of its web—seems to characterize Debussy’s universe and shows,as I
demonstrated,a denial of time and death in the shape of a reflection of
the tragic codas of musical romanticism.Conclusion
Music,the art of time,works on time in its relation to the intentional
conscious and to the unconscious.It plays on representations and fan-
tasies that are created by experiences of temporal feelings in human
life,between continuity and discontinuity,between fusional unity and
fragmentation,and between mobility and immobility.The history of
musical creation is the history of our relation with time on both the indi-
vidual and collective levels.But the remarkable works of Stern suggest
a new depth:the constant reference to the fact that the individual psy-
chology of time is built on interactions with others.The major assertion
that the feeling of duration is created in the game of interactive com-
munication makes us understand that music touches us only through the
other.I agree with J.J.Nattiez (1987) when he says that musical com-
munication (in the banal sense) is but an illusion.But I think that the
problem of musical expression lies elsewhere:music takes its power in
its profoundly social nature,like language,as a vehicle of interiorized
representations.All its temporal substance is nourished by our way of
being in the world;that is,in our time,our culture,our perceptions,our
bodies,our emotions,and our sentiments.It is not communication but a
representation of our ability to communicate,it is a stylized game for our
opening to the world,it is communication without an object to commu-
nicate.In this sense,music is indeed the symbol of our fundamental rela-
tion to time,life,and death.To what extent the capacity for musical
communication depends on innate competencies,related not only to
gestalt properties of musical processing but to the dynamic and affective
aspects of music perception,will be a subject of intense interest in the
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