That one say remains forgotten
behind what is said in what is heard.
Jacques Lacan, "L'étourdit"

Taking Jacques-Alain Miller's "La voix, aphone"¹ ["The Voice, Aphonic"] as our compass, and listening to Andrea Basili's (1705-1777) "Canone a 16 all'unisono" ["Canon in Unison for Sixteen Voices"],² to start from our epigraph and see how ensemble singing tends to address "the incompatibility of desire with speech [la parole]"³—singing not being speaking—and thus how, in the game of substitution, that one sing does not necessarily remain forgotten behind what is sung in what is heard.
Canon is the strictest form of polyphonic repetition, and the simplest, as there is only one melodic line that is repeated with each voice entering at a different point, hence the choice of this piece as a prelude.
Let us return to the matheme proposed by J.-A. Miller:⁴
– the E of enunciation, that one say, that one sing,
– the e of statement, what is said, what is sung,
– and ε, what is heard.
In a canon, the e in the statement [énoncé] also applies to the exposition: it is the bare presentation of the melodic line carrying a meaningful statement. Then, follower after follower, the sonorous material thickens and the words fade away, giving way to signifiers that mingle or rub together. The development of the multiplied melodic line abandons the word-for-word exposition and vocalizes on a vowel that stretches the syllable to the point of forgetting the word, as if the vocalization had a life of its own, flying away from the statement—the flight of E detaching itself from e in ε.
Whilst each singer holds their own line, the homogeneity of the choir lies in the imitation of the driving of the phrase, where each timbre makes its entrance heard before diving into the mass where it is not meaning that sings. Thus, "The voice itself emerges when what it conveys as signifying content is alleviated."⁵ And that one sing, through the musical language that in its writing searches beyond the statement and the vocal technique that aims only at "pure enunciation,"⁶ we manage to make ourselves heard, almost instantly.

^[1] Miller J.-A., "La voix, aphone", La Cause du désir, Hors-Série, numéro numérique. Unpublished in English.
^[2] Les Métaboles, Canone a 16 all'unisono (live), available online: youtube.com.
^[3] Miller J.-A., "La voix, aphone", op. cit., p. 129.
^[4] Cf. ibid., p. 130.
^[5] Cf. ibid., p. 130.
^[6] Ibid., p. 133.