Michel Imberty’s considerations about time as a proto-narrative envelope gives us an incre- dibly effective perspective to interpret the dif cult relationship between creativity, narra- tion and musical structure. The framework of the temporal experience precedes narrative itself, it is what can be called a “proto-narrative form” and organises the coherence and development of the art of narration, and perhaps of the musical form. In this perspective, music seems to be a representation of the origin of all language forms , i.e. of every way of organizing time. In the light of these re ections, we have interpreted a musical experience with a gifted, autistic and visually impaired young man (G) engaged in a piano improvisa- tion inspired by a story: The story of the snow.
In this experimentation, G’s task was to create a soundtrack for The story of the snow while it was being told by a narrator; the story was a description of a blizzard and of the vicissitudes of a wolf and a bird. The second part of the story evoked the image of a small house in the woods from which the sound of a piano came: it belonged to a jazz pianist. All the elements utilised in the story were familiar descriptions for G, as some of them reminded him of his favourite cartoons, and of some popular children’s fairy tales such as Peter and the Wolf.
An expert percussionist had the task of reinforcing and enhancing G’s improvisational intentions during the whole experience.
In the rst part of the story, G’s musical behaviour was childish and stereotypical, the gestural and technical capacities he utilised were simpler than we had expected, and his musical thoughts were completely unstructured. The percussionist’s role seemed to be absolutely irrelevant, and G was improvising unstructured musical fragments, showing typical autistic traits as inhibitions, regressions and lack of creativity.
Conversely, in the part of the story evoking the small house with a jazz pianist inside, his musical performance changed completely. G seemed to be extremely attentive and focused, he suddenly lost his previous inhibitions and displayed an evident rhythmical pro le. His gestures became very precise and coherent with his musical capabilities, and G established an interesting musical dialogue with the percussionist.
A psychoanalytic interpretation of the whole experience was presented at the 13th European Congress of Psychology in Stockholm in 2013. According to this interpretation, the identi cation with the jazz pianist allowed him to recuperate his own musical back- ground, and to activate his sophisticated musical skills, leaving behind the stereotypical behaviour employed during the rst part of the story.
The analysis of the numerous temporal levels of the narration, of the improvisation fea- tutes, and of the rhythmic dimension in the light of Imberty’s thinking allows us to interpret G’s behaviour from a strictly musical point of view, and offers a different perspective of musical creativity.