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.
By:
Christine Dysers
Imprint: Intellect Books
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: New edition
Dimensions:
Height: 244mm,
Width: 170mm,
ISBN: 9781789387636
ISBN 10: 1789387639
Series: Critical Guides to Contemporary Composers
Pages: 190
Publication Date: 25 April 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
List of Figures vii Acknowledgements xi Introduction xiii 1. Philosophies of Repetition 1 Discovering Deleuze 4 Circular thinking 12 Seriality and the rhizomatic oeuvre 26 2. Different Repetitions 32 The same, again 34 The paradox of repetition 42 The same, but different 50 Calculating the unforeseen 62 3. Acts of Repetition 70 Stories about repetition 73 Repetitive stories 75 Repetitive gestures 78 Repetitive scenographies 87 4. Politics of Repetition 99 It’s all about history 109 Take the power back 119 The analytic faculty 124 The limits of the intertext 133 Epilogue 137 Notes 143 References 150 Index 163
Dr Christine Dysers is a postdoctoral researcher at the Uppsala University department of musicology. Her research is broadly concerned with music after 1989, with a particular focus on the aesthetics of repetition, music and the political, musical borrowing, and the notion of the uncanny. Christine holds a PhD in music from City, University of London. In 2021, she was appointed as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar in the department of music at Columbia University.
Reviews for Bernhard Lang: Critical Guides to Contemporary Composers
'Dysers explores the concept of repetition, insightfully examining Lang's use of textual quotation, and his practice of musical borrowing. She argues that while repetition is commonly treated as reiteration of a previously explored idea, this is too reductive. She treats it more as radical instability. [...] The book is indebted to music theory, psychology and post-structuralist philosophy, and Dysers has engaged in extended interviews with the composer.' -- Andy Hamilton, The Wire
