The reprise in the musical field. About the creative dimension of the repetition compulsion

Abstract

Objectives

The Freudian notion of repetition compulsion is marked, in its inaugural conception, by a negative connotation, that of a return of the same, which does not give the measure of the multiple facets of this register. Raising repetition to the rank of one of the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, Lacan uses Kierkegaard's text entitled “La reprise” to point out the renewal, of fecundity that the movement towards repetition can induce. This article aims at underlining how much the creative dimension of repetition finds a particularly vivid illustration in the field of music, a domain that makes regular and varied use of the term “reprise”.

Method

This article takes up themes deployed in a series of conferences during the academic year 2021/2022 at the École Pratique des Hautes Études en Psychopathologie, associating musicians – Vincent Ségal – psychoanalysts -Marc Morali, Corinne Tyszler, Olivier Douville- and music lovers, Mario Choueiry, and leaving a large place to musical listening. This study, beyond a reading of the repetition as an expression of the death pulsion, studies the way in which we can hear and put to work this Freudian notion through its manifestation in the musical register. It is a question here of exploring the question of repetition in the sphere of popular music but also in jazz and classical music in order to apprehend its articulation with the very movement of creation.

Results

In so-called popular music, and mainly in rock music, the cover consists, not in imitating but in proposing a version, more or less faithful or distant, of an original piece. Listening to this cover causes a particular satisfaction in the listener who can identify it. Usually considered as a tribute to the pioneers or the mark of a debt towards the elders, the cover version is however above all an attempt, impregnated with hostility, to erase the origin. This is how covers come to not only supplant the original pieces but also to repress them, to make them totally forgotten. Jazz is also attached to covering standards, not only as a necessary learning exercise, but as a way for those who try to impose their own style and thus gain recognition. The cover of standards can be the occasion to make hear the blind spot of a piece of origin or to make resurface a trait of identity unknown to itself. Within the context of classical music, the progression of a work is also regularly done through the repetition of a theme that always knows how to renew itself through slight displacements. Finally, the contemporary repetitive music pushes, perhaps to its height, this creativity inherent to the effects of the repetition.

Discussion

Pleasure, repression, origin, hostility, imitation and identification: these terms are closely linked to psychoanalysis, which only uses the concept of “repetition”. It is however usual to hear oneself on the divan taking up the story of a dream that of a memory, or even to take up a new slice of analysis. This opens up the opportunity to question the creative function of repetition within analytic practice.

Conclusion

Introducing the musical dimension of repetition into the analytic treatment leads us to question the specific talent it implies in the practitioner. Repetition only becomes creative through a shift in interpretation that can be found in the poetry of language, where the practitioner gains by approaching musical interpretation.