John Zorn’s File Card Works: Hypertextual Intermediality in Composition and Analysis

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Maurice Windleburn

John Zorn’s File Card Works

Hypertextual Intermediality in Composition and Analysis

Maurice Windleburn

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English

Routledge
26 December 2025

Theory of music & musicology; 20th century & contemporary classical music; Orchestras

Series: Ashgate Studies in Theory and Analysis of Music After 1900

This book is the first study of John Zorn’s ‘file card’ works, with special focus made on the pieces Godard (1985), Spillane (1986), Interzone (2010), and Liber Novus (2010). It explains the unique creative process behind these compositions, contextualizing them in relation to the history of file cards, the ‘open work’ concept, cinematic listening, and uncreative aesthetics. Semiotic, hermeneutic, and ekphrastic analyses draw hypertextual links between the four file card compositions and the worlds of their respective dedicatees: author Mickey Spillane, filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, novelist William S. Burroughs and painter Brion Gysin, and psychiatrist C. G. Jung.

This book will appeal not only to those interested in Zorn’s music, but also to scholars of music semiotics and hermeneutics, intermedia studies, and avant-garde music.

By: Maurice Windleburn
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 453g
ISBN: 9781032342887
ISBN 10: 1032342889
Series: Ashgate Studies in Theory and Analysis of Music After 1900
Pages: 140
Publication Date: 26 December 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

1. The File Card Work and its Model Listener 2. The Hypotexts of Sound Blocks 3. Hypertextual Hermeneutics 4. From Metatext to Hypertext via Uncreativity

Maurice Windleburn holds a PhD in Musicology from the University of Melbourne, Australia. His research focuses on avant-garde music, music philosophy, and ekphrastic relations between music and other artforms. His work has been published in a number of journals, including Organised Sound, Tempo, and the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics.