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Reviewed by:
  • Deleuze and Music
  • Brian A. Smith
Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda, eds. Deleuze and Music. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2004. 216 pp.

Edited by Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda, Deleuze and Music accomplishes three tasks simultaneously that are of tremendous interest to anyone in literary studies, philosophy, and studies in music. First of all, given the clear and didactic style of the contributors, this text serves as an excellent companion to reading Deleuze's own writings; the best example being the introduction to the book written by Ian Buchanan who is already becoming well known for his clarity and didacticism in his approach to Deleuze. Secondly, Deleuze and Music in various ways illuminates Deleuze's thoughts on music and their importance for understanding his philosophy as a whole. This is accomplished both through explanations of his thought as well as application in terms of musical concepts such as rhythm and improvisation or musical forms such as jazz, classical, and even death metal. And third, Deleuze and Music does something which most texts discussing music in the realms of literary studies and philosophy rarely ever do: actually theorizing music in terms of musical form and music theory, and again very clearly at that. As if it isn't complicated enough to explain or use Deleuze's philosophy, doing so at times in terms of musical form and music theory for a literary audience that is typically unfamiliar with music theory is very slippery terrain and, from a musician's perspective, the contributors are not only clear but accurate as well.

As far as the various types of music that are addressed, the range is immense, yet there are some that receive more focus than others. Jazz is figured fairly heavily with Eugene Holland's "Studies in Applied Nomadology: Jazz Improvisation and Post-Capitalist Markets" which follows Buchanan's introduction, and Marcel Swiboda's essay "Cosmic Strategies: The Electric Experiments of Miles Davis" which closes the book. Ronald Bogue takes it an almost entirely different direction with "Violence in Three Shades of Metal: Death, Doom and Black" as well as Greg Hainge's "Is Pop Music?" which indeed answers its own question in a very interesting and new light. Other musical forms include Rock, Raga, Muzak, Experimental, Drum'n'Bass . . . the list goes on. As far as specific musicians are concerned, it literally ranges from Beethoven to Björk, from Cage to Kenny G. And of course no book on music and Deleuze would be complete without a confrontation with Adorno, which Nick Nesbitt provides in terms of "musical multiplicity." Yet it might also not be complete without addressing the infamous "Deleuze Tribute Recordings" whose various [End Page 363] composers include Richard Pinhas, one of Deleuze's students, and the multitalented DJ Spooky; the actual essay is by Timothy S. Murphy.

If there is an implicit strand that unifies all of the essays beyond the book's title, it is that music and sound as semiotic systems are integral elements in contemporary culture that have not been adequately theorized and Deleuze provides the best and most intricate conceptualization of music's functions, or, its connections to the world, territorializations in the world, and inscriptions upon it. In other words, it might not only be true that if one wants to understand Deleuze one has to confront his thoughts on music, but also that if one wants to understand music one has to confront Deleuze. If both are true, to whatever respective degrees, the contributors to Deleuze and Music not only realize that this confrontation entails certain encounters with other musicians discussed by Deleuze and Guatarri like Boulez, Cage, or the worker who hums, and not only with such concepts as "territorialization," the "minor," and the "refrain," but also confronting Deleuze by taking him beyond his own limits in terms of musical form, multiplying his concepts or, as Buchanan puts it in the context of the introduction, to "function like a crystal and bring about the crystallization of still more concepts" (17).

Yet, to anyone who is even slightly familiar with Deleuze's thought, it should be apparent that its musical character not only has consequences for music itself, but for various...

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