L’enunciazione o il luogo del disco. Per una teoria dell’inquadratura fonografica e del punto di ascolto

Abstract

The paper proposes a semiotic bricolage: recovering the theories revolving around the linguistic notion of «enunciation», as developed within both film semiotics and narratology, and applying them to mediated music, in order to outline the basics of a theory of phonographic enunciation. Firstly, the paper briefly discusses enunciation as defined, in the wake of Émile Benveniste, by Algirdas J. Greimas and the Paris School of Semiotics (1979), and addresses the troubles music semiotics has faced in appropriating such theory; especially, after the rise, in the second half of the Twentieth Century, of the new aesthetics of electro-acoustic music. Afterwards, on the basis of the distinction between «the profilmic» (whatever is placed in front of the camera, subject to the shooting) and «the cinematographic» (images manipulated or created thanks to the cinematographic techniques) established by film semiotician Christian Metz (1972), the paper proposes a homologous distinction between the prosonic (acoustic sounds, subject to recording) and the phonographic (sounds manipulated or created thanks to the phonographic techniques). As a consequence, it is possible to distinguish between an aesthetics of recorded sound (the re-presentation of a sonic event happened in the past) and an aesthetics of acousmatic sound (music that “happens” at the very moment when it comes out from the speakers to the advantage of the listener). On the basis of the technical affinities between the film and the record, the paper proposes Metz’s theory of «impersonal enunciation» (1991) as a good model for a theory of phonographic enunciation, suggesting, in addition, the reintegration of the actantial simulacra elaborated by Greimassian semiotics and the pertinence of the mode of narration (in particular, the perspective; namely, the point of view) as elaborated by Gérard Genette (1972). Finally, on the basis of the four «enunciative configurations» proposed by film semiotician Francesco Casetti (1986), the paper presents a typology of four enunciative configurations or points of listening in music: Objective (aesthetics of recorded sound), Interpellation (enunciated enunciation – enunciation made explicit – at the prosonic level), Subjective (aesthetics of acousmatic sound), Impossible Objective (friction between the prosonic and the phonographic, between the aesthetics of recorded and of acousmatic sound).