La reprise dans le champ musical. À propos de la dimension créatrice de la compulsion de répétition

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 fully reflect 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 “Repetition” to point out the renewal of fecundity that the tendency towards repetition can induce. This article demonstrates how 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 “repetition.”

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 drive, studies the way in which we can hear and put to work this Freudian notion through its manifestation in the musical register. In this paper, we explore 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 covering a song consists in proposing a version, more or less faithful or distant, of an original piece – and not in imitating it. 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 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 artists impose their own style and thus gain recognition. The cover of a standard can be the occasion to make audible a blind spot in the original work, or to bring to the surface 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 renews itself through slight displacements. Finally, contemporary repetitive music pushes, perhaps to its height, the creativity inherent to the effects of repetition.

Discussion

Pleasure, repression, origin, hostility, imitation, and identification: these terms that are related to repetition are closely linked to psychoanalysis, which only has at its disposal the concept of “repetition.” It is, however, typical to hear oneself on the divan taking up the story of a dream or that of a memory; one can even “repeat” by continuing one's analysis after a break or termination. 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 is enriched by approaching musical interpretation.