Music's Immanent Future ─ The Deleuzian Turn in Music Studies

The conversations generated by the chapters in Musica€?s Immanent Future grapple with some of musica€?s paradoxes: that music of the Western art canon is viewed as timeless and universal while other kinds of music are seen as transitory and ephemeral; that in order to make sense of music we need descriptive language; that to open up the new in music we need to revisit the old; that to arrive at a figuration of music itself we need to posit its starting point in noise; that in order to justify our creative compositional works as research, we need to find critical languages and theoretical frameworks with which to discuss them; or that despite being an auditory system, we are compelled to resort to the visual metaphor as a way of thinking about musical sounds. Drawn to musical sound as a powerful form of non-verbal communication, the authors include musicologists, philosophers, music theorists, ethnomusicologists and composers. The chapters in this volume investigate and ask fundamental questions about how we think, converse, write about, compose, listen to and analyse music. The work is informed by the philosophy primarily of Gilles Deleuze and FAclix Guattari, and secondarily of Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva and Jean-Luc Nancy. The chapters cover a wide range of topics focused on twentieth and twenty-first century musics, covering popular musics, art music, acousmatic music and electro-acoustic musics, and including music analysis, musica€?s ontology, the noise/music dichotomy, intertextuality and music, listening, ethnography and the current state of music studies. The authors discuss their philosophical perspectives and methodologies of practice-led research, including their own creative work as a form of research. Musica€?s Immanent Future brings together empirical, cultural, philosophical and creative approaches that will be of interest to musicologists, composers, music analysts and music philosophers.

Sally Macarthur is a musicologist whose work focuses on recent musical practices in Australia with a particular emphasis on music of the western classical tradition and womena€?s music. She is Associate Professor and Director of Academic Program (Music) in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Judy Lochhead is a theorist and musicologist whose work focuses on the most recent musical practices in North America and Europe, with particular emphasis on music of the western classical tradition. She is Professor of Music at Stony Brook University, USA. Jennifer Shaw is a musicologist whose work focuses on the Second Viennese School, music copyright and on creative practice as research. She is Professor and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Adelaide, Australia.