288

Tarasti

a latent trait that only emerges through certain modalizations, that is,
through certain ways of interpreting and performing a n1usical work. It
seems chat some artists have a special ability co perform music.in a narrative
way. Some pianists or violinists are said to possess a narrative touch or
sound. This possibility seems quite believable, since we generally have to
distinguish between two conceptions of musical semancics. In che first a
musical utterance possesses an invariant semantic content; in the second a
mu.sical uuerance can be pronounced in.a way that imbues it with semanric
signi6ca,n ce. French semioticians or, rather, the so-called Paris school of
semiotics would say that narrativi.ty should be investigated on.the level of
nlusicaJ utterance (bzonce musical) as well as that of rnusical performance
(inonciation musicale). There is consequently a type of narrativity that
only emerges when. the performer or listener con11ects an element from
what Boris Asafiev calls the "intonational store,, (that is, the colJection
of musical motifs .held in a collective memory) to a musical structure.
This type of narrativity cannot be analyzed without accounrjng for the
interaction between musical subject and object in th.e process of musical

commun1cat1on.
Let us consider some cases in music history that show how narrativity
em erges through s,p eci6c processes of s ignification. As we investigate these

processes, it is important to remember that semiotics involves two phenomena: commu.nication and signification (Sebeok,A Sign 22-35). We may
thus speak in music of structures of communication and. of structures of
signification. Tl1e term communication describes the en tire process through
which messages are transmitted from a sender, or descinator, co a receiver,
or addressee. In a musicaJ work a structure of communication is on.e of
chose forms that a composer needs co n1aster in order co convey a certain
idea or meaning to a listener (Taras ti, Theory 16-17). Such structures vary
according to periods: if yot1 were a Baroque composer, you would certainly
master general bass and fugue techniqties; if you were a Viennese classicist,
you would resort to forms such as sonata or symphony, and, if you were a
contemporary avant-garde composer, you would need to learn techniq,ues
ranging from spectral music to serialism. and aleatorics. These structures
are needed co transmit ideas chat possess their own internal structure. This
is what I would call "a structure of signification." It c.onsists of a particular
combination of signifier and signified., and it can be d.escribed through
semiotic concepts such as semes and isotopies.
Both of these types of structure need to be taken into account i11 the
study of musical narrativicy. Which one is the more fundamental?

Mat

COi

d eit:is C> ta<C>is