Music after Deleuze

209 Pages·2013·1.43 MB·English

by  Edward Campbell

Music After
Deleuze
Deleuze encounters
Series Editor: Ian Buchanan, director of the Institute for Social
Transformation Research, University of Wollongong, Australia
The Deleuze Encounters series provides students in philosophy
and related subjects with concise and accessible introductions to
the application of Deleuze’s work in key areas of study. Each book
demonstrates how Deleuze’s ideas and concepts can enhance
present work in a particular field.
TiTles available in The series:
Cinema After Deleuze, Richard Rushton
Philosophy After Deleuze, Joe Hughes
Political Theory After Deleuze, Nathan Widder
Theology After Deleuze, Kristien Justaert
Space After Deleuze, Arun Saldanha
Music After
Deleuze
edward Campbell
LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY
Bloomsbury Academic
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Bloomsbury is a registered trade mark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2013
© Edward Campbell, 2013
Edward Campbell has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on
or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication
can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-0181-5
PB: 978-1-4411-5702-7
ePDF: 978-1-4411-7348-5
ePub: 978-1-4411-3759-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Campbell, Edward, 1958–
Music after Deleuze / Edward Campbell.
pages cm. – (Deleuze encounters)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-5702-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4411-0181-5
(hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4411-3759-3 (ebook (epub) –
ISBN 978-1-4411-7348-5 (ebook (pdf) 1. Music–Philosophy and aesthetics.
2. Deleuze, Gilles, 1925–1995–Aesthetics. I. Title.
ML3800.C166 2013
780.1–dc23
2013016929
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
For Gill and Michael
vi
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Music, difference and repetition 3
2 Producing new music: Rhizomes, assemblages
and refrains 35
3 Rethinking musical pitch: The smooth and
the striated 67
4 Thinking musical time 99
5 A Deleuzian semiotics of music 133
Conclusion 163
Notes 169
Bibliography 175
Index 187
Acknowledgements
many thanks to Ian Buchanan for asking me to write this book
and for his editorial support and to Rachel Eisenhauer and
Subitha Nair from Bloomsbury Publishing for facilitating the smooth
running of the project and for answering my queries. Thanks to Nick
Nesbitt and Arnfinn Bø-Rygg, who read the proposal and responded
with great generosity. Thanks to Cambridge University Press for
allowing me to cite material that I have published previously. I am
grateful to the School of Education at the University of Aberdeen for
granting me 6 invaluable months of research leave. Thanks, finally,
to Björn Heile, Suk-Jun Kim, Ian Russell, Pete Stollery and Chris
Fynsk for helpful consultations on small but significant points of
detail. Published English translations of texts have been used where
available, unless otherwise noted. All other translations are by the
author, unless otherwise noted. As is customary, I take responsibility
for any unnoticed errors within the text.
Introduction
The philosopher Gilles Deleuze was not at all a musician and
certainly not a music theorist. This fact notwithstanding, this
book is predicated on the notion that many of his concepts and ideas
can be of great value in rethinking music today. Composer Pascale
Criton, who participated in Deleuze’s seminar for several years,
and who advised him on musical matters, states that despite not
producing a book on music as he had done on cinema, painting and
literature, ‘it nevertheless occupies a privileged place in [his] thought’
(Criton 2005). Many of his writings contain significant references to
composers, compositions and musical ideas in ways that go well
beyond the anecdotal or the incidental, and music is for Deleuze
absolutely implicated with thought and, at its best, is indicative of
new directions for thought that are arguably uncapturable in any other
medium.
For Deleuze, philosophy concerns above all the creation of
concepts, concepts that enable us to think differently. Despite the
rich implication of music and thought in his writings, this book is
concerned less with what he wrote about music and more with how
his philosophical concepts may be productive for rethinking music.
The book has five chapters, each of which is focused on a discrete
Deleuzian concept or pair/group of concepts. Each chapter has a
similar format in which the specific topic is introduced in a musical
context, followed by a summary of related philosophical material
from Deleuze’s solo writings or his collaborations with Félix Guattari.
This in turn leads to a series of discussions of how the philosophical
concept[s] in question may relate to music.
In Chapter 1, we consider how Deleuzian concepts offer
interesting ways of thinking about difference, repetition and variation
in a range of musics including Western art music from Beethoven to
Boulez, jazz improvisation and aspects of popular and sacred music.