By situating Vincent d'Indy among the “composer-intellectuals” whose modes of thought were shaped by the evolution of pedagogical institutions, scholarship has examined dimensions of his “cultural universe” [3:123-124]: religious (L.Berton, A.Skoric); political (J.Fulcher, S.Huebner, E.Buch); aesthetic-anthropological (G.Saint Arromain, Ph.Cathé, K.Ellis, S.Keym). Shifting the focus to compositional theory brings into view how this universe influences the logic of composition and the “technology” of the musical work.

Our hypothesis is that d'Indy's concept of the creative process, integrating heterogeneous intellectual sources: situates his ideas within the fin-de-siècle aesthetic and philosophical context; clarifies his role in the development of an ontology and hermeneutics of creativity; shapes the structural and semantic properties of musical composition throughout his stylistic evolution.

Our study combines (1) a historico-genetic analysis of aesthetic concepts (A.O. Lovejoy), identifying the origins and intellectual basis of d'Indy's views; (2) a reconstructive approach (after C.Dahlhaus and J.Kerman) elucidating d'Indy's compositional logic; (3) an interpretive semiotic perspective (after M.Riffaterre), focusing on the production of musical meaning within a proto-semiotic horizon.

The material examined consists of a corpus of d'Indy's authentic texts and selected scores exemplifying the gradual transformation of a romantic musical “sociolect” (M.Spahlinger) into an individualized system of musical “signs.”

1.The creative process begins with “feeling” (le sentiment) [2:30], a concept adopted from L.Tolstoy and echoed in Symbolist (Th.Wyzewa), spiritualist (G.Séailles), Wagnerian, psychological (Th.Ribot), and aesthetic (J.Ruskin) discourses. It denotes the experience of impressions from the surrounding world, forming the content of the “soul” as a constellation of creative capacities.

2.The latter generate a need for communication to others, thereby activating this content in art and – within the paradigm of “musical language” [2: 29-30] – requiring its transformation into a structured message (the equivalent of a signified) through “external signs” [2:9-10, 17] functioning as linguistic correlates.

Structurally, these operate as equivalents of syntactic units (from “cell” to “phrase”), contributing both to the “cyclical principle” of formal organization through programmed discursive repetition and to the preservation of romantic expressive means, accompanied by a rejection of modernist experimentation with “noise” and “gesture”.

Semantically, these “signs”, from the cell as a unit of meaning to the “significant key” as a stable semantic field, interact through the linkage of extra-musical connotations, as illustrated by the tonal dramaturgy of d'Indy's musical-dramatic works (e.g. La légende de Saint Christophe), informed by the ideas of A.Lavignac, C.Franck, and Wagner.

3.The temporalization of the message produces a “musical idea” governed by three modalities of l'accent expressif [2:30-31], enabling a modalized conception of utterance in d'Indy's thought [1:140-141] and the analysis of his scores as “musical discourse” [2:26], whose transformations depend on extra-musical connotations, stylistic shifts, and a polemical stance against modernism, as exemplified by three symphonies and programmatic works, from early “legends” to later “landscapes”.

References:

1.Greimas, A.J., Courtés, J. (1986). Sémiotique. Dictionnaire raisonné de la théorie du language. II. Hachette.

2.Indy, V.d'. (1912). Cours de composition musicale. Premier livre (A.Sérieyx, Ed.). Durand.

3.Montpellier d'Annevoie, M.de (2019). La bibliothèque du compositeur : Vincent d'Indy, ses lectures épiques et « l'épopée musicale». Intersections, 39(2):119-144.