In the language of Stern (1995:86–87) it is the “protonarrative enve-
lope.”In effect the narrative form is what,in the universe of language
and of signs to which the baby will have access later,constructs the unity
of time,clarifies the reality of human becoming.The temporal “after the
fact”is thus a semiotization of activation profiles of vitality affects;more
exactly,it is what allows the semiotization to develop in duration,what
gives their form to the temporal feeling-shapes.In short,it is what makes
something weave itself and assume meaning in time.The protonarrative
envelope is thus an affectivity contour distributed in time with the coher-
ence of a quasi-plot,a line of intuitive dramatic tension.It is a proto-
semiotic form of internal experience of time,a matrix of the story of
tensions and relaxations related to the plot (or protoplot) in the search
for satisfaction,it is what gives experience its global unity,whatever its
degree of complexity.
These facts and reflections shed a new light on the concept of
macrostructure.A musical piece is first of all an ordering of acoustic
events in time.The macrostructure is a simplified schema type,an order-
ing a priori that later will be filled by the concrete acoustic events of
which the progression may be defined for the listener as a structured and
hierarchical succession of tensions and relaxations.In consequence it is
simultaneously defined at the level of musical grammar,cognitive oper-
ations active in composition and comprehension of the piece,but also at
the level of expressivity and feelings of the listener.The temporal pro-
gression through tensions and relaxations,and through formal patterns
that evoke what I can now call vitality affects,takes meaning in oriented
continuity from the beginning to the end of the piece.It finds its coher-
ence in this temporal web that links melodic,rhythmic,and harmonic
gestures,telling protonarratives of a thousand nuances.
I tried to demonstrate this in an experimental manner several times
(1981:132–138;1987).I thus showed that listeners are sensitive to this
story-without-words that music awakens in them.They feel the original-
ity of the progression,its directionality,that translates the experiences of
time,markedly different from one composer to another.For example,I
observed that,in spite of their formal structural differences,two pieces by
Debussy,such as La Puerta del Vinoand La Cathédrale Engloutie,show
profile similarities in comparison with the profile of pieces by Brahms:
whereas the latter profile is in general symmetric,starting and ending in
a somber and resigned mood,the former is strangely ascensional in spite
of the important contrasts and the ruptures of tone and atmosphere.La
Cathédrale Engloutieand La Puertaevolve for the listener from a somber
and even violent mood to a calm,serene,luminous,and immobile ending
that is blurred in a sort of complete atemporality and thus creates the illu-
sion that time stops.This ascensional asymmetry of the temporal profile—460 Michel Imberty