ABSTRACT
In the course of the previous chapter, we have already noted that the transition from the Fugue series to Suite constitutes another brisure in Laporte's work. The disjunctive element in this brisure is underlined by the abandonment of a projected Fugue 4, the working notes for which were published as 'Une oeuvre mort-née'. The principal interest of the latter is the insight it affords into Laporte's compositional practice, a great deal of it, particularly in the early pages, consisting of extracts from Laporte's earlier works, above all Fugue 3, representing those parts of the previous work which might provide material for the generation of further writing. Indeed, the very excision and rearrangement of earlier passages already initiates the transformative process which we have seen to be so important in Laporte's work, as Mathieu Bénézet observes in a note which begins by indicating that almost the entirety of the preceding section is culled from Fugue 3: 'Mais ce qui est inédit c'est bien sûr la mise en rapport des citations, les prélèvements effectués dans des phrases, qui tentent à former un nouveau texte. Ou: comment travaille R.L.!' 1 The transformative process of self-quotation is soon brought to bear on this text itself, so that the manuscript, in Bénézet's words again, 'peu à peu devient lui-même objet à citations, incitation de texte (d'écriture)'. 2 In interview, however, Laporte has suggested that this abandoned work of salvage and transformation remained at the level of a commentary on the earlier text: a repetition which did not give rise to invention. 3
