Non-pulsed time is not only a time freed from measure, that is, a duration, nor only a new procedure of individuation freed from the theme and the subject, but rather it's the birth of a material free of the form. In a certain way, European classical music could be defined by the relation of a brute auditory material with a sonorous form that selected, was imposed on this material. This implied a certain hierarchy of matter — life — mind, which went from the simplest to the most complex and ensured the domination of a metrical cadence as the homogenization of durations into a certain equivalence of the parts of sonorous space.

On the contrary, in current music we are present at the birth of a sonorous material which is no longer a simple or undifferentiated material at all, but a carefully elaborated, very complex material; and this material will no longer be subordinated to a sonorous form, since it has no need of one: for its part it will be given the task [chargé] of rendering sonorous or audible those forces which, by themselves, are not audible, and the differences among these forces.

A completely different coupling, elaborated sonorous material — imperceptible forces that the material will render audible or perceptible, is substituted for the pair brute material — sonorous form.

from French translated by Timothy S. Murphy