Review of Brian Hulse and Nick Nesbitt eds.,Sounding the Virtual: Gilles Deleuze and the Theory and Philosophy of Music(Ashgate, 2010)

Abstract

[1] In hailstorm of recent books concerning thought of Gilles Deleuze, editors Brian Hulse and Nick Nesbitt set Sounding Virtual apart as first coherent, comprehensive reply from field of music studies (xv).(1) This careful positioning is necessary, as there is already a substantial body of writing treating Deleuze's relationship to music, both from music-centered scholars and from cultural, film, and media studies. This includes Ronald Bogue's 2003 synthesis of Deleuze's writing on music (and painting), Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda's 2004 volume Deleuze and Music, and a four-paper colloquy in Perspectives of New Music from 2008. These last two sources share two authors each with new volume, and Buchanan and Swiboda book shares with it a balance between explicating Deleuze, tracing connections and dissonances with related thinkers, and applying result to musical examples and/or repertories. By comparison, Sounding Virtual is somewhat more comprehensive, venturing further beyond connections Deleuze himself made with music. A light editorial hand, however, ensures that Deleuze's pronouncements against totalizing conceptual cohesion are respected. What does distinguish this book is that some chapters (though not all) engage with music theory and analysis in a degree of detail that might (but shouldn't) frighten readers from other disciplines. It's this detail that gives book its traction, providing substance to sometimes substantial reorientations of Deleuze's ontological and ethical arguments, and demonstrating potential of those arguments to displace some cherished music-theoretical dogmata.[2] The first three chapters provide complementary perspectives on concepts from Deleuze's Difference and Repetition. Hulse concentrates on Deleuzian concept of in itself, which asserts that each difference is unique, and cannot be compared to other differences by a rule of measurement (as in many current conceptions of pitch space) or by its relation to an archetype (as in Schenkerian analysis). Sean Higgins recasts difference in terms of information theory as noise, which he defines as the absolute difference of empirical sound (52). Although he is careful to stress disruptive materiality of noise, its binary opposition to signal brings clarity to his recasting of Deleuze's critique of representation: noise is both material remainder effaced by categorization, and friction between our senses and faculties that leads to true thought. Christopher Hasty likewise reprises this critique, but shifts emphasis from music's materiality to activity of music, and how we might respect, both conceptually and analytically, persistence of difference in our musical experiences. The lack of friction between Hastian and Deleuzian discourses is telling, but it falls to Hulse to explicitly position Hasty's work on rhythm as quintessentially Deleuzian, providing book's most concrete connection between Deleuze and analytical practice. The different conclusions drawn by Hulse and Hasty, however, are striking. For Hulse, rigorously pursuing difference tends to dissolve identity of genres and media into huge bodies of resonance (42). By chapter's end, music's participants are left with a global reservoir of basic musical materials unbound by style, culture, or era-a utopian abrogation that discards music analysis's hard-won hermeneutic utility in a quest for radical connectivity. Hasty's seemingly more conservative position is actually closer to Deleuze: having foresworn representation and categorization, realm of Ideas, of true thought, must be nonetheless differentiated and internally structured (10). Hasty's solutions provide Ideas including tonal function and beat with a flexible analytical utility that arises from, rather than in spite of, actual musical becoming. His detailed application of these Ideas to beginning of Chopin's Scherzo, Op. …