of the new urge to register the aesthetic experience of music as “ontological mystery,” an experience hinging on a variety of modes of awareness of an Other. When approached via musical sound, the question of the Other becomes a problem of time—the medium through which the experience of the Other happens. Both Brelet and Jankélévitch posited, albeit in differing ways, that through music we become conscious of a time that is other than the way in which we experience time in our ordinary lives. In phenomenology, the Other can take various, but related forms—most iv commonly, it is the alterity of another consciousness, of the world in-itself, or of history. Chapters 2–4 explore in turn each of these forms and their corresponding temporalities as they appear in the work of Jankélévitch and Brelet. Chapter 2 centers on the mystery of intra-human and inter-human time, of time within and between subjects. Chapter 3 addresses the mystery of ecological time, or the temporal relationship between human beings and the natural world. Chapter 4 investigates the mystery of historical time and its manifestations in the dialectics of music. v TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ....................................................................................................................................xi 1.0 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 2.0 MUSICOLOGIE AND MYSTERY.......................................................................... 32 2.1 BETWEEN HISTORY AND AESTHETICS ................................................. 32 2.2 MUSIC AESTHETICS AND MYSTERY: THE ANCIENTS ...................... 39 2.2.1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) ........................................................... 40 2.2.2 François-Joseph Fétis (1784–1871) .............................................................. 43 2.3 MUSIC AESTHETICS AND MYSTERY: THE MODERNS....................... 47 2.3.1 Romain Rolland (1866–1944) ....................................................................... 47 2.3.2 André Pirro (1869–1943)............................................................................... 51 2.3.3 Paul-Marie Masson (1882–1954) .................................................................. 53 3.0 JANKÉLÉVITCH, LEVINAS, AND SONOROUS PSYCHISM .......................... 58 3.1 FELLOW PLOTINIANS .................................................................................. 58 3.2 BETWEEN AUDIBLE AND INAUDIBLE..................................................... 62 3.3 PNEUMATIC MYSTERIES ............................................................................ 66 3.4 EXPERIENCING PNEUMATIC MYSTERIES ............................................ 70 4.0 DRASTIC ECOMYSTERIOLOGY......................................................................... 94 4.1 FROM RESISTANCE CLASSIC TO POSTWAR PROPHET .................... 96 vi 4.2 JANKÉLÉVITCH’S DRASTIC ....................................................................... 99 4.3 ECOMYSTERIOLOGY ................................................................................. 101 4.3.1 Perspectivism: Vision and Intervision ....................................................... 103 4.3.2 Grammatic Mysteries .................................................................................. 105 4.3.3 Technologies of Musical Ecomystery ......................................................... 109 5.0 MYSTERIES OF THE DIALECTIC .................................................................... 138 5.1 IMMANENT METAPHYSICS ...................................................................... 142 5.2 THE DIALECTICALITY OF MUSIC .......................................................... 151 5.2.1 A Tale of Two Dialectics ............................................................................. 153 5.2.2 Antinomies of Philosophy ........................................................................... 157 5.3 ANTINOMIES OF NEW MUSIC .................................................................. 161 5.3.1 Antinomy 1: Psychology / Aesthetics ......................................................... 163 5.3.2 Antinomy 2: Material / Form ..................................................................... 167 5.3.3 Antinomy 3: Old / New ................................................................................ 173 5.4 STRAVINSKYAN DIALECTICS ................................................................. 190 5.4.1 Desublimating Music ................................................................................... 191 5.4.2 Aesthetic Dépouillement.............................................................................. 198 5.4.3 Stravinsky’s Music of Phenomenology ...................................................... 204 5.4.4 Playing with Sound ...................................................................................... 206 5.4.5 La Carrure and the Mystery of the Eternal Present ................................ 210 6.0 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 217 APPENDIX A ............................................................................................................................ 219 APPENDIX B ............................................................................................................................ 222 vii APPENDIX C ............................................................................................................................ 226 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 228 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Types and Techniques of Stagnance in Debussy’s Music ........................................... 120 Table 2. Musical Techniques of Debussyan Immobility (Debussy et le mystère, Ch. 2) .......... 122 Table 3. Correlations of Music and Philosophy (Debussy et le mystère, Ch. 2) ........................ 123 Table 4. Techniques of Geotropism (Debussy et le mystère, Ch. 3) .......................................... 131 Table 5. Correlations of Music and Philosophy (Debussy et le mystère, Ch. 3) ........................ 132 Table 6. Types of Mystery in Jankélévitch’s Debussy et le mystère.......................................... 219 Table 7. Compositions Cited in Jankélévitch’s Debussy et le mystère ...................................... 222 Table 8. Music Examples in Jankélévitch’s Debussy et le mystère ........................................... 226 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Debussy, Le Martyre de saint Sébastien, mm. 237–49 (vocal score) ........................... 76 Figure 2. Debussy, Le Martyre de saint Sébastien, mm. 249–56 (vocal score) ........................... 78 Figure 3. Debussy, Le Martyre de saint Sébastien, mm. 255–70 (vocal score) ........................... 82 Figure 4. Debussy, Le Martyre de saint Sébastien, mm. 271–89 (vocal score) ........................... 87 Figure 5. Debussy, Le Martyre de saint Sébastien, mm. 290–309 (vocal score) ......................... 92 Figure 6. Debussy, Nuages (Nocturnes, n° 1), mm. 98–102 (transcription by Ravel) .............. 119 Figure 7. Debussy, Feux d’artifice (Préludes II, n° 12), mm. 93–101 ......................................