Selected notes on: Hulse, B. (2008) On Bergson's
concept of the virtual. Gamut 1 (1).
Retrived from
http://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=gamut
Dave Harris
[NB after the discussion on virtuality, the
'application' is music theory -- gripping but way
beyond my scope]
The virtual for Bergson 'represents the harmony of
mind and matter, the affirmation of time over
space, and the living, creative power of
difference'(1). As well as Deleuze, people
in the humanities find it useful, although it
tends to be confined to artificial electronic
music environments, and this article shows how it
might extend music scholarship. We might see
it as offering a conception of time and movement,
reciprocal links between perception and memory [so
we can start to see how the memory of one note
overshadows the next, or the note refers to the
whole]. Musicians describe these effects in
terms of other concepts already. Deleuze is
the source of this as well as Bergson.
The virtual is implicated in intuition, which may
be inaccessible to conventional thought, although
intuition is often cited, sometimes as a final
authority. There is some link with Buddhist
notions of direct knowledge, but Bergson and
Deleuze [especially in Bergsonism]
also argue that we can be philosophically rigorous
about this as a method.
In Matter and Memory,
the reality of both body and mind is asserted
first and then brought into a new
relationship. This is not realism which
operates with a dualism where perception and
reality are treated as equivalent, because this
reduces matter to a perception [I thought that was
Idealism]. Perception is more than just
receiving a stimulus, and there is more to matter
as well. Similarly, idealism argues that
matter produces perceptions, and suggests that the
objective world is accessible only through reason
and deduction [I must say I have never seen it
that way]. Both realism and idealism involve
the same assumptions, involving an external world
accessed through transparent perceptions or
concepts respectively. This makes thought
into an endless circle between the two. The
problem is that for both positions, perception is
supposed to be a result of the speculative
interests of mind, but Bergson insists that
perception is directed towards action. This
in turn means that objective reality is split
[human perceived bits and other bits?] , and that
the effect of perception is to produce the idea of
matter as an aggregate of images. The image
is more than a representation but less than a
thing. It is the body ultimately that
inferences the perception of images, primarily of
objects surrounding the body which will permit
action. Perception is no longer a matter of
indifference, but is intended to initiate a
particular return, such as a response to potential
movements relevant to action. This in turn
implies that the mind is not just free to
speculate, but occupies 'a certain posture of
tension'(4), dependent on perception and in
particular on its content. The mind does not
just interpret perception, but helps form it in
the first place, explaining the tension between
perception and mind itself, neither of which is
entirely independent. Mostly perception
links to action automatically.
Memory similarlyinfluences perception by providing
it with 'a vast reservoir of images'(5) which may
be unconscious or latent but which are actualised
by being joined with perception, as an active
partner, supplementing perception, offering
potentials that intervene in the interval inherent
in the act [although in this quote confined to
'the interval between what is done and what might
be done']. The memory is actualised by being
connected with a perception, and its '"body"', a
shape in both the spatial and temporal sense.
What makes this unique to Bergson is that the
distinction is made between perception and the
memories 'that melt into it' (6), and memory
becomes an essential ingredient to perception,
which explains the temporal nature of
perception—'objects and actions appear thrown into
relief by time'. It is not just a
simple resemblance between perception and
memory—memory prolongs perception and enriches
it. Perception also creates memory images
for further use. But it is the temporal
dimension ['environment'] for a movement which is
important: a temporal image is not static but a
nascent kind of movement. We are always
selecting and deploying memories, in advance of
movement. We are blending memories.
'In other words, it is a profoundly immanent
engagement', not at all like associationist
approaches, where each psychical state is a
separate element. Associationist approaches
depend on some similarity between psychic
elements, so that memory confirms the identity of
a perception, or the existing construction of
it. Temporal continuity and movement is
neglected. There is also an arbitrary
interest in the intellectual, rather than say why
one image and recollection is chosen to appear in
consciousness: the interests involved in
consciousness are not grasped, but only the
affects. The actual connections remain
mysterious: 'independent entities have somehow
mobilised, autonomously towards one another'
(8). The fault lies in neglecting the role
of action, seeing thought as purely speculative.
The virtual can now be seen as indicated by the
'immanent intersection between perception and
memory'(9). This intersection involves a
reciprocal return of perception to the virtual
memory image. The virtual provides 'a halo
of temporality' for perceived objects, which
Deleuze describes as an internal repetition within
the singular [citing Difference
and Repetition]. The virtual
must be fully immanent [to be able to provide this
kind of interconnection— a 'taught, continuous
doubling'.] Thus the memory image that infuses the
perception with the qualities and temporal depth
can be understood in Deleuzian terms as 'a
"virtual object". They are hard to grasp in
their effects on the real content because they
animate perception in such a way that the
qualities originating in the virtual appear as
'properties belonging to the perceived objects
proper'[which include 'their consistency in
time']. So the virtual is not so much a system
affecting perception by memory , but rather 'an
ongoing, reciprocally conditioned process', where
memory is 'continuously flooded by
perception' to much increase the density of
activity. Remote memories can also flows
seamlessly into those closer to perception.
Sometimes the process is designed to produce
continuity rather than adding new memories.
For Bergson, memory is far more than just a sort
of catalogue at the disposal of the consciousness
aiming to recognise and affirm identity.
[Now we move on to music scholarship and I get
well out of my depth. Very briefly, it seems
that some people have tried to understand the
pleasures offered by music in terms of notions
like expectation or anticipation, and some of
those approaches go on to suggest that there are
models of appropriate music held in the memory, an
understanding of tonal values, for example. Hulse
rejects these for various reasons, including that
they have the conventional distinction between
listener subjects and musical objects, and
compares them to Bergson on memory. Some
have also used Deleuze to argue that the
variations between specific performances can be
understood as actualizations of some underlying
virtual performance Then on page 16 we get to the
most Bergsonian approach so far, which suggests
that the notes or rhythms in a piece of music are
put into some sort of order, a concatenation, and
that listeners get involved in the progression
that emerges from one point to the next.
This is not a process of abstraction leading to
some general underlying model, but expresses the
human faculty of being able to organise unities of
perceptions, a form of apprehension which
supplements what is actually heard at any
particular moment. 'Durational spans'(17)
become important, which are almost virtual
objects, and there is an interest in 'more
flexible and agile processes of listening' (18).]
Applying Bergson to music raises the whole issue
of whether there is an accessible method in his
analysis or not. The problem is that at the
most general level, it is more difficult to make a
connection with the perception of actual events,
and the whole thing looks speculative again,
outside any specific effects of music. We
have to work somehow with the notion that memory
is 'directly engaged and immediately
responsive'(19), closely connected to perception,
'a function of the events of the actual
piece'. Ironically, we can then presume more
universality among listeners [I can half
understand this—the universality would extend to
the process of how we understand music in
general?]. We would have to understand what
listeners remember moment to moment, and how these
memories are developed as a potential, how they
had doubled perception and gone beyond it to
produce the 'vivid expectations and profound
dynamics that are so characteristic of musical
experience'. We need a distinction between
the actual and virtual here, to link fleeting
perceptions with this extensive experience, and to
distinguish actual perceptions from their effects
on experience.
Links between notes, say, should not be seen as
having direct simple effects on each other.
Instead they should be grasped as 'an active
temporal image' with a dynamic relation to events,
and a potential which unfolds in time and
transforms. Bergson describes a process
which involves connecting discontinuous objects of
experience and understanding them as vibrations
which can be put into some relation of
mobility. This will be an abstract vision of
matter. We can then bring back consciousness
and all the pressures of life, and grasp our
history in terms of '"quasi instantaneous views"'
[quoting Matter and Memory, 208]. We
will then be able to grasp time, with
difficulty, in pictorial terms as '"an
infinity of elementary repetitions and changes"'.
Hulse says this reminds him of the sort of intense
concentration involved in creative lucidity in
music. Applying the characteristics of music
leads to an approach where first we think 'in
terms of continuity rather than juxtaposition';
then conceive of movement rather than objects; we
isolate these quasi instantaneous moments;
reconstruct the inner history of these movements
in terms of repetition and change that produce
'qualitative intensities'(20). We can
understand the effects of other virtual moments
which bear on a particular actual moment rather
than thinking of simple successive moments.
It is a kind of peering inside movement to arrive
at 'an approximate image of the breadth of
intensive content traversing time and
space'(21).
We isolate and 'listen into' musical moments
and produce a pictorial representation of its
component parts, including temporal depth.
The example is a particular beat in a Chopin
etude. [Out of my depth again]. First
we put it in context [in the context of a few
bars, perhaps a particular phrase?] and then in
the context of an interval [between two series of
notes in one bar]. Hulse tries to describe his
experience in pictorial terms, with arrows showing
movements completed or anticipated, movements in
process, various recognition of 16th note
contours, projected down beats and projected bass
rhythms. Temporal depth is represented as
spatial breadth in the diagram. These elements are
felt in the immediate perception of the specific
note, although they are not actually heard at the
time—they are virtual. Various 'temporal
strata' are experienced, some occurring before,
some projected into the future. It is also
the case that some notes 'continue to cast a hue
on the moment' (24) in a form of 'reciprocal'
articulation. Particular patterns occur and
are anticipated, in the form of 'coming
downbeats'. All this can be experienced as a
compound quality, although we only become
conscious of them once we isolate and analyse
them. Overall 'there is much more music in
this moment than the moment itself can objectively
contain', and it is this 'more' that this
fundamental to musical experience. Other cross
sections of later moments might be added to
develop the virtual environment [he calls this a
'cinematic analytic perspective'] to produce 'a
web of subterranean musical dynamics', 'vivid to
the ear' but difficult to analyse conventionally.
We might generalise this to see what Bergson's
analytic technique might involve. The basic
idea is to add a temporal dimension, and to try to
experience 'a multiplicity of moments within this
actual one', 'virtual content', and how what is
stored by memory gets articulated in time.
The virtual object, in music at least, can be seen
as 'an articulated temporal body'. It can be
located near the start of the piece.
Listeners are holding a tension with the actual
duration of the musical piece. The virtual
will be 'saturated with impressions of sound,
contour, rhythms and other looming qualities which
can be quite explicit, or at least intensely
palpable' (25). The actual events will
influence 'the number and complexity of temporal
articulations'. There will be no simple
cohesive internal state but movements that
contract and expand consciousness and its
development [citing Matter and Memory].
This will help us experience the influence of
other moments, and qualities distributed in the
virtual field. These will be actualised
through the 'doubling' with perception
The expansion of the virtual can be understood as
a symmetry between the idea of the depth of past
experience and a 'potential horizon of future
action' (26). As a sequence unfolds, a
future shape can open, sometimes dominated by the
beginning, but sometimes developing its own
differentiation. A contraction of
consciousness can follow the recurrence of the
opening events. There can also be events
which produce a digression away from anything that
differentiates beginnings or ends of
sequences. Further examples follow involving
chords or series of notes as events [diagrams of
various contractions and expansions. Some
chords might indicate a departure from a
particular pattern, or a shift in harmony,
processes of differentiation of a process,
suggesting that one part has been completed and
the other is just beginning]. Experience of
processes like this help us form the virtual
object [and musical repetition can solidify our
grasp?]. The virtual object can exist 'on
either side of the present' (29). The construction of the virtual
complements actualization. This corresponds
to Deleuze on the relation between differenTiation
and differenCiation [my spellings] in Difference
and Repetition. In music, there may be
a connection of internal differenTiation with the
internal development [differenCiation] occurring
after actualization. Overall, the virtual is
the larger form, not just based on immediate
perception, but depending on a temporal process,'
a 'dynamic envelope'(30).
The virtual object is formed after
differenTiation, actualization involves a
contraction of the potential. Actual music
will show all sorts of combinations of creative
divergence, extensions, reversals and so on.
Actual events can become the beginning of a
virtual object, activating a virtual form which
can be developed along the way. Repetition
is important in this process: it leads to the
coalescing of formations. Simple forms might
involve echoes between notes, more complex forms
can produce whole phrases, and here repetition
will be a form of differentiation. Invariant
forms of repetition occurring towards the end of
the peace can reinforce the construction of the
virtual. Forms of softer repetition at the
start can hint at an eventual return or closure
[and examples are given from Schoenberg—an opening
passage establishes a form of phrasing which
is extended and differenCiated into various
patterns of rhythm and musical articulation, or
arpeggios and various rhythmic modulations] [Maybe
this discussion of types of repetition is better
understood in music? I think that is the claim
about developing Deleuze in the Conclusion]
. Segmentation of the sequence can be
signaled by harmonic changes. Rhythm and
harmony can produce a repetitive binding and
segmentation. Overall, we can see how a
virtual object is differenTiated and
differenCiated.
In general terms, musical repetition also
indicates a process of 'self-differing'[not
entirely sure about this but apparently, a tone
can indicate a difference even while being
repeated]. Repetitions can even interact to
form clusters and groups, compound forms with
their own properties [again the example is hard to
follow, but it seems to describe a process whereby
segments are first differentiated from an earlier
segment, and when repeated 'add to and expand the
virtual object' (34)]. Sometimes the virtual
object can be contracted by repetition, but even
here, an 'overall rhythmic patterning'makes
repetition more than just a simple one, but rather
a differenTiation of the virtual object.
[Far too technical to follow, page 35f].
Overall, the concept of a virtual helps us grasp
music as a continuous process'an ever unfolding
landscape'where what is actually heard get
inflected by virtual planes, which can be
developed before and in the future
simultaneously. Analysis should be devoted
to understand how this happens, how the actual
events can be understood as prospective or virtual
events and how this produces an extended musical
experience. Bergson's conception of the virtual is
rigorous and precise as these examples show,
although 'much depends on the ear and the analytic
imagination of the theorist' (38). Exploring
these examples will even extend the notion of
musical repetition in Deleuze [which is horribly
confused and paradoxical with all that stuff about
how repetition is also difference and so on, in Difference
and Repetition].
So Bergson's concept of the virtual can be an
analytic category and suggest further
research. Both perception and memory are in
tension. Memory supplies temporal depth to
perception and this creates a virtual field,
coalescing memory as well as offering a potential
for projected actions. This has already been
grasped in music as vital to musical experience,
but using other concepts and terms. This
analytical schema is more promising: we will
examine creation and actualization of virtual
objects, as differenTiation and
differenCiation. Repetition in particular
seems to be a useful way to explore both of these,
on the immediate as well as aggregate
levels. Bergson will help us explore 'the
depth, power, and. novelty of musical
expressions' (39)
Deleuze page
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