Musical enunciation and its modes of existence: Gisèle Brelet and Iannis Xenakis under a tensive approach

Abstract

Musical acts constitute modes of living music, whose processes realize and dynamize the elements of diverse musical systems and cultures. To deal with the modes of existence of a musical enunciation that accounts for the diversity of manifestations of a collective sonorous-musical praxis, we will approximate, under the viewpoint of the tensive approach, two thoughts about musical time: that of the French musicologist and aestheticist Gisèle Brelet and that of the Greek composer Iannis Xenakis. With Brelet, we will bring the synthesis of rhythm, or the idea of a "general prosody" of music, and two definitions of silence. With Xenakis, we will make use of his temporal algebras (hors-temps, temporelle and en-temps) to make a connection with the modes of existence (virtualized, actualized, realized and potentialized) as they are thought by the tensive approach, developed by Jacques Fontanille and, mainly, Claude Zilberberg. Finally, we will present three scenarios of possible musical existences from the piece Mycenae-Alpha (1978) by Iannis Xenakis.