This introduction to a challenging contemporary composer delves into the theory and philosophy of repetition.
The work of Austrian composer Bernhard Lang elides easy categorization. While rooted simultaneously in DJ culture, free jazz, pop culture and the Austro-European new music scene, his oeuvre explicitly foregrounds repetition. He is, in his own words, a “repeat offender.”
Bernhard Lang serves as a critical guide to the composer’s music and traces the phenomenon of repetition throughout his oeuvre. To examine Lang’s repetitive aesthetics, Christine Dysers employs various philosophical methods, such as Gilles Deleuze’s differential ontology. Fusing critical musicology, aesthetic theory, poststructuralist thought, and music analysis, Bernhard Lang brings fresh insight to the work of an award-winning contemporary composer.
The work of Austrian composer Bernhard Lang elides easy categorization. While rooted simultaneously in DJ culture, free jazz, pop culture and the Austro-European new music scene, his oeuvre explicitly foregrounds repetition. He is, in his own words, a “repeat offender.”
Bernhard Lang serves as a critical guide to the composer’s music and traces the phenomenon of repetition throughout his oeuvre. To examine Lang’s repetitive aesthetics, Christine Dysers employs various philosophical methods, such as Gilles Deleuze’s differential ontology. Fusing critical musicology, aesthetic theory, poststructuralist thought, and music analysis, Bernhard Lang brings fresh insight to the work of an award-winning contemporary composer.
208 pages | 42 halftones | 6.69 x 9.61 | © 2023
Critical Guides to Contemporary Composers
Music: General Music
Reviews
Table of Contents
Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Philosophies of repetition
Discovering Deleuze
2. Circular thinking
3. Seriality and the rhizomatic oeuvre
Chapter 2: Different repetitions
The same, again
2. The paradox of repetition
3. The same, but different
4. Calculating the unforeseen
Chapter 3: Acts of repetition
Stories about repetition
2. Repetitive stories
3. Repetitive gestures
4. Repetitive scenographies
Chapter 4: Politics of repetition
It’s all about history
2. Take the power back
3. The analytic faculty
4. The limits of the intertext
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Philosophies of repetition
Discovering Deleuze
2. Circular thinking
3. Seriality and the rhizomatic oeuvre
Chapter 2: Different repetitions
The same, again
2. The paradox of repetition
3. The same, but different
4. Calculating the unforeseen
Chapter 3: Acts of repetition
Stories about repetition
2. Repetitive stories
3. Repetitive gestures
4. Repetitive scenographies
Chapter 4: Politics of repetition
It’s all about history
2. Take the power back
3. The analytic faculty
4. The limits of the intertext
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index