Faculty of Humanities, Koper

University of Primorska

Paper topic

Transgression of visual imagery in music of the modern age or a

study of musically evoked visuality from late baroque period till
postmodernity

Student: Benjamin Virc

Mentor: prof. Anthony J. Cascardi, Ph.D.

Subject: Languages of the visible world

Date: July 1st 2008

Transgression of visual imagery in music of the modern age or a study

of musically evoked visuality from late baroque period till
postmodernity
If we follow Greenberg’s surmise concerning the modernist painting, which was
derived from Kant’s demarcation of autonomic domains of human activity that
are usually named as science, politics (or ethics) and art, we get the situation in
which an every single art medium (as well as the style) has to meet certain
conditions to earn the status of authenticity, actuality, and especially autonomy.
By doing so the medium demonstrates that the experience, which it enables, is a
value itself, and that no other activity could enable the very same experience in
the same way. Due to specificity of this essay’s topic in which I will be dealing
with the phenomenon of transgression of visual imagery1 within the music of the
modern age, I feel the obligation to point out certain starting-points that seem to
be relevant to the problem of visuality in the context of the language and
everything related to the auditory sphere: it is about the very understanding of
every phenomenon that can be regarded as proto-language form or a type; it is
also about understanding our cognitive processes, when we try to establish an
analogy between music to certain yet unknown meaning or visual representation
that can be justifiable in a specific situation, even though that kind of a conduct
cannot be set up as a general rule. The reason of misunderstanding lies within
the everlasting (puristic) quarrel about defining the limits of a certain medium,
especially within the domain of empiricism of aesthetic experience, as well as the
most intimate method that belongs to the subject itself – i.e. intuitive
introspection which remains beyond reach of the Other, and which is not oriented
towards criticism of public discourse, thus creating a moment of phantasmatic
reality. A reality, which is a product of our imagination – Plato also spoke about
this in his allegory, giving the example of the prisoners in the cave – and towards
which an individual cannot establish true critical (in a way iconoclastic) distance,
because the distance is diminished due to sympathetic reaction of the intuition.
This kind of intuition can thus constitute only intrinsic knowledge that can usually
gain the status of individual practical use – but only for the subject itself.

A problem, which is the crucial object of my paper, relates to visuality of the

code-like system, similar to language, an example for this is also the music itself
(in the context of fine arts one could see an analogy to the abstract painting),
even though it cannot be treated as the true language due to Adorno’s argument
that music lacks the potency of signifying the concrete meaning.2 An
epistemologic status of the notion “music language”, which cannot fully translate
itself into other speaking languages, at least not through exact unequivocal
semantic meanings or codex, becomes unresolved when we try to decipher which
concrete meaning should this chord, melodic line or the mere choice of
instruments represent, and what kind of reality or meaning could be faithfully
represented by succession of articulated sounds. At this point, we are heading
towards semiotic discourse of music’s context, where the latter focus itself on the
mimetic aspect of the art and its relation to the truth. However, I would like to

1
Here I am referring to eidetic images, which can occur during the aesthetic experience.
See the classification of images in: Mitchell, W. T. J.: Iconology. Image, Text, Ideology,
Chicago University Press 1987.
2
See: Adorno, T. W.: On Some Relationships between Music and Painting. The Musical
Quarterly, Vol. 79, no. 1, Spring 1995, Oxford University Press.
abandon this kind of discussion, since this is not the primary teleological
intention of my study, but rather the introspective moment of aesthetic
experience, where the ability of visual representation (evoked by the sound
stimuli) is the crucial object of my analysis. For the purpose of avoiding the chaos
and misinterpretation, I am presenting the new co-actor to this debate, which is
Bergson’s concept of intuition3 with which we can explain the process of
constructing our imagination when it comes to aesthetic experience of different
compositions of renowned and well-known artists, which have been chosen from
the late baroque period till the middle of the 20th century.

In the very beginning I would like to point out two theses, which I will try to prove
in the case of the chosen compositions, and which are crucial for understanding
the transformation of symbolic potency of the music media: a) within the sound
media there are several encoded systems which can establish more or less
complex symbolic relations, even though none of them represents just one-
meaning reality, but acts as part of polyvalent ludistic context that becomes
present only within the reach of aesthetic experience, as well as the individual
(intuitive?) ability to decipher these types of narration; and b) the most intense
form of evocation, as well as the transgression of images occurred in the period
of French and Italian symbolism and impressionism.4

At this point I would like to explain the perspective of my understanding of

certain notions, which are closely attached to both theses, as well as to draw out
the frame of this discourse about the problems mentioned above – therefore I
feel obliged to add some notes to the theses. Firstly, a pseudo-tautological
construction of the first these – a reason, why some readers might won’t treat it
as a real these” – deals with the significance of different codices and their
possible explications, towards which gravitated the structuralistic thought of the
20th century, as well as the importance of deciphering a certain way of narration.
This means two things – firstly, that the human mind is a priori oriented towards
structuring the sensible meaning, despite the obstacles of ambiguous
signification and attribution that comes from the subject’s outer side, even when
the essence of signification cannot be found or pointed out unambiguously on the
object itself; and secondly, that the structure of the music medium – whatever
like it may be – requires proper decoding into the structure of our everyday
language, such as is the emotional, ideological, fable-like etc.; in short, a musical
structure that one finds in scores is the very start of certain epistemologic
construction, which cannot exist without the public reception of music’s
interpretation and which deals with the symbolic capital within the aesthetic
experience.
3
See: Bergson, H.: Esej o smehu (et al.), Slovenska matica, Ljubljana 1977.
4
Here I would like to point out to a different stylistic autoperception by Claude Debussy
who considered himself as a symbolistic author, even though the official academic
musicology, as well as the history of music classified him as impressionistic composer,
which shows a persistent phenomenon of analogical way of pseudo-psychological treatise
within the art, and also a “common sense” notion of specific construction of the reception
of Debussy's music, which is closely connected to impressionistic painting rather than the
symbolic poetry of fin de siecle.
Before I enter the analytical field regarding a diachronic principle from the late
baroque till the middle of the 20th century, one can witness the antithesis of the
regular definition of the musical work, which occurred with the conceptualization
of John Cage’s Tacet 4’33’’ that can be understood as a frontal provocation of the
institutional art. I would also like to emphasize the phenomenon of the negative
dialectics in the history of music, when the idea or the context of certain art
practice becomes more important than the “essence” of sublime within the work
of art which was the main aesthetic, as well as the artistic ideal of the romantic
period.

Transgression, which can be in simpler manner understood as subject’s crossing

or passing over to the other side of its primal function, is used as a notion of
Lacanian psychoanalysis that is being defined with subject’s obedience to the
law; we have then this subject’s intention to cross over the boundaries, what is
usually forbidden and not wanted in general. In the context of music the notion of
transgression could be paralleled to composer’s intention of breaking the general
rule of composing, and making his/her composition a subversive object that can
be later used as an example of legitimate extension of the art’s medium. As a
result, a new symbolic representation is established, and therefore a new
imagery as well. Transgression, which can be illustrated with the metaphor
“walking on the edge”, is indispensable to dialectics – or some kind of a
(r)evolution – within art, which is not always approved by the audience. A more
general notion of transgression can be found within the phenomenon of aesthetic
experience, and not just in the process of artistic creation, especially in the sense
of impressions that can occur as a different type of representation that differs
from the original stimuli.5 In other words – during the listening to the music,
which is in fact a psychological process – in contrast to mere physiological aspect
of hearing –, as Barthes points it out, an individual’s imagination can be
stimulated to the extent that certain visually perceived images can
spontaneously emerge in our mind. The intensity of this phenomenon can be
ascribed to the medium’s transfer efficacy where the symbolic capital of certain
work of art is being transferred through the means of sound articulation. During
the listening other forms of transfer are possible as well, such as verbal-semantic
allusions that can trigger the potency to articulate text, as well as the certain
body movements, which we are not always completely aware of – meaning that a
particular genre of music could evoke affinity to specific body gesticulation,
which articulates – similarly to verbal elements – itself as improvised response to
aesthetic experience that is (by all means) worthy of closer psychoanalytical
observation.

Visual imagery is the second crucial notion, connected to the topic of this essay,
which has a role of an object, created by transgression. Another theoretical
possibility of deciphering the transgression of visuality would therefore have to
deal with the concept of morphology, namely the morphology of the transfer of
the visual from the music media. A notion “visual imagery” can be thus defined
as an experience (or a phenomenon in broader sense) that has the potency of
5
In this case I am referring to the relatively common aesthetic phenomenon, which can
be defined as spontaneous visualization of certain succession of sounds.
giving a visual image to the individual subject, an image, which can be entirely a
product of eidetic imagining, and which can be interpreted through the concept
of collective memory,6 as well as its (deliberate?) oblivion. A collective memory
therefore represents a subtle cognitive sphere in which resides the whole
aptitude of human empiricism and epistemological history.

The last act of drawing out the discourse is to define a notion of the modern age,
what can be carried out from at least two eligible perspectives – the first one
emphasizes the way of production of the capital, especially the reestablishment
of social relations within the capitalist society, and the second one stresses out
the importance of turning-point, in which the significance of the human subject
arose above the apodiction of theology and speculative metaphysics. The main
initiative for such an event emerged from work by Rene Descartes who
established dichotomy between the sapient subject (res cogitans) and the world
(res extensa) which has become an object of modern scientific observation. Even
though the both perspectives remain congruent to the actual stream of history
and to some aspects of causality, I have decided to use the latter one, mainly
because of the scientific foundation of empiric individuality, which has become a
part of the collective human conscience and memory. An aspiration to explore
the world and the importance of processes that enable subject’s self-evolution
have expanded greatly, especially in the field of natural sciences; later on, when
the critical conscience about the production and social mechanisms of
transformation and manipulation of the capital has been established, the so-
called enlightenment project (a part of which was also Marx’s idea of new order
of the society) gradually corrupted itself when the worst types of totalitarian
regimes took place in the human history (degrading a significant part of the
human categorical imperative in ethics as well). In short, from the history’s point
of view, I took the music examples from late baroque period (which is
approximately the time of late Rene Descartes) till the middle of the 20th century.
It is also worth-wile to say that this particular span of history which we generally
acknowledge as the modern times was also the most perturbative times ever.

First attempts to understand music in the baroque period were inherited from the
antiquity and the early Middle Ages, which were some kind of a renewal of the
notion of spherical harmonies that originate from the Pythagoreans. The core of
Pythagorean metaphysics of the sound lies within the notion of cosmos, which is
the source of all beauty, and also the existence of harmonic relations among the
tones. These harmonic relations, which were basically numeric ratios (i.e.
mathematic values) for the true acoustic experience of beauty, were
speculatively connected to the movement of the stars. This somewhat
speculative and nonsensical belief survived through the ages despite the
Aristotle’s argument that it is impossible to have a cosmic base of the acoustic
harmony since the lack of the friction between the stars and the outer space
cannot be the source of the world harmony as we know it. The Christian Middle
Ages adapted pagan representation of spherical harmonies and transformed it to
6
See: Halbwachs, M.: Kolektivni spomin. Studia Humanitatis, Ljubljana, 2001.
the idea of heavenly glory of the God, which is ascribed to Jacob of Liège. At the
end of the dark ages the Aristotelian spherical harmonies were adapted by the
mathematics – the first attempt was those of Adam of Fulda, but the most known
is the work of Johannes Kepler who was using the system of ancient cosmogony
of the so-called six holy planets,7 with a difference that the planets revolve
around the sun in the form of concentric tracks. Kepler calculated in his fifth
book, Harmonices mundi (1619), the exact relations among the tones, which
resound like a polyphonic harmony or like an inaudible world symphony, which
can be heard after the listener’s act of contemplation. Despite the fact that
Kepler is in fact one of the world renowned founders of modern acoustics there
can still be found a presence of an “old” metaphysical understanding of the world
creation and the dichotomy between macro- and microcosm.

A tradition of music’s understanding, which was closely connected to the theory

of affects, with a strong attachment to Boethius’ reconfiguration of the
knowledge of the antiquity, cannot be fully comprehended without notions such
as musica mundana, musica humana and musica instrumentalis, out of which the
first represents harmony of the macrocosm, the second is attributed to the
concept of the psyche, especially to the senses and the divine nature of our soul,
while the third actually is a concrete (unlike the abstract character of the other
two) succession of sounds, using the instruments and the human voice. The third
sphere of music is the actual autonomic field of expression where the composer’s
imagination plays the crucial role while defying the law of theological ideas and
cosmology-based poetics. The next step in society’s development – at this point I
would like to stress out the significance of medieval universities, as well as their
educational program of seven liberal arts, which anticipated the idea of art
school, though on a more speculative level – dictated a change which reflected
also in the reassessment of Boethius’ division of music. In this context, a new
dichotomy (so typical for the modern age) was proposed in the concept of musica
theor(et)ica and musica practica. Yet, in the baroque period, which I set up as a
starting point of my analysis, the prevalence of the musica practica occurred as
the society became more secularized, what was the music’s opportunity to find a
new ways of self-presentation, when an idea of a specific place, intended only for
the listening took the central place with the Florentine camerata in the 16 th
century. Due to the Italian renaissance’s thought an aesthetic conscience about
the importance of social interaction radically transformed the basic perspective
on music which was then still seen as an appropriate medium for religious
purposes. This led to the development of the concerto form, as well as the hybrid
genre of opera, which opened a few new possibilities for music’s “socialization”.

The baroque period is undoubtedly the time when the first radical expansion of
the music medium took place, what eventually changed the “logic” of music
invention – this process can also be paralleled with the invention of the artificial
perspective in the renaissance painting. A similar invention was also the
establishment of the major-minor tonal system, the fixation of tonal planning
which was perfected by Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as the Werckmeister’s
7
In the ancient times, the number 6 was connected to the Star of David, which was a
symbolic representation of the Hebrew god Yehovah.
equally-tempered tone system (in 1695) that enabled composing in all (24)
tonalities. Therefore it is not surprising if I picked one of Bach’s fugues from Das
Wohltemperierte Klavier as the first object of my analysis – this work is, in fact, a
fine example of so-called absolute music – absolute in Kant’s sense when he
claimed that the work of art has no intention despite its potency of providing a
pleasurable experience, or in a Dahlhaus’ sense when he stated that the absolute
music has no concept, object and purpose.8

The difference between visual image of a certain composition and its actual
(audible) interpretation exists also in the cognitive sphere of recognizing the
symbols which are encoded in the most various ways, and – in order to
understand them – one need an intuitive insight, if not the specific initiation to
the “sacred mysteries of metaphysics”. In Bach’s music there are several
distinctive ways of encoding a certain symbol – the most usual were Christian
symbols, such as the Holy Trinity (with its correspondent representation in the
three-tone chord), the cross; moreover, even certain music forms (like caccia and
fugue) represented a symbol, an allusion to the obedience to the Law. A common
way of encoding a message was employment of numbers, which were substitutes
for words, i.e. their position in the alphabet.9

Somewhat less mysterious, and above all non-religious was the doctrine of the
affects which was proposed by Rene Descartes in his treatise on passions of the
soul, in which he introduced the six basic affect(tion)s: admiration (admiration),
desire (désir), love (amour), hate (haine), joy (joie) and sadness (tristesse).
Among these six elementary conditions of the human soul a lot of combinations
could be established, what was considered as the doctrine’s leading advantage,
which was soon adapted by musica instrumentalis that enabled various
possibilities of representations in vocal music, especially the opera.

A rather similar mode of symbolic codification could be anticipated in a rather

specific usage of musical instruments, which was quite a common phenomenon
in the church, especially liturgical music. At this point, I would like to stress out
the existence of the Latin texts that are originally from the Middle Ages, which
gradually gained the status of a generally known text that seem to be
appropriate for the musical use which often gave them a new context through
artistic adaptation.10 The reasons for such employment of the music instruments
lie in their specific character, especially their religious connotations, or at least
prestigious social role that gradually became a source and synonym for a special
aesthetic enjoyment, and in some cases also an example of deliberately

8
See: Dahlhaus, C.: The Idea of Absolute Music, Chicago/London, 1989.
9
One could find an example of such encoding in relations among tones, where the first
tone of the scale (or tonality) corresponds to number 1, the second to number 2, and so
on. A succession of numbers therefore represented a text that was usually an author’s
signature or a motto.
10
One of the most significant examples is the medieval hymn Dies Irae, which is usually
ascribed to Thomas of Celano (ar. 1200-1270). This hymn was often used and adapted as
a literary basis of the requiem mass.
constructed notion of high culture.11 Let us just remember typical literary
depictions of mythological singer Orpheus which was usually associated with the
lyre, or a biblical allegory from the Old Testament, when did the Israeli people
destroy the fortified city of Jericho, while using just their sacred instruments (ram
horns). Both such depictions of two ancient cultures were common in the late
renaissance and baroque period, probably because of the ideological
connotation, and the motive to set up a criterion of what could one comprehend
as universally beautiful and artistic. Such criterion was, of course, in contrast to
the empiric point of artistic creation that came forth in late baroque period, when
the harmonic rules were derived from acoustic experience of the consonances,
and when the technology of making instruments – as well as their playing
technique – led to an idea of the concert presentation, which is indispensable
even today. But let us return to the Bach’s music.

A question that could be proposed by the most naïve listener without any
ambitious analytical aspiration whatsoever, is, what kind of epistemologic value
(in the broadest anthropological sense possible) could one find in plain listening
to one of the many fugues by Bach? Is it perhaps a close insight of a deep,
cosmic order that had composer in his mind, or is it perhaps to experience a
certain emotional effect, some kind of enraptured contemplation that composer
intended for his imaginary listener? For that matter, the fugue and the subject’s
reactions are, in fact, eligible and worthy objects of psychoanalysis and
anthropology of music, as well as the other disciplines like semiotics, linguistics,
aesthetics etc. Despite the complexity of the whole phenomenon how to
understand music and explain it in common, less ambiguous language, one could
find a special quality in Bach’s music that it, in some unknown way, transcends
time, as well as the notion of institutional art. Because of that we need to
rephrase the question, and ask ourselves in what way can we experience Bach’s
music today? Has our perception of baroque music radically changed in
comparison to the listening experiences of that time? In every case, we are
discussing about work that still encourages the associations of the mind, as well
as the imagination of the listener. However, if the reception of Bach’s music has
changed, we could draw a parallel to Heidegger’s thought in which he states that
a specific character of metaphysics grounds in its age that changes with time. In
this context, a certain conclusion can be derived out of this statement that an
understanding of the music depends on the relation between the essence of
music and its actual representation in the world. 12 Representations do change,
that is an obvious fact that needs not to be explained. However, a more
important question is how they change. If we take a closer look to various
stylistic (jazz, new-age, popular) arrangements of Bach’s music, one could easily
see that there a lots of context, where one differs from the other.

11
A similar status of highly refined instrument is also ascribed to the harp, which was
usually depicted with angels as their players, even though it is considered as a typical
instrument of “lesser” pagan cultures, such as the Celtic culture.
12
See: Heidegger, M.: Being and Time, State University of New York, 1996.
And yet, is our experiencing of transformed Bach’s music really different and
greatly altered because of another way of presentation? A positive answer to this
question might explain some positive changes in listeners’ reception which is
often dictated by the everlasting obsession with the “new” that seems to govern
the western society of the spectacle. However, knowing that there is an original
usually means that one should accept the fact that there is just one true way of
presenting the original. At this point I do not want to reject the existence of many
possible interpretations of the original, like there are many staged performances
of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and yet, there is (in Platonic sense) just one idea of
Hamlet, i.e. the whole construction of the story – everything else is just a way of
ontological sharing of this unique idea that has a certain symbolic capital, as well
as the potency to address the spectator with its imagery and context.

An attempt to form a thesis that the creative potential of the late baroque, and
especially the classicistic music production was unburdened with the need to
evoke extra-musical imagery or that is has no tendency whatsoever to cause any
kind of visualization of the audible stimuli, would seem to be an example of
poet(olog)ic universalizing that should be unsuccessful in advance, unless one
should have in mind the phenomenon of normative constructing of a music
medium. Normative constructing of the medium means that there is process of
defining a set of rules or conventions (so to speak) that can give us a general
notion (or a character) of that medium. A fine example of such constructing is the
late baroque use and understanding of basso continuo as a dynamic subtype of
general bass. Another example would be a formalistic construction of the
classicistic melodic line which – at least from nowadays’ perspective – a rather
predictable as it is dictated by a harmonic line which was also premeditated and
limited by a certain amount of measures that were usually even-numbered and
therefore symmetrical. (The logic of symmetry suited the classicistic artistic
criterion extremely well.)

From the viewpoint of introspective method that I have been using during the
listening to selected compositions13 I feel the obligation to point out the
conditions of the whole process: on each occasion I have been listening (with my
eyes closed) to only one piece of music. After the listening I made some notes
about all the visual experience I had. In the case of Bach’s fugue and Mozart’s
Finale I did not have any significant visualization that would resemble to
(Christian-based) symbolic capital of the time period when both compositions
were created – except the small spots of colored light on both eyelids which
occurred only if I moved the eyeballs. Thus, I must express my doubt concerning
the medium’s transfer ability, and point out that there is a possibility of
intentional oblivion of such symbolic imagery. Because of that, it is possible that
people in that time did have a different way of responding to both compositions
because they had a better disposition to recognize encoded symbols. In order to

13
The compositions that I have selected are: Fugue in C minor, no. 2, BWV 871 by J. S.
Bach, Finale: molto allegro from Symphony in C major, no. 41, K. 551, by W. A. Mozart,
Chopin’s Etude in A minor, no. 11, op. 25, Wagner’s overture to Parsifal, Reflets dans
l’eau: Andantino molto (from Images, Book I) by Claude Debussy, and Tacet 4’33’’ by John
Cage.
reconstruct the imagery of that time, one must have the knowledge of the then
context of aesthetic experience. In any other case we must accept that our
attempt of hermeneutic reading is limited by our intuitive insight.

In romantic period, when the conflict between the “absolute” and the “program”
in art grew intense and gradually became an ideological war that resulted in a
tendency to establish a new imagery and a new myth which could be employable
also to the German nationalist movement. Wagner saw his personal ambition
through the realization of his concept Gesamtkunstwerk, which was an idea how
to employ different media and aspects of creativity,14 in order to create a whole
and unique piece of art. Wagner succeeded with this concept in at least two
points: firstly, he revived the metaphysics of the German nationality by
establishing a new relation toward history and hegemonic position of the German
nation, and secondly, he widened the imagery within the genre of opera,
proposing his new role of self-absorbed prophet and artistic genius.

However, another and quite different side of the romanticism, perhaps a couple
of decades before Wagner, was presented in France, where the mimetic principle
was not so radically employed but rather carefully examined within the
possibilities of individual’s artistic expression. Here I have in mind the musical
works by Frederic Chopin who represented a foreign element in French society of
the 19th century. In this case, one can easily recognize a strong core of intimity
and individuality which is usually acknowledged as the specific feature of
“romantic genius”, even though the prevalent character of Chopin’s creative
potential resembles rather a tendency that is to be connected to the criticism of
the enlightenment. That is why Chopin’s symbolic capital has a less ideologic or
mythomanic potency, in order to point out the advantage of its emotional
capacity.

Nevertheless, my experience of Wagner’s Parsifal overture and Chopin’s Etude

was quite different in comparison to what has been said or written about the
characteristics of the imagery in both cases. During the listening I caught myself
spontaneously drawing parallels between the succession of sounds and the
phenomena of everyday life. In other words: I was trying to decipher the meaning
of particular music idioms, while applying the mimetic principle. In Wagner’s
case, I have experienced some kind of a mystic presence, similar to the
phenomenon of the sunrise or to the glimmering of the morning dew – in
Chopin’s case, however, I spontaneously pictured an image of a human figure
with a long hair and a cloak, walking on the iced snow while defying the biting
wind. Both scenes were dynamic and fixed at the same time, as if there was a
self-repeating mechanism behind the “stage” or horizon.

Concerning the vision I had I wanted to parallel my personal experience to

Schopenhauer’s thesis, in which he claims that music is a universal language that
14
A linguistic moment of Wagner’s compositional technique is evident in two main
principles – the first on is the notion of the never-ending melody, which represents a
mythomanic character of the narrator as well as the pure dimension of time; the second
is a notion of leitmotiv which is an actual musical representation of an extra-musical
phenomena.
can be understood by everybody, especially in the sense of epistemologic
application. In my opinion, the universal principle in music cannot be constituted
in the process of its individually derived meaning, but rather in the quality of its
addressing to the listener. Due to variety of all “visual” experiences of other
people, I must conclude that the musical idiom does have a unique way of
encoding a symbolic capital – this happens in the process of artistic creation –,
but it does not always have the same ability to “translate” itself into a proper i.e.
unequivocal signifying “meaning”. Further detailed analysis is always possible –
in this specific context, one may apply the system of gestalt psychology, or
psychoanalysis by Jung or Jacques Lacan, but that would most certainly surpass
the goal of this paper.

Due to the “visual” character of my experiencing my next musical choice, written

by Claude Debussy, should not be a surprise since there is a strong connection
between the title of the piece and the specific transgression character of its
sounding. Adorno’s reproof that Debussy’s music lacks its temporal construction
– what can be paralleled to Lessing’s approach to the motto “ut pictura poiesis”
where he points out the analogy between the painting and poetry, and draw up
(temporal and spatial) boundaries of the respective medium – is in fact
unacceptable from the perspective of the truly aesthetic experience. First
argument for Adorno’s unjustified prejudice against the character of Debussy’s
work would be that he has mistaken the supposed lack of temporal dimension for
the excessive construction of spatiality which means that the spatial dimension
was, in fact, in Adorno’s point of view, not the primal dimension that would
sufficiently define the nature of music.15 In my opinion, this cannot be true since
the spatial dimension was always a part of a harmonic construction, and
therefore represents the core of acoustics. The second remark to Adorno’s
viewpoint is based on my experience of Debussy’s composition Reflets dans
l’eau. In this case, the potency of music’s evocation is very strong and
persuasive. As a result, a very clear visual manifestation of the water movement
has occurred in my mind, which grew in intensity and the velocity until it slowed
down at the end of composition.

The last case of my experience with the phenomenon of transgression is the

experiment by John Cage, Tacet 4’33’’ that ultimately changed the perspective
on the process of artistic creation, as well as on the work of art itself. One can
also draw the parallel between Heidegger’s notion of relation between da-sein
and death, in which case the silence (as a death of the music’s essence) becomes
the most inner and preformed way of music’s existence. Furthermore, one could
also point out that despite the absence of the “positive” piece of music (with
substantial succession of sounds that normally constitute a composition) a
listener could still perceive certain visual images or even hear (real or imaginary)
sounds. After all, we cannot deny the fact that our existence enables producing
sounds, such as those of our bodily functions (breathing, heart beat etc.). Thus, I
must conclude that in spite of lacking of normally expected auditory stimuli the
silence “converts” itself in the annihilating point of nothingness, where the music
15
See: Adorno, T. W.: On Some Relationships between Music and Painting. The Musical
Quarterly, Vol. 79, no. 1, Spring 1995, Oxford University Press.
itself turns out to be a subject’s desire, an anticipated object by the listener’s
unconscious.

To conclude, a hypermodern lesson that was given to us by Cage’s concept of

Tacet 4’33’’, in which he exposed the Silence to our ears, teaches us that there is
no such phenomenon as the universal language that would be equally
understood by all – quite the contrary: music is a language-like artistic medium
which tends to “intimidate” listener’s cognitive processes and abilities, intuition,
and stimulates individual’s potency of imagination. Regarding the two theses I
proposed in this paper I must therefore confirm the first one, claiming that there
are more encoded systems which can establish more or less complex symbolic
relations. On the cases of my rather descriptive study, based on my own intrinsic
insight of visual imagery, I must agree that the context of the actual experience
defines the character of ascribed meaning, which is by no means universal but
rather prone to change within individual’s unique interpretation. The second
these, concerning the most intense way of evoking visual images in the
impressionistic era, can also be accepted as correct in the sense of comparison
(to the other selected compositions), even though I must decline the universal
character of this confirmation, as there are probably many other compositions
from different periods of time that I am not familiar with, and that have the same
or even greater potential of evoking visual images than Debussy’s music.

The only possible universality that can be recognized in this world is the
acknowledgment that there can be no universal experience that could be equal
to all, but rather a phenomenon of aesthetic experience in its perpetual
abundance of unrepeatable patterns, as well as the multitude of individually
experienced uniqueness that surround us every day.
 Index of references

Adorno, T. W.: On Some Relationships between Music and Painting. The Musical
Quarterly, Vol. 79, no. 1, Spring 1995, Oxford University Press, p. 66–79.

Adorno, T. W.: Music, Language, and Composition. The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 77,
no. 3, Autumn 1993, Oxford University Press, p. 401–414.

Adorno, T. W.: On the Problem of Musical Analysis. The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 1,
no. 2, Jul. 1982, Oxford University Press, p. 169–187.

Adorno, T. W.: In Search of Wagner. Verso, London/New York, 2005.

Barthes, R.: Image, Music, Text. Fontana Press, London 1977.

Barthes, R.: The Responsibility of Forms: Critical Essays on Music, Art, and
Representation, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991.

Bergson, H.: Esej o smehu (et al.). Slovenska Matica, Ljubljana 1977.

Bergson, H.: Mind – Energy. Greenwood Press, Westport Connecticut, London,

1975.

Dahlhaus, C.: The Idea of Absolute Music, Chicago/London, 1989.

Halbwachs, M.: Kolektivni spomin. Studia Humanitatis, Ljubljana, 2001.

Heidegger, M.: The Age of the World Picture, (The Question Concerning
Technology).

Heidegger, M.: Being and Time, State University of New York, 1996.

Lessing, G. E.: Laocoön, An essay on the limits of painting and poetry, The John’s
Hopkins University Press, Baltimore London 1984.

Mitchell, W. J. T.: Iconology. Image, Text, Ideology, Chicago University Press 1987.