Jonathan Langseth PHI607-Deleuze Toadvine-Winter 09 Deleuze and Guattari, Schoenberg and Cage, and the Deterritorialization of Music In Difference

and Repetition, Deleuze says, For there is no other aesthetic problem than that of the insertion of art into everyday life (293). I would like to take this claim seriously and investigate how it is operative in music. In A Thousand Plateaus (ATP) Deleuze and Guattari (D&G) assert, Musicuproots the refrain from its territoriality. Music is a creative, active operation that consists in deterritorializing the refrain (300). In order to unpack this brief but dense claim, we must first grasped what is meant by refrain and territory. But in so doing we will find that we must wrestle with numerous concepts created by D&G in their attempt to generate an ontology of music. I propose following Nick Nesbitts approach following Deleuzes own prescription: to take concepts as various tools, and see what they might bring to our understanding of various (musical) events (55). In the end I will suggest that in the history of Western music, the combination of the twelve-tone serial music of Arnold Schoenberg and the indeterminate chance music of John Cage mark the complete deterritorialization of the refrain and, ultimately, of Western music, thus infinitely broadening the potential to both create and hear new forms of music as perceptive and affective forms of expressionand that in everyday life. This claim will become clearer after some explication. Let us begin with the concept of territory. D&G define a territory as any marked off space, essentially any frame of space and/or time, enclosed within a border. Such a framing or territorialization is expressive. What is expressed is an articulation or claiming of a region, a bloc that has the function of pronouncing something or other for any variety of purposes. Elizabeth

Grosz says, Territory is artistically inscribed, the consequence not of a naturally selected territorial imperative but of an artistic movement: the creation of a marker (48). If music deterritorializes the refrain, then the refrain must already be a territory, a marking of expressed enclosure. The refrain is a sonic territory, the buzzing of a bee or the scream of one in joy or pain, the motif one hums to comfort themselves at work. Its relation to music is integral and complex. While acting as the content of music, it is also works to prevent the actualization of music:
the refrain is properly musical content, the block of content proper to musicThe motif of the refrain may be anxiety, fear, joy, love, work, walking, territorybut the refrain itself is the content of music (ATP 300). Yet, The refrain isa means of preventing music, warding if off, or forgoing it. But music exists because the refrain exists also, because music takes up the refrain, lays hold of it as a content in a form of expression, because it forms a block with it in order to take it somewhere else. The childs refrain, which is not music, forms a block with the becoming-child of music (ATP 300).

While taking the refrain as its content, music disrupts the territory the refrain encloses. Before delving into how music takes up and disrupts the refrain we need to further understand the nature of refrains and how D&G view art in general. The refrain operates in the dual function of acting as content and blockage of music by way of four different methods:
Refrains could be classified as follows: (1) Territorial refrains that seek, mark, assemble a territory; (2) Territorialized function refrains that assume a special function in the assemblage; (3) the same, when they mark new assemblages, pass into new assemblages by means of deterritorialization-reterritorialization; (4) refrains that collect or gather forces, either at the heart of the territory, or in order to go outside it (these refrains of confrontation or departure that sometimes bring on a movement of absolute deterritorialization) (ATP 326-7).

We have already noted the first classification in which a frame of expression is produced. The second classification focuses on the function the marks the boundaries of a territory, the kind of expression expressed. The third classification involves either the destruction of the territory and/or the configuration of a new one, a becoming. The fourth classification is a concentration of a territory to the extent that it intensifies its expression, possibly to the extent that it expands beyond 2

its own boundaries. What is offered in this classification is a description of the emergence of art (4) out of a progression stretching back to the most basics forms of expression. In What is Philosophy? D&G view art as blocs of percepts and affects, independent of the artist or audience. D&G say of percepts and affects that, Percepts are no longer perceptions; they are independent of a state of those who experience them. Affects are no longer feelings of affections: they go beyond the strength of those who undergo them. (What is Philosophy? 164). Of course, as Elizabeth Grosz notes, the sensations and affects do not in themselves make up art (on the contrary, art is composed of materials, sounds, colors, textures, melodies and not affects or sensations). They are the products of art, what art makes, what enables art to stand on its own, independent of its creator and of the circumstances of its creation (59). We might say that the affects produced in the act of a works producing is the proper content of art. The production of an affect requires a becoming in the being affected. This change in state must be unique, posing the problem for the artist to create something new. Each art he defines by its problems, by the challenges faced by the creator in the task of making something new (Bogue 3). This is why D&G assert that, The artist is always adding new varieties to the world (What is Philosophy? 175), for if the artist did not add new varieties producing new affects they would not be artists and their work would no be art. Following Deleuze, Peter Hallward argues that art does not interpret or represent reality but rather makes it. From the division of a cell to the performance of Mozarts Requiem, the reality of actuality, or reality as actuality, is being formed through expression and creativity. We can further suggest that all expression and creativity, broadly construed, is the constitution of life, broadly construed. To quote Hallward, Art enables the full spiritualization and dematerialisation of life (105).

Hallward also highlights two important points of Deleuzes conception of art: that is must be both novel and autonomous. Art cannot be a bare repetition, nor dependent upon some external foundation, hence Deleuzes focus on artist rather than critics and audiences. The novel and autonomous qualities of art must be necessarily so in order to give it eternal standing as genuine creativity. This applies for the generation of cell division as much for the human artist: the act of creation must be an act of necessity in and for itself. This is what determines if the product stands or falls in the flow of time. Reception is secondary. The expressive nature of territorializing is the aesthetic, the producer of blocs of sensations, independent of consciousness, yet instantiated therein. The sensations occur through becoming, from the movement of major to minor. This movement is deterritorializing. Following Leonard Lawlers reading of major as the global state of being, any becoming would consist in becoming-minor, of what one is already not. For Deleuze to become is a move from what one is to what one isnt. This is why to become is to become something minor, for what we are is already the major or dominant form of our being. Deterritorialization, the process of becoming, occurs through a change in what D&G call percepts and affects. Music is precisely the adventure of the refrain: the way music lapses into a refrain; the way it lays hold of the refrain, makes it more and more sober, reduced to a few notes, then takes it down a creative line that is so much richer, no origin or end of which is in sight (ATP 302). This is why art must be novel, because it must create a becoming out of precepts and affects. If the refrain protects us from chaos and entices us to abide and enjoy in a region provisionally enclosed from chaos, music opens up and transforms us, making of both our bodies and of the earth itself a new site of becomings toward a differently contained and directed chaos, to the opening up and exploration of chaotic elements (Grosz 56). The continual need for new forms

of expression produces a history of musical change.1 D&G offer a traditional reading of Western musical development, citing three stages, Classicism, Romanticism, and Modernism. In each of these stages we find a break with the former. In the Classical stage we are at a point of a fixed tonal center and a rhythm tamed by a steady measure. Romanticism begins to break rhythmically by dancing around the measure and tonally by exploring new possibilities of tonal invention, yet still centered around an identifiable tonal center. Romanticism reaches its apex with the rhythmic variations of Brahms and the indecipherable (multiple) tonal centers in the later works of Wagner (the Tristan Chord). With Modernism we find a complete break with both measured rhythm and tonal centers. D&G suggest they
have tried to define in the case of Western music (although the other musical traditions confront an analogous problem, under different conditions, to which they find different solutions) a block of becoming at the level of expression, or a block of expression: this block of becoming rests on transversals that continually escape from the coordinates or punctual systems functioning as musical codes at a given moment (ATP 299).

The systems escaped from in the becoming of music, of musics historical evolution, are the theories that territorialized musical possibilities. Becoming-music is always a deterritorialization, a mark of new expression, a transgression of what has been or currently is. The evolution of musical theories of correlative with musical development. Ronald Bogue is correct in suggesting that, In virtually every regard, Deleuze and Guattaris treatment of music is the antithesis of the traditional, Platonic approach to the subject (16). While the Platonic approach seeks to discover the perfect harmonic system as expressed in an ordered, hierarchic reflection of an ordered and hierarchic cosmos, D&G suggest music is always already a fleeing from the bounds of any such posited system into and out of chaos2in the case of western music that of the tonal center of a work of
1

Refrains, then, are rhythmic, melodious patterns, small chants, ditties, that shape the vibrations of milieus into that harmonics of territories, the organization of a wall or barrier. Music is the reverse movement, the liberation of these harmonic and rhythmic patterns from their originating location and their placement into a double movement, both musically, beyond the smallness of the refrain and on, to the song, the tune, the sonata, the duet, the symphony, other forms of music, genres, and so on, to forms as yet not even conceivable on the plane of composition; and spatio-temporally, beyond territory, to individuals, peoples, races, bodily movements, performances (Grosz 54). 2 The song is like a rough sketch of a calming and stabilizing, calm and sable, center in the heart of chaos (ATP

music.3 While citing Wagners Tristan chord (in which five tonalities are played at once, making each and none a tonal center) as the initial break with traditional tonality, Nick Nesbitt recognizes Schoenbergs twelve-tone serial music as the final destruction of the hegemony of classical tonality. He says this is a music of sheer immanence in which each musical moment arises out of another without reference to an external source or stylistic authority (61). It is a complete undoing of the hierarchy caused by the imposed need for tonal centers to ground musical composition. Schoenberg himself says, Tonality is no natural law of music, eternally valid (9). D&G suggest that the transition from Romanticism to Modernism begins with Wagner and Debussy:
The work of the plane of composition develops in two directions that involve a disaggregation of the tonal frame: the immense uniform areas of continuous variation that couple and combine the forces that have become sonorous Wagner, or broken tones that separate and disperse the forces by harmonizing their reversible passages in DebussyWagner universe, Debussy-universe. All the tunes, all the little framing and framed refrainschildish, domestic, professional, national, territorialare swept up in the great Refrain, a powerful song of the earththe deterritorializedwhich arises with Mahler, Berg, and Bartok. And no doubt in each case the plane of composition generates new closures, as in serial music (What is Philosophy? 190).

I would like to suggest that while these composers, among others, greatly contributed to the move to Modernism in Western music, that it is with Arnold Schoenberg and John Cage that Modernism reaches the apex of its deterritorialization of tonality and opens up infinite directions and dimensions by which music can be conceived and composed; and that from this apex an ever growing number of percepts and affects can be produced. I will proceed to explain why believe this to be the case, but with two caveats: that Schoenberg and Cage did not reach their respective points in Western music history alone, and that other composers both helped form the ground and extend the compositional methods of these two

311). Art fundamentally constitutes a dwelling, a domain out of chaos (Lingus 280).

composers as mentioned in the quote of D&G cited above. Nonetheless, I will maintain that these two composers together reached a point in musical composition that hold the particular place my thesis claims them to hold. With Schoenberg we not only reach the point of complete breakage with tonal music, the point of tonality, but also the point at which each of the twelve tonal pitches in Western music is given equal weight. This equality is accomplished with Schoenbergs serial compositions in which music is composed by starting with a linear arrangement of the twelve pitches, each without repetition.4 This arrangement can be reversed, inverted, or both, and the series can be given any rhythmic scheme. No tonality can be given privileged over the others. In other words it is impossible for there to be a tonal center. Each tone is free from the bondage of any other tone. In so doing the difference of each tone is given equal weight. This follows Deleuzes notion of univocity. Univocity in no sense implies uniformity. On the contrary: univocity is affirmed as the basis and medium for a primordial and unlimited differentiation (Hallward 12). Serial music as univocity of a system of tones recognizes each tone as equal in difference to all others, there is no tonal center of gravity.
Tonality is a formal possibility that emerges from the nature of the tonal material, a possibility of attaining a certain completeness or closure by means of a certain uniformity. To realize this possibility it is necessary to use in the course of a piece only those sounds and successions of sounds, and those only in a suitable arrangement, whose relations to the fundamental tone of the key, to the tonic of the piece, can be grasped without difficulty. Subsequently, I shall be compelled to take issue with various aspects of tonality and can therefore confine my remarks here to just two points: (1) I do not, as apparently all theorists before me have done, consider tonality an eternal law, a natural law of music(2) it is essential that the pupil learn thoroughly the basis of this effect [tonality] and how to attain it (Schoenberg 27).

Schoenbergs theoretical intention is in line with his artistic achievement, unblocking the evolution of music. He has freed the ear of the need for resolution of dissonance, of consonances domination
4

The period of free-atonal composition more accurately composition freely using the twelve-tone scale previous to Schoenbergs development of the twelve-tone serial row refers to a method of composition in which all twelve chromatic tones are employed without reference to a transcendent diatonic scale or need for specific resolutions. In this sense, this is a music of sheer immanence in which each musical moment arises out of another without reference to an external source or stylistic authority (Nesbitt 61). 7

over dissonance. Although serial music involves a strict structure, this need not hinder its freeing of tonality: there may be an advantage in being able to restrict oneself to a very determinate zone in some circumstances, and in others to widen or deepen the zone to assure oneself counterpoint and to invent chords that would other wise diffuse (ATP 331). To be frank, pure serial music is not pleasant to listen to, nor do I believe that it is intended to be so. Rather, it produces affects of uneasiness, unstableness, upset, and tensionin short, dissonancewhile at the same time producing effects of becoming that are liberating, freeing, and opening.5 John Cage introduced the element of indeterminacy with his chance music which occurs both at the level of composition and performance. While Schoenberg used a precise and strict structure to free each tonality, Cage does away with the need for predetermined structure all together. A composition can be written, for example, by placing notes where a fly happens to land on a piece of staff paper, or by allowing silence to make evident the sounds that are consistently surrounding us. Although D&G suggest that composers, such as Cage, may at times go too far so that it remains a territorial refrain,6 I believe Cages introduction of chance music or indeterminacy deterritorializes not only the refrain, but Western music in general. Cage writes about the experimental aspect of his music: compositionis indeterminate with respect to its performance. That composition is necessarily experimental. An experimental action is one the outcome of which is not foreseen. Being unforeseen, this action is not concerned with its
5

To give evidence to Schoenbergs intention, we need only cite two passages from Harmony: His insistence to again and againbegin at the beginning; again and againexamine anew for ourselves and attempt to organize anew for ourselves (8) and his exclamation To hell with all these theories, if they always serve only to block the evolution of art (9) are both telling of his approach to music theory and philosophy/critique. 6 Sometimes one overdoes it, puts too much in, works with a jumble of lines and sounds; then instead producing a cosmic machine capable of rendering sonorous, one lapses back to a machine of reproduction that winds up reproducing nothing but a scribble effacing all lines, a scramble effacing all soundsA material that is too rich remains too territorialized: on noise surfaces, nature of the objects(this even applies to Cages prepared piano) (ATP 343-4).

excuse (39). This quote unknowingly echoes a related passage found in Deleuzes Difference and Repetition:
It is rather a question of a throw of the dice, of the whole sky as open space and of throwing as the only ruleTo abolish chance is to fragment it according to laws of probability over several throws, in such a way that the problem is already dismembered into hypotheses of win and lossBy contrast, the throw of the dice affirms the whole of chance each timeThe most difficult thing is to make chance an object of affirmationWhen chance is sufficiently affirmed the player can no longer lose (198).

This affirmation of chance is integral to Deleuzes philosophy of difference, in which he advocates the affirmation of difference, of chance, under any circumstance and outcome. Together, these two methods of strict structure and intentional absence of prescribed structure, at the moment of their recognition as music, mark the limits of musical expression as a human act of artistic creation, and in so doing free the field of musical composition to an everopening expanse. This is not to say they are the limits that restrict musical composition, but rather, they are the limits that allow future composers the capability to experiment in an infinite number of approaches and creative directions. By freeing music from any tonal center, and by freeing music from the need for any tones at all, we can imagine any conjunction of sounds as expressive. This is the complete deterritorialization of Western music. Reterritorialization, or the creation of music, need not follow any particular compositional approach. Or, inversely, the creation of music can follow any particular approach or method. The results will produce affects, percepts, forms of sensation. Some will bring us closer to the ground, others to unmasked chaos, some to the cosmos. I suggest the consequence of this complete deterritorilization of musical composition is two-fold: First, it opens up the potential of music composition to infinite possibility, variation, or newness in reterroritoriaizations. Second, it opens our ears to hear the audible expressions of sound in general that may at one time, or still, can been understood and felt as he music of everyday life, a complete deterritorialization. As D&G quote Cezanne, Not a minute of the world passes that we will not preserve if we do not become that minute (ATP 169). And at times nature is also

beautiful where we do not understand her and where she seems unordered (Schoenberg 30). Schoenberg and Cage have made both these claims immanent in Western music, but it is still up to the listener to choose to accept or affirm the new forms of listening and hearing the composers offer. In doing so, art will not only produce new forms of affect, but also bring art into the everyday world, where we can here and make sounds that would otherwise be heard as noise, nuisance, or background, as music. In conclusion I would like to come back to Deleuzes quote at the opening this paper. It reads:
For there is no other aesthetic problem than that of the insertion to everyday life. The more our daily life appears standardized, stereotyped and subject to an accelerated reproduction of objects of consumption, the more art must be injected into it in order to extract from it that little difference which plays simultaneously between other levels of repetition, and even to make the to extremes resonate namely, the habitual series of consumption and the instinctual series of destruction and deatha freedom for the end of a world[Art] lead[s] us from the sad repetitions of habit to the profound repetitions of memory, and then to the ultimate repetitions of death in which our freedom is played out (Difference and Repetition 293).

I read this quote as making the claim that is the becomings produced by art that break us free from bare repetitions and static modes of being, into new worlds and selves. A freedom for the end of a world, marks the beginning of a new one. Ultimate repetitions of death are the changing of ourselves, the becoming of ourselves, out of which new selves are born again.7 This continual becoming is nothing short than the education, expansion, and development of a world or individual. In becoming nothing is lost that allows itself to become with new becomings. We can bring out the past in new shapes and forms by affirming the possibilities for becoming. Schoenberg and Cage offer us not only the ability to hear new forms of audible affects, but also a capability to hear music of the past anew, by affirming the difference or becoming it produced, at its stage in the development of Western music. We can now deterritorialize in any direction, past, present, and
7

subject[ing] oneself to the destructive force of the contradiction, to run up against a logically impossiblethe point of which is to attempt to break through the sedentary fixations of subjectivity, to perceive the plane of the pure event, the transcendental plane of the univocity of being that itself founds the fixed self-same subject (Nesbitt 56).

10

future.

Bibliography Bogue, Ronald. Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts. Routledge: NY, 2003. Cage, John. Silence. Wesleyan University Press: Hanover NH, 1973. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Aul Patton. Columbia University Press: New York, 1994. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. University of 11

Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 1987. Grosz, Elizabeth. Chaos, Territory, Art. Columbia University Press: New York, 2008. Hallward, Peter. Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation. Verso: NY, 2006. Lingus, Alphonso. The Music of Space. Rethinking Nature. Ed. Bruce V. Foltz and Robert Frodeman. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 2004. Nesbitt, Nick. Deleuze, Adorno, and the Composition of Musical Multiplicity. Deleuze and Music. Ed. Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda. Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh, 2004. Schoenberg, Arnold. Theory of Harmony. Trans. Roy E. Carter. University of California Press: Berkeley, 1984.

12