DECONSTRUCTION IN

MUSIC
Table of Contents
1. Deconstruction in Music - introductory page

Section I
2. Outwork
3. Deconstruction In Music
4. Deconstructive Sociology
5. Derrida's Ear
6. Interactionist Sociology
7. Justification
8. Music Is a Text
9. Music, Deconstruction, and Ethics
10. Of New Musicology

Section II
11. Restitutions, Shibboleth or Aporias
12. (D)(R)econtextualization
13. Burt Bacharach and John Zorn
14. The Death of the Composer
15. Deconstruction
16. DJ Spooky
17. Great Jewish Music
18. Hymen
19. Positions I
20. Positions II
21. Saprophyte
22. Scritti Politti
23. The Signature of John Zorn
24. Zorn, Noise, Cage, Pop
25. Zorn's Pharmacy

Section III
26. The Gift of Silence [donner les bruits]
27. What is Music?
28. Cage, White, Mallarmé, Silence
29. Cage and Noise
30. Cage and Silence
31. Music and/as (Dis)Order
32. Music, Noise, Silence, and Sound
33. Noise as Undesirable Sound
34. Noise as Undifferentiated Sound
35. Silence and Death
36. Silence and/in Music
37. Silence, Noise, and Ethics

Section IV
38. Specters of Bach
39. T.W. Adorno
40. Sons brisés - J. Allende-Blin
41. Die Kunst der Fuge [The Art of the Fugue]
42. Alt-Rhapsodie - J. Brahms
43. Contrapunctus I
44. Of the Critics
45. Of Interpretation
46. Timbres-durées - O. Messiaen
47. Pablo Neruda
48. Quatuor - J.S. Bach
49. No (-) Music - D. Schnebel
50. Gerd Zacher's Kunst einer Fuge [Art of a Fugue]

Section V
51. The Truth in Teaching
52. Education and Ethics
53. Education: From Modernism to Postmodernism
54. To Give a (Music) Lesson
55. Intermezzo
56. Of Jazz Education
57. The Role of the Teacher
58. Teaching a Supplement

Section VI
59. Introduction to Deconstruction
60. Context
61. Deconstruction - an Affirmative Strategy of Transformation
62. Deconstruction: Between Method and Singularity
63. Displacement
64. Dissemination
65. Hierarchical Oppositions
66. Logos Above Writing
67. The Pharmakon
68. Pharmakos
69. Plato's Supplements
70. Supplement
71. Undecidables
72. Writing Above Logos

73. About the Author

74. Acknowledgements
75. Bibliography
DECONSTRUCTION IN
MUSIC
[1] Five times around music. Five different entries to discover how deconstruction
articulates itself in music. In The Gift Of Silence [donner les bruits]: On Music, Noise
and Silence, the apparently clear borderlines between music, noise, and silence, among
other things, are questioned through the work of John Cage. Specters Of Bach: On Gerd
Zacher's Kunst einer Fuge deals with a project of German church organist, Gerd Zacher,
in which the first counterpoint of J.S. Bach's Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fugue) is
deconstructed. In a totally different way, deconstruction appears in the contemporary
avant garde rock music of John Zorn. Restitutions, Shibboleth or Aporias: On John Zorn
and Burt Bacharach shows deconstruction at work in Zorn's CD, Great Jewish Music:
Burt Bacharach. The Truth in Teaching: On Deconstruction in Music Education holds a
different approach. The point of departure here is the practice of teaching jazz music.
What can deconstruction imply for teaching materials, teachers, and students in jazz
education? These four parts are framed, as it were, by Outwork. Deconstruction In Music:
An Introduction. In addition to some important 'credentials' (the ethical implications of
deconstruction and Derrida's relation to music), this section focuses on the relationship
between this work and other musicological texts that are permeated by post-structuralism
and deconstruction.
This site would not have been possible without the texts of French philosopher, Jacques
Derrida. In Of Deconstruction, some ideas on deconstruction that are based on Derrida’s
oeuvre are discussed.

[2] Five times around music. Wandering about/along/with music. Five times. Wandering
from the straight and narrow of the order, of linearity, i.e. the teleology of an end in a
beginning. Around music ... Hesitating ... Groping ... 'Reticence, as you know, is the
figure of a deliberate keeping-quiet so that more than eloquence can be heard in it',
Derrida writes in Of Hospitality (p.95). How does one write with restraint? How is this
task fulfilled?
Five times around music. Not denying the existence of gaps and uncertainties, not
disguising problems, not trying to be complete or rounded-off. Not a clear method that
seeks to decipher a truth but a series of encounters that affirms play. No conclusions. To
arrive at conclusions would be to assume an authority I do not have. So, without any
decisive ending ... Not knowing where and when to end my writing
around/beside/through music ... Not knowing where to begin my writing ... But … it has
already begun. It has always already begun.
Outwork
'At some level, one just cannot say with words what music says without them' (Feld,
p.93).
'We must begin wherever we are and the thought of the trace ... has already taught us
that it is impossible to justify a point of departure absolutely. Wherever we are; in a text
where we already believe ourselves to be' (Of Grammatology, p.162).

[1] This site can be the beginning of a journey through the world of deconstruction in
music. Of course, a deconstruction of music. But also a strategy of deconstruction
through music, through music performance. I am not primarily interested in
deconstruction as applied to the writing about music, or to a direct application of
philosophical concepts to musical practices. What I have in mind is a deconstruction of
music by music(ians). To make the issue more tangible, practical and relevant questions
are those such as: What can this 'musical deconstruction' mean? How can forms of
deconstruction be traced in (present-day) musical practice? And how would such musical
deconstructions sound? Additionally, I will seek out another application of
deconstruction as it pertains to music education: how can deconstruction contribute to re-
thinking of music education? And is it possible to teach music in a deconstructive way?
By asking these questions, I strive to think and write 'from within the music'. But this
keeps us outside of music at the same time. A paradox. Making contact with music
through language, speech and writing defers this contact at the same time. Or are
speaking and writing about music a precondition for contact? I will return to this.
Opening the space of deconstruction in music, addressing the space in which we can
contemplate deconstruction in music implies a change in the way we reflect nowadays
upon what can be said about and can be heard in music. It is, however, a modest change,
and not radically or totally different in the sense that certain current terms will still be
required in order to discuss music. Nevertheless, these texts differ from what has already
been written on deconstruction and music.

[2] Outwork. (In a way it is detached from the 'real' work, which follows this preliminary
text.) Intro. (This outwork, in fact, leads you into, introduces you to the 'real' work.) An
'overture'. (An opening or disclosure of a space where deconstruction in music can be
encountered.) I first want to submit three theses that can somewhat serve as preliminary
remarks that have a bearing on the rest of the site. Summarized with no particular order,
they are as follows: The first thesis, entitled Music is a Text, states that music can be
regarded as a text and that each (musical) text is made up of different (already existing)
texts. The second thesis, Deconstruction In Music, states that deconstruction has always
already been part of the musical praxis. In other words, deconstruction in music is not by
definition a contemporary phenomenon. The third thesis, Deconstruction, Music, and
Ethics, explains why I think it is important to be attentive to the relationship between
deconstruction and music. This importance transcends the esthetical and refers, to a great
extent, to the ethical.
[3] I am not the first, nor the only to write on the connection between deconstruction and
music. In a separate section, Of New Musicology, I define my position in relation to
others who have previously written on deconstruction and music. Justification is more
expressly directed towards the man who, as one of the first, shows us the deconstructive
working of texts, Jacques Derrida. The question as to why he has not yet written on music
is briefly addressed in this section.

[4] Outwork consists of more than just the five hyperlinked texts listed above as well as
this text, this outwork of the outwork. The above-named texts, the (un)covered texts, will
lead you to others. They are not fully committed yet, they remain hidden for now. In a
way, they are still absent, although they are already present.
Deconstruction In Music
[1] In 'Letter to a Japanese Friend' [Lettre à un ami japonais], Derrida writes that
deconstruction is not an initial act of a self-conscious subject, but an event that can be
found everywhere: 'Deconstruction takes place, it is an event that does not await the
deliberation, consciousness, or the organization of a subject ... It deconstructs it-self'
(Wood, p.4). Hastily, however, Derrida adds that 'it' should not be thought of as an
impersonal matter, opposed to an ego-logical subjectivity. Deconstruction is not
something that is added to a text; rather, it constitutes a text in the first place. In fact,
deconstruction is always already at work in the texts studied by Derrida. Incidentally, it is
the paradoxes in the texts of De Saussure, Husserl, Plato and Freud, for example, that
particularly give rise to deconstruction: 'Deconstruction is therefore an activity performed
by texts which in the end have to acknowledge their own partial complicity with what
they denounce', says Derrida (cf. Norris, 1982, p.48).

[2] Hence, deconstruction is not identical with Derrida's work. However, when a text
deconstructs itself, what then is Derrida's significance? Hugh Silverman attempts to
answer this question in his statement: 'Deconstruction is the general name for the practice
in which Derrida engages. In practicing deconstruction, however, Derrida does not make
it his own property. It is his own when he practices it, but it is an activity of appropriation
when he does so. Indeed, the particular form of appropriation is one in which he inscribes
the deconstructive practice in a text which is itself the writing of the reading of another
text' (Silverman, p.61). The triangular relation of Derrida, deconstruction, and text is
subtle and complicated. Derrida considers every text to have a surplus meaning, and by
that is susceptible to deconstruction. This surplus is inherent to language. No author can
avoid or circumvent the multiplicity of meanings of a text, a word, music. However, this
should not be perceived as a weakness of the author. In fact, the multiple possibilities of
meaning are what enable the text to be. Still, Derrida does recognize the need for an
active subject: only a (reading and writing) subject can expose this multiplicity.

[3] If deconstruction can be characterized as a reading practice, a writing of a reading,

then the repeatability of the practice is evident. To a certain extent, the word
'deconstruction' is a banner under which Derrida and others conduct an entire series of
practices. Hence, we can dissociate deconstruction from Derrida. Moreover, one must say
that an imitation of Derrida's style does not make for a deconstructive practice as such.
(By a deconstructive practice, I mean showing how deconstruction is at work in texts, in
music, in education, in institutions.)
What consequence does this have for music and for my thesis? Music can be 'linked' to
deconstruction in a number of ways. The first one implies a deconstructive reading of
texts on music (see for example McClary, p.9-17). The second type follows the same
procedure in reading music as a text. Deconstruction here often becomes a new
interpretation-model. These points, however important, will not be the object of this
thesis. I do not wish to examine the actuality of deconstruction in music by concentrating
on verbal articulation. My interest is not directed to the relation of a verbal text towards
another verbal text or a score, as is usually the case when deconstruction is discussed in
relation to music. (In a 1999 review article on the relation between deconstruction and
music, Christopher Norris writes that deconstruction is often regarded as a project with
'emphasis on those moments of textual aporia (contradictions, paradoxes, and ideological
stress points) that emerge in the discourse of mainstream musicology'. His overview only
involves deconstruction in discursive verbal aspects of music at any rate.) Rather, I aim to
focus on the workings of deconstruction in the field of musical utterance, that is, the
relationship of music towards music. As Susan McClary states: 'For the study of music,
music itself remains the best indicator' (McClary, p.30). In other words, I aim to delve
into the question as to whether music, while 'reading' itself, realizes this in a
deconstructive way. For this reason, I will speak of deconstruction in music and by
music(ians). The attempt here is not a mere 'application' of certain theories or written
texts on deconstruction to the musical domain (even if the project occurs on the surface
of a written text). Rather, several strategies will be employed to gradually uncover the
working of deconstruction within musical concepts. Questions relating to this are: How
does deconstruction occur within music? Taking into account Derrida's above-mentioned
position, how do musicians and composers uncover deconstruction at work in music?
Tracing deconstruction in music will raise questions of borders between music,
musicology, and the philosophy of music. Thinking about music and music 'itself' are not
always two clearly distinguishable domains as Beethoven has already showed us in his D
minor Sonata, for example, where, through music, he comments on the classical sonata
form.

[4] In my opinion, deconstruction always already is and has been a part of the musical
praxis. This means that my investigations are not limited to music that is explicitly
related to deconstruction. In many instances of its development, music has related
towards itself in a deconstructive way, although this has not always been explicitly
articulated. By making this relation between music and deconstruction somewhat more
explicit, I hope to initiate a (culturally broader) discourse on music.
The basic methodological assumption refers to the idea that music, while reading itself,
realizes this according to a strategy that can be characterized as deconstructive. A twofold
problem then occurs: first, deconstruction in music is exclusively enunciated in musical
language, thereby impeding non-musical enthousiasts in tracing deconstructive moves.
Second, neither musicians nor composers generally refer to their work in deconstructive
terms. However, by introducing the music of John Zorn (cf. Restitutions, Shibboleth or
Aporias), John Cage (cf. The Gift of Silence [donner les bruits]) and Gerd Zacher (cf.
Specters of Bach) as concrete manifestations of deconstructions at work within music,
these composers come to act as a kind of musical Derrida. Their works - which I deem as
a kind of 'musical readings of music' in which reading is simultaneously writing and
listening - show how deconstruction has always already been present in music. (What I
describe as a musical reading of music implies that I think of music as a text. cf. Music Is
a Text).

[5] Of course, it is very possible that deconstruction has inspired musicians and
composers (of which John Zorn could be an example). I do not oppose this line of
thought. I do oppose the view that deconstruction is only a recent phenomenon and
therefore only contemporary philosophy and art can be regarded deconstructive.
'Deconstruction happens and it already happened in Plato's discourse in another form,
with other words perhaps, but there was already an inadequation, a certain inability to
close itself off, to form, to formalize itself, which was of a deconstructive order' (Derrida
in Kaplan and Sprinker, p.226). Deconstruction is taking place. It is happening. Always
already. It does not wait for the completion in a musico-philosophical analysis. A
deconstructive 'analysis' is infinite; it merely intervenes in music. (Deconstruction is not
an analysis in the ordinary sense of the word. cf. Deconstruction: Between Method and
Singularity.) It is inscribed upon it.
In compositions from times long gone, as well as in contemporary music, deconstruction
is at work. In this sense, it is cumbersome to speak of 'deconstructive music'. All music,
every composition, every improvisation, every performance (in principle) works
deconstructively, but each in a different way. I concur with Geoff Bennington in the
following statement by him (and replacing the word 'painting' by 'music'):
'Deconstructionist painting' could not be the result of a successful application of
Derrida's theory. Deconstruction in painting has always already begun. Of course,
painting can be 'influenced' by Derrida's writing. This does not ipso facto make it
'deconstructive'. It is quite possible that the most 'deconstructive' painting should (have)
happen(ed) in ignorance of Derrida's work, though knowledge of Derrida's work might
help us to talk about that painting, and others' (Bennington, p.7).
Deconstructive Sociology
[1] Deconstructive sociology. An offshoot, a branch, a side road. Not only considered
from standpoint of mainstream sociology (if 'mainstream sociology' exists), but also from
the perspective of this site about deconstruction in music. On the side. A 'hors d'oeuvre'.
Although the links with music and thinking on music are hardly made, this page on
sociology can offer some insight into musicology, music theory and music analysis as
well. Most sociological practices are conceived of as a representation of the real, of social
reality. This implies that there is a distinction between social reality and the
representation of social reality. Texts and language are somehow less real than social
reality, which remains as extra-discursive context.
There is a clear analogy with this and thinking on music. Musicology, music theory and
music analysis deal with a specific part of this social reality, music; in one way or
another, they represent the real, in this case, musical reality. On this page the relationship
between reality and representation is rethought.

[2] In Undoing the Social. Towards a Deconstructive Sociology, Australian sociologist

Ann Game attempts to break away from the typical sociological distinctions between
representation and the real, text and context, theory and practice. She calls these
(hierarchical) oppositions 'sociological fictions'. A sociology as advocated by Game
deconstructs the (hierarchical) difference between the real and the representation of the
real. Before taking a closer look at her thoughts, I want to make two short comments on
reality, representation and their hierarchical relation.
First, the real needs a representation in order to appear. We need signs to refer to reality.
The real cannot present itself; it requires a vehicle in the form of a representation, a sign.
In his text, 'La différance', Derrida demonstrates that the presence of the real without a
representation is an impossible and unattainable ideal for us. This means that (from the
inside) the real is always already permeated with a deficit, a shortage. However, if the
real cannot exist without its representation, if the latter is established as the precondition
for the presence of the real, then representation should become the point of departure.
On the other hand, representation also prevents the real from appearing; it defers the real.
Representation disables an immediate connection to the real. Derrida describes this using
the word différance, which is derived from Latin 'differre', denoting a movement both of
differing and deferring. Différance at work within sociology could be the play of
difference (between a social presence and its (supplemental) representation) and deferral
(the postponement of any presence) (cf. supplement).
Second, a theory of representation that seeks to establish foundations must assume the
presence of that which accurate representations represent. However, there is always the
question of the extent to which any supposed given, any supposed reality, might in fact
be a construct or product of a theory that it purports to support. In one way or another,
reality is always discursive reality (cf. Culler, p.152).

[3] A deconstructive sociology. Which is also a deconstruction of sociology. Game opts

for a form of analysis that is understood as a reading and writing of texts that breaks with
the reality-fiction opposition. She assumes that reality or the social is written; there is no
extra-discursive real outside cultural systems. The social world does not consist of ready-
made objects that are put into representation; there is no extra-textual ground on which
social analysis clings (cf. Game, p.4).
What does it mean that the real is written, that the real is a text? First, we experience
reality as a connection between events, a heterogeneous network, a textile. Second, as
Derrida states, '... all reality has the structure of a differential trace [différance], and one
cannot refer to this 'real' except in an interpretative experience', (Limited Inc., p.148).
Any experience is a practice that is both culturally embedded and historically situated.
The real is constituted in and by cultural systems. In this sense, the real is written only as
reflections on the real. Applied to music: to experience something as music means that
one needs a certain schematic (representing) understanding of the concept 'music'. It is
always already a matter of an interpretative forming of meaning. Music appears in a
certain way in one's consciousness. The reality of music can only come to us in the form
of an interpretative experience. And the music 'itself'? It is part of a broad and complex
textile of connections, of a web without a center, of ever changing assemblages: lines of
flight to the composer, memories evoked by the music, circumstances in which the music
is played, etc. Thus music, as a text, becomes an intertextual (intermusical) network. As a
result, there is not one privileged meaning, but many meanings.
The converse of the reality-fiction opposition is that texts are real; there is no 'deep'
reality below the surface of texts. Game does not understand textual analysis as
representation. She radically departs from the conception of knowledge as a
correspondence between sociology and social reality, drawing critical attention to
sociology as a discursive practice in which the real or the social is produced. The idea
that the social is written shifts the ground of representation: there is no pre-social real to
be represented in writings. Both fact and fiction are representations (cf. Game, p.5-7).
(In The Postmodern Turn. New Perspectives on Social Theory, Richard Harvey Brown
offers a similar textualist approach to society and sociology. According to Brown,
knowledge is less a matter of correspondence of word and world than conformity to
specific authorized practices of reading and writing. Social reality and the social sciences
themselves are textual constructions. Theories can be regarded as the practices through
which things take on meaning and value, and not merely as representations of a reality
that is entirely exterior to them. Brown states that insofar as theoretical representation is
thought to be objectively true, it is because its methods of construction have become so
familiar that they operate transparently (cf. Seidman, p.229).)

[4] 'Sociological discourse claims to be a science of modern society, the mirror of modern
society or the social. 'The mirror' refers to a conception of knowledge as correspondence
or as adequate reflection' (Game, p.20). But what are the mechanisms by which
sociological discourse produces a mirroring relationship between itself and the social?
Looking at it from a different standpoint, if we think of social reality as being
discursively produced, as a product of sociological practice and labor, we must then ask
how it is produced as a mirror to sociology. Game's contention is that the discipline
assumes the self-identity of the social that it discursively presupposes. 'What is not
acknowledged is the significance of the fact that sociological concepts are necessarily
used to account for sociology. 'The development of modern society', 'class struggle',
'rationalization' are discursively produced by the discipline' (cf. Game, p.23). When
sociologists speak of 'critically locating' their theory, they do so with reference to, for
example, class location or specific location in history, that is, 'the real' that they have
produced themselves in their texts first. A project of undoing, of deconstruction, consists
in destabilizing the givenness of the social, in shifting the sociological rules and
premises. Deconstruction is a strategy of transformation, a positive strategy: it is
simultaneously an unmaking and a making. But it is a process without an end; it is a
becoming (cf. Game, p.x).

[5] Game attempts to abandon the idea that there could be a better or a worse theory to
describe reality. 'If we take theorizing to be a writing practice, theory cannot be seen to
operate as a model to be tested for adequacy to the real, and there can be no appeal to the
real in refutations of theories' (Game, p.7). With that, she reacts against sociologist
Anthony Giddens in particular, who takes the view that theories can always be evaluated
in terms of observations generated by empirical research. Theories, understood as
models, are modified or refuted in the light of the empirical; there is a demand for
coherence to the real of the social world. Such sociologists as Giddens assume the
existence of a 'real' world outside of theory. The world's reality is taken as the source of
concrete empirical data. This idea of a freestanding reality as the source of empirical data
partakes of the traditional distinction between the knowing subject and the world of
objects; it relies on a belief in attainable knowledge as the arbiter of that distinction. This
approach leans on research to investigate social facts; it aims at objectivity with respect to
these facts and the reporting of findings in a transparent language that makes for a direct
translation. Here, the distinction between theory and research methods reflects the
distinction between representation and the real. Research is understood as empirical
research while theory operates as a model or hypotheses that are to be tested through
research.
Post-structuralist sociology and deconstruction criticize this view in several ways. Here
are three of them. Three objections in three different directions. Game rethinks research.
'If research is understood as writing, critical attention is drawn to the process of textual
production which is research, as opposed to a final writing up of research results' (Game,
p.28). Agreeing with Roland Barthes, she states that it is an illusion that research is not
written: from the moment research concerns the text research itself becomes text
production. Thus, it becomes part of the writing, rather than 'the occasion for putting off
writing until a result has been found'. Brown starts from another position, he formulates
another criticism. 'There is always a 'surplus reality' because existence (potential
experience) is always larger than actual experience', he writes (Seidman, p.234). There is
too much, more than one can say. The infiniteness of a field cannot be covered by a finite
discourse. Third, in Writing and Difference, Derrida adds to this that the problem is not
only that of an inexhaustible field, of being too large. The problem has to do with
language as well. Derrida calls this 'the movement of supplementarity' or 'the play of
substitutions' (the linguistic representation that substitutes the real). One cannot
determine the real and come to an exhaustive description because the signs that replace
the real, that supplement it taking the real's place in its absence - these signs are added,
occur as a surplus, as supplements. 'The movement of signification adds something,
which results in the fact that there is always more, but this addition is a floating one
because it comes to perform a vicarious function, to supplement a lack on the part of the
signified [or of the referent, MC]' (Writing and Difference, p.289).
According to post-structuralist sociology, our understanding of how science and
knowledge were constituted in the past relied upon an assumed polarity and hierarchy
between truth and its medium of expression. Foundationalist epistemology and modern
scientific method insisted that objective truth existed independently of any symbols that
might be used to convey it. However, when Game and other post-structuralists take the
real to be a writing practice, theory can no longer be seen as an adequate model for
testing the real. There can be no reverting to reality in judging theories. In every research,
social reality, i.e. social texts, is 'only' rewritten. Deconstructive sociology disrupts and
displaces the traditionally bifurcated hierarchy of truth over expression, the opposition of
reality vs. appearance. It does so by focusing on the how rather than on the what of
sociological knowledge. As Jonathan Culler puts it, 'Deconstruction has no better theory
for truth. It is a practice of reading and writing attuned to the aporias that arise in attempts
to tell us the truth ... Deconstructive enquiry does not lead to new foundations. But ... it
does lead to changes in assumptions, institutions, and practices' (Culler, p.154-5).
Deconstructing sociology does not lead to a better or more complete sociology. It
questions its rules and closures. (Again, an analogy to deconstruction in present-day
musicology and music analysis can be made. By putting new questions on the agenda,
one gains an insight into the strategies of closure and boundary defining of these
disciplines. I elaborate on this in Of New Musicology.)

[6] A deconstructive sociology questions the rules and closures of the discipline. It does
so by focusing on the how rather than on the what of sociological knowledge.
One more remark. About closure. About exclusions.
'Discursive social practices realize differences and distinctions; they define what is
normal and deviant, and hence express and enact forms of domination. Thus, the
processes of definition and exclusion are not only logical properties of discourse; they
also are preconditions of intelligibility, sociation, social order, and social control', Brown
writes (Seidman, p.234). Some versions of reality are legitimized at the expense of
others. Brown calls this an operation of closure. That is, it protects certain interpretations
by means of social sanctions that marginalize or silence different voices. Reciprocally,
from such operations emerge (temporarily stable) social structures and institutions.
Closure and legitimization involve repression of alternative realities, subjugated
discourses that stand outside the regime of truth. Marginalizing the discursive practices
through which they are constructed de-legitimizes these alternative realities. They
become unofficial, extra-institutional. One effect is that it conceals the rhetorical
construction of reality, of the social text. According to Brown, society comes to be seen
as a natural fact rather than a cultural artifact (cf. Seidman, p.236).
What can these last statements teach us about musicology, music theory, music analysis?
Just a few questions in closing. How exclusivating are these disciplines? How is the
operation of closure at work within these disciplines? How are other stories, alternative
views, different voices marginalized and de-legitimized? How are they marginalized and
de-legitimized in music 'itself'? I ask you to keep these questions in mind while reading
other texts on this site.
Derrida's Ear
[1] In Plato's Symposium, Eryximachus dismisses the flute-player so that he can have a
profound conversation with his guests. After all, the 'voice of the flute' (a non-discursive
sonority) drowns out the voice of the logos. It impairs the ethical powers and causes one
to go into an orgiastic flush. The flute produces (mimics) a human voice without logos,
and the moment a human voice is without logos it becomes demonic and abysmal.

[2] Rarely have philosophers made themselves known as music enthusiasts. In addition to
Plato, others have condemned music. One refuses to hear when one wants to think or
philosophize. Since the ear cannot avert itself like the eye can, in a certain sense this
undermines the freedom of the subject. Sound (music) disturbs the subject's peace. He
needs to plug his ears so that he can hear himself and be assured of his own autonomy
and freedom. In 'Derridas Ohr' [Derrida's Ear], Byung-Chul Han proposes that perhaps
philosophers cherish deafness from the paradoxical desire to hear truer, better and more
genuinely: one affirms deafness in expectation of finding, of hearing, more truth.
Nevertheless, according to Derrida, the logocentrism of Western philosophy, the
dominance of the spoken word in a conception that involves truth based on presence is
closely connected to a phonocentrism. In Of Grammatology, Derrida argues that the ear is
usually not presented as the sinister and uncanny place of the other. Rather, it is put
forward as the most familiar or intimate domicile of the subject, which produces an effect
of nearness and subjective inwardness. According to Derrida, Western thinking relates
the ear to the voice, the ideal of presence and meaning.
As Han writes, however, the voice of this phono- and logocentrism has no sound; it is
silent. It is not acoustic, it has no spatiality (cf. Han, p.10). Phonocentrism is in fact not
only an oppression of grammocentrism, but of the sonorous voice as well. The
phonocentric or logocentric reduction is deaf. In the protected hearing-oneself-speak area,
there is no room for the sonorous voice. That voice endangers the intended meaning
(vouloir dire) because it emanates a heterogeneous power that throws the subject off its
position of being-present-to-itself. 'Danger in the voice. Sometimes in conversation the
sound of our own voice confuses us and misleads us to assertions that do not at all reflect
our opinion', Nietzsche writes in Human, All Too Human (aphorism 333). The sound of
the voice guides the voice of the other to the voice of the self. It is a voice that the subject
cannot control. Thus, the sound of the voice accomplishes the opposite of what one
would expect from the idealized voice. Hearing one's own voice is a threat to the inner
nature of the subject. The subject loses his autonomy.
Grammocentrism, like phonocentrism, excludes sound. Indeed, sound has a disruptive
effect on the ideality, the unambiguousness of meaning; it is caught in the here and now.
The written or printed word, liberated from the here and now, can be continuously
repeated while remaining the same; it precludes the invasion of the heterogeneous. Here,
phonocentrism and grammocentrism interlock: in their respective attempts to exclude the
heterogeneous, the other, the ideal writing as well as the ideal speech make a plea for the
absence of sound (cf. Han, p.12).
[3] In many of his early writings, Derrida leads the attack on the logo- or phonocentrism.
However, Han argues that a deconstruction of logocentrism does not consist of giving
logos an eardrum (and) to let it hear. Derrida regards the eardrum as a protective and
defensive wall that can shut out the other, thus securing the autonomy of the subject.
Nevertheless, Derrida does not mean to simply ignore the eardrum or cut off the ear. He
envisions an entirely different (h)ear(ing). Derrida's ear, as Han describes it, is a very
refined acoustic seismometer, a ready ear for the noise in a text. Derrida's ear develops
into an organ that needs to train itself in receiving the unpredictable, the uncanny, the
'unheard'. It is not directed towards the sound of the flute that Eryximachus felt was
disturbing, but towards the noise in a conversation, i.e. the heterogeneousness and
différance of each utterance that brings chaos to the order of the logoi. Derrida's
deconstructive strategies point us to the impossibility or fruitlessness of any
precautionary measures that would prevent such a noise.
In Circonfession (published in Jacques Derrida by Geoffrey Bennington and Derrida),
Derrida remembers the earaches that plagued his youth. The desire for a transparent voice
remained frustrated because of this buzzing in his ears. According to Han, the
inflammation of Derrida's middle ear was not only a rather far-reaching experience in
Derrida's early life, it can be regarded a key word of deconstruction as well. Derrida
shows throughout his work how discourses, which are supposed to be free from any
viruses, certify a viral infection. These viruses do not penetrate from the outside to the
inside, but are always already part of the inside. The desire for a transparent voice is a
dream, an illusion. Every general Verstimmung (the word means both 'disgruntlement'
and 'out of tune') at all times interrupts a familiar harmony. Verstimmung as disorder.
Likewise, the textuality of a text obstructs the seclusion of a text in one single
interpretation; it does not make up a complete set of meanings. Deconstruction reveals a
multitude of voices within one text - a multitude that cannot (even) be reduced to a
polyphony - and a multitude of tones - more than a polytonality.

[4] Derrida criticizes logo- and phonocentrism in the Western philosophical tradition that
excludes the sonorous voice in its deepest craving for unmediated presence. Certainly in
some respect, however, Derrida stays closely connected to the philosophers he criticizes.
As is the case with most philosophers, Derrida, keeps the silence intact; his ear is mute as
well. 'What interests me is writing in the voice, the voice as differential vibration', he
writes (Points, p.140, my italics). Han states that Derrida's work does not accommodate
the phenomenal aspect of the ear, the voice, or sound. The voice to which Derrida
addresses his critical remarks has no tone, no body, no volume (cf. Han, p.21). His
deconstructive practices do not reach the sonorous domain, the domain of music. He
seems to not be concerned with sonorous qualities. More important to him is the idea that
texts, either spoken or written, are marked by a certain (non-sonorous) tone, or better, a
multitude of (non-sonorous) tones: deconstruction makes clear how texts always prove to
consist of an infinite amount of tonalities.

[5] How right is Han in his conclusions? Does Derrida really pay no attention to sonority,
sound, music?
Rudimentary and aside, Derrida writes in D'un ton apocalyptique about the impossibility
of a pure tone in musical sense. The deconstruction of the tone. First, a tone is only a tone
through tonal differences, the differences from other tones, the differences in vibrations.
Second, every tone is continuously different from or within itself because it consists of
vibrations.
But doesn't Derrida address sonority in more detail when he speaks and writes about
différance, about the impossibility to hear in French the difference between 'différence'
and 'différance'? (Would the equivalent in music be 'enharmony', the non-audible
difference between G sharp and A flat, or C flat and B?) Maybe it is a negative attention,
criticizing the idea that speech is supposed to be more effective than writing in
communicating meaning. After all, sonority has a deficit here. Only sight gives you
insight into which word Derrida uses. Nevertheless, he focuses his and our attention to
sound and sonority as well.
And in 'Justification', I quote Derrida on non-discursive sonority. His play with words,
his fascination for the materiality of words, the working of dissemination is certainly also
influenced by their sounds, their audibility. So I think deconstructive practices do include
the sonorous domain. However, in Derrida's case, they are not oriented towards music in
the strict sense. Which can (thus) become the area for special attention of others. Of this
site.
Interactionist Sociology
[1] Some casual remarks. Very rudimentary. By way of a footnote. In Susan McClary's
Feminine Endings. Music, Gender, and Sexuality, music becomes a cultural field where
underlying gender structures need to be uncovered. In Deconstructive Variations. Music
and Reason in Western Society, Rose Subotnik reads Chopin's A-Major Prelude, op.28,
no.7 against the background of issues concerning personal freedom (cf. Of New
Musicology). Still, this does not necessarily lead to a model of representation that both
authors seem to apply. An example of an alternative is given by Peter J. Martin who, in
Sounds and Society. Themes in the Sociology of Music, appears to subscribe to the so-
called interactionist sociology.

[2] Like most sociologists, Martin starts from the premise that the words, thoughts, and
deeds of individual human beings are profoundly influenced by the nature of the social
circumstances in which they occur. However, this does not mean that individuals are
simply conditioned by the culture of their society. The process of social interaction is one
in which meanings are constantly affirmed, modified, abandoned, negotiated, and so on
(cf. Martin, p.29). According to Martin, the prime concern of sociologists must be with
the interactional processes through which a variety of meanings, and the consequent
conflicts, challenges, negotiations, accommodations, disputes may be produced. Taken
together, these constitute the social world that provides a context in which the various
groups and individuals pursue their interests and that is also a source of the meanings and
schemes of interpretation that are available on which they can base their actions.
According to Martin, these interactional processes also determine the significance that is
assigned to music at a given time and place. Martin states that musical knowledge is
socially derived, transmitted, and approved. A useful approach to musical meaning must
focus on this joint interpretive activity by individuals and groups. Music - considered as a
given cultural and institutional pattern at a particular time – should not be considered a
reflection of society's basic artistic infrastructure, but rather as the temporary outcome of
a perpetual process of conflict, competition, negotiation, coercion. Cultural and
institutional patterns such as music are considered as perpetually developing in response
to new contingencies (cf. Martin, p.163).

[3] This perspective implicates that thinking on music can no longer be centered on a
search for correspondences between musical structures and social structures. The general
supposition that art 'reflects' society can no longer be sustained; there is no necessary
connection, for example, between the form of music and the class structure (cf. Martin,
p.164-5). Approvingly, Martin quotes sociologist D.F. Wright who states that music may
be defined as expressing 'social' messages of one kind or another. However, this may be
understood as a result of the ability or the attempts of some individuals or groups to
influence the ways in which the sounds are heard (cf. Martin, p.172). Music is actively
and collaboratively produced in specific social contexts; one cannot simply assume that it
represents the values of social groups, or that it reproduces their organizational features.
The work of critics and theorists must be seen as an integral part of the process through
which music is constantly reconstituted. In this sense, styles of music are socially
organized. 'The music does not express the essential qualities of any group or individual
(though it may believed to do so) but is formed and changed in the constant process
through which people sustain, modify, transform and abandon conventions' (Martin,
p.171). According to Martin, according to interactionist sociology, this thinking is free of
the difficulties encountered by 'reflection' theories that see art as a representation of
underlying structural patterns.

[4] It might be clear that Martin's views and those of other interactionist sociologists are
opposed to deconstruction and post-structuralist ideas - the central topics of this site - in
many ways. It should suffice to mention one briefly. Martin's premise that the words,
thoughts, and deeds of individual human beings are profoundly influenced by the nature
of the social circumstances in which they occur is far removed from Derrida's 'il n'y a pas
hors texte'. The 'transcendental signified' of interactionist sociology, the center that
guarantees all meaning and that is itself beyond everything else, seems to be the social or
social activities. A metaphysics of presence to which deconstruction opposes. However, it
is outside the scope of this site to deal with a deconstruction of interactionist sociology in
detail. I let it rest here as this entire page is only a sidetrack, a side-shoot. Nevertheless, it
would be beneficial to investigate into possible similarities and complements between
interactionist sociology, post-structuralism and deconstruction, particularly with regard to
the possibilities of contextualization, decontextualization, and recontextualization by
which musical meaning constantly changes. (I enter at length into the possibilities of de-
and re-contextualization at (D)(R)econtextualization.) Following naturally from this, the
question could be asked as to how, for example, interactionism and dissemination relate
to each other.
Justification
[1] This work is the sediment of a quest, a wavering series of explorations, and not the
presentation of a set of conclusions. Without diffidence, these texts openly parasitize
Derrida's work. However, they are no more parasites than the host-texts they use since
both inhabit host-texts, which themselves parasitically feed on their host-like willingness
to receive them. The relationship between my texts - re-inscribed texts - and the so-
called original texts is not that of patency and latency, but rather the relationship between
two palimpsests. The 'original' texts themselves are the palimpsests of 'pre-texts'; any
inscription is (only) a trace of former inscriptions. Referring to textual interpretation,
Gayatri Spivak writes in her preface to Of Grammatology: 'The so-called secondary
material is not simply adjunct to the so-called primary text. The latter inserts itself within
the interstices of the former, filling holes that are always already there. Even as it adds
itself to the text, criticism supplies a lack in the text and the gaps in the chain of criticism
anterior to it' (Of Grammatology, p.lxxiv).
Texts refer to and depend on each other. This can take on different forms: a quote, a
reproduction, a commentary, an interpretation, a summary, an addition, an abbreviation.
Regarded as such, a trace of linearity can still be maintained throughout these forms.
There is a source or core text onto which other texts graft themselves. Derrida criticizes
this idea of linearity. There is indeed a relation between different texts, but these texts
make up a network without a center. This principle is called intertextuality, a non-
closable system in which texts take on their meaning within a network of mutual
references. 'Text'. Derived from the Latin 'texere' which means 'to weave', or 'textum',
meaning 'web' or 'fabric'. 'Web' implies that there is no root, no center, no origin. Nothing
functions on its own. Everything is interwoven, every text (word, meaning) refers to a
vast series of other texts (words, meanings).

[2] I re-read texts by Derrida and others and put them in a different context. Meanings of
texts are brought forth through a process of re-reading, a process of re-creation, de- and
re-contextualization. (Re-)reading is always caught up in a chain of proliferating
meanings that can neither be halted, nor fully comprehended. In Rethinking Intellectual
History, Dominick Lacapra calls it 'the worklike aspects' of a text. These aspects are
critical and transformative. They deconstruct and reconstruct the given; repeating it, but
also bringing into the world something that did not exist before in the significant
alteration or transformation (cf. Lacapra, p.29-30). In other words, in rereading Derrida's
texts, I will not merely take up a position of servant whose task it would be to elucidate
his philosophy. Musical deconstruction - the topic of this study - is not an application of
his philosophical lessons to music, but an exploration of textual logic in texts called
music(al).

[3] A parasite. My texts are parasitical. But parasites only abstract a part from their hosts.
In attempting to introduce Derrida's work to music and the discourse on music, I have cut
up his texts, mutilated them. However, as Derrida himself is fully aware, the publication
of his texts as texts allows for such a mutilation. It is in fact unavoidable. Or, as Jonathan
Culler writes, 'One is tempted to speak of an original practice of deconstruction in
Derrida's writings and to set aside as derivative the imitations of his admirers, but in fact
these repetitions, parodies, 'etiolations', or distortions are what bring a method into being
and articulate, within Derrida's work itself, a practice of deconstruction' (Culler, p.120).
To treat Derrida's writing as the original and other texts on deconstruction as modest
imitations is to forget precisely what the strategy of deconstruction can teach us about the
relation between meaning and iteration, mis-interpretations, and infelicities.
Deconstruction persists not as a univocal set of instructions, but as a series of differences
that can be charted on various axes.

[4] I write five times around music. Around music. Using different approaches. Every
musical phenomenon can potentially be examined from the point of view of all
disciplines. This web-site is situated on the crossroads of philosophical, musicological
and sociological texts read against musical practices that also function as texts. My
analytic strategy will thus consist of reading theoretical texts with musical texts. I do not
read post-structuralist theory and deconstruction as philosophers do; that is, primarily in
relation to other philosophical texts. I am re-reading these theories in relation to texts of
music, and vice versa. However, none of the sociological, musicological and
philosophical texts function as a theoretical model to be tested against the empirical.
Rather, my form of analysis can be understood as textual dialogue. For example, Gerd
Zacher's Die Kunst einer Fuge is re-read, in part, against Derrida's Specters of Marx. But
this is not a one-way reading. Derrida's work is also re-read against Zacher's text. Rather
than invoke the traditional metaphors of surface and depth, according to which theory is
said to lie at a deeper, more foundational level than empiricism or practice, I would say
that both types of texts lie in the same intellectual space (cf. Moxley, p. xi). In line with
these points of departure, moreover, is the assumption that all fields of knowledge that
stand outside the history of music are considered to be equally potent with regard to their
function within research around music, and not as borderline, 'sister', or auxiliary. But
what does 'outside' mean? Derrida writes that any talk of meaning or structure is
ineluctably caught up in a process that it does not control. To him, this signals the
dissolution of absolute boundaries that mark off one text from another (cf. Norris, 1982,
p.114). Intertextuality easily leads to, already assumes, a challenging of disciplinary
boundaries; it has the power to estrange the familiar and to make people conceive of their
own thinking and institutions in new ways.

[5] Deconstruction in music. Derrida considers himself unqualified in the sphere of

music. He wonders whether most philosophy might only be possible when it represses
music (cf. Points, p.394). Univocality, conceivability, controllability, appropriation -
ideas that inhabit most Western philosophy (perhaps the only exceptions would be post-
structuralism and deconstruction) - are diametrically opposed to music in its quality of
the experience of impossible appropriation and a multiplicity of voices (cf. Derrida's
Ear). The experience of impossible appropriation and a multiplicity of voices. Precisely
two points Derrida constantly emphasizes in his own work: no text can escape from them
although most philosophers try to avoid them. Do deconstruction and music touch on
each other here? Are there in fact close similarities? Can the strategies of deconstruction
and the workings of music teach us more or less the same lesson? Still, Derrida considers
himself unqualified to write about or around music. So he does not. In spite of the fact
that Derrida's deconstruction of a text by Rousseau (in Of Grammatology) deals with the
hierarchical relation between melody and harmony, this can by no means be called a
musical deconstruction or a deconstruction in music.
In Deconstruction and the Visual Arts, Derrida confesses: 'Music is the object of my
strongest desire, and yet at the same time it remains completely forbidden. I don't have
the competence, I don't have any truly presentable musical culture. Thus, my desire
remains completely paralyzed. I am even more afraid of speaking nonsense in this area
than in any other' (Brunette and Wills, p.21). Obviously, Derrida does not exclude the
possibility of a musical deconstruction with this. On the contrary, according to Derrida,
every text - that is to say, each chain of signifiers considered as the product of differences
- carries with it its own deconstruction in principle. Derrida even states that 'the most
effective deconstruction is one that deals with the non-discursive or with discursive
institutions that don't have the form of a written discourse ... I would say that the most
effective deconstruction is that which is not limited to discursive texts and certainly not to
philosophical texts' (Brunette and Wills, p.14). Even though Derrida does not become
involved with musical deconstruction, these words certainly open the possibility of
disclosing deconstruction in disciplines other than those around which he orients himself:
in music, musicology, music education. (In Deconstructive Variations, Rose Subotnik
describes her encounter with Derrida during which she tells him she wants to apply
deconstruction to music. At first, Derrida believes she means deconstructing a
musicological text. When Subotnik explains she wants to deconstruct a prelude by
Chopin, he is pleasantly surprised at the idea of applying deconstruction directly to
music. In Of New Musicology, I elaborate upon and criticize Subotnik's way of using
deconstruction as a kind of interpretative tool.)

[6] So the work of Derrida does not neatly map opportunities for tracing deconstruction at
work in (the discourse on/of) music. But this should be regarded as something positive. It
prompts an investigation of deconstruction in musical practices, which would be more
closed off if his work did map it. It means that we can not only reread and rewrite
Derrida's texts, but also embroider, develop and go beyond them.
However, is it actually true that Derrida has not involved himself with the musical?
Yugoslavian musicologist Mirjana Veselinovic-Hofman states that '... it cannot be denied
that Derrida, truly quite indirectly, arrived at musical questions as well, especially at the
non-semantic treatment of verbal material in 20th century music. He managed this by
advocating the thesis that linguistic communication in itself hides the rupture caused by
non-discursive sonority' (Suvakovic, 1997, p.11). The non-semantic aspect of language
and non-discursive sonority. Derrida touches on this in an interview stating: 'You know
that I love words ... And if I love words it is also because of their ability to escape their
proper form, whether they interest me as visible things, letters representing the spatial
visibility of the word, or as something musical or audible ... [it] probably has something
to do with a non-discursive sonority, although I don't know whether I would call it
musical' (Brunette and Wills, p.20-1).
Derrida hesitates to equate non-discursive sonority with the musical. He does not say
why. He does not elaborate on this statement. But a probable answer could be that the
musical cannot be reduced to non-discursive sonority. Non-discursive sonority is just one
part of the musical. Nevertheless, this idea of non-discursivity opens a way to connect
Derrida's thoughts to music. Veselinovic-Hofman points this out to us as does British
musicologist Steve Sweeney-Turner in his essay 'Speaking Without Tongues'. According
to Sweeney-Turner, non-discursive sonority can easily be recognized in the so-called
'musicalization of language' where 'vocal delivery does not so much communicate
something as perform it. The voice has become an instrument, and is all the more musical
for that' (Sweeney-Turner, 1995, p.186). Especially in 20th-century music, there are
many examples that have the voice act as a non-discursive sonority. Let me mention just
a few. German composer Wolfgang Rihm calls the practice of setting words and actions
to music, as is customary in opera, old-fashioned. In his work, words, actions, and images
are adopted into the music. The semantics are subordinated to the sound; the music needs
to be wrested from the text. For John Cage, the voice is an instrument like any other. In
his Roaratorio, the importance is not the meaning of the words; rather, the (pure) sound
is. Vocalist Yamatsuka Eye from John Zorn's band, Naked City, hardly uses any words at
all. His screams and howls communicate in a purely non-discursive way. Derrida's claims
that the idea of linguistic communication itself is ruptured at every point by non-
discursive sonority agree with Belgium composer Karel Goeyvaerts' conception of
language as non-semantic primal sound in his composition Aquarius. Goeyvaerts is
concerned with creating the possibility of communicating from the quality of the sound
itself before any (conventional) (ascription of) meaning. But perhaps the best example of
vocal non-discursivity can be found in jazz music where singers use their voice as an
instrument during improvisation, a principle called 'scatting': sounds without discursive
meaning are produced.

[7] 'Speaking Without Tongues' leads to the challenging thought that Derrida, despite all
his professed incompetence in musical matters, has nonetheless provided musicology
with unprecedented opportunities: 'Perhaps, instead of musicologists looking to
linguistics for new paradigms and methodologies, it should be linguistics knocking on
[their] doors' (Sweeney-Turner, 1995, p.186). Although challenging, I will not deal
(solely) with the non-semantic and non-discursivity of music while elaborating how
deconstruction is at work within musical practices. I hope to make clear that
deconstruction in music surpasses this idea.
Music Is a Text
[1] Practice shows that post-structuralism and deconstruction graft primarily onto texts,
onto writings: a constitutive feature of a deconstructive strategy involves the reading of
texts (cf. Silverman, p.58). When I propose a way to indicate how deconstruction is at
work within music, I take the view that music, too, can be regarded as text. This implies
the expansion of the concept of text. Derrida emphatically asserts that there cannot be
anything that is not textualized in the sense he gives to the word 'text' - which goes
beyond the purely discursive. (In Deconstructive Sociology, the consequences of this line
of thought are shown for the hierarchical opposition between the real and its
representation.) Text in this usage can no longer be reduced to the idea of a collection of
printed pages (cf. Positions, p.60). The broader concept of text that Derrida advocates has
to do with the idea he develops concerning the concept of writing.

[2] Traditionally, writing is considered a tertiary function that follows thought and
speech, respectively. The ideal would be to communicate thought directly. Since this
cannot be, language should be as transparent as possible. The spoken word represents
thought. Speech is seen as having direct contact with meaning (which is most clearly in
Husserl's idea of the voice in an interior soliloquy): words issue from the speaker as the
spontaneous and nearly transparent signs of his present thought. The danger of non-
transparency is that, instead of permitting direct contemplation of thought, linguistic
signs might affect or infect the thought by interposing their material form (cf. Culler,
p.91). Writing: '... That dangerous supplement'...! Writing is a means of expression,
which is at best irrelevant to the thought it expresses and at worst a barrier to that
thought. It is considered a representation of speech, a secondary substitute, a supplement.
Writing consists of physical marks that are divorced from the thought that may have
produced them. Furthermore, it may indicate a double absence, the absence of both
author and reader. The hierarchic relation in which speech prevails over writing is based
on the association of speech with presence, origin, truth. Writing, on the contrary, is
connected with distance, absence, misunderstanding and ambiguity.

[3] Derrida's criticism is now well-known. He emphasizes that the very possibility of
opposing speech and writing on the basis of presence versus absence or immediacy
versus representation is an illusion. Speech is structured by difference and distance to the
same extent as writing. Both the written and the spoken word replace something to which
they refer. Both are a presence that refer to something absent. Speech and writing as
irrepressible references to an alterity which cannot be grasped. The sign of which the
spoken and the written word make use is a supplement: it is an addition to, or a filling in
of an absence. Thus, the sign evokes a desire for the nearing of the thing it replaces. At
the same time, however, the sign puts presence on hold, creating distance. The effect of
the sign is one of time and space. This effect cannot be undone, even though the sign
suggests it can; it is a precondition for speech and writing. The sign suggests an ideal of a
presence without signs while making this impossible at the same time. This principle
applies to both the spoken and the written word. Spoken language is made up of sound
and meaning, and both sound and meaning of speech are systems of difference just as in
writing. The sound 'cat' is different from that of 'fat' or 'hat'. Additionally, the meaning of
'cat' is different from that of 'rabbit' or 'camel'. It is the play of difference that makes the
sounds and meanings; this play is similar to the play of difference in writing (cf.
Positions, p.27-8). In writing, an 'r' means nothing in of itself; it is what it is because it is
different from a 't' or an 'h'. It becomes 'itself' only as an element in a system of
differences. Therefore, its present meaning depends upon its relationship to what it is not.
'To mean' automatically means 'non-being'. As soon as there is meaning, there is
difference. 'Whether in written or in spoken discourse, no element can function as a sign
without relating to another element which is itself not simply present. This linkage means
that each 'element' - phoneme or grapheme - is constituted with reference to the trace of
the other elements of the sequence or system it contains. This linkage, this weaving, is the
text, which is produced only through the transformation of another text. Nothing, either in
the elements or in the system, is anywhere simply present or absent. There are only,
everywhere, differences and traces of traces' (Positions, p.26).

[4] Aside from empirical variations of tone, voice, accent, etc., one must be able to
recognize the identity of a signifying form. This identity only constitutes itself by virtue
of its iterability, by the possibility of its being repeated in the absence of its 'referent', the
intention of actual signification, and the intention of present communication (cf. Limited
Inc., p.10). Writing is often set aside as merely a technique for recording speech in
inscriptions that can be repeated and circulated in the absence of the one that speaks. But
this iterability is the condition of every sign. A sequence of sounds can function as a
signifier only if it is repeatable. And when speech is a sequence of signifiers, as is
writing, it is similarly open to the process of iterability.

[5] Based on this, Derrida changes the meaning of writing. Writing, to Derrida, no longer
means 'words on a page'; rather, it is any differential trace structure, a structure that
includes spoken language as well. A new concept of writing: a generalized writing. The
condition both of speech (vocal writing) and writing (graphic writing). Arche-writing (cf.
Culler, p.101). Arche-writing makes possible the play of differences.
However, Derrida assesses that arche-writing is not limited to the spoken and written
word only. In Of Grammatology, he writes: 'And thus we say 'writing' for all that gives
rise to an inscription in general, whether it is literal or not and even if what it distributes
in space is alien to the order of the voice: cinematography, choreography, of course, but
also pictorial, musical, sculptural 'writing'' (Of Grammatology, p.9).

[7] Writing as an economy of difference. Arche-writing as the movement in which every

referral system constitutes itself as a weave of differences. Through this notion of
'writing', Derrida realizes that 'there has never been anything but writing' (Of
Grammatology, p.159). This means that reading cannot transgress a text toward a
signified outside the text, i.e., outside of writing in general. 'There is nothing outside the
text' [il n'y a pas de hors-texte, there is no outside-text] (Of Grammatology, p.158). Or:
'There is nothing before the text; there is no pretext that is not already a text'
(Dissemination, p.328). After a rethinking of 'writing', a transformation of 'text'. Text:
any system of marks, traces, referrals. Not an extension of a familiar concept, but a
displacement or re-inscription of it. 'Il n'y a pas de hors-texte' does not mean that there is
nothing outside of words, or that everything can be reduced to linguistic concepts. Says
Derrida: 'I never ceased to be surprised by critics who see my work as a declaration that
there is nothing beyond language, that we are imprisoned in language; it is, in fact, saying
the exact opposite. The critique of logocentrism is above else the search for the 'other'
and 'the other of language'' (Kearney, p.123). In his epilogue to Limited Inc., published in
1988, Derrida once again resumes his definition of text: 'I wanted to recall that the
concept of text I propose is limited neither to the graphic, nor to the book, nor even to
discourse, and even less to the semantic, representational, symbolic, ideal, or ideological
sphere. What I call 'text' implies all the structures called 'real', 'economic', 'historical',
'socio-institutional', in short: all possible referents. Another way of recalling once again
that 'there is nothing outside the text' ... It does mean that every referent, all reality has the
structure of a differential trace, and that one cannot refer to this 'real' except in an
interpretive experience. The latter neither yields meaning nor assumes it except in a
movement of differential referring' (Limited Inc., p.148).
Writing - text - context. When there is nothing outside the text, it means that the context
is also part of the text. Context remains other than the text, is not part of the text, is
external to the text, but, at the same time, context belongs to it. Contextual features
accompany the text and are 'texted' in that they are the con-text for the text in question.
Insofar as they are 'texted', they are also intrinsic to the text. (Some musical examples are:
religion is 'musicalized' (texted) in many of Bach's compositions, the American society is
reflected in the music of Frank Zappa, and in John Zorn's music we can hear Jewish
culture.) Although separate and other, the context is on the inside of the text as well,
without necessarily thematization and specific identification. Context. In French it can be
heard as 'qu'on texte', that which one texts, that which is rendered text (cf: context).

[8] What does this mean for art in general, and for music in particular? As for works of
art, Derrida notes that they definitely have a dimension in which 'words find their limit'.
However, at the same time, these 'silent works' are in fact talkative, full of virtual
discourses. 'There is text because there is always a little discourse somewhere in the
visual arts, and also because even if there is no discourse, the effect of spacing already
implies a textualization ... The works of art ... cannot help to be caught within a network
of differences and references that give them a textual structure' (Brunette and Wills,
p.15).
Music, too, as a sounding or notated phenomenon, is as a system of signs inscribed in the
play of differences. So, by looking at music as text, I do not mean an equivalent of
(written) language in a narrow sense. Music is not organized according to utilitarian
language. Starting with Derrida's disseminated idea of text, music can be regarded as a
text on three, interrelated, plateaus. First, the discursive institutions, constitutive orders of
knowledge and power that identify music as art, as culture, and as a 'social field' are
textual. Second, the representation of music, of listening to music, in language is (of
course) textual. And third, music as sound, music as a spatial, temporal, and sense event,
is a text (cf. Veselinovic-Hofman, p.29). I consider the activity of performance, the
experience of audition, and sound itself texts to the same extent as the notational text of
the score. Furthermore, a musical text involves the possibility of other versions with
similar structures (for example, any performance or interpretation), intertextual elements
from other (musical) texts that are co-present with the musical text, and a general musical
language in which the musical text participates.

[9] Intertextual elements. Intertextuality. I return once again to Derrida's early works.
According to structuralist thinking, the meanings of a text are determined by its inner
order. A text is a closed order of signs. In contrast, Derrida takes the view that its relation
with other texts determine the meanings of a text; it is not a closed order. In 'Structure,
Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences', a text from 1966, Derrida
exposes the weak spots of structuralism, the most important philosophical tendency of
that time (Writing and Difference, p.278-293). Structuralism depends upon structures,
and structures depend upon centers. Derrida calls into question the very idea of a stable
center (the idea of decentering). While he agrees to the structuralist position that reality is
always perceived via a matrix of meanings, he rejects that this matrix would have an
unchangeable and unambiguous order. To Derrida, all Western thought is based on the
idea of a center - an Origin, a Truth, an Ideal Form, an Essence, a God, a Presence that
guarantees meaning. The problem with centers is that they attempt to exclude, ignore,
repress, marginalize 'the other'. Furthermore, centers want to fix or freeze the play of
differences. Deconstruction appears as a critique of structuralism pointing to the fact that
texts are not built on a central, exclusive center. They are more like ambiguous figures.
Every text is woven from an endless number of fragments, phrases, forms, expressions.
There is no original text, no center. A text is made from other texts. Intertextuality. Any
element-sign or sub-text, by being placed into a 'new' text, adopts meanings that are
different from its primary meanings or meanings in other texts.

[10] Textuality is the open production of meanings. Meaning - the product of differences,
i.e., references - becomes a virtually infinite process. The option of repetition in other
contexts incapacitates the retrieval of unambiguous meaning; it becomes unstable and
intangible. The iterability of signs, their connections with other signs and contexts and
the extendibility of context preclude the rigorous circumscription of meaning. Textuality,
this dissemination or dispersal of meanings, this play of differences in writing, in and
between texts, is an irresistible force. It cannot be repressed. Textuality, intertextual
interweaving, is a dynamic process. (Additionally, post-structuralism does not base itself
on the assumption of a linear concept of time, but rather, on time as a space of infinite
repetition.) Within a structure, there is always a non-structure functioning at the same
time as well, 'something' which prevents the structure from closing up.
The condition of the text is not one of autonomy from a general textual system, but of
intertextuality. Texts have intertexts. They are included within texts in that they become
part of a complex of texts that constitute the text in question. All texts cross-refer
endlessly (and not necessarily only in the simple sense of quotation or citation). Texts
have intertexts. Texts are intertexts in the sense of an 'internal' textual multiplicity. For
each text, there are many textualities. Each text is considered divisible into other texts,
indefinitely. The text is difference itself. Textuality is the movement of the texts' differing
from itself, making itself different.
Deconstruction is concerned with texts and their inscribed interrelations. It requires that
the text be examined for its differences from other texts and deferrals into other texts.
Deconstruction examines textual traces, marks, traits, signatures, and differences as they
occur in writing. It connects into a text, which is already in circulation, whether this text
is philosophical, historical, political, musical, etc.

[11] I return to music. It follows from the above that music is not a closed text. Any
musical 'element' functions as a sign, which means that it refers to another element that is
simply not present. This connecting chain makes every element of music a constituted
beginning with 'traces' of other elements of the chain or system within it. This chain is the
text, produced only by the way of a transformation of other texts. In other words, a
musical work is not identified as the final result of the practice of 'creating' music, but as
a 'mediator' in establishing the chain pointing and indexing events, meanings, senses, and
values in relation to other texts (cf. Veselinovic-Hofman, p.33).
Intertextuality. Intermusicality. In following with Misko Suvakovic, I sketch three
possible meanings of intermusicality: (a) A relation between 'extra-musical' (linguistic)
texts and musical texts; (b) the relation between a musical text and music as a cultural,
historic institution; and (c) the exchanges, referentialities, (dis)placements, inscriptions,
or mutual coverings of two (or more) musical texts (cf. Suvakovic, p.36). In particular,
(b) and (c) point to the fact that there is no musical text that exists autonomously. A
musical text always exists only through its relationship with other musical texts, as well
as with other (artistic) texts in a cultural field. From the outset, every text is 'different
from itself' in the sense that every text, even at the moment it comes into physical
existence, is a translation of countless impulses into a commonly accessible, rather than
personally controlled medium. Thus, every text is always already, on a multiplicity of
levels, preformed by innumerable physically absent, yet historically generative traces: 'A
text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological' meaning (the message of the
Author-God), but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them
original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable
centers of culture' (Barthes, p.146). The boundary, the limit of each text is always already
provisional due to the endless cross-referencing of all levels of signification. Textuality
effectively deconstructs the limits of identity, the limits of what belongs to music and
what does not (the extra-musical), the limits between music and non-music. A musical
text is not an autonomous object.

[12] The notion of intertextuality posits a lack of fixed boundaries. It is very difficult, if
not impossible to determine what is inside the musical text and what is outside.
Restricting, for a moment, my focus of attention to a musical score, the following
questions may be asked: Is the title of a piece of music inside or outside the music? Are
the spaces between the different notes or the staves inside or outside the music?
Alternatively, should the score as a whole perhaps be thought to be outside the music?
(But what is 'as a whole'? Again, here the problem of demarcation arises.) The musical
text is neither a composition, nor a series of notes, neither a score, nor the content of its
pages. On the other hand, it contains all of them. It only cannot be restricted to these
ingredients.
The musical text is off-center, located where the intra-musical meets the extra-musical
and de-defines its borders. Its textuality is the condition of not setting clear lines of
demarcation between the inside and the outside of music, between what counts as part of
the musical text and what does not. For an understanding of textuality in a musical
context, the question of the scope and limits of music must be raised: What is the space of
music? If music is equivalent to the musical object, how is the musical object different
from other objects such as literature, paintings, and human beings? If music is a form of
expression, how is it different from other types of expression, such as ideas, images,
pictures, and gestures? If music is a language, how is it different from other languages
such as corporeality, sight and fashion?
Longing for an answer? A short and unelaborated, incomplete and always provisional
answer would come down to this: musical space is determined according to the different
ways in which it is known, read, and studied. Music history is of great importance here:
historical studies tend to define music, tend to define periods, styles and movements (cf.
Silverman, p.70-1; cf. also Danto and Dickie).

[13] Deconstruction is (also) a reading practice. As a reading identifies the textuality of a

musical work, the reading deconstructs the text. In structuralism and semiotics, the
attempt to describe structures and codes responsible for the production of meaning
focuses attention on the reading process. However, when a text is in principle subject to
an unbridled number of meanings, it may be asked whether this concerns a quality of the
text 'itself' or the liberty of a reader to continually assign new meanings to a text. Is a text
so rich a plenitude that no reader can ever grasp it all, or is it a set of marks on which the
reader confers structure and meaning? In the former case, the reader gives expression to
the text that itself asserts the interpretation. In other words, the reader provides a
multiplicity of meaningful significations that are already there. The text's indecidability
does not result from an indeterminacy of reference or a simple multiplicity of references.
It lies in its textuality through which the text establishes its identity as a text. The text is
always something more than what is there (cf. Silverman, p.80). In the latter case, reading
means producing a text. Through the associations followed up and the connections
established, each reader constructs a different text out of each work. Reading a text can
be considered a writing practice, and in this lies the possibility of a rewriting of texts. In
every reading practice, in every interpretation or performance, a text is also rewritten.
Deconstruction is a reading strategy, a writing strategy, of transformation (cf. Game, p.x-
xii).
However, text and reader easily switch places: a story of the reader structuring the text
easily becomes a story of the text actively controlling the reader (cf. Culler, p.70).
Similarly, we can detect a continual going back and forth in Derrida's work from reader
to text and vice versa. In one case, this is said as '... any act of reading is besieged and
delivered by the precariousness of intertextuality' (Of Grammatology, p.lxxxvi). In
another, Derrida writes that reading is something more than simply reproducing. Reading
must not be content with doubling the text, although our reading must be intrinsic and
remain within the text (cf. Of Grammatology, p.158 ff.). This shifting back and forth
between reader's actions and reader's responses is not a mistake that could be corrected,
but an essential structural feature of the situation. If we say that the meaning of a work is
the reader's response, we nevertheless show that interpretation is an attempt to discover
meaning in a text. If we propose some other decisive determinant of meaning, we
discover that the factors deemed crucial are subject to interpretation in the same way as
the text itself and thus defer the meaning they determine (cf. Culler, p.73 and p.133). It is
a using and a being used by language that is shifting and unstable so that each (re)reading
of a text produces another text. Such strategies as deconstruction demonstrate the
impossibility of establishing well-grounded distinctions between what can be read in the
text and what is read into it. On one hand, the text is already complete and inexhaustible -
one can read and reread without ever grasping completely what has already been written.
On the other hand, the reader has to create the text in the process of reading, without
which it is only black marks on paper (cf. Culler, p.76).

[14] The result of this thinking is not a new foundation, but stories of reading in which
two aspects become clear. First, it is impossible to derive any definitive meaning or 'truth'
from a text. With every reading, a reader discloses new information, but other
information is lost in that same movement. Reading is not simply a way of coming to
know the work, but a series of events. This automatically leads to the second point: the
active role of the reader. Reading has lost its status as a passive consumption of a product
to performance. Perhaps this becomes very clear with regard to notated music. Musical
identity, sometimes centered in a score, appears to be decentered into infinite sound
differences or musical interpretations and performances of which every single one tends
to come near to this notated, but never attainable 'essence' (cf. Veselinovic, 1998, p.13).
Explicitly more than in written texts, it is grounded in musical practice that a score only
receives meaning through an active reading (which can be both kept in silence or realized
in sound) and that a definitive version is an illusion.
Music, Deconstruction, and
Ethics
[1] A difficult start. A matricide. A double matricide. It seems so ungrateful. Merciless.
(Although we have to keep in mind that a matricide involves respect as well.) An
attempted double murder to make (a) space for my own work.
In Of New Musicology I state that many 'new musicologists' take a pragmatic approach
to deconstruction and music, presenting deconstruction as a salutary tool (pharmakon) to
save music and musicology. (Sometimes deconstruction seems to owe its power
exclusively to its popularity. Since deconstruction is no longer a 'hot item', musicologists
hardly occupy themselves with it anymore.) Pragmatic arguments. Susan McClary writes:
'My primary concerns are first with justifying (affective) reactions through musical
analysis, social history, critical theory, and much else ... my eclectic tool kit of methods
has been assembled over the years out of whatever has seemed handy in unlocking
particular musical problems' (McClary, p.22-3, my italics). Is deconstruction put into play
the moment other models of interpreting music seem ineffective? Is deconstruction
(reduced to) a 'handy' tool, useful when other research methods fail? Rose Subotnik, also
seems to regard deconstruction as an enhancement of her interpreting repertoire. She
describes her deconstructive essays as inquiries 'primarily concerned with establishing
new paradigms for the study of music'. For Subotnik, deconstruction 'greatly expanded'
the ways in which she thought about analyzing music (cf. Subotnik, p.xxvii-xxviii).
Deconstruction is presented as a possible and - more or less - reliable musicological way
of seeing which could considerably enrich theoretical approaches to music. However,
deconstruction is not an interpretation model for tracking hidden meanings in a (musical)
text. It is not a method, not a series of instructions for analyzing music. Deconstruction
does not elucidate texts in the traditional sense of attempting to grasp a unifying content
or theme. Deconstruction is not deconstructivism. And deconstruction does not cease
when it is not in vogue anymore. Of course, McClary, Subotnik and other 'new
musicologists' know this too. Perhaps I just used the quotes above to introduce my own
work which takes a (slightly) different direction.

[2] When I try to answer the question why I do, indeed, concern myself with
deconstruction and music, I do not want to resort (only) to the arguments of New
Musicology. Why am I investigating deconstruction in music? Why do I want to show
where and how what is called deconstruction is at work within the musical praxis? What
message is it that I want to convey or pass on here? Is there a message at all?
These are important questions to me and (perhaps therefore) hard to answer. I agree with
Terry Eagleton where he states that what is important is 'asking first not what the object
is or how we should approach it, but why we should want to engage with it in the first
place' (Eagleton, p.210, my italics).
Alongside New Musicology's pragmatic arguments, I would like to draw attention to an
ethical component in paying attention to deconstruction. Alongside the extrinsic accounts
of Subotnik, McClary, and others, I want to take the intrinsic forces of a deconstructive
strategy as my point of departure. I by no means wish to undervalue the potential of
connecting music and musicological thinking to other cultural or scientific discourses. In
fact, it is the object of this site as well and it may yield a series of new possibilities for
dealing with music. I by no means wish to undervalue the pioneering work of (these)
'new musicologists' who show in very different ways how deconstruction is at work
within music and musicology. But the question remains. Why am I investigating
deconstruction in music? My motivation is different from theirs. In formulating a
provisional, prudent, groping response to this question, I aim to open a door to the ethical
dimension of deconstruction, the ethical dimension of deconstruction in music, (perhaps)
the ethical dimension of music.

[3] In The Ethics of Deconstruction, Simon Critchley describes the strategy of

deconstruction as follows: 'To locate a point of otherness within philosophical or
logocentric conceptuality and then to deconstruct this conceptuality from that position of
alterity' (Critchley, p.26). Otherness. Alterity. Especially in his later works, Derrida often
speaks of 'l'invention de l'autre', where 'l'autre' ('the other') may be regarded as that which
remains unthought, that which escapes the grip of our concepts. The other is whatever
resists, escapes definition whenever definition is put in place. Recognition of the other
opens the ethical dimension of deconstruction which consists in opening, uncloseting,
destabilizing foreclusionary structures so as to allow passage toward the other. No
culturally based directive, but the other appealing to me very concretely. No laws of
tolerance, hospitality or acceptance but my singular relationship to a singular other.
Deconstruction can be thought of as a reading and writing strategy that takes notice of
traces of the other, of the unthought, the invisible, the unheard without absorbing,
assimilating or reducing it to the same (to the cognitive power of the knowing subject or
self-consciousness). 'The interest of deconstruction, of such force and desire as it may
have, is a certain experience ... of the other', Derrida writes (Waters and Godzich, p.36).
Derrida wants to preserve the space of the other as other. But how? How can a
deconstructive strategy - a reading and writing practice - pay attention to the other, even
the other of or in language, precisely in language itself? The paradox is that what cannot
be put into language has to be evoked in language nonetheless. According to Derrida it is
this same language that can open the space, the space of the other, that, in fact, never
really succeeds in closing it. Thus, the invention of the other implies locating traces of the
other within the order of the same. A cautious oscillation between two positions:
complete assimilation would deny the other as other, whereas complete affirmation of the
difference between the other and the same would render any contact between them
impossible. Derrida: 'It is in this paradoxical predicament that a deconstruction gets under
way. Our current tiredness results from the invention of the same and from the possible,
from the invention that is always possible. It is not against it but beyond it that we are
trying to reinvent invention itself, another invention, or rather an invention of the other
that would come, through the economy of the same, indeed while miming or repeating it,
to offer a place for the other' (Waters and Godzich, p.60).
The other is always something (someone) different. It differs from itself. Not a generality
but a singularity. The other. Otherness. No new concepts, no universalities, no
metaphysical terms. The ethics of deconstruction can be considered as an appreciation of
the singularity of the singular. The other is a singular other that will not disappear in a
crowd of others. The ethics of deconstruction is primarily an attention to the concrete
particularity of the other in its singularity. Nevertheless, this singularity, too, is only
accessible through the general.
The invention of the other evades every conceptual grasp. One needs to suspend, to defer
as much as possible, the conceptual horizons of meanings. In that sense, the susceptibility
or receptivity to the other that Derrida has in mind is passive. However, this passivity
requires a deliberate and conscious effort. At the same time, a resoluteness is required to
allow for that which escapes every anticipating horizon; to actively prevent existing
conventions from taking command. To be receptive to the advent of the other, to receive
the other, requires both an active and a passive attitude. 'The invention of the other is not
opposed to that of the same, its difference beckons toward another coming about, toward
this other invention of which we dream, the invention of the entirely other, the one that
allows the coming of a still unanticipatable alterity and for which no horizon of waiting
as yet seems ready, in place, available. Yet it is necessary to prepare for it; for to allow
the coming of the entirely other, passivity, a certain kind of resigned passivity for which
everything comes down to the same, is not suitable. Letting the other come is not inertia
open to anything whatever', Derrida writes (Waters and Godzich, p.55).
The invention of the other. In-vention. To come upon. An activity that is not an activity.
Derrida warns that it escapes all programming, that it is beyond any possible status, that
the other is actually not inventable. He still calls it invention because one gets ready for
it, one makes this step destined to let the other come, come in (cf. Waters and Godzich,
p.56).

[4] How can this ethics of deconstruction be related to music? My idea is to introduce the
specific attention to the other as manifested in deconstruction, into the discourse about
music and to show how the dimension of alterity is articulated in music. First of all, the
question could be posed whether music itself is not a certain manifestation of an other. In
Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, Lawrence Kramer argues that music has
been closely related to the 'logic of alterity' since mid 1800s: 'The logic of alterity
operates not only internally, within a musical terrain, but also externally, upon music as a
whole. And when the internal logic of alterity yields to the external, music as a whole
stands for the other' (Kramer, p.36). In this case, Kramer explains, music as the other is
associated with irrationality, passivity, stasis or regression, fragmentation. The other
stands opposite to the self and opposite to reason, activity, progress, unity, and the
integrity of boundaries. Music is regarded as the other of language, of conceptual thought
and of conscious self-possession (cf. Kramer; cf. De Groot).
Other questions can be asked. Not about music as other, but about the other in or in
relation to music. Is it possible to develop an appreciation for, a receptability and
response-ability to the other in and through music? To what extent does the other
manifest itself in musical practices? Is it possible to approach music from the place of the
other, from an other place? And what could be the other of music? In different pages on
this site, in different contexts, with different musical works, I elaborate on these
questions, trying to open an ethical space for the invention of the other of/for/with/in
music (cf. for example Silence, Noise and Ethics, Education and Ethics, Of the Critics).
[5] In his book Philosophy and the Analysis of Music, Lawrence Ferrara warns against
rigorous methods when trying to say something about music: 'Methods have developed or
evolved in ways that do not fully respond to the multiplicity of levels of musical
significance ... music comes to mean only what methods allow it to mean' (Ferrara,
p.xvi). Our urge to take charge over that which we do not (as yet) have under our control
has lead us to apply pre- conceived models of interpretation that are placed over music
where they act as a kind of filter. As a result, 'the work responds to the manner of
questioning that has evolved in that method ... the music can only answer within the pre-
designated tasks of the method' (Ferrara, p.39 and p.45).
Here is my statement. Traditional musical analysis silences the otherness within music.
The ethics of deconstruction can teach us to meet music otherwise, to approach music
from a point of view that is aware of its multiple and heterogeneous voices. It supports
the opening up of this multiplicity. It is the opening up of this multiplicity. It is a
susceptibility to other voices without reducing or incorporating them into the same.
Derrida: 'The call of the other is a call to come, and that happens only in multiple voices'
(Waters and Godzich, p.62). For me, deconstruction does justice to the heterogeneity of
music by opening up our ears to hear the other (voices) in music. Deconstruction as the
invention of the other in music. Why? One of the reasons could be that deconstruction is
not a method, not a (new) analytic model to get a grip on music (cf. Deconstruction:
Between Method and Singularity). Perhaps it shows us the opposite, the impossibility of
getting a grip. Deconstruction is not a magic password to provide secure knowledge
about music. The password remains a secret, the passage way is uncertain.
Deconstruction unveils a secret only to confirm the secret of music. There is always
something which withdraws itself from knowledge forever ducking out of the exhaustive
readings of hermeneutic interpretations or musicological analyses.

[6] Deconstruction in music. 'I am talking about the absolute arrivant, who is not even a
guest. He surprises the host - who is not yet a host or an inviting power - enough to call
into question, to the point of annihilating or rendering indeterminate, all the distinctive
signs of a prior identity, beginning with the very border that delineated a legitimate home
and assured lineage ... This absolute arrivant as such is, however, not an intruder, an
invader, or a colonizer, because invasion presupposes some self-identity for the aggressor
and for the victim. Nor is the arrivant a legislator or the discoverer of a promised land',
Derrida writes (Aporias, p.34). Why this quote? I think these phrases tell how
deconstruction is always already at work within music. The arrivant is deconstruction, the
host is music. Deconstruction is not an intruder into the realm of music; it always already
operates from the inside. It has no clear and delimited identity. Derrida: 'All sentences of
the type 'deconstruction is X' or 'deconstruction is not X' a priori miss the point, which is
to say that they are at least false' (Wood and Bernasconi, p.4). Deconstruction does not
mean dis-covering music, uncovering everything in music that was concealed so far.
Deconstruction in music questions musical identities, musicological assumptions and
achievements; it questions the border between music and non-music.

[7] Deconstruction is not a method. It takes on different shapes, according to the text
(music). With every text, with every reading, deconstruction changes. The ethics of
deconstruction is about the invention of the other as singular other. What does this mean?
Deconstruction has nothing to do with generalizations or abstractions. Traditional
musical analysis involves an identification of general and objective particularities in a
score, a quest for patterns and structures that can be counted and measured through all
kinds of methods. More than the other humanities, it insists on locating unifying
principles (cf. most Schenkerian analyses). The essence of the music is sought in a
reduction of the multiplicity of available patterns to one motive (motif) that would bear
the whole. By focusing on the singularity of a musical piece or interpretation, a
deconstructive strategy discloses the limits of these analyses. A further acquaintance with
deconstruction at work in music by music(ians) will again and again require a new
vocabulary, since deconstructive strategies present themselves in a different manner at all
times. A further acquaintance with music will again and again require a new vocabulary,
since music presents itself in a different manner at all times. This implies a certain
displacement of the traditional working method of music researchers who often are
required to establish their method first and then examine a musical work (cf. Ferrara).
Deconstruction In Music. Invention of the other. Hopefully. The other in music. The
other of music. Music as other. An other space to write around or beside music. An other
space to let music speak. An other music.
Of New Musicology
[1] Are there traces of deconstruction in contemporary musical thought? Traces of post-
structuralism? Although it is important to note at the outset that they are not fully related
terms, deconstruction and post-structuralism are often bracketed (cf. Culler, p.28).
According to Culler, deconstruction can be read as either a precursor of a post-structural
situation or a subset of post-structuralism. (Nevertheless, the term 'post-structuralism' sits
oddly with deconstruction. Derrida does not refute the structuralist claim that binary
oppositions are the predominant principle of meaning. In this sense, his philosophy is
structuralistic and not post-structuralistic. Maybe Derrida offers a structuralist critique of
structuralism: what separates him from structuralism is his concern to bring to light the
play of differences in structure, the experience of temporality, a critique on the static
concept of the sign.)

[2] Post-structuralism has proved pivotal in refashioning our image of society and
knowledge. It has done so by proposing alternatives that urge a shift in focus, from issues
of class, individualism and materialism, to a focus on discourses, identities (differences)
and cultural codes. Nevertheless, reflection upon music has been minimally affected by
post-structuralism up until now. While post-structuralism stands out as one of the most
important intellectual developments that has occurred within the humanities since the late
1950's, musicology, music theory and music analysis have neither been affected by, nor
contributed to this philosophical enterprise (cf. Shepherd and Wicke; cf. Seidman).
(According to Steve Sweeney-Turner, the reason the reception of deconstruction within
musicology has been hampered is probably due to its philosophical complexity (cf.
Sweeney-Turner, 1995, p.183.) In his review essay 'Disciplining Deconstruction (For
Musical Analysis)', Adam Krims indicates that musicologists who are writing about
deconstruction are often ignoring its radical implications.)
According to Edward Said, however, the first actual post-structuralist tremors finaly
began to be felt in musicology in the 1990's, even if the work of post-structuralist
musicologists is at a relatively early stage and occupies a minority if not marginal status
(cf. Said, p.xvi.). (Christopher Norris (cf. Norris, 1999, p.116) and Adam Krims (Krims,
p.298-9) agree with him in more recent essays.) Since the late 1980's, a small group of
thinkers on music has sought alliance with post-structuralist philosophy and humanities.
As a result, a positivistic and formalistic approach of music is abandoned in favor of the
view that before anything, music is a socially caused phenomenon. At the same time, the
attention is shifted to the intertextual dimensions and the performative aspects of music.
(German musicologist Ulrich Dibelius calls this a post-modern shift from the
characteristics of music 'itself' to its 'modes of action'. The new (post-structuralist or post-
modern) musicology is based on a criticism and deconstruction of musicological
objectivism, the general idea of the autonomy of (the theory of) music. In other words, a
shift to contextuality.)

[3] Especially in the USA during the 1990's, a (small) number of essays have been
published in which music and deconstruction are interrelated. Authors that have
published work on this subject include Rose Subotnik, Lawrence Kramer, and Susan
McClary. Here, I am primarily interested in the arguments to to deal with deconstruction
and music. This 'emergent desire' (Sweeney-Turner) for musicology to finally engage
with contemporary critical discourse in general and deconstruction in particular is
commonly regarded as a bare necessity. Accordingly, its formulation springs from a
certain negativity. The need is incited by a twofold observation from these (and other)
musicologists. First of all, they detect an increasing isolation of classical music in
particular. Secondly, musicological discourse threatens to enter a similar isolation as
well. By engaging in a more general cultural debate, they try to prevent both from
happening.
In his book, Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge, Kramer expresses worry about
the limited social basis for classical music. 'The lack of a viable public discourse about
'classical' music is one reason why the music, cherishable though it is, is losing cultural
ground at an alarming rate' (Kramer, p.xiv). Kramer speaks of a 'scholastic isolation of
music'. By returning music to its place in general cultural discourse, Kramer aspires to set
classical music free from its isolated situation. 'For those who care about 'classical' music,
the possibility of tapping new sources of cultural and intellectual energy may come not a
moment too soon. It is no secret that, in the United States anyway, this music is in
trouble' (Kramer, p.3).
Next to these alarming notes regarding the position of classical music in modern Western
society, many thinkers on music point out an increasing isolation of musicology as well.
From outside the field of musicology, Edward Said calls for an end to 'the generally
cloistral and reverential, not to say deeply insular, habits in writing about music' (Said,
p.58).
Susan McClary establishes that the crucial critical debates are 'almost entirely absent
from traditional musicology' (McClary, p.54. cf. also p.20). She objects against the highly
formalistic character of musicology. According to McClary, music is a discursive
practice in which (a) social reality is constituted. (This does not mean that music is only
an epiphenomenon that can be explained by way of social determinism. Music does not
simply reflect a social reality that exists outside of it; rather, social reality itself is
constituted within music (cf. McClary, p.21).) 'Given its centrality in the manipulation of
affect, social formation, and the constitution of identity, music is far too important to be
passed over, even if the most important questions cannot be definitively settled by means
of objective, positivistic methodologies' (McClary, p.26). Thinking and writing about
music should be better integrated to other discourses about social reality. This would
benefit both music and musicology.
Richard Leppert states that musicologists have proved themselves incapable of keeping
abreast of contemporary cultural theories. It is necessary to break with the historical
tradition of musicology because it continues to use a paradigm that not many people
outside academic parameters experience as real. He considers most musicology to be
isolated from the rest of society and from post-modernism in particular (cf. Leppert, p.
244).

[4] Such thinkers as Kramer, McClary and Leppert specifically denounce the hermetic
musicological discourse and emphasize the necessity to try to join a broader cultural
discourse. Meanwhile, other musicologists and music sociologists warn against yet
another danger that this may conjure; namely, that music 'itself' will not be written about
at all anymore. In Deconstructive Variations, Rose Subotnik observes that thinking on
music is going through some rough times. 'As I see things, generally speaking, Western
art music is beginning to go out of fashion as a topic of study ... Certainly in the world of
pop music today, writing about music usually means writing about everything except
music' (Subotnik, p.xx and p.xxiv). Music sociologists John Shepherd and Peter Wicke
subscribe to these remarks. With regard to prevalent sociological studies on popular
music, they write: 'It is not music that is being discussed. The object of study is often the
linguistic discourses that are constructed around musical practices' (Shepherd and Wicke,
p.1. cf. also p.103). Alf Björnberg discussed the conflict between musicologists and mass
media theorists. While the former have focused on the music, the latter have regularly
ignored the musical structure, concentrating instead on extra-musical aspects. According
to Björnberg, this is largely due to 'the expert status of music-analytical discourse and the
concomitant reluctance on the part of 'non-experts' to regard such analysis as relevant to a
context-oriented understanding of music and its cultural significance' (cf. Edström, p.58).
Where (the old or traditional) musicologists hold on to a rather closed and inaccessible
discourse that often features a 'close reading' of a score, music sociologists normally
write about everything but music. The supporters of a 'new musicology' try to join a more
general cultural debate; for example, by bringing in post-structuralism and deconstruction
in order to free traditional musicology from its isolation, with the hope of simultaneously
lifting classical music from its increasingly marginal position as well. No doubt, this
motivation is noble and valid. I agree with it and I hope this site will be a positive
contribution. However, I want to call forth another 'necessity', another reason, for dealing
with deconstruction and music. In Music, Deconstruction, and Ethics, I argue how
deconstructive strategies - always already at work within music - have an important
ethical component as well.

[5] After this survey of reasons as to why several 'new musicology' authors want to open
music to post-modern and deconstructive readings, I now propose to focus attention as to
how they have done so. Out of necessity, I must restrict myself to two (perhaps non-
representative) examples: Susan McClary's remarks on the sonata form, and Rose
Subotnik's double reading of Chopin's A-Major Prelude.

[6] In Feminine Endings. Music, Gender, and Sexuality, Susan McClary wants to read the
musical repertoire 'against the grain'. Although an explicit reference to Derrida's work
appears only once - in an end note - occurs, her work may be regarded as deconstructive.
In discussing works of music, composers and musicians, she aims to undermine binary
oppositions and to bring 'the other', the subordinate, the marginal, the secondary, to the
fore (cf. Hierarchical Oppositions). For example, by a deconstruction of the sonata form.
Usually two themes are exposed in the first part of the sonata, the exposition. The first or
principal theme is set in the main key or tonic, while the second theme appears in a
different key. Opposite the harmonically stable principal theme is the unstable second
theme. It becomes immediately clear from this that the second theme is subordinate to the
principal theme (according to classic harmony). It is a supplementary theme,
hierarchically subordinate to the principal theme, subordinate to the tonic. Now, McClary
shows that this hierarchical relation is being undermined in and through the sonata itself.
She cites the following passage from the New Grove Dictionary: 'The 'sonata principle'
requires that the most important ideas and the strongest cadential passages from the
second group reappear in the recapitulation' (McClary, p.15). The recapitulation. The
concluding third part of the sonata form. This part that should take care of a good
outcome, i.e., where the triumph of the 'self' over the 'other' would have to take shape, is,
in a sense, 'fouled' by the material from the subordinate second theme. Still, the
hierarchical relation is maintained here. The self seems to defeat the other. Why?
Because the second theme is played here in the principal key, which results in the
disappearing of the initial unstable character. More important, therefore, is McClary's
observation that the second theme and its key are necessary to the sonata or tonal plot.
'Without this foil or obstacle, there is no story' (McClary, p.15). The second theme
presents a threat to the principal theme, both thematically and harmonically, as far as
preserving its own identity is concerned. But, McClary writes, '... the self [the principal
theme, MC] cannot truly be a self unless it acts: it must leave the cozy nest of its tonic,
risk the confrontation' (McClary, p.69). The identity of the one (theme), the self, is
confirmed and enhanced in the difference with the other, the other. This other, the
supplementary or secondary, becomes a necessary condition for the existence of the
primary, the self. The initial hierarchy seems reversed. Incidentally, this does not mean
that the secondary theme now becomes the central theme. Rather, it can be explained as a
subversion of the distinctions between the essential and the inessential, the central and the
marginal.
In brief, this is what the deconstruction of the traditional hierarchy within a sonata form
as revealed by McClary comes down to.

[7] Deconstruction at work within music. One deconstructive strategy. Within music. A
deconstruction of music by music. A deconstruction of (traditional) music theory by
music. McClary's work is an important contribution towards the rethinking of (imposed)
hierarchical relations in music. Nevertheless, I also object to her method of working.
McClary thinks not only from the music, the text, 'itself'. In striving to connect music and
musicology to other discourses, she reads the music from a feminist point of view. 'Most
of the essays in this collection seek to identify and analyze the ways in which music is
shaped by constructions of gender and sexuality' (McClary, p.9). McClary admits that the
convention of simply designating themes as masculine or feminine has been repudiated in
musicology for a long time. However, this does not mean that musical pieces are free of
gender marking. 'The gender connotations of the opening 'Mannheim rockets' or
'hammerstrokes' and the sighing second themes in Stamitz symphonies are so obvious as
to border on the cartoonish, even if neither he nor his contemporaries actually called the
respective themes 'masculine' and 'feminine'' (McClary, p.14). Thus, she holds on to an
old tradition that marks the principal theme of the sonata, masculine, and the secondary
theme, feminine: the sonata is the musical manifestation of a cultural paradigm that
features binary oppositions such as strong-weak, active-passive, masculine-feminine.
(Incidentally, a similar view can also be found in Subotnik's work. cf. Subotnik, p.34-5).
Moreover, McClary continues to say that before we can address questions concerning
gender and sexuality, 'it is necessary to construct an entire theory of musical signification'
(McClary, p.20). And this is indeed exactly what McClary does. She employs a pre-
constructed, external model in order to assess and analyze music; in this case, a kind of
feministic determinism. Deconstruction is put into action as a newly attained model for
interpretation. It is no longer a strategy that works on the inside of the text - that is to say,
with the vocabulary of the text 'itself'. It seems insufficient to show how hierarchically
ordered binary oppositions in music are undermined by music. McClary uses
deconstruction. She uses it for the project of 'questioning the claims to universality by the
'master narratives' of Western culture, revealing the agendas behind traditional 'value-
free' procedures' (McClary, p.123). This appears to be more of an agenda of
demystification than of deconstruction per se. In other words, McClary's lexis suggests
that deconstruction is a form of analysis that uncovers an ideological sub-structure
beneath an obfuscating surface: essentialism. Deconstruction (in its 'proper' mode) would
immediately set about interrogating the opposition between surface and sub-structure (cf.
Sweeney-Turner http://www.dun-eideann.com/suibhne/). It appears McClary attempts to
expose some deeper truth about music. However, deconstruction has no better theory of
truth. '[Deconstruction] is a practice of reading and writing attuned to the aporias that
arise in attempts to tell us the truth. It does not develop a new philosophical framework or
solution but moves back and forth, with a nimbleness it hopes will prove strategic,
between non-synthesizable moments of a [text]' (Culler, p.155). In contrast to Derrida,
who works from the vocabulary of the text 'itself', McClary departs from a self-
discovered system of meaning that she lays over the music as a meta-concept. Derrida's
work, on the contrary, is an attack on the abstracting of containable meanings from
concrete texts.

[8] Sweeney-Turner notes that in musical academia 'the term deconstruction is often
misused as a more impressive (and supposedly trendy) way of saying analysis' (Sweeney-
Turner, http://www.dun-eideann.com/suibhne/). This critical comment seems to apply to
Rose Subotnik when she writes, 'Deconstruction was now available for me as a model for
making multiple readings of a single text' (Subotnik, p.xxxv). She describes her most
widely elaborated essay in Deconstructive Variations, 'How Could Chopin's A-Major
Prelude Be Deconstructed?' as a 'testing out deconstructionist method' on this
composition (cf. Subotnik, p.82). Derrida assumes a text that deconstructs itself and takes
care to not reduce deconstruction to a reading method: 'I am wary of the idea of methods
of reading. The laws of reading are determined by the particular text that is being read ...
It means that we must remain faithful ... to the injunctions of the text. These injunctions
will differ from one text to the next so that one cannot prescribe one general method of
reading. In this sense, deconstruction is not a method' (Kearney, p.124). Subotnik,
however, does not seem to recognize these basic principles, in spite of the fact that she is
one of the few musicologists to begin with an elaborate introduction to deconstruction
(cf. Subotnik, p.39-84).
Like McClary, Subotnik stays close to the musical text on many instances, and starts
from the specific vocabulary of the prelude in A-major. She begins her reading with a
typical deconstructive focus on a secondary, supplemental, marginal moment in the
prelude, the F#7-chord in bar 12. Subotnik calls this chord secondary because it is the
only chord in the entire prelude that does not belong to the tonality of A major. A matter
of tonal instability. Consequently, Subotnik classifies those musical elements as primary
that by traditional Western tonal standards tend toward a condition of stability and unity,
toward an affirmation of the original key. However, Subotnik says, '... one feels
comfortable speaking of structural unity in Western music only in situations that present
something to be unified' (Subotnik, p.91). In order to experience something as a unity,
elements are needed that jeopardize the unity. The dichotomy of stability-instability is
needed in order to arrive at (the experience of) a unity. What seems additional and
marginal - the F#7 chord - proves to be necessary and elementary. Moreover, the F#7
chord proves to be secondary only in a functional harmonic respect. In 'physical terms', it
is not secondary at all. It is the loudest moment in the prelude. Several symmetrical
patterns are disrupted here. The top line reaches its highest point, and nowhere else in the
prelude are there so many notes to be played simultaneously. Finally, because of the wide
spread, this chord becomes the dominating element, especially to small-handed players.
In short, the harmonically most unstable moment coincides with the (physical) climax of
the piece.
The two readings by Subotnik on this prelude focus on the question of whether this F#7-
chord, which may be called secondary, enhances or undermines the stability of the entire
prelude. Her first reading concludes that the unstable, alienating elements of this prelude
are subordinate to a more stable, higher structural order. Better yet, it says that every
instability ultimately enhances this order. (Moving away from the tonic, and then
returning to it only enhances the tonic.) The climax on the F#7-chord exudes confidence
in the existence of a framework that is able to manage its instability. Subotnik regards
this first reading as a metaphor for subjectivity or individuality that is adopted into a
higher order, a rational order of necessity. 'Projecting itself as unified to the point where
every structural choice seems necessary, the prelude evokes an image of each life as a
structure that is not only meaningful, but necessary. This it does mainly by successfully
subsuming the contingent aspects of individuality under a universal principle of reason'
(Subotnik, p.142).
In her second reading, Subotnik assumes that the secondary, marginal, ornamental or
supplementary characteristics are essential to the work in themselves. With that, the
hierarchy between the stable and the unstable can be reversed. 'The primary function of
the climactic chord is not to reaffirm the governing power of tonality, but to project a
condition of strength that is unsettling and disruptive in as many ways as possible (even
tonally)' (Subotnik, p.113). Gradually, she points to more musical instabilities that
confirm her view that a shift can take place from 'closing toward opening gestures', a
weakening of the basis for perceiving unity in the prelude. Subotnik now emphasizes the
contingent character of the prelude. The differences, conflicts, and absences presented by
the prelude call our attention to a simultaneous possibility of 'otherness'. The prelude
cannot exclude the idea that a change in its structure can lead to another unity (cf.
Subotnik, p.132). In her first reading, the prelude could be thought of as a metaphor for
individual human life based on rationality. In her second reading, she regards the prelude
as nothing more than a contingent structure, open to many pressures and possibilities in
the course of its construction. The prelude turns into a metaphor for a life that is
characterized by coincidence. 'The prelude, in this reading, recognizes the possibility that
the course of every human life may be nothing more than an aggregation of contingent
circumstances, conditions and events' (Subotnik, p.142).

[9] It is exactly in the principle of the double reading that Subotnik locates the
deconstructive moment. To apply a second interpretation to the central maxim as a basis
for analyzing the heterogeneity is to propose a deconstruction: the alternative reading
threatens to unravel all that appeared true in the previous reading (cf. Subotnik, p.22).
Subotnik convincingly demonstrates the means by which the prelude deconstructs itself,
i.e., by employing the 'undecidable' F#7 chord. Moreover, the undecidability of this chord
disrupts certain musicological assumptions. However, it is precisely her comments on 'a
powerful metaphor for the individual human life' that make her deconstructive reading
become a model for interpretation, a method of reading from a preconceived framework.
By her own admission, she applies 'deconstruction as a method of musicological analysis'
(Subotnik, p.xxxv). I subscribe to Jonathan Culler's criticism that sees deconstruction as a
model of analysis. He criticizes this assimilation of deconstruction to interpretation and
denounces the deep presupposition of American criticism that the goal of analysis is to
produce enriching elucidations of individual works (cf. Culler, p.221). From the outset of
her essay, Subotnik makes clear that she wants to read the prelude from the oppositions
order versus freedom, determinism versus contingency, and pre-existing musical
strategies as control mechanisms versus the concept of subjective freedom. By doing so,
she abandons the specific character and idiom of Chopin's prelude in order to strike up a
more general discourse in which the prelude functions as a mere example. Her
deconstructive reading is not only a model of interpretation, but even before that, a model
of representation similar to the way Adorno regarded music as a blueprint of social
processes. Subotnik's deconstruction can be seen as a continuation of Adorno's critical
project in which he argues against an aesthetic ideology that promotes a confusion
between art and life, or that elevates art to a transcendental realm. (One possible
alternative for this model of representation is presented on the page entitled Interactionist
Sociology.)

[10] Two examples of 'new musicology'. Two examples of deconstruction in music, in

musicology. Two deconstructions of musicologist essentialism. But also, two examples
of a cultural essentialism or determinism. In both readings, deconstruction appears to
function as a theoretical model, a method by which a musical piece can be reinterpreted.
Both are very specific readings that seem to exclude other encounters. Deconstruction as
a tool for revealing the existence of 'deep structures' beneath the signifying surfaces of
musical texts. Derrida would certainly object. I object; in short, because it is not the
purpose of this site to criticize.
But what about my project? What about my relation to this new musicology? What about
Deconstruction In Music? I hope this site will provide an answer. Using caution.
Hesitating. Groping. Partly relying on the work of McClary, Subotnik, et al., partly trying
to take other directions, trying to avoid employing deconstruction as a scientific model or
method of analysis.
Other directions. This is my proposal. I am not primarily interested in a deconstruction of
texts on music (although this site contains some pages dealing with this). I do not want to
concentrate on the sphere of verbal utterances on music. My attention is first directed to
the question of how music, while reading itself, realizes this in ways that could be called
deconstructive. No longer do we have a mere discursive deconstruction of music, but a
deconstruction of music by music, by musicians. A deconstruction in music. According to
Veselinovic-Hofman, deconstruction can be recognized as a strategy inherent to the very
nature of music - a hopeful and stimulating thought. 'If the development of music is
considered a process in which music continuously 'reads' itself, it follows that it is
necessary to clarify the mechanism of this type of reading. By identifying the
deconstructive procedure as a phenomenon inherent to music, it can be demonstrated that
this mechanism is, in its essence, quite conceivable as deconstructive' (Veselinovic-
Hofman in Suvakovic, p.12). (This is an important statement in terms of this project
although I object to the use of such terms as 'procedure', 'phenomenon' and 'essence'.)
My intention is to reveal how (certain) musicians and composers (re-)read, (re-)write,
perform, and interpret (previous) music in ways that can be considered deconstructive
(without their necessarily using this terminology when referring to their work). It is my
intent to shift from a (musicological) writing on deconstruction and music to a
deconstruction within a musical practice. Not (only) to speak of music, but to let music
speak (for) itself. Deconstruction as a musical practice, each time appearing in a different
way. A transformation from writing on music to a strategy of deconstruction with and
within music. But problems occur; for example problems concerning limits. What is the
inside of music? What is 'within' music and what stays outside? Furthermore, I am aware
of the fact that I attempt to bring these deconstructions in music to the open in an extra-
musical, i.e. discursive, way. But then, just how extra-musical is discursivity? These
thoughts will (have to) follow us. Like specters. And we should not avoid them. We
cannot avoid them, although we might not be able to resolve them either.
Restitutions, Shibboleth or
Aporias
'The general Verstimmung [the word means both 'disgruntlement' and 'out of tune', MC]
is the possibility of an other tone, or the tone of an other to interrupt a familiar music at
any time ... The Verstimmung, if one thus calls this derailment from now on, the sudden
change of a tone like a change of mood, is the disorder or the nonsense of the destination
(Bestimmung)' (D'un ton apocalyptique adopté naguère en philosophie, p.67-8, my
translation).
I want to emphasise that these are different stories of Western culture, that there is no
one story, and certainly not one that is the true story. In a sense they are all true, and in
reading them across and against each other we can discern a multiplicity of
determinations and subject positions (Game, p.66).

[1] Deconstruction within music. Deconstruction at work in the compositions of John

Cage and in the project of Gerd Zacher (cf. The Gift of Silence and Specters of Bach). At
work. But never mentioned (by them). Neither is Derrida. Which is not the same, as is
made clear in Deconstruction In Music. With regard to the music of John Zorn, I found
only one reference to deconstruction. On a poster for Naked City (Zorn's band with Fred
Frith, Bill Frisell, Joey Baron, and Wayne Horvitz) used in 1989 for premier
performances, one can read the types of music that are going to be poured upon the
public: blues, Ennio Morricone compositions, solo, duo, and trio improvisations, and
'hardcore and surf music deconstructions' (Dorf, p.44). It is not further explained (of
course not). It can leave the reader puzzled, curious or indifferent. Perhaps readers
acquainted with deconstruction can think of possible connections. What is striking is the
plural, deconstructions. There is more than one. Which is true. But deconstruction is
always already a multiplicity of voices; speaking with one voice it is no longer
deconstruction.
Occasionally, the word turns up in reviews. Mostly it is used as an equivalent to that
other difficult to define word, postmodernism. Musicians and composers, in talking about
their work, hardly, if at all, express themselves in terms of deconstruction.
And what about Derrida? Is he mentioned? Do musicians or composers know him or his
work? There is at least one pop band (in fact it's only the lead singer of the band) that can
be considered a kind of fan: Scritti Politti's lead singer, Green, dedicated a song to
Derrida. DJ Spooky refers to him in one of his reflective essays that is infused with the
spirit of post-structuralism. And then there is also this band called Deconstruction.
And Zorn? Can one find clear traces of Derrida in his work? I think I've found two, but I
am not sure about either of them. In 1997, Zorn composed the chamber music,
Shibboleth, for string trio, clavichord and percussion. Shibboleth, the password used by
the Israelites in order to distinguish themselves from the hostile Ephraimites who could
not correctly pronounce the word. It's the word by which Jews are distinguished from
non-Jews. It confirms the 'being Jewish' of the Jew. A friendship word. A password. And
the title of a book by Derrida.
In 1998, Zorn released the CD Aporias. Requia For Piano And Orchestra. On the back
cover are three short texts. One is signed by Zorn and printed in block letters: 'An aporia
is an impossible passage, and Aporias, part piano concerto/part requiem, is about those
mysteries and spiritual passages separating life from death. The piece is subtitled Requia
For Piano And Orchestra, but these requia are not for any particular artist or groups of
artists; they are dedicated to all artists and to the indomitable spirit of creativity itself -
the spark that refuses to die'. Another text comes from the aristocratic Roman elegist,
Sextus Propertius, and is capitalized: 'SUNT ALIQUID MANES LETUM NON OMNIS
FINIT LURIDAQUE EVICTOS EFFUGIT UMBRA ROGOS'. It is the opening sentence
of the seventh poem in the fourth book of his Elegies, a sometimes macabre poem in
which death and eroticism are connected. A translation in italics is added: 'Spirits do
exist: death does not end all things and so the pale ghost, victorious, escapes the flames'.
The specter as a revenant. The spark that refuses to die.
But it all begins with the other citation. But why am I calling it a citation? Nothing proves
it is one. There are no quotation marks. It is not signed. Neither by Zorn, nor by
Propertius. Here it is: 'Is it possible to say our lives, or my death? Can death be a plural ...
is death even possible?' Whose text is this? To whom does it belong? Who is the owner?
Strange questions in the realm of deconstruction where a text is always considered an
orphan (I'll return to this). Nevertheless. It's in italics. Does this mean that it is a
translation just like the Propertius citation? If it is, then the original language is lacking.
Why this mystification? I can only guess. Zorn composed Aporias (or parts of it) in 1994.
Derrida published the English version of Aporias in 1993. I quote (and for once I do this
in italics as it is after all a translation): 'Is my death possible? ... If death (...) names the
very irreplaceability of absolute singularity (no one can die in my place or in the place of
the other), then all the examples in the world can precisely illustrate this singularity.
Everyone's death, the death of all those who can say 'my death' is irreplaceable' (Aporias,
p.21-2). The key problems are the same, but not exactly the same; not the same words. So
it is not a citation. Not from Derrida. It seems like a rewriting of Derrida's sentences,
although he is not mentioned. The return of a specter which is always already a
transformation. The text is a spark (a mark) that refuses to die. It stays behind when the
author is already gone (dead?).
Aporias. This may be what music philosopher Jerrold Levinson means by allusive titles,
titles that refer to other works, other artists, other cultural utterances (cf. Levinson,
p.174). But we are never sure about this.

[2] Where do these preliminary remarks take us? I don't know. I cannot control their
dissemination. However, this quest is not an attempt to legitimize my main subject,
deconstruction in music. Enumerating as many places as possible where deconstruction
and music are brought together - either by composers and musicians or by critics and
musicologists - cannot be the justification for my project. It is neither the beginning of an
elucidation or explanation of Zorn's work. No overall interpretation. Let's leave enigmas
intact.
These opening sentences can be a possible passage, a threshold to a door which is already
ajar. For instance, an opening to some moments of transgression. Intermusical: the
connecting of several more or less separate musical worlds or people working within
these worlds. I will call this de- and recontextualization. The confrontation of several
musical styles in the Naked City compositions can be regarded as a temporary and
rudimentary example. But soon others will appear. Intertextual: music's nomadic
possibilities to attach itself to, and become part of, 'extra-musical' formations. In this
section of the site much attention will be paid to Jewishness.
It is also an opening to discuss the inside and outside of a musical work. To think about
supplements. Parerga. For example, titles, liner notes, texts and pictures on the cover of a
CD. Do these belong to the musical work or are they 'hors d'oeuvre', outside of the work?
Every philosophical discourse on art is centered on the question of how to distinguish
between the internal and external elements of an artwork, Derrida writes in The Truth In
Painting. And it is always a problem. Among others things while parerga have a
thickness, which separates them not only from the integral inside, from the ergon, but
also from the outside, from the space and place in which a musical work is situated
(notated, performed), from the whole institutional field in which the work is produced.
(But what is the ergon of a musical work exactly? The score? The sounds? Both? Which
sounds? All the sounds heard (or made) during a performance, or only the notated ones?
And when there is no notation? Difficulties arise.) The title, the liner notes and the cover
illustrations stand out against two 'sides', but with respect to each of those sides, they
merge into the other. With respect to the musical work they gradually merge into the
background. In this case, the parergon installs an internal boundary. However, it also
installs an external boundary. With respect to the general background (the institutional
field, abstract ánd concrete), the parergon merges into the work that stands out against
this background (cf. The Truth In Painting, p.61). Neither simply outside, nor simply
inside. Sometimes or in some way detached, but at the same time very difficult to detach.
Why? Because a parergon is not simply a surplus, Derrida explains; it is there because the
inside is lacking. It seems as though the parergon comes as an extra, exterior to the proper
field (the musical sound 'itself'). However, this exteriority intervenes in the inside only to
the extent that there is a lack in the interior of the ergon. Apparently, the inside needs
these additives, these supplements. Jerrold Levinson argues that a title can be thought of
as part of a musical work, even as part of a work's structure, partly because the music
'itself' is not a fine enough type to properly possess the work's representational properties
(cf. Levinson, p.161. I will not elaborate on the problem of representation here.) And
John Zorn says in an interview: 'Every piece on Torture Garden, for example, has some
kind of subtext to it; a story that is being told ... The titles help with that too, they give the
pieces a cultural resonance, something that can get thinking patterns going, which
someone can identify with or not identify with or get pissed about. My record covers are
involved in this, too. You try to create a package that really tells a story and says
something within a larger context than just the abstract world of sound or pitches'
(Gagne, p.526). Evidently, the covers, the titles and the liner notes, convey something the
music cannot convey by itself. It is lacking and without this lack, the ergon would have
no need of a parergon.

[3] What is on the inside of a musical work, what stays external? This is not only a
philosophical problem, but it is, in fact, also the main issue of controversy between Zorn
and his record company of that time, Nonesuch. Nonesuch wanted to have a say on the
covers of several of Zorn's CD's. The idea behind this could (somewhat speculatively) be
formulated as follows: Zorn takes care of the music, the record company takes care of
distribution and sales (cf. Gagne, p.531). His CD's will sell better if the cover is not too
controversial. For that reason, Nonesuch wanted to collaborate on the covers. Perhaps -
why not give it some credit - it did not mean to influence Zorn's artistic creativity. After
all, covers are exterior to the musical work. They only come beside, in addition to the
ergon. They're not really a part of it.
Zorn had a different opinion. He considers cover art an essential part of his work: 'I told
them [the record company, MC] that I would not put out a Naked City record without
Maruo Suehiro's [the artist who made the cover drawings, MC] participation; that he was
integral to the packaging of Naked City in the way that Yamatsuka Eye [he does the
vocal parts, MC] is integral to the band ... With me, the packaging is essential - that is my
artwork, making records' (Gagne, p.531-2). Another reaction to Nonesuch: 'If you don't
understand what's happening with the covers, then you don't understand what's happening
with the music because they're both coming from the same place' (Gagne, p.531).
According to Zorn, the covers are part of his artistic product and the cover designer is as
important as a member of the band. The parergon is an essential part of the ergon, the
inside. It is on the inside.
Where is the boundary drawn? Is it possible to draw a clear border? Where does it begin?
Where does it end? What is its internal limit? Its external limit? Depending upon the
point of view, shape and color are added to what I called an internal or an external
boundary, while the other boundary is unavoidably effaced at the same time. If we want
to maintain the field of tension, however, then all that we are left with is the aporia: a
parergon, a cover design or title is (n)either on the inside (n)or on the outside. It
undermines the opposites, inside vs. outside, intrinsic vs. extrinsic, essential vs.
accidental, etc. The idea to consider the parergon merely as an external and subordinate
supplement can only sustain itself when the complexity, the plurality, of the parergon is
ignored. (Titles, covers, and liner notes also have the dual function of closing up and
opening up. For instance, they demarcate a musical work from other works. But at the
same time, within the same move, they present and introduce the musical work.)
I am not at all interested in judging who is right or wrong, Zorn or Nonesuch. It is not
about outlining new borders or maintaining old ones. It is not about subverting any
border at all, just like that. 'Deconstruction must neither reframe, nor dream of the pure
absence of the frame' (The Truth In Painting, p.73). Perhaps, it is only about a sensitivity
to an insoluble situation of instability, of undecidability.

[4] Something on the structure of this section of the site. It has something to do with
Zorn's composition, Spillane, named for the author of the Mike Hammer detective books
and movies, Mickey Spillane. With Spillane, Zorn starts a composing method he calls
file-card composition. After much fieldwork (viewing the films, reading the books:
'Spillane is the distillation of all the books. Each section relates to an adventure in the
picaresque detective novel'), Zorn begins by making lists of impressions, ideas and
snippets of sound, some of which are later transferred to file cards as individual events.
These file cards become the actual score. In the recording studio, he slowly builds the
piece, section by section (cf. Duckworth, p.445). The result is a series of musical blocks
without a traditional development. It is a musical structure or montage involving much
juxtapositioning and discontinuity, a mixture of different musical styles, Zorn's own
contributions as well as quotations from pre-existing music (for instance, he uses the
theme from Route 66 as a kind of icon symbolizing the detective world). Listening to
Spillane means listening to jazz, blues, film music, spoken parts, and rhythm and blues
within a few minutes.
This section on Zorn can be regarded as a kind of file-card composition, too. Although it
mainly revolves around one project, Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, it has a block
structure as well, a montage of different texts that, taken together, should form a
kaleidoscopic picture of John Zorn and the deconstructions at work within his music.

[5] Positions I and Positions II are sociological explorations of Zorn's position in the
music world of New York and of his opportunity to create a new art world around
himself. In a way, Zorn, Noise, Cage, Pop is also about Zorn's musical position. This
page focuses on the idea that Zorn stands simultaneously inside and outside the popular
culture. This is supported on the basis of Zorn's use of noise as opposed to Cage's. While
listening to and analyzing Zorn's music, the problem of inside and outside is constantly
returning. (Zorn himself is also aware of this. In many interviews he talks about the
different musical languages he speaks which make it difficult to stereotype him.) In
Hymen, I connect the deconstruction of this oppositional pair in Zorn's music to Derrida's
ideas about inside and outside regarding hymen. In my opinion, the songs in Great
Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach can be called hymen, (n)either on the inside (n)or on the
outside of Bacharach's originals. In Zorn's Pharmacy, I liken these inside/outside
problems to a tumor, assuming Zorn's fondness for physical damages that is evidenced in
many of his song titles and on many of his CD covers.
In (D)(R)econtextualization, I explain how Zorn takes the music of Burt Bacharach out of
its 'normal' or 'original' context and places it within several others. Perhaps the most
important new context is revealed by the title of the project, Great Jewish Music. On the
Great Jewish Music page I expand upon the Jewishness of Zorn's music. What does it
mean to call his music Jewish and how Jewish are Bacharach's compositions? In Burt
Bacharach and John Zorn I concentrate on a more deconstructive musicological reading
of several of Bacharach's songs and Zorn's versions of them.
Zorn comments as such upon Bacharach's tunes. In that sense, Zorn can be regarded as a
parasite taking advantage of already existing music. In Saprophyte, I take another
standpoint: Zorn is also contributing to his host, Bacharach, and he is creating something
new, as well.
Up to this point I have been regarding Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach as a project
of John Zorn. And it is his project. However, he is not playing one note on either of these
two CD's. This raises the question of what it means to speak about 'his' music. In The
Signature of John Zorn and The Death of the Composer, I expand upon such questions
as: What is composing? What does it mean to be a composer? How clear is the distinction
between composing and arranging? What is the meaning of the proper name above a
composition? Is it thereby the composer's property? Is he the only producer?
Inside and outside. Either inside or outside. Neither inside nor outside. John Zorn. Great
Jewish Music. Burt Bacharach. Undecidability in music.
(D)(R)econtextualization
[1] Collage. Bricolage. Quotation. Parasitism. Use. Misuse. Decontextualization.
Recontextualization. Deterritorialization. Reterritorialization. Parody. This network of
terms - terms that overlap each other, but at the same time differ - is often made use of to
grasp the extremely versatile oeuvre of John Zorn (cf. Strickland, 1991; Gagne, 1993;
Jones, 1995; McNeilly, 1995; Lange, 1997). In general, it comes down to this: Zorn uses
pieces of music that appeal to him - musical parts, musical styles, sometimes even a
significant part of the complete works of a composer - takes them out of their 'original'
context and puts them into a new one. Confronting them with a new one. Confronting
them in a new one with other musics. Dismantling and reassembling. Following the
diagonal trajectory between what is reified and liberated. Inserting the music into the
stream of a musical history only to immediately dismantle a comfortable historical sense
(cf. McNeilly, p.7). In his own words: 'You could call it stealing, you could call it
quoting, you could call it a lot of different things. Basically, it's like I'd hear a sound
element in a Bartók section and I'd say, 'That sounds neat', so I'd take that section out of
the score and transcribe it into my own notation. Right? Then, I'd hear an Elliott Carter
there that I thought was neat, so I'd take that out of the score and put it someplace else.
And then I'd have my transitions and ... Do you know what I mean? I'd hear a sound; I'd
copy it. That's still pretty much the way I work now. I write music with the TV on or with
music playing, and I work things out. If I hear something on the TV, like in a commercial
or something, I'll say, 'Hmm... that's neat', and I'll just stick it in. The same thing with
records. In a lot of ways, it's got a collage element to it, but it's not so much what you're
taking as it is how you transform it into your own world' (Duckworth, p.449).
Citations. Displacement. Fragmentation. Cut and paste. 'Sometimes in my string quartets
I'll have one of my own lines in the first violin part; the second violin, I'll say, 'improvise
using glissandos'; the viola part will be from Boulez, Le marteau; and the cello part will
be a retrograde inversion of Stravinsky from some orchestra piece. All stacked in one bar.
And the next bar goes on to something else. That's one technique I like to use. Another
one is the use of genres: tango, blues, jazz, country. Also tributes to famous composers -
in other words, writing in the style of the great masters. Or taking all the pitches from one
bar of L'histoire du soldat and putting them in a different rhythmic matrix. I enjoy codes
and games like that. It gives a piece a strange kind of resonance - a relation to the past'
(Gagne, p.527). A relation to the past. But a disruptive one. Dislocated. Disquieted.
De- and recontextualization. These are the terms with which I would like to make some
groping and exploring movements around Zorn's project on Burt Bacharach's music.
Recontextualize it. But is this process not always already going on when we begin to talk
and write about music? Isn't working on the edge of music, the philosophy of music, and
musicology not already a way of decontextualizing (displacing and multiplying the
identification) and - of course - (re)contextualizing ((re)placing the identification)?

[2] So, although we have already begun, although we are already in the middle of 'it', let's
'begin' with some general remarks.
Every sign, every mark - either written or oral, discursive or musical - has to be
repeatable or iterable in order for it to be communicative. Such iterability structures the
mark. A mark that is not structurally iterable cannot be a mark. This structural iterability
implies that generally a mark must be able to function both in the absence of the sender
(the context of production) and in the absence of a receiver. A mark continues to 'act'
even when the producer (composer, author) no longer answers to what he has said or
written. Any mark can be dissociated from the intentions of the sender. The intention
does not mark out a field that can assure the meaning of a mark, since it must be iterable
in order to be a mark, and, therefore, detachable from intention and context. What holds
for the sender or producer also holds for the receiver for the same reasons. Every mark
must be capable of functioning in the absence of every empirically determined receiver.
The absence, or the possibility of the absence, of the receiver is inscribed in the structure
of the mark. These two possible absences of the sender and the receiver construct the
possibility of the message itself; 'they remark the mark in advance' (Limited Inc, p.50).
A mark carries with it the structural possibility of breaking away from its given context.
In 'Signature Event Context', Derrida distinguishes between two types of context. In a
real context, a mark possesses the characteristic of being audible or readable even if the
moment of its production is irrevocably lost and even if we do not know what its alleged
producer consciously intended to say when s/he produced it. In an internal semiotic
context, a mark by virtue of its essential iterability 'can always be detached from the
chain in which it is inserted or given without causing it to lose all possibility of
functioning, if not all possibility of 'communicating', precisely. One can perhaps come to
recognize other possibilities in it by inscribing it or grafting it onto other chains. No
context can entirely enclose it' (Margins, p.9).

[3] The fact that a mark can be repeated, taken out of its context, decontextualized and
recontextualized is part of its identity. This is no defect; rather, it constitutes the mark as
a mark. The possibility of iteration. Stem: iter, which means 'again'. But this possibility is
also what divides the identity of the mark. Iterated in a different context can and will
change its meaning. Derrida suggests that the word 'iter' comes from the Sanskrit word
'itara', which means 'other'. Along this line, we enter a paradoxical logic that ties
repetition to alterity. On one hand, iterability constitutes the identity of a mark: a certain
self-identity is required to permit its recognition and repetition, a certain consistency
must be maintained in order to be an identifiable mark. On the other hand and at the same
time, iterability never permits the mark to be a unity identical to itself. Because its
context is always different, it is never absolutely the same: 'repeated, the same line is no
longer exactly the same' (Writing and Difference, p.296). Iterability presupposes a
minimal remainder so that the identity of the selfsame is repeatable and identifiable in,
through, and even in view of its alteration. However, iterability implies both identity and
difference, repetition and alteration. It alters, it parasitically affects what it identifies and
enables it to repeat 'itself'; iterability ruins the very identity it renders possible (cf.
Limited Inc, p.76). The iterability of a mark divides its own identity a priori; it is a
differential structure. Alteration is always already at work within the inner core of the
mark when the identical is repeated.

[4] We can only speak of a signifying sequence when it is iterable, that is, if it can be
repeated in various contexts. Repetition is not an accident that befalls an original; rather,
it is its condition of possibility. Repetition. In more than one way. A mark can be cited
and parodied. It may occur in serious and non-serious contexts. It may. It's a possibility.
That's the difference between iterability and iteration. A distinction can be made between
possibility, the fact that marks can always be cited, and eventuality, the fact that such
possible events do indeed happen (cf. Limited Inc., p.86-7). However, it is important to
point out that constant possibility cannot be ruled out.
Iteration alters; something new takes place. For this reason, all conventional utterances
are exposed to failure. This is not an exception, but the condition of a mark. Failure is an
essential risk of the operations under consideration. The possibility of a negativity is a
structural possibility. This opens the way for the 'mis' in misunderstandings,
misinterpretations, the possibility to repeat something with another intention, to say
something else or in a different way 'than what it says'. There is always the possibility of
such 'mis-es'. With this in mind, Derrida, in 'Signature Event Context', wonders if the
'standard', 'normal', 'literal' is not at all times affected by the 'non-standard', the 'void', the
'abnormal', etc. Then what does that tell us about the former, the privileged first term?
So-called 'standard cases' can be reproduced, mimed, simulated, parasitized. They are in
themselves reproducible, already impure or open to parasitism. Indeed, the parasite is
never simply external; it can never simply be excluded from or kept outside of the body
'proper'. Parasitism: a parasite living off a body in which it resides. But, reciprocally, the
host incorporates the parasite to some extent, randomly offering it hospitality, providing
it with a place. The parasite is always already part of so-called ordinary language (cf.
Limited Inc., p.89-90). The risk of failure is an internal condition of every mark. It is an
outside, which is always already on the inside. The anomaly, the exception, the 'non-
serious', the citation is 'the determined modification of a general iterability without which
there would not even be a 'successful' performative' (Margins, p.17). A mark is marked
with a supposedly 'positive', 'serious' value. However, as it is iterable, it can be mimed,
cited, transformed. It always carries within itself its other, its 'negative' double.
Applied to the realm of music, it follows from these general remarks that iterability is
always inscribed, and therefore necessarily inscribed, as a possibility in the functional
structure of the musical mark, be it a note or a fragment, a whole composition or a
complete body of works. Iterability entails both the 'faithful' or conventional repetition of
a piece of music, as well as its transgression or transformation. All music can, in
principle, be repeated; thus, it automatically brings its own altering with it, dividing and
displacing in accordance with the logical force of the 'iter'.
It is within this structural possibility of the musical mark that I would like to situate
Zorn's works. 'In a lot of ways it's got a collage element to it, but it's not so much what
you're taking as it is how you transform it into your own world'. This is how Zorn talks
about much of his music, his method of working. (On The Signature of John Zorn, I
elaborate on this reference to one's 'own world'. His music commutes between identity
and non-identity. What exactly is Zorn's 'own world'?) Here, I would like to emphasize
Zorn's remark that his collage technique is not a mere citation, but a transformation of the
citations as well. At the same time. His musical 'commentary' let's listen 'for the first time'
to what already could be heard in the 'original' and it simultaneously repeats what could
never be heard before. Admittedly, something other than the 'original' musical piece is
played, but only with the understanding that it is this 'original' piece that is heard, which
is now completed in a different way.
There is more still to be said about this when related notions are invoked. Could we, for
instance, talk of a 'rhizomatic' relation (cf. Deleuze and Guattari)? The signification of the
cited element is neither univocal nor stable; it is precisely that which is destroyed in
deconstruction. The iterability of each mark undermines any unequivocal meaning. Each
cited element that Zorn uses breaks the continuity of the musical discourse and
necessarily leads to a double reading. By cutting it free and grafting it elsewhere, each
citation, each quotation creates a both/and situation with regard to the cited mark. It
acquires a new meaning in the new context. However, it retains its 'original' meaning at
the same time, even as its new context generates another meaning. The fragment can be
perceived in relation to its musical text of 'origin' (I stress 'origin' because no matter how
a musical text struggles to keep itself pure and different from other musical texts, it
originates as a weaving of prior musics) while it is incorporated into a new whole, a
different environment. It is not simply a matter of colonization; the alterity of these
marks, united in Zorn's composition, can never entirely be suppressed.

[5] Zorn (Who? He? Without playing?) de- and re-contextualizes a number of Burt
Bacharach's hit singles. In fact, I am doing the same with both of them. As well as with
that other who keeps haunting me.
'You are from another part of the world'. A quotation. A quotation from a quotation. Fred
Frith uses this phrase often in his version of 'Trains And Boats And Planes' in the album,
Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach (1997, Tzadik, TZ 7114-2). 'Trains And Boats And
Planes', a sad love song about someone who loses his or her lover who has returned to his
or her homeland in 'another part of the world'. S/he promised to come back, but it seems
an idle promise.
But what if Frith turned this song into a more musical reflection? What if 'you' refers to
Burt Bacharach? What if Frith means to say that Bacharach is from another part of the
musical world? Is this what Frith's version (I won't say interpretation, rather, encounter)
lets us listen to? The text Frith uses continues: 'You had to go back awhile, and then you
said you soon would return again'. Bacharach was a world renowned songwriter, film
composer, arranger, and producer from the early 1960's through the early '70's. He then
disappeared for the most part for some 25 years reemerging at the end of the 1990's.
Younger generation musicians such as Elvis Costello, McCoy Tyner, Eric Matthews, the
Cranberries, Oasis, Yo La Tengo, Stereolab, and the Pizzicato Five began to pay tribute
through cover versions and reinterpretations and allusions to his music. During
interviews, they talked of the influence Bacharach had on their work. This, along with the
deconstruction of his music in Zorn's project, contributed to Bacharach's return. Could
the cited lyrics (also) refer to Bacharach as a revenant? Could they refer to specters of
Bacharach, coming back and coming for the first time? It is evident that there are more
than one. It is evident that 'Bacharach' is a metonym for his music here, something with
which he does not converge, like traces that he left behind in his passing. As soon as the
musical text is there, the composer has already gone, has passed by, has perhaps died.
The music stays on as an orphan. It is dissociated from its producer. However, because it
is a mark it can be reproduced, repeated, iterated. And it can be altered in the same move.
Iterability and/as first time. Repeated, but never the same. Like a specter. And since a
specter is a revenant, it returns. But it is a coming back of something, which is
simultaneously transformed, and not really there; it was never there in this form. 'I'm
waiting here, but where are you?' Although the 'original' song does not end at this point,
these are the final lyrics that Frith uses. 'But where are you?' There is some identification,
but it is not very clear. Is it about Bacharach again? Where in this version are you?
Bacharach, present and absent at the same time? Of course, Frith plays 'Trains And Boats
And Planes'. You'll recognize it. But at the same time, his version is entirely different as
it plays only part of the bridge and the first two bars of the main theme. Moreover, they
are highly modified. The first two bars are continuously repeated, only in the
instrumental, with underlying steady rhythmic patterns and mechanical, industrial beats
that evoke old-fashioned trains, boats, or planes. The vocal is not sweet, not slightly
mellow as in the original, but becomes more aggressive with each repetition, more
desperate, shouting out the frustration over the lover's (or is it Bacharach?) not coming
back. Frith's version of 'Trains And Boats And Planes' is an interpretation of Bacharach's
composition, but at the same time, it is not. It is certainly not a cover version in the
traditional sense. He cites parts of the song, but these citations make up his entire version.
They are not connected with compositions from other parts of the musical world. The
encounter with another musical world lies in the way Frith plays these citations, vamps
them, alters them. His variations are also deviations, restructurings. He cuts them out of
their conventional whole without offering them a new safe haven. They are bared,
stripped, like one who is lovelorn. And Bacharach cannot protect them (himself?). Why?
Because he is not there. He had to leave. He only left some traces.

[6] I return to the first quotation of a quotation. 'You are from another part of the world.'
Suppose this is a reference to Bacharach's coming from another area (another level? I'll
return to this) of the musical world. Zorn introduces Bacharach to other contexts, other
discourses, other musical worlds. Below are three of them, two of which are closely
connected.

1. So-called avant-garde (rock) music. Let's not attempt to clearly define this world. It is
too heterogeneous, too diverse, too pluralistic. Let's assume we all know what it means -
for example, that the avant-garde artist is not interested in the reception of her or his work
by the general public. Furthermore, that he does not produce art for the sake of the public;
rather, that the public is there for the art. Finally, that art is autonomous. In this respect,
Zorn seems to have 'classical' avant-garde views. He is not interested in pleasing
everyone. He does not care much for the opinion of the general public with respect to his
music (cf. Lesage, p.11. cf. Gagne, p.530). Rather, he seeks recognition among his fellow
musicians who work in the same musical world (cf. Strickland, p.130). Although he
clearly states that his music does not fit neatly into any one scene, Zorn aligns himself for
the most part with the legacy or maverick tradition of the avant-garde. Or, at least Zorn
recognizes that many critics regard his music as avant-garde.
But how classically avant-garde is Zorn? Let's add one more familiar characteristic of the
avant-garde; again, one that will not be elaborated upon. I refer to the problematic, if not
antagonist, relationship to so-called popular culture, in particular, their respective
positions on the autonomy of art and recognition by the general public. Avant-garde. The
word itself (the self-definition of the 'avant-garde') leaves no room for misunderstanding
about its position: at the forefront, the vanguard, the cutting edge of art, and way ahead of
popular culture at any rate. Doesn't popular culture at best follow the avant-garde? And
isn't it true that popular culture will never be able to overtake the avant-garde?
It appears that a kind of reversal of these ideas takes place in Zorn's music. How could
Zorn's Burt Bacharach project be used as an example of deconstructing the opposition
between popular culture and avant-garde? (All sources concerning Bacharach's music
consider it a part of popular culture. cf. for example Lohof, p.74-81.) In Great Jewish
Music: Burt Bacharach popular culture is presupposed as a given. Avant-garde is no
longer a form of artistic creativity that runs ahead of popular culture. Instead, here the
avant-garde follows popular culture! It functions as an heir to popular culture. (And, as
we should know, an inheritance is never neutral. It is not a given, but a task, as Derrida
explains in Specters of Marx. There will always be some kind of transformation.) Given
the fact that Zorn uses aspects from popular culture, that is, his project is a reflective
processing of this cultural heritage, his avant-garde music cannot simply oppose popular
culture (cf. Lesage, p.13-4). Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach is, in one way or
another, part of this popular culture, but stands outside of it at the same time. (N)either
inside (n)or outside. (In Zorn, Noise, Cage, Pop is pointed out that much of his music is
rooted in popular culture, but that it disrupts this culture as well. Rethinking and
reconsidering his position should elucidate the difficulty in classifying him.)
Zorn makes a slice of popular music accessible and acceptable to a public that is more
comfortable with avant-garde music or with music that is situated in the margins of the
musical world. Zorn writes in the liner notes of a similar project, Great Jewish Music:
Serge Gainsbourg: 'It is my sincere hope that this compilation will introduce
Gainsbourg's music to a whole new audience ... I urge you to search out the original
versions. Devour them. Live with them. They will delight and surprise you time and time
again'. It is not difficult to imagine that this will also apply to Bacharach's music.

2. High and low culture. Zorn questions the consolidation of the alleged opposition
between avant-garde art and popular culture. Closely related to this is the oppositional
dichotomy of high and low culture. Zorn adopts a double position that seems to reflect his
attitude towards the opposition of avant-garde versus popular culture. It looks quite
simple at first sight. The liner notes of his 1987 CD, Spillane, read: 'We should take
advantage of all the great music and musicians in this world without fear of musical
barriers, which sometimes are even stronger than racial or religious ones'. This could
allude to a license Zorn takes to let the 'great' music of the low culture enter the realm of
the high culture. Zorn's projects introduce low cultural utterances to a 'higher' part of the
musical world. At the same time, however, Zorn neutralizes the strict opposition in his
struggle for the abolition of music-political hierarchies. Jazz, rock, pop, klezmer,
classical, electronic, concrete, and improvised music need not be viewed as stagnant
compartments, but as potential for interaction. The deconstruction at work within Zorn's
Burt Bacharach project is not a simple deconstruction of the borderline between high and
low culture that would permit the latter to enter the former. This would leave the
opposition intact. If Zorn's project questions the concepts of high and low culture, it takes
place in an area between, or outside of high and low culture. Zorn juxtaposes them in
such a way that they question each other. The concepts themselves become the topics for
investigation: 'This is something I really react strongly against, the idea of high art and
low art. I mean, that distinction's a bunch of fucking bullshit ... There's good music and
great music and phoney music in every genre, and all the genres are the fucking same! ...
People who grew up in the 60's listening to blues, rock, classical, avant-garde, ethnic
music - I think we all share one common belief, that all this music is on equal grounds
and there's no high art and low art' (Strickland, p.128-9). If the concepts themselves and
the use to which they are put are discussed, the boundary between arts and economics or
politics is transgressed. Whose interests are served by the institutionalization of the
existing distinction? In reference to his border crossing music in general, Zorn is quoted
as saying: 'It's a pity writers can't deal with this music on its own terms. But not being
tied to any one existing musical tradition has made it difficult for journalists to
pigeonhole what we are doing - to place it historically - and for businesspeople to market
it' (Blumenfeld). According to Zorn, an erroneous categorization creates an entirely new
layer of misunderstandings. The possibility of a musical categorization seems to
influence economic successes. Without a clear label, marketing becomes very difficult
and large record companies simply will not deal with it. Zorn, however, insists that his
music, and that of many others, does have commercial potential. He pleads for the
addition of an avant-garde or experimental music section in record stores (cf.
Blumenfeld). Is he falling into the trap against which he argues: a categorization of that
which cannot be categorized? (After all, what is experimental? What is avant-garde?) Or
can we regard his plea as a necessary questioning of certain institutions, institutions that
classified high and low culture as absolute categories of identities? (We cannot not
categorize or classify and every de- and re-categorization gets something done.)
Something strange happens with these two points. The re-territoralization turns out to be
a de-territoralization at the same time. Where do the territories of avant-garde art, popular
music, high and low culture begin and end? How rigid are the frames? How clear the
boundaries? Although Zorn argues for more categories (Would there be an end?), his
music does not favor one category over another. His music is located - or better,
dislocated - precisely on the frame, on the border of innumerable already existing
categories and (eventually) new ones. This is what Misko Suvakovic calls exoteric
modernism. On one hand, there are artworks that include the criticism, correction,
application and mass consumption of their high culture effects, inscriptions, tracks. These
are artworks that use the communication channels, modes of expression, effects, clichés,
genres, codes, and modes of mass culture representation in the domain of high artistic
experiment and production. At the same time, however, these same artworks transform,
transgress, and transfigure the values, representations, expressions, and goals of high art
into the domains of mass media and mass consumption (cf. Suvakovic, p.34). John Zorn.
Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. (N)either high art (n)or low art. In between high
art and low art.

3. Jewishness. Undoubtedly the most controversial recontextualization. Since it is also the

most complicated, I have reserved a special page for this topic: Great Jewish Music. This
text is confined to a few preliminary observations. In the liner notes of his CD, Great
Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, Zorn writes: 'Burt Bacharach is one of the great geniuses
of American popular music - and he's a Jew. This should come as no surprise since many
of America's greatest songwriters have been Jewish - Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, George
Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Leiber & Stoller, Bob Dylan, Lou
Reed, Richard Hell, Beck ... It is arguable that the history of the Jews in this century has
produced one of the most richly rewarding periods of culture in American history. Yet,
this fact is somehow kept neatly hidden. WHAT? Compare Philip Roth to Sholem
Aleichem? Kafka to Moses de Leon? Walter Benjamin to Rashi? Wittgenstein to
Spinoza? Steve Reich to Felix Mendelssohn? Allen Ginsberg to Yehudah Halevi?
Einstein to Nostrodamus? Lenny Bruce to Hillel? Burt Bacharach is such a name. A
trailblazer. A questioner. An unbridled genius. More than a great tunesmith he's a
conductor, a pianist and a singer, a bold arranger with an original vision and sharp ear for
detail, a brilliant producer and a sensitive collaborator. ... Thank you, Burt. Thank you for
not changing your name'.
The switching, going quickly from inside to outside, is abundantly clear: Zorn now
speaks of the music (the inside?), then of something quite different (the outside?).

[7] We are entering a complex web of recontextualizations. Bacharach (both the music
and the man) enters into a plurality of contexts. He is introduced to contexts that are not
always clearly distinguishable. And there are always more contexts at work. Furthermore,
no context can be saturated. With respect to music as a mark, music, as such, can attach
itself to other (musical) texts. There is always the possibility of dissemination, of going to
places, carrying meanings and revealing connections that were not only unintented on the
composer's part, but that he could not even have imagined. With respect to the composer,
he composes in a musical language, the proper systematics and laws of which he cannot
fully dominate. A critical reading must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived
by the composer, between his ability and inability to command the patterns of the
language that he uses (cf. Of Grammatology, p.158). With respect to the institutional
context, each relationship we have with an artwork includes the history of its reception,
which has been determined by the aesthetic ideologies of each consecutive present, these,
in turn, being conditioned by the ideologies of contemporary social groups (cf.
Hadjinicolaou). Zorn's recontextualization could include such questions as: How 'neutral'
can any 'ordinary' reading, interpretation, or performance of Bacharach be? Can we gain
more insight into the conventions and conceptual operations that shape the listener? Can
we gain more insight into capitalist overtones, which are at the service of a political
ideology? Are we able to examine the social factors that frame every mark? By placing
Bacharach in a different context, a controversial context perhaps, we may be forced to
reconsider how marks are constituted or framed by various discursive practices,
institutional arrangements, and value systems. More concretely: by including the word
'Jewish' in the title, the work exceeds the 'purely musical' realm. It may raise questions
about the unwritten (and unexplored) role that religion, or a culture (history and politics)
based on common religious foundations, has in the creation of contemporary music.

[8] Returning to the Jewish context, I will distinguish - roughly, arbitrarily, provisionally,
rudimentarily - four possibilities to examine a difficult matter:

1. A Jewish political context. By explicitly and polemically referring to his Jewish

descent, Zorn draws Bacharach into an ethno-political context, a specific cultural identity.
An important issue for Zorn because he experienced some latent anti-Semitism in a
number of countries where he performed and in some musical scenes in which he had an
interest. Zorn: 'I think it's important for Jews to have positive role models, so that they
want to identify themselves as Jews' (Blumenfeld). Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach
can be described as the 'coming out' of Jews. 'Thank you, Burt. Thank you for not
changing your name'. Zorn seems to turn Bacharach into a hero. Unlike many others,
Bacharach did not change his Jewish sounding name in order to safeguard his career.
According to Zorn, this was a risk: many Jewish artists, in coming out, had to content
themselves with a marginalized position in America's mainstream culture (cf. Wilson,
p.23).
Here, music proves to be an important medium of ideological and political expression. It
is stepping over its own threshold. It insists on a listening or reading of something that
resides beyond music as an (acoustic) frame. (Or is it always already a part of it?) Zorn's
project and his accompanying commentary go beyond music as 'mere' music. It overflows
the musical boundary. An outbidding in surplus value. Debordering. Overbordering. One
might ask, or perhaps one should ask: is this overflowing an intended result of Zorn's
discursive operation or does the music have reasons of its own? Or, to be more concrete:
is there Jewishness in the musical structure? These are questions about limits, of being-in
and being-out. Zorn's music avows what often is disavowed, i.e. that there is no 'mere'
music or 'purely musical' realm.

2. Jewish music. First, some dates. From the early 1990's on, many people in the (white)
avant-garde scene in New York (re)discovered their Jewish identity. In 1993, the Knitting
Factory (longsince the place for the New York avant garde to perform) started organizing
eight yearly concert evenings under the header Radical Jewish Culture. Also in 1993,
Zorn released his CD, Kristallnacht, that consisted of klezmer traces, Jewish wedding
and party music, the extreme noise of breaking glass (no explanation required!), and
speeches of Hitler. A Star of David decorates the cover. Two years later, Zorn produced
his first Masada CD. (Masada refers to the last Jewish bulwark against the Roman
conquerors.) Important influence: klezmer music. Also in 1995, Zorn founded Tzadik, a
label for experimental and avant-garde music. One of the most important series released
on this label: Radical Jewish Culture, a mixture of new Jewish music and disruptive
interpretations of klezmer or Sephardic classics, Hebrew texts, stories on and by Jews,
etc. Part of this series is called 'Great Jewish Culture', a series of discs by composers not
usually recognized as Jewish. The battle of words can begin (and, of course, it is about
more than words alone): what exactly is Jewish music? Does it have any distinguishable
intrinsic characteristics? Or, is it simply music made by Jewish people? These questions
are addressed on the page Great Jewish Music.

3. Jewish musicians. A new chain of connections presents itself. In his liner notes, Zorn
prompts us to draw a 'line of flight' (cf. Deleuze and Guattari) between Bacharach and
other such Jewish musicians as Lou Reed, Steve Reich and Kurt Weill. These are
conjunctions that would (perhaps) be less obvious in a conventional musical context. In
the Radical Jewish Culture series, we find Bacharach linked to such avant-garde
musicians as Zeena Parkins, Richard Teitelbaum, and David Krakauer. All the musicians
performing on Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach are Jewish. Being Jewish is what
relates Burt Bacharach to Serge Gainsbourg and Marc Bolan, two other composers Zorn
honors in the series 'Great Jewish Culture'. Is this all too obvious? All right then, how
about linking Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach to Redbird, a CD which is not usually
associated with Jewishness at all. The chamber music on this CD seems to be a tribute to
another Jewish composer, Morton Feldman, a tribute without naming it a tribute. The
slow, tranquil sequences of chords in Redbird strongly resemble Feldman's Piano and
String Quartet.

4. Jewish identity. What exactly is Zorn doing with Bacharach? His liner notes and the
title (how important, how essential are these parerga?) - indicate that he is rendering
Bacharach his Jewishness. By paying tribute to Bacharach in and through an explicit
Jewish context, Zorn disputes possession of Bacharach's music with an American music
industry and with a cultural mainstream, which, in his opinion, exclude Jews or restrict
their influence when they profess their religion or acknowledge their culture. So Zorn is
(re)reading ((re)presenting) Bacharach within a Jewish context. A process of
deterritorialization and reterritorialization; bringing him back to the territory that he never
actually left ('Thank you, Burt. Thank you for not changing your name'). Zorn assigns
something to him that he had already possessed. He was always on the inside. And yet,
Zorn has to give it back to him. Zorn - as the guest, the visitor, while Bacharach is the
host - gives the man of the house the opportunity to enter into his own house. The host
enters the inside from the inside, as though he is coming from the outside. And it is the
guest who offers hospitality. (This idea of host and guest is elaborated upon in
Saprophyte.)
However, Zorn is not only redelivering a Jewish identity to Bacharach. In fact, he is also
redelivering a Jewish identity to himself. Through Bacharach. He professes Judaism by
paying attention, by paying tribute to a Jewish composer. He testifies in and through his
music. It is a chain of restitutions. As if he were a stranger, he knocks on the door of the
host and asks to be let in. Or, perhaps, he forces an entry. But this stranger (and how
strange he really is, we will have to determine) is the prodigal son at the same time,
returning to the house of his father. Zorn and Bacharach. They both lived in the same
house, under the same roof of Judaism. With the help of the other, they may enter the
inside of the house again.
Burt Bacharach and John
Zorn
[1] It seems obvious to consider Zorn as someone who is quite difficult to stereotype. His
flirtations with almost every type of music make it impossible to categorize or classify his
work. And even when you do finally decide, for example, that his string quartet, 'Cat-o'-
Nine-Tails', is definitely classical music, it will always be in the margins of this label, this
category, this music world.
To classify Burt Bacharach seems to present less difficulty. Former king of mainstream
popular music. Composer of middle-of-the road hits. Producer of easy listening tunes. He
is at the heart of American pop music, confirming and continuing in the conventions of
the Tin Pan Alley tradition. He can be viewed as a last bastion of this tradition of well-
crafted songwriting. And the content of his songs signifies a world where nothing is
likely to go seriously wrong. His work is a symbol of the uncomplicated part of the
1960's, the musical expression of the 'American Dream', the musical perfection of the
bourgeois ideal.

[2] At the same time, however, Bacharach is outside the tradition and conventions within
which he is located. He profoundly altered the art of songwriting, expanding both the
harmonic and melodic potentials of the popular song. He stretched and redefined the rules
of the Tin Pan Alley paradigm that dictated the structures of pop songs. In the liner notes
of the CD, Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, Zorn writes of Bacharach, 'Bacharach's
songs explode the expectations of what a popular song is supposed to be. Advanced
harmonies and chord changes with unexpected turnarounds and modulations, unusual
changing time signatures and rhythmic twists, often in uneven numbers of bars. But he
makes it all sound so natural you can't get it out of your head or stop whistling it.
Maddeningly complex, sometimes deceptively simple, these are more than just great pop
songs: these are deep explorations of the materials of music and should be studied and
treasured with as much care and diligence we accord any great works of art'.
Here, another Bacharach appears: a true subversive, a maverick who challenges the
conventions of an entire generation of composers of popular music. At a time when the
three or four chord pop tune is the rule, Bacharach employs more sophisticated chord
progressions that are usually associated with jazz music. But his compositions have not
so much to do with most conventional jazz standards, an A-A-B-A form in 4/4 with many
II-V-I chord progressions. (Forgive this inaccuracy. This is not the place to discuss in
detail the accounts and principles of jazz.) His melodies are often asymmetrical and do
not fit into conventional 4/4 rhythms and harmonic forms. Rhythmically, his
compositions move far beyond the 4/4 swing of jazz. (Perhaps the influence of
Bacharach's teacher, Darius Milhaud, whose music stresses polyrhythms and unusual
asymmetrical phrases, can still be heard here.) Extended harmonies, complex wanderings
of melodies, and changes of meter all sounds like a formula for commercial suicide, yet
Bacharach ruled the pop charts through the 1960's (cf. Heller). (Bacharach talks about his
compositional technique as a 'horizontal' view of a melody in which the tune is allowed to
stretch and breath naturally, unhindered by the strictures of chords and rhythms. The
structure of the songs is generated by the arc of the melody. All other components are
secondary to securing that natural flow.) These intricate compositions are about their own
virtuosity. This virtuosity delights in complexity and craftsmanship, even more so
because it is disguised within just another pop tune: the melodic, harmonic, and
rhythmical turns do not seem forced, but sound very natural.
Bacharach can be considered a transitional character. He can be situated (But should we?
What is the benefit, the surplus value?) in between the past of the Tin Pan Alley tradition
and the forthcoming pop and rock culture. Neither inside nor outside either world. In
between, that is, in the margin. In terms of both music and time.

[3] The cool perfection of Bacharach's songs is deceptive. Under a seemingly unwrinkled
surface, subtle complications are hidden.
Let's consider two songs in a bit more detail. 'Alfie' sounds like a 32-bar song with four
8-bar phrases according to the conventional pattern A-A-B-A. However, the first A
comprises ten bars, the second, eight, and the third, fourteen. Furthermore, the third A
repeats only the first two bars of the other A's before it takes a whole new melodic and
harmonic direction in the next five bars. To end the song, it returns to material already
exposed in the first A, but with a deviating final cadence. Harmonically, 'Alfie' resembles
some conventional jazz standards. It includes several II-V-I progressions; the chords that
are used contain such extensions as a nine and a thirteen, and each phrase has some
modulations. Yet many problems occur in 'the bridge', the B part. First of all, there is this
strange transition to B minor where the A parts might be in C major, a modulation which
is not very common in most jazz standards. But can we really assert that the bridge
modulates to the key of B minor? These are the first four bars of the bridge: I Bm7 / / / I
Eb6/d / Am9/d / I Bm7 / / / I Cmaj7/d / / / I. Neither the Eb6, nor the Am9 nor the Cmaj7
fit in the key of B minor. Not in one single key! These are very uncommon chord changes
not only for a popular song, but for a jazz tune as well. Is this the reason why so many
jazz musicians who play Bacharach's tunes have great difficulties in finding the right
approach? By improvising on the harmonic changes, they may try to tease out unsounded
implications, yet Bacharach's song proves curiously unyielding. As a vehicle for jazz
improvisation, this music seems too tightly constructed to permit much fruitful alteration.
The song stubbornly resists the often used jazz patterns or scales.
Stan Getz contents himself with a virtual singing of 'Alfie' on sax in the album, What The
World Needs Now. No improvisation on the harmonic schema. It is not necessary. His
version already contains some explorations and variations on the musical material.
During his Village Vanguard sessions - between the early 60's and mid 70's - pianist Bill
Evans recorded 'Alfie' several times. Like Getz, he plays around with the melodic part
using rhythmic variations, additions and embellishments. But as a master of the
reharmonization of standard tunes, he added many chords. So, in one of his
interpretations the first two bars, I CaddD I Dm7 I, change to I C6/9 Bb9 Am7 A7b10 I
Dm9 / / G(b)13 I. Taking a closer look, however, these added harmonic progressions are
merely ornamentations of a tune that comes pre-ornamented. The G chord in the second
bar makes the transition from Dm to the Cmaj7 in the third bar a bit easier: a
conventional II-V-I. In the same way, the A7b10 prepares for the appearance of Dm.
Am7 can be regarded as a substitution chord for C. Finally, Bb9 leads chromatically from
C to Am and is, at the same time, the tritonus of E7, the V of Am. So, in fact, Evans'
'Alfie' is not reharmonized. Although extended with additional chords, the harmonic
foundational structure remains the same. His improvisations stay close to the melody and
never extend over more than the first half of the form (the first two A's): approaching the
bridge, he always returns to the theme.
I digressed. Let's go back to that 'other' 'Alfie', the melodic part of the composition. In
many popular songs, the melody is directly derived from the chords. In 'Alfie', the
melody is supported by the chords; the melody note often extends the chord (cf. for
instance bars 8, 10, 21, and 33). Unfamiliar with jazz chords, the use of unresolved
melodic cadences in 'Alfie' can leave the listener hanging. Furthermore, the melody
constantly runs the risk of simply extending outwards in a series of increasingly far-flung
spirals, losing the possibility of circling acceptably back. How far can it drift from the
starting point or opening motif before the literate listener (performer, analyst) loses all
hope that it is ever going to get back? The melody meanders so unpredictably that it is
threatened with unbridgeable gaps and unexpected dissonances. But then Bacharach
abruptly brings it home by using some type of deft shortcut or another (cf. for instance
bars 10 and 25-6). This can be explained in part by Bacharach's remark that his work
proceeds from the lyrics; 'It can take you to different places than you might have gone to
left on your own. The lyric dictated that the melody needed to go there'. But in some
sense, the lyrics hardly seem to matter to this music; are they anything more than an
occasion to let Bacharach play with a very elaborate melodic and harmonic palette?

[4] 'Promises, Promises'. In fact, this song is about false promises, the mental pressure to
keep your pledges to yourself. What does 'Promises, Promises' musically promise? First
of all, a 3/4 time. However, already in the first bar, the melody tries to break this promise.
To be sure, the 3/4 time is maintained, but the six notes divided up in two groups of three
notes ask rather for a 6/8 time. 'Things that I promised myself fell apart' the lyrics tell us.
This kind of introspection can be recognized in the rhythmic part of the song. (Is the
sentiment and meaning of the lyrics that are 'driving' the rhythmic development?) Meter
and time dissociate in this first bar; they fall apart. Chances are very high that the second
bar is indeed a 3/4. But one could read the third as a transposed copy (this seems like a
paradox) of the first (again as a 6/8) while bars 5 and 6 are in 4/4 time. From the very
start, the song has many difficulties in keeping its promise. No, not many difficulties; it
cannot fulfill its pledge. 'Promises, promises, this is where those promises, promises end!
I won't pretend ...'. They end immediately where they started. Here, different than that of
'Alfie' probably, it is difficult to blame the lyrics for the melodic development. It is not
grammatically, nor poetically necessary to repeat 'promises' the second time (bar 3). And
where the sentence ends, with the word 'end', the melodic phrase does not end. Only the
melodic and rhythmic inventions of Bacharach are to blame here. I will not assert that the
melody works against the lyrics. More carefully, more prudently put, it works outside of
it.
The following bars are more quiet. The promise of time is redeemed. Still, the musical
phrases have patterns and pulses of their own as a result of the frequently occurring
syncopations. Sometimes it seems as if this part of the piece was written with a formal
rhythm for the purpose of keeping the performers together.
I come to the end now. A feast of excess. Superabundance, almost dissipation, waste.
Time changes every bar. Time signatures tumble over one another. The end cannot
control itself. Bacharach cannot control himself. Maybe he cannot even control the end; it
follows its own dynamics, beyond any control. Bacharach, however, makes excuses: 'I
don't know they [time changes, MC] are there until I go to write it out'. Maybe Bacharach
is right: maybe it is a bit boring trying to keep your promise, to promise a 3/4 time and to
maintain it throughout the entire song. 'Promises, promises, take all the joy from life', the
text goes on before it ends with: 'My kind of promises can lead to joy'. Whose kind of
promises? Bacharach's? His kind of promise is to break his promise. His kind of promise
is a non-promise. He promises a waltz, but there never is one. He promises a waltz in G
major, but the second and third chords already do not fit this key. He breaks his promise
already in the first bar, after only three notes. But it can lead to joy. We can see him
smile, we can hear him laugh. 'I put them on the wrong track again'. Or, the melodic
development has put us on the wrong track.
At other times, however, he doesn't fail to keep his promise because he didn't promise.
There is no trace, for example, of the standard patterns A-A-B-A or verse-chorus-verse-
chorus-interlude-verse-chorus. Of course, one can expect them in a musical song, a
popular hit. One hopes for it. But they're not there. And he didn't promise: 'I'm all through
with promises, promises ... I feel free'.
I'm all through with 'Promises, Promises'.

[5] His peers were first to recognize his genius. They tended to copy his arrangements
almost note for note amounting to a sort of tribute. But would paying tribute be the same
as imitation, as mimicry? Can it be different? Must it be different, perhaps? Derrida
suggests another perspective in 'At This Very Moment In This Work Here I Am', a text
which honors Levinas by being 'ungrateful', 'faulty', 'violent' to him. (I'm using the
quotation marks to make clear that these words are not used not in the usual sense.) It has
to be ungrateful in order to maintain the ethical structure that Levinas' texts puts to work,
an ethical structure that generously goes from 'the same' to 'the other' without ever
returning to the same. So, in his text Derrida is (has to be) loyal and disloyal at the same
time, avoiding a return to the same, to Levinas (cf. Of the Critics.) In my opinion, Zorn
works in much the same way as Derrida. Consider, for example, Spy Vs. Spy, Zorn's
tribute to Ornette Coleman. Zorn isn't playing any cover versions; he doesn't imitate
Coleman's music or his way of playing. This kind of gratitude would return the work to
the same. In this sense, Zorn is disloyal. But he is loyal to the intense energy and real
'bluesiness' of this music. It shocked people. They didn't understand it. It was mere noise
to them. So Zorn promised himself: 'If I'm going to do a record on Ornette, it's got to be a
punch right in the face, it's got to shock people - the way his music did in the early '60s,
because that was an important part of what that experience was, it was so different'. So I
said 'It's got to go all the way. Let's bring the energy up more, the trash' (Cagne, p.523).
Rather than paying respect by playing jazz 'under glass à la Wynton Marsalis' there is a
reinvention of the tradition, a tradition 'that needs to be updated to keep it alive' (cf.
Jones, p.151). Zorn honors Coleman, not by copying him, but by letting other voices
(noises) be heard, in a way that Coleman did in the 1960's.
Updating it to keep it alive. That's what Zorn does with Bacharach's music, as well. How?
Let's return to the liner notes for a moment. Zorn characterizes Bacharach as 'a
questioner' with 'an original vision and sharp ear for detail'. 'Bacharach's songs explode
the expectations of what a popular song is supposed to be ... Maddeningly complex,
sometimes deceptively simple, these are more than just great pop songs: these are deep
explorations of the materials of music and should be studied and treasured with as much
care and diligence as we accord any great works of art'. Questioning musical conventions.
Staking expectations. Examining the materials of music. These are the key phrases. And
according to these standards, we could judge Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach.
Updating it to keep it alive. How? Not by adding some musical aspects (ornaments) to the
surface, but by removing them from the depth, by sifting out what seems unnecessary.
Zorn's project lends credence to the notion that the way to recapture the past is to tear it
apart. Not adding further decoration to the tunes, but stripping away textures and
trappings to find the song's skeleton. To be faithful. To honor him. 'The intention, in all
cases, has been to pay tribute to one of the world's greatest songwriters' (liner notes).
Not adding something to Bacharach's originals, but suppressing certain elements
(sometimes cunningly, sometimes overtly) in order to make space for something new.
Listen to Joey Baron's version of 'Alfie'. On drums. Solo. The melody becomes vaguely
apparent. An empty outline. Toms, snare and cymbals mark the contours of this song. By
playing the melody on drums, Baron is hiding the missing parts of this solo version, but
at the same time, exhibiting the lost parts in absentia. 'Alfie' appears as a specter: blurred,
not clearly recognizable. The opposition of present vs. absent is being undermined in this
spectrality. It appears. But there is something that has disappeared as well, departed in the
apparition, itself a re-apparition of the departed. And it appears with a slight alteration:
The striking four semi-quavers, followed by a minim, do not appear on the first beat of
the bar, but they do appear on the second. But what's it all about! 'Are we meant to take
more than we give, or are we meant to be kind?' Is it a question of choosing, as the 'or'
suggests? Baron took more than he gives back, but he is 'kind' to Bacharach. Not by
imitating him, but by emphatically allowing the meandering of the melody to be heard.
Rhythmically. 'I learned those songs according to how the phrases breathe', Baron says
(Heller). But Baron does not seem to need the lungs in order to let his 'Alfie' breathe; he
needs only the skeleton.

[6] The point is not about roots, but connections. Not arborescent systems, but rhizomes.
How far from its point of origin, from its home, can a version (not a cover!) wander?
How violently can the original be distorted, while remaining tantalizingly recognizable?
(I call it 'violently distorted' because it is not a return to the same, not a repetition of the
same.) One of the difficulties in dealing with Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach is that
of grasping the furtive moment when a certain (border)line is crossed, and of grasping,
too, the step with which it is crossed, the infringement that detaches the music from its
'original' milieu. Sometimes, charting the migration of the musical materials becomes part
of the listening experience. A play between similarities and differences. A shibboleth
between both pieces of music. A shibboleth that guarantees the transition from the one to
the other, in all their difference, within the realm of the same (cf. Shibboleth, p.57).
Let's expand on the strangeness of being-at-home, being-away-from-home, being called
away from the native country, or called away from home within the native country ... 'A
House Is Not A Home'. Anthony Coleman (keyboards, piano, trombone, vocals), Doug
Wieselman (clarinet) and Jim Pugliese (percussion, trumpet). I'm not going to discuss it
in detail. I cannot explain in words what the music tells us so well. Please listen to it.
Listen to how alienating the opening notes of the melody sound when badly played on the
trumpet. Listen to the dissonant accompaniment on keyboards and clarinet. Listen to the
second part of the main theme, stretched out like a rubber band by the piano in indistinct
harmonic progressions. Listen how 'everything' converges again, resolves, on the tonic in
bar 10, but how they extend this 'coming home' (by, for example, a ritenuto) before the
trumpet gives the sign to leave again. Listen, finally, to 'the bridge' that is played in an
entirely different tempo where a sweet clarinet repeats the first two bars (neither
indicated, nor played in the original) accompanied by a discordant pedal point on the
keyboard and dissonant minims by trombone and trumpet. At the very least, this
translation is not a very common version of Bacharach's title song for the movie of the
same name. When you know the 'original' version, this one can lead to a very
discomforting experience. You certainly will not feel at home. It involves a
transformation, if not a perversion, of the way this music is read 'in general' and perhaps
by Bacharach himself. 'A house is not a home when there's no one there to hold you
tight'. Detached from the author, the holder, there is no one to protect the musical text
from dispossession, expropriation, despoilment, decontextualization. This must be taken
into consideration. Once written down (recorded), a (musical) text is irrevocably
detached from the intentions of the author (composer). He must relinquish his text, and he
cannot be present when it is repeated or reread. As an inscription, as a mark, it can be
iterated, cited, parodied, distorted, extracted from its context, confronted with other
marks. Because of its own materiality, a mark cannot prevent connections that the author
did not specifically intend (cf. (D)(R)econtextualization.)
This tune turns out to be a mobile home. Or in a mobile home, like chairs that can be
moved from one house (context) to the next. Never at home once and for all, never for
good embedded in one context, never forever protected against the possibilities of
transformation and alteration.

[7] What is this Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach made by Zorn and his 'inner circle
of noisemakers and deconstructionists'? (cf. Davis, p.4). Certainly, it is not a collection of
cover versions. Neither is it a compilation of interpretations, at least not in the
conventional meaning of interpretation. Bacharach's hits are not newly arranged, but
rather disarranged. In commenting on Bacharach, in rereading him in a certain way, Zorn
deconstructs the opposition between 'same' and 'other'. The accents are changed; surplus
value is added. Sometimes his musical language is almost unrecognizable. The
commentary becomes obscene. Playing the tunes in another way becomes playing other
than Bacharach, other than 'proper'. Zorn does not relate to this music in a humble,
respectful, or timid fashion. He negotiates with it to reveal the richness of the music. The
music is provoked, violated, forced. It is stricken in its weak moments, in its incapacity to
exclude everything it doesn't want to say: folding or stretching a melody, adding
discordant voices or dissonant chords, playing a tune deliberately badly or letting
undifferentiated noises enter, ignoring the structure of the compositions, playing only
faintly recognizable fragments of it. Not at all like Stan Getz and Bill Evans who leave
the tunes intact and only insert some melodic or harmonic variations. Not at all like
'Alfie' recorded by Everything But The Girl in 1988 where it is played just slightly more
'pop-ish'.
In 'Edmond Jabès and the Question of the Book' (Writing and Difference, p.64-78),
Derrida examines two possible positions in relation to textuality and interpretation. He
distinguishes between a rabbi and a poet. Derrida writes: 'But the shared necessity of
exegesis, the interpretive imperative, is interpreted differently by the rabbi and the poet.
The difference between the horizon of the original text and exegetic writing makes the
difference between the rabbi and the poet irreducible' (Writing and Difference, p.67).
Both of them have lost the 'original' text. Both of them interpret. However, the rabbi, the
sage who possesses knowledge and power, strongly holds onto the horizon of an 'original'
meaning. He tries to reconstruct the 'original' text. The poet, on the contrary, writes
without hope of a complete restoration. He considers himself free. But there is only a
minor difference between them. The poet is not in a position to abstract entirely from 'the
horizon of the original text' either. So the difference is that the poet highlights and
accepts the absence of an origin more so than the rabbi.
The analogy should be clear. Where Zorn feels himself free to withdraw from
Bacharach's originals without losing track of them, the others stay much closer to the
original texts, in either case harmonically. They are the rabbis, Zorn is the poet.
So let's continue with the poetry. Sometimes it is just playing the tunes otherwise, more
modern, to make them applicable to the times by bringing the feeling and the essence of
what Bacharach tried to accomplish with this music in a (post-)modern way. Playing with
the notes and playing beyond the notes. Neither attached, nor detached. The melodies and
harmonies are present, but alienated, transformed, distorted. Similar to 'The Man Who
Shot Liberty Valance'. Here Bacharach juxtaposes a country fiddler against a full string
section, and he uses rhythms that evoke images of square dances and horse clops in order
to capture a hint of the Old West. But right from its annunciatory fiddle line, this little
cowboy symphony seems even further removed from any conceivable prairie than any
other Hollywood Western theme. Elliott Sharp changes this soundtrack into a far more
vicious piece of music. (Driven by the lyrics?) The disquieting character is reinforced by
the drone of the C-tone throughout the entire piece. The use of a filter sweep causes the
frequency spectrum of this 'C' to constantly change (although still at home, also on his
way). The scene has changed from the Wild West of a couple of centuries ago to some
desolate industrial area of a metropolis of the 1990's. The desperado, Liberty Valance,
turns into a street criminal, the revolver into a machine gun (listen, for example, to the
drum sections), the fiddle into an electric guitar. The fear of the people when he is nearby
is converted into a squealing, whining guitar solo. Or is it the final gunfight in which
Liberty Valance dies? It does not matter here. It's about playing the same tune and
playing it entirely otherwise at the same time. The melodic themes are present, even
played decently. But as for the rest, this version reminds us little of Gene Pitney singing
Hal David's skilful synopsis of the John Ford movie.

[8] With shameless attention, the periphery (or is it the heart?) of Bacharach's musical
corpus is explored. Following it with meticulous care, the musicians lend it occasionally
unrecognizable echos. They take Bacharach into areas where he would perhaps dwell
reluctantly. They make him part of an incrowd where he could feel compromised. How
can this happen? The materiality and textuality of a (musical) text makes falling back on
an immediate being present at the intentions of the author (composer) impossible. All that
remains is the materiality of the text. This means that each text always runs the risk of
being de- and recontextualized. The risk is inherent in the structure of a text as text. By
its materiality, a text cannot prevent the possibility of connections (with other (re)marks)
that the author didn't intend, that he does not necessarily like or approve. The departure
from a 'proper' context is not an accidental possibility, but a constituent of a text as text.
'The approaches in this collection are as varied as the contributors who participated.
Some will delight you, some will confuse you, some may even annoy you' (liner notes).
Zorn probably addresses himself to the listener, but we cannot exclude the possibility that
his writing is directed to Bacharach.
The Death of the Composer
[1] What is composing? What does it mean to be a composer? How different is it from
arranging, orchestrating or performing? Strange questions, perhaps. We have dictionaries
at our disposal. For example, The Oxford English Dictionary: An inexhaustible
enumeration just for making clear the (alleged) differences. To compose: to put together
(parts or elements) so as to make up a whole. To compose music: to invent and put into
proper form; to set to music. To arrange: to adapt (a composition) for instruments or
voices for which it was not originally written; to place things in some order. To perform:
to complete, to finish (an action, a work, a process); to execute (a piece of work, literary
or artistic); to execute formally a piece of music. According to these definitions,
composing, arranging, and performing seem to be clearly distinguished activities. Also,
with respect to chronology: composing precedes arranging and performing. Maybe we
could even say that performing in particular is a mere supplement to composing. Each
composition has a lack: it needs a performance to appear. A performance is required for a
composition to be audible. A performance is an exteriority, an outside to the
composition's inside, a necessary evil because it can never represent the composition
exactly. On one hand, in every performance, in every interpretation something is lost - cf.
how composers such as Pierre Boulez, Brian Ferneyhough and Frank Zappa in his later
years sometimes notate their music (or, in the case of Zappa, play it by himself on the
synclavier) in order to avoid too much freedom for interpretation, i.e. do the work wrong,
misinterpret it. But it is impossible to control everything; it is impossible for a
performance to function as a transparent and a neutral medium. On the other hand, and
precisely because of the last argument, in every performance there is something added as
well, things that the composer cannot control, cannot avoid, did not think of (cf.
Supplement).

[2] Zorn reduces the distinction between composing and arranging. Let's take as a starting
point 'Once Upon A Time In The West' from The Big Gundown, Zorn's tribute to Ennio
Morricone. In an interview Zorn comments: 'Arranging is more than just saying this
instrument does this, and that instrument does that. It's several things. It's knowing, for
starters, what an instrumentalist can do, and putting him in a context that's gonna make
him shine. In the Morricone record [The Big Gundown, MC], deciding who did what was
more than just deciding this should be two guitars; it was deciding that I wanted this to be
[Robert] Quine and Jody Harris because they're two people who have worked together,
developed a certain rapport. So it's a matter of players and personalities'. What is Zorn
doing when he is arranging, assuming that The Big Gundown consists of arrangements of
Morricone's music, something we could seriously question? He is not only connecting
two electric guitars to perform a version of 'Once Upon A Time In The West'. He is
bringing together, uniting, placing together, two guitar players to transform this tune into
a harrowing, dissonant sound-scape in which now and then fragments of the original
appear. To connect, to bring together, to unite, to place together. To put together this
ensemble. Other words for that word we should actually avoid here: to compose. Zorn's
arranging turns out to be (also) a form of composing.
Should we say that Zorn (re)arranged 'Once Upon A Time in The West'? Should we say -
to return to Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach - that Fred Frith arranged 'Trains And
Boat And Planes'? (On (D)(R)econtextualization you can find a more extensive
reflection on this composition.) Arranging - to play the same tune with other instruments?
This is not what is happening there. Frith isn't just playing 'Trains And Boat And Planes'
on electric guitar with distortion and electronic organ supported by electronic beats
instead of smooth female voices, acoustic strings and modest percussion. He seems to
quote Bacharach's tune, but not within another musical text. He is not playing the whole
tune, but enlarges and pulls out some parts while leaving out others. (What happens when
certain word-fragments are underlined in a citation? Is it still a case of 'citing', of 'using',
of 'mentioning'? Derrida asks himself in Limited Inc.) He changes the entire structure of
the song so that the same song turns into an other, which is at the same time, the same.
Better said, it is an in-between that does not oscillate between the same and the other, but
a transversal moment that sweeps one and the other away. Frith's arrangement is a
composition. His composition is an arrangement ('I urge you to search out the original
versions'). The more traditional and hierarchical distinction between the 'original' and the
'arrangement' is displaced by Frith. And by Zorn. In the liner notes, Zorn speaks of
'approaches' instead of interpretations or arrangements. An approach. That means a
difference and a deferral at the same time in order to remain an approach. Infinitely.
Différance. I would like to call 'Trains And Boat And Planes' a deconstruction in music
of Bacharach's song. Deconstruction does not escape from the language of the passages
that it cites. It is of the same nature as that which it works against. However,
deconstruction is not only a parasite; it is also a parricide. It feeds itself with the host-
music and kills it at the same time. It suggests the demolition of the helpless music (cf.
Hillis Miller, p.251). Killing. Demolishing. Yes. But as we know deconstruction is not
only destructive (cf. Deconstruction - an Affirmative Strategy of Transformation).
Deconstruction keeps its host alive as well. Alive. An elixer of life. Construction and
transformation. As opposed to preservation.

[3] A composer of classical music in the conventional sense writes down a score that can
basically be performed by any musician. The composer, John Zorn, not only writes down
a score. (Sometimes, as in Cobra, it is an indeterminate score, so the piece assumes the
character of its performers. Sometimes Zorn describes his composer role as that of an
organizer or director who sets up rules so that the people in the band have to make
decisions, have to communicate. Composing turns out to be something more, something
other than 'setting to music'. Zorn is not in control of 'his' music, he does not own it. Once
written down, once in the hands of other musicians, he can no longer master it: 'I have a
general conception of the framework, and what belongs in the frame stays, what does not
belong does not get written down. And the frame is constantly changing ... The frame
starts to stretch. It's my job as a composer not to get in the way of the growth of a piece.
But I have a responsibility to ensure its integrity, to make sure it doesn't stretch so far that
it's not the piece it was intended to be' ... But it is not about expression: 'I'm not trying to
express myself, I'm trying to create expressive music ... I've created a certain body of
work. Each piece has a life of its own and exists and gives new life to other pieces and to
other musicians ... I try to create these children that go out and do their own thing. And
best luck of them'.) He also puts together the ensemble that is performing his music and
he considers this an essential part of composing. This means that to Zorn, making music
becomes more than just playing a score - a performance of his work which could easily
be replaced by another performance, by other musicians. Maybe more so than other
composers, Zorn is aware of the fact that every interpreter lends his own signature to a
performance, making this performance irreplaceable by any other. And he draws a
conclusion from this. Zorn - as arranger, composer, sometimes performer (roles that often
overlap) - puts together a palette of sounds he wants to hear from the singular ways in
which several musicians who are known to him handle their instrument(s). He uses the
Shibboleth, the friend's word. A musical password. Inclusion. The sign of belonging,
belonging to his musical community. The musicians who are admitted can pronounce this
Shibboleth; they speak the same musical languages. They are thus allowed to cross the
threshold where others have to stay outside. Shibboleth as a judgment of exclusion.
Not everyone can perform his music since 'his' music is always already the result of a
collaboration with select others. These others are chosen by him because of the mark they
leave on 'his' music while performing it. Zorn's music is 'his' music to the extent that it is
expropriated by the others, i.e. that it becomes, at the same time, the music of the others.
'His' music only becomes into being afterwards, at the moment it is performed. So it is
not the score that keeps Zorn's music for future generations; it is the recording first of all
(cf. Lesage, p.27-8).
Deconstruction
[1] Deconstruction. The name of a (former) band. They recorded a single album with the
same name and then called it quits. The band never performed live. Members:
guitarist/vocalist Dave Navarro, bass/vocalist Eric Avery (both were former members of
Jane's Addiction) and drummer Michael Murphy. Before the release of the debut album
in 1994, they had already disbanded as Navarro was enlisted by the Red Hot Chili
Peppers. It was a dead band that had risen for a moment from the ashes of another dead
band even before the first CD was released. (You can find more information on
Deconstruction at http://members.home.com/g12241/decon/).

[2] In one of the scanty interviews Avery granted, he says about the band's name: 'The
word deconstruction applied to where I was at the time and also was prophetic about
where I was going to be a year and a half later. It represented the demise of Jane's
Addiction, the final break between David [Navarro] and I, and really signifies that I really
am no longer in Jane's Addiction. That part of my life is really in the past ... The name
Deconstruction fit instinctively without my knowing why. It seemed to dictate exactly
what the experience was going to be about - not only in the relationship that I had with
David, but how I made my music. It fits with deconstructive philosophy, but the choice
was totally unconscious, not contrived or manipulated. We began to write songs, not
paying attention to what was being put out as far as the alternate of sound' (my italics).

[3] Obviously, Avery is using the word deconstruction in its most literal sense, the
junction of a negativism (destruction) and a positivism (construction), the combination of
an end and a beginning, an end as the beginning of something new. Deconstruction is the
solidification in (the name of) a band, the transition from the music of Jane's Addiction to
something else, and finally, the change in a relationship (between Avery and Navarro
when the latter prematurely left Deconstruction).
We have to wait until the last sentence to observe a new layer, another meaning, a shift
from a more personal outpouring in which deconstruction finds its place and significance
to a point where deconstruction takes on a musical meaning. 'We began to write songs,
not paying attention to what was being put out as far as the alternate of sound'. Avery
recalls he was no longer interested in making rock music per se, no coherent wholeness
with regard to sound, as well as structure, in a rough rock style. Using the musical
materials of the rock world (line-up, amplification, (use and function of) instruments, the
contextual infrastructure of this music (sub)world), the band tried mainly to dismantle the
formal structure of a standard rock song (verse-chorus-verse-chorus-guitar solo-chorus).
A deconstruction on the inside from the inside. To Avery, composing for Deconstruction
meant putting together musical parts that do not work together in order to see if a new
relationship happens between them. (He compares his compositions with the paintings of
collagist and creator of assemblages, David Salle. Salle juxtaposes iconography, objects,
styles, and techniques from the antipodal extremes of high and low art. For example, in
Landscape with Two Nudes and Three Eyes, he appropriates an historical masterpiece of
art by the Dutch master, Meindert Hobbema, with a picture of a nude woman in a
provocative pose.) There is no cyclic structure in which the chorus often returns to secure
the unity of the composition; one cannot hear a stylistically closed-off whole. The songs
on the album, Deconstruction, are characterized by a linear approach, a sequential
construction of different types of sound and music. Not a complete whole, but a principle
openness, an essentially infinite succession of distinct sound-scapes or musical fragments
(a ‘cut-and-paste monument’ as it is referred to by a review), more A-B-C-D than A-A-
B-A. The illusion of a possible unity (it is always difficult to determine the boundaries of
a text) is provoked by making musical dissemination the principle of composing.

[4] Avery: 'I did indeed have the abruptnesses intentionally in mind. It interested me to
try making a record that mimicked the audio/visual randomness of daily life in any major
metropolis. Like TV. I was thinking about how incredible the human faculty for making
sense is. That we are able to make order out of the barrage of images and sounds that
assault us all the time is amazing ... The record title refers to the post-modern architects
and thinkers who played around with things being defined by what they are standing next
to rather than by themselves. I wanted to try to pair up seemingly unrelated musical parts
and see what kind of music would be produced'. This process, for example, lead to 'L.A.
Song'. 'The first and second parts of 'L.A. Song' have no real connection, but the fact we
put them together does make sense because we allow them to exist side by side', Avery
says.

[5] To what is Avery referring when speaking about post-modern architects and thinkers?
There is no further explanation, so we can only guess. But he uses these people, he uses
some post-structuralist notions, to clarify (maybe to legitimize) Deconstruction's way of
working. Avery is suggesting at least an analogy between the work of some academic
philosophers and his ideas on composing. How do their theoretical explorations translate
into a musical language? Maybe Avery is talking about this diagram:

12
AB C
14

The middle mark means nothing in-and-of itself. It has no essential feature, but gains its
identity only through the difference from other elements in its system. The mark gets its
meaning in a certain context, i.e., it is impossible for a mark to have meaning outside of a
context. There is always context. However, no context can be entirely marked out and
there are many contexts. Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless. 'This is my
starting point:', Derrida writes, 'No meaning can be determined out of context, but no
context permits saturation. What I am referring to here is not richness of substance,
semantic fertility, but rather structure, the structure of the remnant or of iteration' ('Living
On. Borderlines', p.81). Meaning comes into being and changes through context; a mark
means something in relation with other marks. (And why not call a musical part, a mark?)
As the context, the environment changes (because of iterability, the possibility to repeat a
mark in a different context), a mark does not get a non-meaning but a (partial) other
meaning. The first and second parts of 'L.A. Song' did not have any prior connection; the
musical parts came from different contexts, perhaps even different musical languages, but
putting them together gave them a different meaning. (The middle mark in the diagram
changes meaning depending on the horizontal or vertical way it is read.) Not a totally
different meaning because each mark always already bears traces of other contexts within
it. The different musical parts are at once related and unrelated. Like Deconstruction:
freed from the general concept of traditional rock music, but at the same time working
with and within this tradition. An exteriority on the inside.

[6] The manner in which some musicians invoke (appropriate) Derrida’s philosophy of
deconstruction has been shown here. Not only by using the name 'deconstruction';
departing from their music and texts a space opens where deconstruction appears in an
altered form. Certainly less philosophical, maybe less profound, but, in any case, grafted
onto an other discipline. No explicit imitation of Derrida's intentions and thoughts. Not
only would it be impossible to translate a discursive language into a musical one, but it
would also be a betrayal to the work in which he expresses himself.
Sometimes we encounter him without recognizing him.
DJ Spooky
[1] Several quasi-philosophical essays by the versatile artist, Paul D. Miller (alias DJ
Spooky), can be found at the DJ Spooky website (www.djspooky.com). In
'Uncanny/Unwoven Notes towards a New Conceptual Art', many famous names from the
canon of Western philosophy and high art turn up regularly. From Ovid to Deleuze, from
Kant to Freud, from Duchamp to Artaud and Beuys, from Chomsky to Hegel and
Derrida. The references whiz past one's ears.
Main theme of Miller's essay: An analysis of the condition of contemporary art and its
engagement with the real. Miller wants to open some alternative perspectives on the
reality in which we live. For Miller, reality is a social construct and we need to rethink
this construct from the perspective of our global tele-mediated culture. Today we live in
an 'electric-modern reality', a 'proscenium of presence and absence'. (It is not so difficult
to imagine that virtual reality in particular raises questions about presence and absence.)
New technologies have led to fragmentation, continuous transformation, and a 'plurality
of reals'. ('In the electronically accelerated environment that we call home, a turbulent
cloud of paradoxical meanings arises whenever the notion of consensus is engaged'.)
Miller writes that art was, and is, our guide to these new terrains because of its special
and rapidly changing relationship with reality. He mentions the conceptual art of Bochner
and Duchamp as a starting point. Their recontextualization of everyday objects (an
ordinary urinal turned into a work of art) meant a transformation and an extension of
meanings of these objets trouvees or 'ready mades'. According to Miller, conceptual art
opens up a world of cross-referenced double meanings, '…a world of Derridean
textuality where the double ... becomes the foundation for art and the way we experience
its textuality'. The binary opposition art versus reality, art representing the real, is
contested, perhaps even deconstructed. Art is not representing reality anymore, art is
reality. The opposition is no longer adequate. Furthermore, art teaches us that no
signifier, no object, has a fixed meaning. Meanings are floating, continuously changing.
And so are we, living in an 'electric-modern' world of multiple realities, playing different
roles in different situations. No fixed identity. ('The 20th century has bequeathed to the
creative mind a panoply of identities'.) What only a few decades ago was the exclusive
domain of the arts - playing with different identities and meanings in different contexts -
has become a part of the everyday reality in which we find ourselves immersed. All this
because of technological innovations and the opening of alternative perspectives that
reflect on and affect mankind (post-structuralist philosophy, the linguistic turn). In
Derridean style, Miller writes, 'the 20th century has been a realm of disappearance and re-
inscription, an electro-magnetic dance between the real and the unreal - a place where
presence and absence become two signifiers of a condition of dispersed identity'. Neither
subject nor object has a stable unitary reference point, but are counters [pawns] in a
system of relational, associative, and referential meanings. Il n'y a pas hors contexte
['There is nothing outside context'].

[2] A confused story ('If you're looking for a smooth clean linear analysis ... look
someplace else')? Superficial? Not very innovative despite Miller's own opinion about
this ('This essay will engage in radically different perspectives on the reality we all live
in')? Of course, there is a lot to be said against Miller. For me, however, he serves
primarily as an illustration. An illustration of someone who uses post-structuralistic
views, Derridean language and analyses in trying to make clear his idea on how present-
day disjunctions in reality and in identity have had their predecessor in artistic
developments. For Miller, philosophy, art, and modern technology are three equal
domains through which the world in which we live can be analyzed. He places the
thoughts of jazz musician Charles Mingus next to those of Freud, the poetry of Phillis
Wheatly ('One of the first African Americans to write a book') next to a quote from
Derrida's The Truth In Painting, a Richard Wright haiku next to a discussion on Hegel's
thesis about the end of art. (Could we compare this to Derrida's Glas in which he
juxtaposes the philosophy of Hegel and the literature of Jean Genet and where he
questions philosophical notions of how knowledge should be passed down through
rigidly controlled channels?) 'Uncanny/Unwoven Notes towards a New Conceptual Art'
can be regarded as an example of different cultural utterances (different levels?)
interacting with one another, assuming different meanings when recontextualized, as they
say in the DJ world, 'in the mix'. The ideas of Derrida and others are used (misused?),
borrowed, grafted and (thereby) transformed and disseminated. Iterability. (cf.
(D)(R)econtextualization). Although music is mentioned, it is neither an essay about
music, nor an essay about deconstruction in music. However, let's say in a Deleuzean
way, there are many 'lines of flight' or 'rhizomatic structures' (and this page is one of
them) that connect Miller's writing to (his) music, Derrida and deconstruction. Lines of
flight: the movements by which 'one' leaves the territory and makes new connections,
differential relations internal to deterritorialization itself.
Great Jewish Music
[1] From the liner notes of Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach
'Burt Bacharach is one of the great geniuses of American popular music - and he's a Jew.
This should come as no surprise since many of America's greatest songwriters have been
Jewish - Irving Berlin, Kurt Weill, George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen
Sondheim, Leiber & Stoller, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Richard Hell, Beck. The Jews are a
tribe who continue to believe that if they devote themselves to a place they love and
contribute to the society selflessly that they will be embraced and accepted into it. In
many cases this has proved to be a fatal error, yet there they go again, stubbornly
believing in their own ability and vision. It is arguable that the history of the Jews in this
century has produced one of the most richly rewarding periods of culture in Jewish
history. Yet, this fact is somehow kept neatly hidden. WHAT? Compare Philip Roth to
Sholem Aleichem? Kafka to Moses de Leon? Walter Benjamin to Rashi? Wittgenstein to
Spinoza? Steve Reich to Felix Mendelssohn? Allen Ginsberg to Yehudah Halevi?
Einstein to Nostrodamus? Lenny Bruce to Hillel? Burt Bacharach is such a name ... I
hope this set can in some small way repay Burt for the inspiration he has provided for
generations of musicians in their battle to be creative and keep producing in the face of
what often seems like insurmountable odds. Thank you, Burt. Thank you for not
changing your name. We will always love you'.
From the liner notes of Great Jewish Music: Serge Gainsbourg
'Born to Russian-Jewish parents, Lucien Ginzburg was to become a sex symbol as Serge
Gainsbourg ... Gainsbourg's poetry slyly combines his Jewish sense of humor with the
French romantic tradition and the perverse twists inherited from Gérard de Nerval,
Baudelaire, Genet, Bataille and Sade ... Like many Jews who were raised in an
atmosphere of mild-to-violent anti-semitism (Fritz Lang, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Nathanial
West) Gainsbourg downplayed his Jewish roots. Jewishness was not an active part of his
public persona. But Jewish identity is a complex thing. Accept it as a blessing or curse it
as a disease, it is part of you whether you like it or not. And it is there in Gainsbourg's
songs. At times certain inflections, lyrics or turns-of-phrase sound strangely Jewish, but I
will leave the provocative discussion of just how Jewish his music is to another time and
another place'.

[2] Great Jewish Music. Part of the Radical Jewish Culture series. Released by Tzadik.
Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach and Great Jewish Music: Serge Gainsbourg. Liner
notes from John Zorn. About Jews. About Jewishness. About Jewish music. This is what
interests me here. But where do we begin? Too many matters need to be discussed. Too
many questions can be asked. What does this radical Jewish culture reference mean?
What is Jewish culture? What is Jewish music? Does it mean that the themes of this
music are either Jewish in nature or that they have many influences from that culture? Or
is it simply the fact that these men are both musicians and Jewish, and, therefore, must
make Jewish music? Perhaps their music isn't characteristically Jewish. But then what
exactly is 'real' Jewish music? How does it sound? Does it have any specific harmonic
and melodic structures? And conversely, why is that music 'actually' Jewish, while other
music made by Jewish musicians is not? Is Jewish music something entirely other than
music written by Jews?
How can we relate these Great Jewish Music projects to some of Zorn's other works, for
instance Kristallnacht, the Masada series, Bar Kokhba, and his chambermusic with
Jewish titles? And to the works that have no apparent connection with Jewishness on first
thought?
Maybe we should start to think from another position. Does the work become something
other than 'merely music' by putting the word 'Jewish' in the title? Is it Zorn's aim to force
people to rethink their notion of Jewish culture or identity? Is he asking us to examine
this music in a different context? Is it a political or ethnic statement ('a bizarre example of
ethnic proclamation', as Peter Niklas Wilson writes)? Is Zorn simplifying the problem of
'Jewish music' by invoking an atavistic form of identity politics, as New York Times
columnist Adam Shatz contends (cf. Cuthbert, p.22)? Or is he expanding and
reconsidering certain categories? This is what interests me here.

[3] The question of Jewish music. Or, more broadly, the (definition) problem of
Jewishness. I won't solve the problem here. The only thing I can do is offer some
considerations, some thoughts to avoid rash and premature conclusions or opinions. So
let's proceed carefully, meticulously, not too hastily. For instance, with some utterances
by Zorn. 'I am not religious, but interested in everything that has to do with Jewish
thinking. The question of what such a Jewish identity can mean to me, exploring and
renewing it, plays a central part in my life. The answer to the question of whether 'Jewish
music', as such, is recognizable, I find less interesting than the question itself; it is the
presentation of the question that is directive to me'. This is a translation from a Dutch
concert program from 1999. Three items are worthy of our attention here. First, following
Zorn, these projects are rarely, if ever, based on Jewish religion, and more often on more
general Jewish traditions. How general and how traditional we have to find out. Works
presented as Radical Jewish Culture, both on CD or as part of the several festivals with
this title that Zorn has curated, seem to have no relationship to Judaism as a religion, but
rather to a broader range of lived experiences shared by Jews. I'll come back to the
question of whether these experiences are exclusive to Jews. As yet, we have to content
ourselves by noticing a certain displacement from a possible religious orientation to a
more theoretical or even philosophical exploration of Jewish identity. This brings me to
the second point of interest. How is (t)his Jewishness explored? By posing questions. So
the answer to this question is itself a question. Are we already approaching a certain trace
of Jewishness here? Is some characteristic of being Jewish cautiously unveiled here? I
make this proposal: Suppose it is precisely an inexhaustable reference to an alterity, an
openness to otherness that is connected to Jewishness here (by Zorn). Derrida puts
forward this hypothesis in several passages in Writing and Difference and in Shibboleth.
'The Jew's identification with himself does not exist. Jew would perhaps be the other
name for the impossibility to be himself' (Writing and Difference, p.75. The second
sentence is only to be found in the French version, p.112). Could it be that the openness
to any alterity precisely reveals itself in asking questions? Perhaps questioning is (also) a
certain (temporary) deferring of one's identity. Or risking it. On the wrapper of
Kristallnacht, one can find this quote from the French Jewish writer, Edmond Jabès: 'The
Jew doesn't ask questions: he has himself become questions'. I'm going too fast. We are
entering a new domain of thinking Jewishness. Let's leave it for a while and come to the
third point. Above, I spoke of Zorn's orientation towards 'more general Jewish traditions'.
I have to reconsider the word 'traditions' because Zorn speaks about exploring and
renewing the question of Jewish culture and identity. All of his Masada CD's contain the
following quotation from Gershom Scholem, founder of Kabbala studies and professor in
Jerusalem. 'There is a life of tradition that does not merely consist of conservative
preservation, the constant continuation of the spiritual and cultural possessions of a
community. There is such a thing as a treasure hunt within tradition, which creates a
living relationship to tradition and to which much of what is best in current Jewish
consciousness is indebted, even where it was - and is - expressed outside the framework
of orthodoxy'. With Scholem's voice, Zorn seems to want to ease our minds; the
(re)discovery of his Jewishness does not lead to some reactionary retrospect. He not only
wants to give shape to a Jewish identity anew, he is reshaping it at the same time. In a
similar manner, he tries to rethink a definition of Jewish music and confronts it with a
drastic metamorphosis. I have to be careful here because a metamorphosis suggests that
something has changed. But what is that something when we are talking of Jewish
music? Even when we assume for a while that Jewish music is equal to Klezmer music (a
fault that is often made), it won't solve the problem. Klezmer doesn't imply unity of style.
It is influenced by gypsy music, folk music from the Balkans and Slavonic countries and,
especially in the USA, it mingled with jazz. (Gypsy music, folk, jazz: heterogeneous
musics like Klezmer. An abyss. Is there any unity of style? Any stabilized, self-identical
style? Is the concept 'Jewish music' blurred by Zorn precisely when he uses it?) And what
about the identity of the Jew? Is this an easily determined site or position? We'll have to
come back to this.

[4] Some say it all started with Kristallnacht and speak about a turn towards Jewish
culture, to give full breadth of it (Wilson; Cuthbert). This CD from 1993 is an exploration
and a rethinking of Jewish identity in a musical way. It is not just about the Holocaust, so
says Zorn in an interview. Some music is about what happened before the Holocaust:
'Shtetl' (Ghetto Life), which confronts Klezmer-like style with early propaganda speeches
of Hitler, and 'Never Again', the harrowing and painful musical expression of the
'Kristallnacht', the night in November 1938 in which the Nazis destroyed and devastated
Jewish stores, synagogues, and other properties in Germany. Other compositions are
about what happened after the Holocaust: 'Gahelet' (Embers) is a soft plaintive mourn
over the atrocities of the Holocaust. And according to Zorn, Kristallnacht is also about
the foundation of the state of Israel - Zorn here probably refers to 'Gariin' (Nucleus - the
New Settlement) -, about Jews today, and about the problems occurring when orthodoxy
goes too far (cf. Blumenfeld). Perhaps the latter idea is expressed in various compositions
where a combination of modern and traditional music can be heard. (For example, at the
beginning of 'Tzifia' (Looking Ahead) hardcore industrial noises are contrasted with old
recordings of a classically trained Jewish singer.) In Kristallnacht, Zorn relies on many of
the same techniques he used in earlier compositions: game pieces, file card pieces, free
improvisations, fully notated music. It is, however, his first project in which he employs
more than one of these compositional methods at the same time (cf.Cuthbert, p.7). It is as
if the Jewish identity is so diverse, so complex - am I already allowed to say non-
existent? - that Zorn needs to take advantage of all his musical experience and qualities,
all kinds of musical languages which perhaps are not his own.
For the second time, I anticipate an idea of an other Jewishness (another idea of
Jewishness), take an advance on an other model of Jewishness, that is, 'the Jew-as-other'
(Derrida). Jewishness as the other of identification, Jewishness as the other of a clear
individuality, even the other of a Jewish religious and cultural tradition. A Jewish
dimension of non-identity and non-individuality, as opposed to a certain Jewish tradition.
I turn to Jabès, again on the cover of Kristallnacht: 'The Jew has always been at the
origin of a double questioning: questioning himself, and questioning 'the other'. In truth,
there is no way of avoiding the ability to cease being Jewish; he is forced to question his
identity ... This may seem paradoxical, but it is precisely in that break - in that non-
belonging in search of it's belonging - that I am without doubt most Jewish'. Can we say
that Zorn is a composer and musician without a marked identity, without a certain
individuality and that precisely in this elusiveness his Jewishness can be marked out?
Let's postpone these ideas again. For just a little longer.

[5] If Kristallnacht is the first recorded musical expression of Zorn's (re)discovered

Jewishness (and I emphasize 'if'), then the pamphlet, 'Was genau ist diese Radical New
Jewish Culture?' [What exactly is this Radical New Jewish Culture?] from 1992,
published in the Art Project Festival program in Munich, can be regarded the first written
statement of it.
The manifesto opens with the thesis that the American Jews make a great contribution to
the diversity of American music. However, this contribution has practically stayed out of
sight up to now. According to Zorn and co-signatory, Marc Ribot, this is due to the fact
that Jews who are and have been very important to the development of popular music (for
instance, Bob Dylan and Michael Landon), often changed their names and identities.
('Thank you, Burt. Thank you for not changing your name'.) Conversely, the ones to
whom Jewishness openly appealed had been excluded from the cultural mainstream and
banished to the margins. Zorn and Ribot want to make this Jewish contribution more
overt, more visible, more manifest. But it is not the Jewishness, as such, that they are
trying to emancipate. Their main interest is in Radical New Jewish Culture, which
describes the position with regard to the mainstream American culture, as well as the
relation to the mainstream Jewish range of thought.
Clear assumptions and provocative statements, typical of and important to a pamphlet.
Less usual and perhaps more profound are the many questions Zorn and Ribot pose. Not
rhetorical ones, quasi-questions which already hold their answers, but open questions
(Jewish questions?) that lead to more than one answer, which is never final. Here are
some. Are there explicit Jewish musical values that are shared by all musicians, despite
the fact that they are often not religious, do not have any contact with Judaism, and do
not occupy themselves with Klezmer or Jewish liturgical music? Must Jewish music
necessarily include Jewish scales or themes, or is Jewish music simply music played by
Jews? Does this ideate an endpoint of Jewish music or a new beginning? Or both?
Then the questions change. To another plateau I might say. They turn towards the subject
I came across twice, but didn't finish, didn't really start, in fact. I continue. Is the
contribution of the Jews to the American music motivated by the wish to insert
themselves into the American culture or is it a sign of alienation of their own origin? Or
both? To what extent has the specific Jewish quality to defend and to embrace suppressed
elements from other cultures contributed to the 'patchwork-music' that was produced in
New York in the 1980's? Can music that is controversial, critical of the social structure,
and that is operating in the margins be connected with the archetypical Jewish history of
exile and oppression, with an indictment of iniquity?

[6] One last stop before we reach ... reach what? This place is Peter Niklas Wilson's
critical essay on Radical New Jewish Culture. According to Wilson, Zorn's turn to Jewish
music and identity (What is Jewish music? What is Jewish identity? Is it really a turn?) is
'a catalogue of symbolic operations' that accomplishes something that his music did
without before, that is, cultural identity. Wilson refers mainly to the Masada series and
Bar Kokhba, which he describes as adaptations of well-known more recent jazz-patterns,
interlarded with supposed melodic phrases from the Near East. Wilson shows more
sympathy for Zorn's earlier works. Precisely in these 'quick change collages' Wilson
descries a play with identities, an unrestricted decontextualization and a recombining of
musical data. Uninhibited and bold, 'reserved only to someone without roots' (a Jew
perhaps?). Some interesting sentences follow: 'The conversion of such a deconstruction
to the essence of Judaism - patchwork-aesthetics as principle of the Jewish Gestalt - was
a first step ... on the way to this Radical New Jewish Culture. The second stage is the
creation of a new, integral, homogeneous 'Jewish' music as an expression of a cultural
self-assurance. As brilliant as Zorn deconstructed a (music)cultural identity, he pitiful
failed in his reconstruction of a unbroken Jewish music' (Wilson, p.24, my italics, my
translation).

[7] First station: and what if we do not or cannot restrict 'Jewishness' to Jewishness?
What if we give up a racial definition of Jewishness, even when this makes every attempt
to define it almost impossible? What if we deny that 'Jewishness' has something to do
with the original characteristics of the race or the particular structure of the Jewish
religion? In his interview with Richard Kearney, Derrida seems to differentiate between
Jewish and 'Jewish'. 'I consider my own thought, paradoxically, as neither Greek nor
Jewish. I often feel that the questions I attempt to formulate on the outskirts of the Greek
philosophical tradition have as their 'other' the model of the Jew, that is, the Jew-as-other.
And yet, the paradox is that I have never actually invoked the Jewish tradition in any
'rooted' or direct manner. Though I was born a Jew, I do not work or think within a living
Jewish tradition. So that if there is a Judaic dimension to my thinking which may from
time to time have spoken in or through me, this has never assumed the form of an explicit
fidelity or debt to that culture. In short, the ultimate site (lieu) of my questioning
discourse would be neither Hellenic nor Hebraic if such were possible. It would be a non-
site' (Kearney, p.107).
Leave the autobiographical insights aside for awhile and let's concentrate on the two sides
(sites) of Jewishness. On one hand, the 'living Jewish tradition', the Jewish roots, religion,
and culture: Jewishness. On the other hand, the 'Judaic dimension', the 'model of the Jew',
'the Jew-as-other', the 'non-site': 'Jewishness'.
Could we call Zorn's work a musical expression of a non-religious or cultural rooted
'Jewish' sitelessness as Derrida describes it? Wilson calls Zorn a man without roots. Zorn
confirms this idea in several places. 'J'ai l'impression d'etre plusieurs' ['I have the
impression of being several'], he says in the very heterogeneous collage composition,
'Godard' in the CD, Godard ça vous chante. In the liner notes of Spillane, he writes:
'There's a lot of jazz in me, but there's also a lot of rock, a lot of classical, a lot of ethnic
music, a lot of blues, a lot of movie soundtracks. I'm a mixture of all those things'. And in
an interview: 'I like to say that I'm really rootless. I think that the music that my
generation ... is doing is really rootless in a lot of ways, because we listened to a lot of
different kinds of music from an early age ... We listened to all different kinds of shit, and
as a result we don't really have a single home' (Gagne, p.516). But in fact we need only
listen to his sizeable oeuvre in order to establish that he uses many kinds of musical
languages at once without belonging to one musical world. He is like the emigrant who
adapts himself to a culture that will never be his own, in between this foreign culture and
his own. The occupier of a non-site. Zorn's music can be regarded as an exponent of a
Jewish culture inevitably containing material derived from cultures that have interacted
with Jewish culture. Is Wilson, however, correct when he writes that Zorn has shifted to a
clearly recognizable musical identity, to a rumination of his Jewish roots with Masada
and Bar Kokhba? In other words, has Zorn switched from 'Jewishness' to Jewishness?
This is what Zorn says about his Masada project. 'The one thing that really surprises me,
and is a symbol of how limited critics' ears are, is the way critics describe it: klezmer
meets Ornette [Coleman]. Of course, there's klezmer. Of course, there's Ornette. But there
are as many influences in that music as went into the composition of Naked City music or
any other music I've done - like surf music, movie soundtracks, Sephardic and Arabic
music, modern classical, modal jazz. I play them with Joey [Baron] and Dave [Douglas],
and they say, 'Ornette meets klezmer'. When I do it for the Masada String Trio, everyone
says, 'Wow! It's so deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition of string music'. Then I do it with
a sextet, and people say, 'Yeah, it's a real loungey, easy-listening Les Baxter type of
thing'. I mean, I could do it with a hardcore band. It was a revelation to take those pieces
outside of the context of a steady quartet that was playing them and give it to smaller
groups to play in different ways' (Blumenfeld). The rootlessness is still there. Maybe one
could decide it is 'Jewish' music and Jewish music at the same time.
Can we find the same 'doubleness' in Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach? Of course,
Bacharach is a Jew and so are Zorn and his fellow-musicians. So we could call it Jewish
music. But more important is the 'Jewishness' of this tribute, this musical non-site, in
between a low popular culture in which Bacharach's hits can be situated and a high avant-
garde culture to which the versions of Zorn, et al, are referring (cf.
(D)(R)econtextualization.)
We should not accept without question the proposition of a certain breach in Zorn's
musical activities, non-Jewish music on one hand and Jewish music on the other. We
have to rethink what being Jewish means. I present and defend the idea that the Masada
series is no more 'Jewish' music than Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, Spillane, or
Naked City.

[8] Second station: disidentification. What is Jewishness? Is 'the Jew' (Derrida)

something? Or is his essence to not have an identity? Does the Jewish identity consist of
renouncing any identity? These are questions that arise in Derrida's texts on Edmond
Jabès, Emmanuel Levinas, and Paul Celan. In Writing and Difference, Derrida writes:
'The Jew's identification with himself does not exist. The Jew is split, and split first of all
between the two dimensions of the letter: allegory and literality' (Writing and Difference,
p.75). Between allegory and literality, between 'Jewishness' and Jewishness. What is
essential to the Jew is perhaps the vacancy, the split, in French, brisure. The Jew is the
brisure, non-localizable, beyond every permanent setting. The Jew is without foundation
and therefore a threat to each foundation. Before (re)turning to Zorn, I would like to
quote Anthony Coleman from his CD, Selfhaters (keyboardist Coleman belongs to the
inner circle of Downtown musicians who often work with Zorn): 'Do they [Jews?] show
the rest of the world the picture that they believe anyway, or do they strip away an
element of false consciousness implicit in a sense of 'belonging' to a 'culture'. And which
culture? Jerusalem, Belz, the Lower East Side, or Rockland County? Or the culture of
wandering, the culture of acquisitiveness, of having-no-voice-of-one's-own, of
mauscheling in any and all languages. Well, this disc doesn't purport to answer. Some say
that's Jewish, too...'. This non-identity again, this non-belonging to one site. The culture
of wandering between many cultures. It is this that characterizes Zorn's music as well. It
can be a threat to the existing musical world because it is subversive, crossing
conventional musical borders. It is not clearly classifiable because it lacks an identity.
'I'm inherently rootless. I don't fit into the jazz tradition. I don't fit into the rock tradition
... There's a certain set of rules which you have to obey. And with most scenes, the most
important rules are the least important to me: attitude; stance; posture; the clothes you
wear; where you play. All the trappings of the music. I'm not a skinhead with tattoos on
my arm, who goes and slamdances at CB's. I'm interested in the music those people are
making. The same thing with the jazz scene: Their trappings are not my trappings. The
classical scene too: I don't obey those rules. I'm interested in music, and not the bullshit
trappings that surround so many of the scenes, and which people are convinced are the
tradition of the scene ... You can't put what I'm doing or what Elliott [Sharp] does or what
any of these guys do into any kind of a box like that. Inherently, it's music that resists
categorization because of all the influences we've had' (Gagne, p.524).
I would say that Zorn's music consists of 'Sons brisés', broken or fractured sounds (Cf.
Sons brisés - J. Allende-Blin), not only because it changes very abruptly from one style to
another, but also because it gives the music this unpredictability, this non-identity.

[9] Third station: 'the Jew-as-other' (Derrida). Zorn's music-as-other. This other, however,
that contrasts with conventional (musical) traditions has to pass through these same
musical traditions, through these musical languages, in order to avoid complete
inaccessibility (cf. also Music, Deconstruction and Ethics). The other has to follow in the
footsteps of the same despite the risk of self-loss and of being veiled in something it is
not. But this doesn't mean that it disappears. It leaves traces, references to an alterity
within the conventional domain (cf. Sneller, p.224). These traces, these references,
Derrida calls 'Jewish'. The Jew is not opposed to the Greek, but is right at the heart of him
(cf. Writing and Difference, p.153). Being 'Jewish' means being dominated and drowned
out by a culture that is never able to fully absorb it. Could this be 'Jewishness': an
inexhaustable reference to an alterity within culture itself, an openness towards the
always already present (and at the same time absent) other? Could 'Jewishness' mean
between the other and the self, between alterity and identity, between difference and
connection, between familiar and unfamiliar? Is the 'Judaic' experience an experience of
différance?
I return to Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach to make this proposition. The Jew that
Zorn is plays the 'Jew' in the music world. All the versions in this CD play the part of
'Jewishness' within a well-known musical language. Zorn brings in elements of alterity.
He wants to confront this language (of Bacharach, of popular music) with the other, with
what is not composed or played, but with which it is still permeated. A heteroglossia, or
even a cacophony of incongruous strands of musical discourses, is the result. Great
Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach sets scores with the idea that an interpretation should
account for every detail of the work within the same framework; it sets scores with the
idea that details that don't fit are ignored or set aside as unimportant. Rather, Great
Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach is working the opposite way. Details that don't fit in the
conventional framework of interpretations, details that don't fit in the conventional
language of popular music, are exaggerated and are made very important.
Sometimes a version is 'Jewish' and Jewish at the same time, assuming for the sake of
convenience that the latter has something to do with certain scales (for instance, C-Db-E-
F-G-Ab-B-C). Listen to Eric Friedlander's version of 'Promises, Promises'. The
arrangement of cello, clarinet, bass-clarinet, and double bass give it a flavor of Klezmer
music. However, what initially attracts attention is the improvised part. On a steady
rhythmic and melodic pattern of bass and bass-clarinet, the cello (and later, together with
clarinet) improvises on the basis of some scales that are often connected with Jewish or
Klezmer music. Jewishness entering 'Jewish' music, this music that moves between
conventions and deviation from these conventions, an in-between that does not designate
a localized relation going from the one to the other and back again, but a transversal
movement that sweeps one and the other away (cf. Burt Bacharach and John Zorn).
A circumcision of music. Through Zorn, Bacharach and his music accede to a treaty, both
a Jewish and a 'Jewish' community. But especially in 'Promises, Promises', Friedlander is
circumcising the music, bringing it into a Jewish context by making it Klezmer-like.
Circumcision: the infliction of a wound. So being Jewish here is the experience of being
wounded. (There is more than one resemblance between certain Jews and certain
Muslims.) However, it is at the same time a matter of 'circumcision': the music is being
cut, something is excised. In Zorn's project, the wounds remain present. Mutilations of
the 'original' text. One can hear the violence. Being Jewish, as well as being 'Jewish',
means to suffer. (By advocating (and warning against) an excruciatingly loud level of
'Never Again', Zorn wants some small part of the pain that was endured by the Jews to be
felt by the listener; not emotionally, or through artistic and musical resonance, but
actually physically.)

[10] Fourth station. A delicate question. Are these Great Jewish Music projects, despite
everything, a matter of 're-Judaicizing' Jewish composers and musicians (Bacharach,
Gainsbourg) by a Jewish artist (Zorn)? There seems to be a tension between this apparent
classification and the above commitment to openness. Does the discovery of his
Jewishness lead Zorn to a kind of Zionist imperialism or exclusivism? How should we
interpret his rather strong preference for Jewish musicians, shirts bearing Magen Davids,
Jewish song titles, Jewish interviewers, etc.? It seems to be a Shibboleth, a 'friends word',
a word of alliance or covenant on one side, a sign of exclusion on the other. But a
Shibboleth for whom? The title, Great Jewish Music, tells us more about Zorn than it
does about Bacharach who never made an issue of his religion or ethnicity. And
Gainsbourg, although he didn't particularly hide it, never put his Jewishness in front
(maybe only as a provocation). Their inclusion is, at the same time, an exclusion.
A paradox. Zorn's early claims to openness, to the use of multiple musical languages, to
otherness, appear in a closed, excluding discourse. (It always and necessarily appears in
an excluding discourse. The otherness of the other means a certain exclusivity. That is the
paradox.) 'Jewishness' repeats itself in Jewishness. The general articulates itself in the
particular. Maybe we can understand the general idea of openness only against a
background of a particular Jewishness. Maybe the mixing of multiple compositional
methods within one piece arises with or as a result of his latent Jewishness. And as a
result, the difference between 'Jewishness' and Jewishness may not be that clear. Because
the opposite is true as well: Zorn's Jewish music and themes repeat his 'Jewishness'. Let's
take Kristallnacht as an example. Can we decide what repeats what? Is the background,
the history and future of the Jews given musical expression in the use of Klezmer-like
themes, Jewish scales, quotes from a Jewish singer and the sound of breaking glass
within an alien context of free jazz, hard core, and modern classical composition
techniques? Or is the background constituted by a very heterogeneous musical language
in which Jewish music has just a place for its own? Maybe Kristallnacht is Zorn's first
musical exploration of his Jewish heritage as Cuthbert and Wilson suggest. But it is not
only a break with the past; it is also a continuation, a continuation of his 'Jewish' heritage,
the 'Jewish' music he previously made. And how open, how 'Jewish' is Jewish music? The
concept of Jewish tone scales is somewhat odd. Jewish music always already contained
material derived from cultures with which Jews have interacted: Greek, American,
Spanish, Eastern European, Ethiopian, Western European, etc. Jewish music has a
structure that resists every inclination to a final formation of identity, to seclusion and
determination. Sometimes it refers to the Eastern European modalities, sometimes to
gypsy music, sometimes it has similarities with some Arabic music, the hijaz. These are
only small corners of Jewish music though. Jewish music that originates from different
parts of the world shares no common characteristics; it is not consistent. 'Jewishness' is a
part of Jewishness and Jewishness is a part of 'Jewishness'. Both Jewishness and
'Jewishness' refer to expropriation, having no fixed identity. (Or do we have to say that
this is their identity?)

[11] How explicitly Zorn is referring to the Jewish cause? To what extent does this
Radical Jewish Culture restrict itself to well defined archives? How Zionistic is the
appropriation of the myth-laden names such as 'Masada' and 'Bar Kokhba'? It is
undecidable. Ambivalent. On one hand, Zorn explicitly addresses himself to Jews. With
the Masada book, a collection of over a hundred tunes, he wants to give Jews something
positive for the future: 'I think it's important for Jews to have positive role models so that
they want to identify themselves as Jews ... After [Kristallnacht], I wanted to do
something that was not about the history of pain and suffering, but about the future and
how bright and beautiful it can be ... This is my answer to what new Jewish music is. This
is my personal answer. That's why I wrote the Masada music' (Blumenfeld). These
remarks seem to make clear that his intended audience for Masada would be American,
European and Israeli Jews. The titles of the Masada series - Alef, Bet, Gimel, etc., the
initial letters of the Hebrew alphabet - confirm this. On the other hand, however, Zorn is
defying these (his own) ideas: he originally released these Masada albums with liner
notes in Japanese only. Through the use of this language he is only making the discs less
accessible to most western Jews (cf. Cuthbert, p.18-9).
And what are we to think of the dedication of the Masada book to Asher Ginzberg,
founding father of Cultural Zionism who, in the late 1880's, called out for a New Jewish
Cultural Renaissance, 'one in which all Jews everywhere could find pride and meaning'?
Is this an openly avowed form of Zionism or should we pay more attention to the word
'everywhere'? 'Everywhere', it could be meant as a contrast to constructions of Jewish
identity that bind it closely to the modern state of Israel. 'Everywhere', which means
having no fixed place, a non-site. Jewish becoming 'Jewish' again. The 'Jewish' site is an
empty site. 'This Site is not a site, an enclosure, a place of exclusion, a province or a
ghetto. When a Jew or poet proclaims the Site, he is not declaring war. For this site, this
land, calling to us from beyond memory, is always elsewhere. The site is not the
empirical national Here of a territory' (Writing and Difference, p.66).
Last meditation: Tzadik, Zorn's record label. Many Jewish musicians find a home here.
And Radical Jewish Culture: one of the largest series formats under this label. Jewishness
seems very important. But on the other hand, if Zorn feels that a musician is getting too
much press for being a Jewish performer and not enough for his compositional activities
he may find his next disc issued in the Composers Series (cf. Cuthbert, p.23). Tzadik. A
tzadik is a Jewish spiritual leader. Zorn? Is Zorn not only a poet, but also a rabbi (cf. Burt
Bacharach and John Zorn)? He is an important person in New York's music scene.
Almost all musicians who determine the sound of the Jewish Alternative Movement, a
Knitting Factory CD label, have at some time worked with Zorn. So he is a kind of
leader. And a Jew. But in Hebrew tzadik also means righteous, just. A strange name for a
record company. Or maybe not? 'Founded in 1995, Tzadik is dedicated to releasing the
best in avant-garde and experimental music, presenting a worldwide community of
contemporary musician-composers who find it difficult or impossible to release their
music through more conventional channels', says an advertising brochure. Who does
Tzadik serve? Those who have no permanent address at their disposal. Homeless in
double respect: musically (these experimental and avant-garde musicians usually mix
several musical languages in one work), and institutionally (no major record company is
interested because their music is not commercial enough). They are a kind of outcast.
'Jews'. Like Jabès's quote on Kristallnacht: 'It is precisely in that break - in that non-
belonging in search of it's belonging - that I am without a doubt most Jewish' [in fact
most 'Jewish']. Tzadik is doing justice to music that cannot be specifically classified,
giving the homeless a home, the voiceless a voice. Tzadik is a Shibboleth, a place where
a decision is made about the right to enter a legal community, a sign of belonging.
However, as the mark of a certain pact, it also intervenes: it prohibits, sentences,
excludes. Somewhere between sharing and dividing (cf. Shibboleth, p.109-111).

[12] Zorn's dedication to the Jewish cause seems to be in opposition to more narrow
versions of Zionism, both in his insistence on going beyond 'conservative preservation'
(Gershom Scholem) and his constant playing with identities and contexts. His Jewishness
is also a 'Jewishness', dominated by a loss of identity, security, safety. Zorn is the thorn in
the side of conventions and apparently uncomplicated assumptions and not only on a
musical level. He asks questions. He questions (his) identity, and questions 'the other'.
Hence, from the start he is confronted with the discourse of the other. And he disorders it.
He disorders it by revealing that every endeavor toward determination and conclusion,
every attempt toward a final formation of an identity, is doomed to fail. This means that
not only Zorn is a 'Jew'. It is not the privilege of a few. The 'Jew-as-other' is inside of
non-Jews as well, inside of music. It reflects a more 'original alienation', a structure of
every music as a music of the other, the impossibility to possess music, the impossibility
to return it to the same.
Hymen
[1] Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach is not Zorn's first, nor is it his only tribute to a
composer. His interest in and admiration for several musicians and composers from very
diverse musical worlds are shown in a number of his recordings. In the series, Great
Jewish Music, Zorn pays attention to Serge Gainsbourg and Marc Bolan, in addition to
Burt Bacharach. With the occasional quartet, Total Loss, he pays a tribute to Dutch
pianist and composer Misha Mengelberg in October Meeting 1987. 'Der kleine Leutnant
des lieben Gottes' in Lost In The Stars is Zorn's self-willed transcription of a Kurt Weill
song from his opera, Happy End. News For Lulu (named after a Sonny Clark
composition) contains arrangements of the works of four (and almost forgotten) hard bop
musicians: pianists Sonny Clark and Freddie Redd, trumpet player Kenny Dorham, and
tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley. (According to jazz critic, Joachim Berendt, this record
contributed more to their rediscovery than the 'classicist' tributes that should, in fact, have
been responsible.) Undoubtedly, his best known homage is The Big Gundown (1985).
With many fellow musicians and some notable others (among them, organ player, 'Big'
John Patton and harmonica player, Jean 'Toots' Thielemans), Zorn plays the film music of
Ennio Morricone in his own (deconstructive) way.
I add one more. Spy Vs Spy. The Music of Ornette Coleman. In a more detailed
explanation of this CD, Zorn says in an interview: 'The idea of doing Ornette in a trash
style started to germinate in my mind and I began pushing it - especially when I realized
we were going to make a record. If I'm going to do a recording of Ornette's music, I want
it to be the way I did the Morricone. I've got to bring something new to it, I've got to
bring it up to date; but it's got to come from the inside - not a totally alien agenda
imposed on it from the outside ... I think it's the best tribute that I could have done to
someone who was absolutely one of my biggest heroes. And whether he likes it or not, I
don't care. I really feel I did his music justice' (Gagne, p.523).
I include this quote here for three reasons. First, I think that this citation can be applied
equally as well to Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. Second, it says a lot about the
relationship between the original music and Zorn's tributes. This quote lays open the
whole problematic nature of inside and outside, which is so important in the work of
Derrida as well (as a theme and as a strategy). Third, once more it becomes clear that
deconstruction is not a linguistic tool to get a grip on musical utterances, but that
deconstruction articulates itself within music, in a musical way. (cf. Deconstruction In
Music and my comments and criticism on the New Musicology). Here, the problem of
inside and outside does not exist primarily in a discursive discourse among musicologists
or music theorists; it is a musical task that Zorn has to resolve within music. Through the
philosophy of Derrida, I want to establish the analogy between a textual deconstruction
and Zorn's musical deconstruction (Can we say it is 'his' deconstruction?) in his homage
to Burt Bacharach.

[2] The opposition of inside vs. outside is a frequent returning point of Derrida's interest.
An example is found in his writing about the hymen. Hymen, the virginal membrane, but
also the consummation of a marriage. (In Greek and Latin mythology, 'hymen' refers to
the God of matrimony and to a hymeneal song.) As a protective screen, as an invisible
veil, it stands between the inside and the outside of a woman, and consequently between
(male?) desire and fulfillment. As a (con)fusion between two people (marriage), however,
there is no longer any difference between desire and satisfaction. So, hymen both implies
communion and hinders this communion; it is both barrier and interaction. Hymen is a
fusion that abolishes contraries, for example, the difference between desire and its
accomplishment. But hymen is also the fold of a mucous membrane that keeps them
separate (cf. Dissemination, 209-18).
It is not a matter of choice here. If we would choose between the two, there would be no
hymen. Hymen is neither fusion nor separation, but stands between the two. Neither
inside nor outside, but between the two. 'It is an operation that both sows confusion
between opposites and stands between the opposites at once' (Dissemination, p.212). And
it is the 'between' that counts. It outwits, as Derrida says, all manner of dialectics.

[3] Why am I connecting hymen to Zorn's project on Bacharach? Why should I? Am I

trying to explain this music by means of certain linguistic, semantic, or philosophical
ideas (and with that - reduce it to these ideas)? No, I am paying attention to this hymen
because it is not about the word hymen. Derrida: 'What counts here is not the lexical
richness, the semantic infiniteness of a word or concept, its depth or breadth, the
sedimentation that has produced inside of it two contradictory layers of signification
(continuity and discontinuity, inside and outside, identity and difference, etc.). What
counts here is the formal or syntactical praxis that composes and decomposes it. We have
indeed been making believe that everything could be traced to the word hymen. But the
irreplaceable character of this signifier, which everything seemed to grant it, was laid out
like a trap. This word, this syllepsis, is not indispensable ... It produces its effect first and
foremost through the syntax, which disposes the 'entre' in such a way that the suspense is
due only to the placement and not to the content of words' (Dissemination, p.220).
What I want to present is a kind of analogy between hymen and Zorn's tribute. They are
both about the 'entre', the in-between, about undecidability. They are both undecidables.
This undecidability is not only at work when we look at the different meanings of hymen.
This in-between articulates itself within one meaning as well. (Can we speak of one
isolated meaning or are the other ones always resonating, present in their absence?) In
order to explain this, I return to the meaning of hymen as marriage. In this case, hymen is
a sign of fusion, the identification of two beings. Between the two, there is identity.
Derrida, however, generalizes his meditations on hymen as marriage in his statement: 'It
is not only the difference (between desire and fulfillment) that is abolished, but also the
difference between difference and non-difference'. To Derrida, hymen shows itself in the
articulation of meaning in general. 'Non-presence, the gaping void of desire, and
presence, the fullness of enjoyment, amount to the same. By the same token, there is no
longer any textual difference between the image and the thing, the empty signifier and the
full signified, the imitator and the imitated'. It is the fusion that is important, not the
different poles of the pair. But it does not follow, Derrida continues, by virtue of this
hymen of confusion, that 'there is now only one term, a single one of the differends ... It
is the difference between the two that is no longer functional ... What is lifted, then, is not
difference but the different, the differends, the decidable exteriority of differing terms.
Thanks to the confusion and continuity of the hymen, and not in spite of it, a (pure and
impure) difference inscribes itself without any decidable poles, without any independent,
irreversible terms' (Dissemination, p.209-10). So although hymen represents fusion, it
also, by the same movement, leaves the difference intact.

[4] The songs in Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach are (like) hymen. Some aspects of
the originals are unveiled, others veiled. (And to be taken out of the song, they must have
already been within it). There is a (partial) contact, but no (complete) assimilation. Both
fusion and separation, and neither fusion nor separation; (n)either inner (n)or outer. It is
connected to and cooperates in its inside operation from the outside. Great Jewish Music:
Burt Bacharach moves between difference and identity, but the difference between these
two terms, the two poles, is no longer functional.
In Fred Frith's version of 'Trains And Boats And Planes', the musical elements are all
present, but nevertheless the listener can only catch a glimpse of the original. The original
song remains partially hidden behind his 'interpretation'. (Of Interpretation discusses the
problems using this word while writing about this kind of deconstruction in music. 'Of
Interpretation' is specifically about Gerd Zacher's Die Kunst einer Fuge, but certain
analogies with Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach are possible). So, on one hand
Frith's music (Is it his music? Or Bacharach's? Or both?) brings one into contact with the
compositions and musical world of Bacharach; on the other hand, Frith makes a (real or
direct) contact impossible because he stands in the way. The perverted repetition of the
first two bars (a de(con)structuration of the composition together with the repeated drum
pattern generating the idea of a passing train), the squealing infringements of the guitar,
and the ever increasing shrillness of the voices are but three examples that maintain a
distance. However, everyone who knows Bacharach's 'Trains And Boats And Planes' will
recognize it in Frith's version. And yet, it is so different from the original. It absolutely
puts no effort into resembling the original (no imitation, no mimesis). And yet, it is the
same song. This 'representative of the outside' is nonetheless constituted in the very heart
of the inside. Frith's 'Trains And Boats And Planes' is located at the boundary between
the inside and the outside. Outside from a certain perspective, inside from another. It is
not a matter of deciding; that would destroy the working of hymen, the area of tension in
which Frith's play between identity and difference takes place.
Concepts such as interpretation or arrangement are no longer adequate to describe
projects like Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach unless we redefine, refine or
accentuate them. That's why I propose in Of Interpretation the term encounter instead of
arrangement or interpretation. But more important than suggesting new terms is the care
and attention that should be paid when writing on music that in its development escapes
from and passes by the discourse about music as it is still generally used. For that,
attention to deconstruction can contribute in my opinion, although Zorn seems to
eliminate any possibility of writing or talking about his work: 'This music has progressed
far beyond the capabilities of our language to describe or notate it'. However, maybe
deconstruction is not about description but about de-scription. Writing on music can be
considered a hymen: it mediates our contact with the musical world and establishes a
distance at the same time.
Positions I
[1] In 'Coordination and Convention: The Organization of the Concert World' (1987),
American sociologist Samuel Gilmore describes the relationship between the
organizational structure of a musical (sub)world and artistic conventions. For this, he
compares the music world surrounding the grand concert halls and famous orchestras of
Midtown Manhattan ('repertory concert music') with the music world of Uptown
Manhattan that is concentrated, to a large extent, around Columbia University ('academic
composition'), and the music world of Downtown Manhattan ('the avant-garde milieu').
(Is this the world of John Zorn? I'll return to this.) 'I examined the production processes in
one type of art world, the 'concert music world', which is the name used by performing
rights organizations (e.g., ASCAP and BMI), to designate what is generally considered to
be classical or art music and differentiate it from jazz or popular styles', Gilmore writes
(Gilmore, p.212). Gilmore does not name John Zorn as a member of the Downtown
avant-garde scene. (Is it because he is more of a jazz or pop musician?) Instead, he
mentions minimalists such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich.
'Each sub-world is a wholly encompassed organization of concert producing activities
with a relatively distinct identity from the other sub-worlds' (Gilmore, p.213). The link
that relates them is the degree and type of musical conventions used in concert activities.
He points to the inadequacy of explanations of musical activities that focus exclusively
on the individual, and that neglect the complex web of social relationships in which
individual identities are formed and transformed. Participation in either the Uptown or
the Downtown world leads to different musical values (interpretation and technical
virtuosity versus innovation and radical challenge to established conventions). Gilmore's
proposition: The more complex the concert organization is, the more constrained the
artistic innovation; the simpler the organizational structure is, the more innovation is
allowed (cf. Gilmore, p.210). Midtown productions are large-scale, incur high costs and
require a large number of concert collaborators. Downtown concerts, on the other hand,
are small-scale, the costs are (therefore) low and can operate by maintaining a small,
interpersonal organization of collaboration (cf. for instance Gilmore, p.215, table 1).
According to Gilmore. And he mentions Glass as a representative of the Downtown
concert world.

[2] Let's digress here for a moment. For instance to recall that Glass' opera, Einstein on
the Beach, was performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1976, the year in which
the opera was written, after more than 30 successful performances abroad. (Gilmore
writes about the Downtown scene: 'Few composers have more than 10 performances a
year, and even composers who have immediate access to their own concert spaces
perform infrequently.') 'This was hardly one of the many experimental works predestined
for the lofts and galleries of downtown New York', Glass writes about his first opera
(Glass, p.32). His third opera, Akhnaten, had its American premiere in 1984 at the New
York City Opera and was performed some 20 times within six months.
Glass recalls that preparations for this mammoth production, Einstein on the Beach,
started as early as 1974. In Music By Philip Glass, he cannot resist drawing repeated
attention to the enormous organizational worries. 'Putting on opera is a tremendous
enterprise involving literally hundreds of people - orchestra, chorus, soloists, sometimes
dancers, all the backstage people, designers, builders, fitters - the list goes on and on',
Glass writes (Glass, p.138). This meant that Glass worked with a team from the inception
of each project. 'To produce an innovative work on a large scale requires organization
and skills that its authors have no time for' (Glass, p.46). 'Division of labor' is a key
phrase found in his memoirs. The composer, theater producer and choreographer are all
supported by directors, administrative staff, stage managers, international theater agents
and producers ('As such, the musical division is collapsed,' Gilmore writes, describing the
Downtown scene.) And let's not forget that Einstein on the Beach sure was an innovative
work within the concert music world. The work marked a turning point in the history of
American music-theater. Innovation and organization go hand in hand; they support each
other. One is a condition for the other.
Do I have to go on? For instance, to compare Gilmore's remark, '… events tend to be
small and production costs are fairly minimal' with Glass' refutation that Einstein on the
Beach cost 'about $900,000 on salaries, travel, living costs, equipment expenses,
administration and so on - actually a very modest amount for the number of people, time
worked, distances traveled'. Or should I compare Gilmore's statement that most
composers '…are not paid or are paid only small amounts for concerts' with Glass'
remarks concerning the commission, i.e. the money for the composer, that had to be
found in the Netherlands when the Netherlands Opera commissioned him to compose
another opera (Satyagraha). To be sure, Einstein on the Beach was written for Glass' own
ensemble and this supports Gilmore's observation of a small community with small
collaborative concert groups, illustrative of the Downtown concert world. This makes the
coordination of innovative practices more feasible. Glass' second opera, Satyagraha,
however, was scored for a more conventional orchestra: strings, woodwinds, organ, six
solo singers, and a chorus of forty. 'It should be for my orchestra, chorus and soloists,
people trained and practiced in the singing of traditional operas,' Hans de Roo, the
director of the Netherlands Opera, told Glass (Glass, p.87). Gilmore: 'There is a highly
specialized division of labor between composers and performers. Performers start to
specialize very early in their careers and have little or no contact with living composers'
(Gilmore, p.217). An utterance, perfectly applicable to Glass and the Netherlands Opera.
However, Gilmore writes this when he begins to describe the Midtown sub-world,
whereas Glass was offered as an example of the Downtown scene. One more example.
According to Gilmore, the organization of interaction between composers and performers
in Midtown takes place through open, formal distribution processes. Composers of new
pieces lose touch after they publish, and often do not know who performs their work (cf.
Gilmore, p.218). His description of the Midtown concert world seems to agree quite well
with Glass' remark that he is often not involved in all the productions of theater works
containing his music (cf. Glass, p.163).

[3] Maybe Glass' operas are exceptions. Maybe Philip Glass is an exception. But once
more, call to mind that it is Gilmore who mentions Glass explicitly as one of the core
members of the Downtown scene. And, according to Gilmore, it is precisely these central
figures that can be examined separately in order to explore the internal relationship of
social organization and aesthetic practices, in order to compare the differences between
subworlds. His own example, however, seems to prevent Gilmore from proving his thesis
that artistic innovation and complex organizational structures tend not to occur together.
With particular regard to Einstein on the Beach, a solid and extensive organization was
the precondition for creating an innovative opera.
I'm not intending to reverse Gilmore's argument by claiming that Glass is actually a
member of the Midtown or the Uptown scene. By giving a short comment on an example
I want to show that the tri-partition Gilmore makes is not discrete. Gilmore, though, is
also aware of that: 'Each sub-world is a wholly encompassed organization of concert
producing activities with a relatively distinct identity from the other sub-worlds. This
does not mean that these sub-worlds are completely separate and autonomous' (Gilmore,
p.213). They have overlapping peripheries and only partially distinct cores; Gilmore only
shades his first statement, thereby creating an opportunity for escape through which even
the core members can disappear.

[4] Is this non-discreteness of the musical sub-worlds the reason he does not mention
John Zorn? Or, did Gilmore have foresight, anticipating the moment when it would be
very difficult to categorize him? He must have known Zorn. His most famous album up
until the year Gilmore wrote his essay, The Big Gundown. John Zorn Plays the Music of
Ennio Morricone, was released in 1985. Cobra, together with some 43 other albums to
which Zorn contributed, had already been released.
Why did he not mention Zorn? Because Gilmore would have had great difficulty
maintaining his idea about core members and periphery. Let's read Gilmore's findings
regarding the Downtown sub-world once again. Even more closely this time. And
confront them with information about Zorn. (Here, I have deliberately chosen the time
until 1987 in which to write about Zorn and his work.)

(a) In the Downtown scene 'many concerts are produced by only one musician, a
composer/performer who plays his own music exclusively. As such, the musical division
of labor is collapsed' (Gilmore, p.219). Recalling his career in music, which started in the
mid-seventies in downtown New York, Zorn says in an interview, 'I started promoting
my own concerts. I'd just go into a coffee shop and say, 'Hey, can I play here on Friday?'
And they'd go, 'Well, yeah, why not?' I'd make my own posters and put them around.
That was 1974. I kept making my own posters until something like '83 or '84. And it was
really a great period. No one would come to my gigs, but I just loved the opportunity to
be able to play, and to compose and then perform it' (Duckworth, p.457).
Zorn may be regarded as a paradigm of the 'composer/performer'. But can we say - more
generally - that being a composer and performer simultaneously is a characteristic of a
music sub-world (classical or art music) clearly separated from jazz and popular music as
Gilmore says (see above)? Does not this criterion subvert the division of the music world
in three sub-worlds? Being composer as well as performer is very typical in the jazz,
blues, and pop traditions; it was there all along, while in the classical world the separation
between composer and musician became more distinguished. So the core of the
Downtown classical sub-world is already infected by a characteristic which places it in a
twilight zone or on a boundary between classical music, jazz, and pop music. The outside
(jazz and pop influences) is already on the inside (classical music); the inside (the very
heart of the Downtown scene to which Glass and Zorn, for example, belong) is already
on the outside (both Zorn and Glass find themselves on the outside or on the edge of the
Downtown concert world).

(b) 'Downtown concert practices are not conventionalized. Notational practices are highly
varied and change frequently ... The primary musical activity is radical innovation in both
compositional and performance techniques' (Gilmore, p.214).
Zorn promotes rather unconventional relationships between performers and their
instruments and, especially in his solo performances, he introduces some alternative
musical instruments (honking, squeaking and tweeting toys, duck calls, water whistles).
His composition (Is it a composition in the traditional sense? Zorn questions the
dichotomy of improvisation versus composition. According to Zorn, both are ways of
putting music together. Also, there is not a great difference in the opposing ends of the
linked opposition, spontaneous versus carefully considered because both improvisation
and composition are based on a concept, a style with which the performer/composer lives
(cf. Duckworth, p.461).), Cobra, consists of an elaborate set of rules recorded on index
cards that determine who plays when, but does not determine the resulting sound. Colors
and (abstract) information on the index cards indicate what will happen; cues mark the
transition from one musical adventure to the next. Zorn acts like a prompter, in between a
conductor and a referee, holding up and changing the cards. Somewhat similar innovative
composition and notation techniques are also to be found on Spillane: there is written
music, but much of it is not notated in any conventional sense. Zorn uses numbered file
cards sometimes only marked with certain indications: 'Harlem nightclub', 'blues guitar
and backup', 'shoot out'.

(c) Another characteristic of the Downtown concert world is that 'composers know who
they are writing for, and thus can explain, face-to-face, the techniques and intentions of
their composition' (Gilmore, p.220).
Direct contact with musicians plays a very important role in Zorn's working method.
While composing, he imagines not just the instruments, but first the musicians. Zorn
says, 'On the Morricone record [The Big Gundown, MC], deciding who did what was
more than just deciding this should be two guitars; it was deciding that I wanted this to be
Quine and Jody Harris, because they're two people who have worked together, developed
a certain rapport. So it's a matter of players and personalities' (Lesage, p.27-8). Zorn
knows the musical languages his fellow musicians speak. On that basis, he tries to find
the right balance for a band. Not always in terms of the instruments or, sometimes, not
even just in terms of the sounds that they make. More important to Zorn are the
personalities (cf. Duckworth, p.462). In another interview he confirms this strong
emphasis on personal contribution: 'I work with musicians and I try to get the best out of
them ... I play the game according to their rules' (Gagne, p.525). This even means that
once he has chosen the players and the right chemistry turns out to be missing, he will not
go ahead.
His face-to-face contact is very apparent in Cobra. With expressive gestures, Zorn
commands this game piece. He communicates the parameters of this work to his players
by eye or by cue. His role is to set up rules so that the people in the band have to make
decisions; they have to communicate - with Zorn and with each other (cf. Jones, p.146-7).
(d) 'When larger performing groups are called for, the performers recruited are also often
composers. Not surprisingly, these performers frequently contribute to the compositional
development of a piece' (Gilmore, p.219). In The Death of the Composer, I expand upon
the great interest with which Zorn chooses the right musicians to play his compositions
because he is aware that each interpreter leaves his own signature on a performance. In
fact, they become a kind of co-composer. Cobra especially - as an indeterminate score -
acquires the character of its performers. It is a composition that allows the players to
devise and invent musical situations. 'Each performance will be drastically different in
sound and structure as the participants bring in their own private perceptions, past
experiences, instrumental techniques, and interpersonal attitudes', Zorn says. (One
example: on the CD version of Cobra, turntable player Christian Marclay inserts a
Wagner quotation. In an interview, Zorn points out that he did not tell Marclay to use
Wagner. 'That particular piece was chosen by Christian right then. He wanted to use it, he
used it. I had nothing to say about it. In Cobra, the musical materials are completely up to
the performers' (Strickland, p.133).) There are a lot of reasons to call somebody into the
band in a game piece. One very important reason Zorn gives is that a particular musician
has 'a lot of compositional ideas' (Gagne, p.521).
'The performers recruited are also often composers'. It is difficult to find a musician with
whom Zorn works who is not a composer. Elliott Sharp, Anthony Coleman, Eugene
Chadbourne, Ikue Mori, Derek Bailey, Eric Friedlander, Bill Frisell, Joey Baron, David
Moss, Charles K. Noyes ... The list is endless.

(e) 'In terms of scale, the number of potential participants available for a given concert in
Downtown is much smaller than in Midtown. Several composer/performers characterized
the sub-world as a community where everybody knows everybody else ... Downtown
performers tend to participate in only a few groups and establish long-term relationships
in these ensembles' (Gilmore, p.220).
Over the years, Zorn has become a central figure in the Downtown scene, a dedicated and
tight group of musicians playing in ever-shifting bands and improvisational circles. When
he arrived in New York in 1974, he began networking with musicians throughout the
East Village. 'I was performing in my little apartment on Lafayette Street, meeting
musicians one by one. The downtown improvising scene didn't exist at that time. I met all
the musicians I work with one by one over the years' (Strickland, p.139). Contemplating
the results of his social activities, Zorn concludes: 'I really feel like I've created a small
society: a way of working. People fit into it - they like it - they have time off and then
they're called to perform ... It's like Hakim Bey's concept of a TAZ, a Temporary
Autonomous Zone: a moment separate from society, which creates its own rules ... Some
people can enter it and some can't, but regardless of that, it has validity, it's organic, it's
alive, it has life in it' (Gagne, p.514).
Do permit me a slight diversion, a (lateral) branch (as in that of a river or an olive tree).
'Some people can enter it and some can't'. That is the implication of Zorn's meticulous
screening. To play with him, every musician needs a musical and social password, a
Shibboleth. Shibboleth is about the difference between inside and outside, about crossing
a threshold. This threshold, this Shibboleth, is John Zorn. He gives access to a certain
community, or better, he is the place where the decision is made about the right to enter a
certain society. (In Great Jewish Music, I consider at length my choice of the Jewish
word Shibboleth. This password used by the Israelites to keep their enemy on the outside
seems to apply very well to Zorn: like Zorn himself, almost all his fellow musicians are
Jews.) Shibboleth is both a word of benevolence and a word of violence: a sign of union
and a verdict of exclusion and discrimination. Some people can enter and some cannot.

(f) 'Concerts in Downtown are produced under much less economic pressure than
Midtown. Events tend to be quite small and production costs are fairly minimal. Many
concerts are held in 'lofts' where Downtown musicians live. In addition, most
composers/performers are not paid or are paid only small amounts for concerts' (Gilmore,
p.221).
Zorn has been toiling away in the performance spaces and lofts of the Lower East Side
for close to 14 years (cf. Jones, p.149). 'My first performances in New York were in his
theater [Richard Foreman's Theater of Musical Optics at Broome street on lower
Broadway, MC] and in my own apartment', Zorn recalls (Gagne, p.514). This
experimental theater producer, Foreman, taught Zorn the love for doing things under
adverse conditions and on small budgets. And although he was making next to nothing
(Duckworth: 'Were you making any money by this point?' Zorn: 'No, nothing. Nothing at
all' (Duckworth, p.459)), Zorn seemed to be quite happy and willing to make hardly any
musical concessions. In a burst of nostalgia, Zorn says: 'We were working on our own
music, in our own little clubs, putting our own little posters up, and developing our own
audience'.

[5] Why all this information? Why try to prove that Gilmore could have labeled Zorn a
core member of the Downtown music sub-world? One possible answer: to make
something clear about the position Zorn has in this sub-world, to situate his position.
Why not take advantage of the findings of a serious researcher to give Zorn the position
he deserves, at the heart of a dazzling music world? However, look at the title: Positions.
There is more than one. Zorn can be situated on the inside of the Downtown concert
world, a name given to a music sub-world that differs from jazz and popular music
worlds (cf. Gilmore, p.212). But the specific albums I mention above - Spillane and
especially Cobra - as well as the performances I'm referring to, are all about
improvisation, improvised music, usually closely related to jazz music. And can't we say
that a tribute to Ennio Morricone also means a tribute to popular music? Even Gilmore
himself, talking about performers who are shown to be co-composers (see 4), introduces
with this a musical element generally not associated with a music world that is clearly
separated from the jazz and pop scenes.
Zorn is in the center of the Downtown classical music world, although he barely has any
connection to classical music. He is on the inside, but as an outsider. In order to protect
the inside, to make clear that what is located, not on the edge or in an overlapping
periphery, but - almost ideal typical - in the core of the Downtown concert world, we
could position a person who comes from the outside, who always operates from a place
(or non-place) situated between classical music, jazz, and pop music. Zorn (like Socrates)
is a pharmakos. When Gilmore wants to accomplish his mission ('The cores of concert
production in each sub-world can be analyzed separately'), he has to drive Zorn out of the
center. He has to chase away the outsider who brings in many aspects that do not or
cannot belong to the core of the Downtown concert world. He has to expel John Zorn (an
a-poria, a no entrance, instead of a Shibboleth, a password), an almost exemplary model
of this inside, because the core of the core of the Downtown sub-world is already
permeated by its own periphery.
Gilmore has to expel Zorn because of Spillane. Because Spillane is also about
improvisation, jazz and rock. Because Spillane is released by Elektra Nonesuch,
ostensibly a classical music label and more closely related to the Uptown scene. Because
Spillane contains the composition 'Forbidden Fruit' played by the classically trained
Kronos Quartet that I presume Gilmore would classify among the Uptown concert world.
Because in Spillane, the borders between jazz, pop and classical music dissolve, the
dividing line between the emphasis on continual innovation and the development of
virtuoso techniques (a difference between Downtown and Midtown according to
Gilmore) is abolished, and the cooperation of Uptown and Downtown musicians
('Forbidden Fruit' is a piece for string quartet, turntables, and Japanese voice recorded by
the Kronos Quartet, Christian Marclay and Ohta Hiromi, the latter two representing the
Downtown scene) reveals that the boundaries between the three distinguished concert
worlds is not discrete, even when we take an exemplary model of the core of one of these
worlds (and I tried to demonstrate that a composer proposed by Gilmore is not a good
example any more than Zorn is).
Positions. Of course, a musician like anyone else holds more than one position (guitarist
instead of pianist, jazz instead of pop musician, performer instead of composer, etc.).
Here, however, it is impossible to talk about different positions in this sense. Zorn's
position as a musician differs within itself. He is both at the heart of the Downtown
concert world and on the periphery. That means he is neither in the center, nor on the
periphery. Or, when he is on the inside Gilmore sketches (performers being (co-
)composers at the same time), he is already on its outside (performer/composer as a
stronger characteristic of the jazz and pop worlds, worlds Gilmore tries to exclude but
seem to resonate at the very heart of the Downtown concert world).

[6] Why this modest initiative (modest because a great deal more could be said if we had
more time, if Gilmore's work were the central point of this essay) to deconstruct
Gilmore's theoretical framework? I turn to Jonathan Culler's book, On Deconstruction,
for some help and insight. Following Derrida, Culler states that reflection upon
theoretical results and institutional frameworks is necessary. The questioning of these
theoretical and/or institutional structures can be seen as an act of politicizing what might
otherwise be thought of as neutral frameworks or neutral research (cf. Culler, p.156).
Classifications such as Gilmore's are produced by acts of exclusion (for example, the
division of the music world in a classical, pop and jazz sub-world). Of course, one
frequently finds general agreement, but a consensus adduced to serve as foundation is not
given, but produced, produced by these acts of exclusion. Since deconstruction is
interested in what has been excluded and in the perspective it offers on consensus and
convention, there can be no question of accepting consensus and convention as the truth
or restricting truth of what is demonstrable within a system. It tries to keep alive the
possibility that attention to the marginal, the periphery of a system, might yield ideas that
contradict the consensus, ideas that are not demonstrable within the framework yet
developed (cf. Culler, p.153). The inversion and displacement of hierarchical oppositions
open for debate the institutional arrangements that rely on the hierarchies and thus open
possibilities for change. Deconstruction's most radical aspects emerge precisely in a
theoretical reflection that contests particular institutionalizations of a theoretical
discourse. It's analyses have potentially radical institutional implications (cf. Culler,
p.159).
Deconstructive strategies do not lead to new foundations. They have no better theory to
offer, but are attuned to the aporias that arise in attempts to reveal the truth. For instance,
the truth about the Manhattan concert world. Deconstruction does not lead to new
foundations. However, working within and around a discursive framework, producing
reversals and displacements rather than constructing on new ground, it can definitely lead
to changes in assumptions, institutions, and practices (cf. Culler, p.154-5).
Positions II
[1] Two justifications for this page on the institutional world around Zorn and his music.
Two justifications for writing around music. Just in case.
(1) In The Truth In Painting, Derrida talks about the frame, the surrounds of the artwork,
its fringes: discourses, the market, the institutional frameworks, everyplace where one
legislates on the right to produce art by marking the limit, the limit between art and non-
art. Of course, talking about the surrounds of an artwork means talking about something
that is external to art. External and, thereby, marginal, peripheral because the work of art
is (at) the center. At the same time, however, these frames are often essential to the works
of art. It is here that the decision is made as to whether or not an object or an (acoustic)
event can be called a work of art; here, the boundary is drawn between art and non-art.
So, in fact, it is the frame, the discourse, the institution that can be called the artworld,
that 'produces' the art, that sets something off as art. Thus, the frame can be considered
central; for without it, art is not art. The artworld is an essential supplement to works of
art.
(2) In almost all of Zorn's interviews, he talks about his experiences with record
companies, about the politics and economics of the music industry, about the difficulties
he used to have distributing his music, about how his work is classified (for instance, in
record shops), about the wages he could or could not pay his fellow musicians, about
record covers and liner notes, about the intentions of his work, in short: about the
surrounds of his music. (And let's not forget that the interview itself is part of the fringe
of the work of art.) Apparently these subjects are important and they supply a need that
(his) music alone cannot fulfill. Sometimes, it is even difficult to consider these
surrounds external to Zorn's works as is the case with the record covers: 'With me, the
packaging is essential - that is my artwork, making records', Zorn says (Gagne, p.531)
(cf. Restitutions, Shibboleth or Aporias).

[2] Enough now. Time to come to the main point of this page. Time to introduce some
remarks by sociologist and musician Howard Becker in order to clarify Zorn's position in
the contemporary world of music. Why? Because Zorn seems to be an illustrative
example of what Becker describes as an absolute prerequisite of success when talking
about an innovative artist: the crucial importance of organizational development to
artistic change. In other words, Zorn represents the possibility that successful innovators
can create around themselves the apparatus of an art world (cf. Becker, p.300-1). (Just
how innovative Zorn is, is not my concern here. Becker distinguishes between continuous
and revolutionary innovations, but, elaborating on the two, he comes to the conclusion
that the distinction he first proposed is not so clear. Neither of them changes every pattern
of convention-mediated, cooperative activity. Furthermore, a change may be
revolutionary for some involved in the existing system, but not for others (cf. Becker,
301-8). Becker seems to dismantle his own analytically constructed opposition by saying
that the one is always permeated by the other. A form of auto-deconstruction?)
And in the year 2000, John Zorn is successful. 'Zorn was able to rise to the top of the
'Downtown Crowd', a group of musicians playing in ever shifting bands and
improvisational circles' (Cuthbert, p.2). 'He is a lightning rod for new music talent in New
York' (Jones, p.143). But his fame is not restricted to New York, nor to the USA. 'Zorn
became a central figure in the realm of free improvisation, networking with musicians at
first throughout the East Village, and eventually throughout the world' (Gagne, p.509).
(Zorn as a central figure is also illustrated in Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, the
CD that bears his name although he does not play a single note on it.) He is an esteemed
guest at important international music festivals; his records sell worldwide and his
compositions are performed all over the (western) world. ('Even my father looks at me
now like a success.') And he is fairly famous not only in the inner circle of modern jazz
and avantgarde enthusiasts. His versatile oeuvre has made him well-known in the
(alternative) pop circuit and in the world of contemporary composed music as well.
Famous string quartets and orchestras play his works in concert halls in which Beethoven
and Schubert are usually performed.
It all started differently, laboriously, and not very promising when Zorn came (back) to
New York in 1974. 'I started promoting my own concerts. I'd just go to a coffee shop and
say, 'Hey, can I play here on Friday?' And they'd go, 'Well, yeah, why not?' I'd make my
own posters and put them around ... No one would come to my gigs, but I just loved the
opportunity to be able to play, and to compose and then perform it'. He gave
performances in his own appartment for two people, he received miserable reviews until
the 1980's, and was not making any money with his music (cf. Duckworth, p.457-9).

[3] What is the source of his current success? His great musical talent? His ability to
create new musical forms and to obscure musical boundaries? Of course, his musical and
compositional skills have influenced his reputation. Becker, however, disputes - or at
least puts into perspective - this highly individualistic theory of art made by specially
gifted people who create works of exceptional beauty. According to Becker, this theory
arises in times and places and under social conditions that emphasize the individual over
the collective and needs some reconsideration. 'The theory of reputation says that
reputations are based on works. But, in fact, the reputations of artists, works, and the rest
result from the collective activity of art worlds' (Becker, p.360). Becker mentions the
influence of critics, aestheticians, historians, scholars, editors, and participants in the
distribution system. (Introducing the notion of an art world gives rise to as many
questions as it offers solutions. Becker is aware of that himself, but avoids a discussion
by falling back on his pragmatic position. In this way, he tries to prevent questions about
the boundary of an art world. Which people and which activities can still or already be
considered part of an art world and which do not (yet or any longer) belong to it? In much
the same way, he avoids a definition of art. But how can we speak about an art world
when we do not first know what art is? By what does one recognize an art world or works
of art if one does not have a sort of preconception of the essence of art? Again, questions
about the problem of inside and outside arise and although I put these remarks in
parentheses - putting them on an outside as it were, but an outside which is on the inside
at the same time - they should resonate throughout this text.)
What applies to reputation, also applies to art in general. The main point Becker wants to
emphasize is that all artistic work involves the collective activities of a number of people.
Every art rests on an extensive division of labor and the artist works in the center of a
network of cooperating people, all of whose work is essential to the final outcome. (This
is not the place for in depth questioning of Becker's idea of the artist as the center of an
art world. I confine myself to refer to the remarks made in the first justification: what is
considered marginal can become central and vice versa.) Producing works of art requires
elaborate cooperation among specialized people. So, works of art are not the products of
individuals, artists who possess a rare and special gift. Rather, they are joint products of
all the people who cooperate in an art world of which the artists are (only) a sub-group
(cf. Becker, p.1-39).
In The Signature of John Zorn and at the end of The Death of the Composer I indicate
more emphatically Zorn's regard for his work as the outcome of varying collectives of
individuals (cf. also the liner notes of Spillane). To Zorn, the hierarchical difference
between the actual Genius and his assistants seems to dissapear. Perhaps the idea of a
genius still exists for Zorn, but it exists in the plural: he emphasizes that his fellow
musicians are geniuses, too. Instead of analyzing the oeuvre as the final result of a
creative process connected with one proper name, Zorn asks musicologists and music
theorists to pay attention to the whole production process. The signature with which an
oeuvre is supplied conceals the complexity of the production process underlying this
oeuvre (cf. Lesage, p.4-6).

[4] I return to my question: What is the source of Zorn's current success?

According to Becker, success, reputation and recognition depend to a great extent on an
artist's ability (and probably a certain amount of luck and coincidences) to create a (new)
art world around himself or his artistic product. Artistic changes succeed when 'their
originators mobilize some or all of the members of the relevant art world to cooperate in
the new activities their vision of the medium requires ... Their success depends on the
degree to which their proponents can mobilize the support of others ... Innovators who
command the cooperation of everyone needed for the activities the innovation requires
have an art world at their disposal, whether they take over existing institutions or simply
create an entire new network' (Becker, p.308-10). Becker goes on to describe in broad
and general terms how such a new network can come into existence. 'Experimenting
groups cluster locally because they communicate largely face-to-face, hearing or seeing
each other's work … In addition to experimenting with new possibilities, the pioneers
also begin to construct the rudiments of an art world - networks of suppliers, distribution
facilities, and collegial groups in which aesthetic questions can be argued, standards
proposed, and work evaluated' (Becker, p.320). Little by little, the informal circuit
professionalizes (Becker mentions, as an example of this professionalization, the
development of stable contractual arrangements for performances) and becomes more
familiar over a larger area (for example, through performances in other parts of the
country and through the distribution of recorded material). New and professional business
and distribution arrangements help a small, local art world, one in which a circle of
cooperation does not go beyond the face-to-face interaction, to spread over a larger
territory.

[5] An exciting book for a young boy? Maybe, but it is also Becker's sociological
description of the development of jazz music in the USA. And it seems befitting to
describe Zorn's career (and that of his fellow musicians from the Downtown scene) as
well. (The parentheses are used because it is Zorn who attracts most attention. He appears
to be the center of the network, an idea that Zorn confirms in an interview. 'Question: We
live in a time when the music press encourages either that kind of adulation, or else a
total denial of a composer. The scene is constantly being reduced to a few heroes and
heavies, who's in and who's out, in order to sell newspapers and magazines - that is, if
anyone gets written about at all'. Zorn's answer: 'Yes. It's a shame when they pick out one
or two people from a whole generation of musicians to turn into gods. It happened with
Reich and Glass; it happened with Cage. God forbid it should happen to me, but of all
those musicians - Elliott [Sharp] and Wayne [Horvitz], Anthony Coleman or Chadbourne
- I'm the one that keeps getting the play, and it's not fair. I come from a pool of musicians
that collaborated, that shared ideas ... I think it is important for people who find
themselves in the public eye to try to diffuse some of the attention to other places, and
give support back into the community that nurtured them in the first place. It's a
responsability I became very aware of years ago when the press started jumping on me in
the mid 1980's' (Gagne, p.517-8, my italics). Analogously, Becker points to the
possibility that one locale may become dominant, while the others model themselves on
its example.)
I do not think that Zorn created a whole new art world. However, I would like to call him
one of the most important originators of a new subworld within the Downtown scene of
New York, a subworld that now receives worldwide recognition. To elaborate on this,
let's concentrate on four keywords: The scene, clubs, record companies, and a book.

[6] The Scene. By the mid-1970's, when Zorn moves to New York, he finds a city where
it is both hard to find musicians with whom to play and a place in which to perform his
music. 'So, starting from where I dropped out I just said, 'Okay, I'm going to meet people,
write, perform my music, and play wherever I can play'. I played on the street for years.
And I had met musicians on the West Coast who eventually gravitated to New York, and
we began working together. But in 1974, '75, '76, there were maybe two people I could
play with [Polly Bradfield and Eugene Chadbourne, MC], so I booked trio pieces', Zorn
recalls (Duckworth, p.457). And he continues: 'That was at the beginning. And then Tom
Cora and then Toshinori Kondo and then Bob Ostertag and then Ned Rothenberg - bit by
bit, people came together from all over the country and gravitated to New York and
somehow got involved in the maelstrom of the downtown improvisers. That was what we
were back then; even more so now ... I really feel I created a small society: a way of
working. People fit into it - they like it - they have time off and then they're called to
perform' (Gagne, p.514-6 and Duckworth, p.459). A quick glance at the enormous list of
musicians with whom Zorn worked over the years gives the impression that he manages a
kind of database or runs a temp agency. In the ever changing line-up of performers (that
at times does not include Zorn), musicians from this network collaborate in very diverse
musical projects. Zorn seems to satisfy Becker's description of a successful new art
world: 'The history of art deals with innovators and innovations that won organizational
victories ... mobilizing enough people to cooperate in regular ways that sustained and
furthered their idea' (Becker, p.301).

[7] The clubs. After Zorn's rough start, things improved slightly. 'We were finding places
to play on our own. We were working in our own little clubs, putting out our own little
posters up, and developing our own audience. And it was a very exciting time. Clubs
would come and go within a few months', says Zorn (Duckworth, p.459). Clubs would
come and go within a few months. This changed in 1987, when three men (Michael Dorf,
Louis Spitzer, and Bob Appel) founded the Knitting Factory. In Knitting Music. A Five-
Year History of the Knitting Factory Dorf recalls: 'The NY music scene, from jazz to
rock, was desperate at this time for a new venue'. Downtown musician Elliott Sharp
confirms this: 'Before the Knitting Factory there was this huge well of musicians with no
venue for their musical extremes. It gave them a means of dissemination' (Dorf, p.10 and
p.66).
Dorf, coming from Wisconsin, neither knew much about jazz and improvised music, nor
did he know the musicians of the Downtown scene. Through an advertisement, he came
into contact with Wayne Horvitz who introduced him to others on the scene. By April
1987, Dorf was booking every single night, mostly improvisationists or artists in a jazz
vein who needed work. Zorn, in a 1987 article from The New York Times: 'Michael came
along just at the right time. The Lower East Side downtown scene had been starving for a
place for a year. After 10 years, we were finally getting our due in the press, and people
were paying attention to us. But the Knitting Factory helped us take that extra step into
the limelight' (Dorf, p.17-8). And in a 1989 issue of the New York Magazine: 'Those guys
were really great; you could say, 'I want to play something I'm working on tonight', and
they'd say, 'Sure, we'll do a midnight set ... The Knitting Factory reinvoked the music
scene in New York. We fed it and it fed us, and it became bigger than both of us' (Dorf,
p.59). We fed it and it fed us. Musical innovations and a new organizational initiative
came to fertilize each other. 'Innovations begin as, and continue to incorporate, changes
in an artistic vision or idea. But their success depends on the degree to which their
proponents can mobilize the support of others' (Becker, p.309-10).
'New business and distribution arrangements help the growing art world spread over a
larger territory. This involves the sale of finished work, for object-producing arts, and the
development of stable contractual arrangements for performances', Becker writes
(Becker, p.325). Something similar happened to the Knitting Factory scene. Dorf booked
a series of concerts at Lincoln Center with a rather large budget. (From The New York
Times, 'The Knitting Factory Goes Uptown' and 'It's a chance to take this music and put it
in the mainstream media and give the larger population access to it, to experience it,
which, given the mostly underground nature of the scene, is a welcome opportunity'.)
Attention from Holland led to the 'Knitting Factory Festival' during the 'Jazz Marathon'
held in Groningen, The Netherlands in 1988, in which about thirty Downtown musicians
collaborated; the Japanese press and music industry started watching them closely. And
as a continuation of the success in The Netherlands, Dorf was able to arrange a European
tour in 1990.
In 2000, the Knitting Factory opened a branch in San Francisco. (It already had, for a
number of years, a branch in Amsterdam exclusively for the sale of records.) (Note:
Becker does not write about arguments and quarrels that can cause a split in an art world.
In 2000, John Lurie of The Lounge Lizards, a band that often played in the Knitting
Factory, sent a letter to The New Times LA Music Editor. In it, he decries 'the injustices
commited by the notorious Michael Dorf and the hideous Knitting Factory'. Lurie accuses
Dorf, in no uncertain terms, of getting rich at the expense of a lot of musicians. He
continues, 'In New York getting screwed is known as getting Dorfed ... Dorf is Frod
backwards'. Zorn, who remarkably enough almost never mentions the Knitting Factory
during his interviews, had also been avoiding this club for a couple of years. ('I was
unhappy about the way things were progressing at the Knitting Factory. I felt that
musicians were being mistreated'.) 'We fed it and it fed us'. The past perfect. Both seem
to be mature enough to feed themselves. Zorn helps to nurture a new inventive Lower
East Side club where he can promote his music and that of his fellow musicians: Tonic).

[8] Record companies. Many musicians of the art world to which Zorn belongs, benefited
by Dorf's next steps. He starts recording the shows at the Knitting Factory and
succesfully tries to interest radio stations for this music. ('We had more than 200 stations
carry the series in 1990', writes Dorf.) The music industry becomes interested, and, in
1989, Dorf signs a contract with A&M Records. As early as 1990, he buys back the
European rights from A&M in order to license the Live at the Knitting Factory CD's to a
more interested European label, Enemy Records. In 1991, the first CD on Dorf's own
record label, Knitting Factory Works, is released, the first CD outside of his A&M deal.
And with the financial help of his Japanese distributor, Dorf is able to expand the record
company.
By the time Dorf begins exploratory talks with A&M, Zorn has already had a contract for
a number of years with Elektra Nonesuch, a label that supported artists outside the
mainstream. His Ennio Morricone project in 1987, commissioned by The Brooklyn
Academy of Music, landed him a six-album deal with Nonesuch that released the project
on LP as The Big Gundown. Although this deal means a definite breakthrough for Zorn
(the Naked City album sold over 60,000), he is not very happy with his contract. He
accuses Nonesuch of unwanted interference with artistic matters, i.e., the packaging (cf.
Restitutions, Shibboleth or Aporias). They had difficulties with Zorn's scandalous covers
containing violent or politicized pictures and they wanted to change them. After licensing
Film Works 1986-1990 for North American release in fulfillment of his contract, Zorn
leaves Nonesuch and looks east to Japan. Although several subsequent CD's are released
by Eva Records in Tokyo, Zorn forms his own label, Avant, in 1991. He intends for
Avant to become a home to an important repertory of recordings produced with complete
artistic freedom by composers that he respects, composers whose work he feels is
undervalued and ignored elsewhere. In 1995, Zorn founds a new label, Tzadik. The
opening lines on a flyer make it clear that Zorn still wants the same thing: 'Tzadik is
dedicated to releasing the best in avant-garde and experimental music, presenting a
worldwide community of contemporary musician-composers who find it difficult or
impossible to release their music through more conventional channels'. In March 2000,
the discography for Tzadik numbers over 150. A worldwide community. 'No one small
locality, however metropolitan, can furnish a sufficient amount and variety of work to
serve a national or international market. For that reason ... the organizations that
distribute work begin to look everywhere for material, and thus breach the walls around
the local, provincial art world', Becker writes (Becker, p.329). According to him, the
development of new art worlds frequently focuses on the creation of new organizations
for the distribution of work. Fully developed art worlds provide professional distribution
systems.

[9] The book. Arcana. Musicians on Music. Edited by John Zorn and with the
contribution of 29 musicians/composers. Arcana: mysteries, secrets. From the title it is
impossible to deduce whether or not this book is meant to veil or unveil some mysteries.
But in the preface Zorn writes that it should provide a 'helpful insight into the artists'
inner mind', more direct than a manipulated interview.
How well this title is chosen. In alchemy tradition, arcanum means a secret medicine (a
pharmakon?), an elixer of life, a tonic (!). Maybe it is primarily a medicine for Zorn, who
writes in order to rid his system of the disappointment he feels about the lack of an
intelligent analysis of the music produced by the Downtown scene. 'This is almost
entirely unprecedented for an artistic movement of such scope and involving as many
important figures as it does' (Zorn, p.v). Through Arcana, with this pharmakon, he is able
to use writing to flush the frustration out of his system. 'This book exists to correct an
unfortunate injustice, the incredible lack of insightful critical writing about a significant
generation of the best and most important work of the past two decades' (Zorn, p.vi).
However, within the context of this page, Arcana, seen as an elixer, is perhaps more
important. An elixer of life is supposed to extend life. It gives new life to someone or
something. ('Putting it together was not a 'labor of love', but an act of necessity', writes
Zorn.) Arcana is probably not a real resuscitation, but a new way, another way to create
and define the musical subworld in which Zorn works. In his commentary on the book
jacket, Steve Reich recommends the book because it maps the 'historical sociobiology of
the Downtown music scene'. Not on a musical level, nor on a distributional level, but this
time on a discursive level, Zorn is able to attract a group of sympathizers, and, in this way
he consolidates and reconfirms the existence of (t)his art world. Although Zorn
emphasizes the impossibility of classifying or categorizing the music of the Downtown
scene, and although he stresses the differences between the works of the musicians
concerned, Arcana works as a kind of Shibboleth - a sign of belonging and association,
but along with that, also a sign of exclusion and discrimination - thereby marking the
(indefinite) borderlines of an art world, thereby defining that art world. With his book,
Zorn strengthens the bonds of this musical community, (re)creating a group with its own
standards, expectations and conventions, in which individual members will account for
the course of their own activities: the other members constitute the 'reference group'.
Here, Zorn puts himself in the position of an aesthetician as Becker describes:
'Aestheticians (or whoever does the job) provide the rationale by which art works justify
their existence and distinctiveness, and thus, their claim to support. Art and artists can
exist without such a rationale, but have more trouble when others dispute their rights to
do so ... A coherent and defensible aesthetic helps to stabilize values and thus to
regularize practice' (Becker, p.164 and p.134).

[10] Creating an (international) community of musicians, a continually expanding

network of collaborating musicians. Providing professional distribution channels to bring
this music out into the limelight (places to perform and record companies to release
CD's). Legitimizing the artistic choices made by the Downtown scene in a discursive
discourse which helps to stabilize its values and thus to regularize its practice. Zorn can
be regarded as an successful innovator who was able to create around himself the
apparatus of what could be called a new music subworld.
Saprophyte
[1] Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. John Zorn pays tribute to someone whom he
considers a great composer. He takes advantage of (exploits?) existing music. He
parasitizes, he feeds on Bacharach's music. However, he also creates something new.
Bacharach's compositions are the source of new ones; but at the same time they are
disregarded and passed by.
At least two ways of reading are possible here. A double bind. Zorn enters the musical
world of Bacharach, but Bacharach's music simultaneously enters into Zorn's musical and
socio-cultural environment as well. (Is a citation an alien parasite within the body of its
host, the main text, or is the new composition the parasite that surrounds and strangles its
host, the citation?) Each reference to Bacharach's music can be regarded as an alien
parasite within the body of its host, i.e., Zorn's music; at the same time, Zorn's music is
the parasite that surrounds and strangles the host, i.e., Bacharach's greatest hits. Zorn's
project is parasitical on Bacharach's music and, simultaneously, the sinister host that
destroys it by inviting it into its home. Host. At once, warm supplier of hospitality and
enemy. All of this exemplifies the undecidable oscillation of the relation between parasite
and host. It cannot be decided which element (which music) is the parasite, which one the
host (cf. Hillis Miller, p.223-5).
In both cases, however, the parasitical represents the uncanny, the alien who breaks into
the closed economy of the home, although it is difficult to speak about anything being
closed, especially with regard to Zorn's music. (In general, one could say that any
composition parasitizes on earlier compositions; it contains earlier compositions as
enclosed parasites within itself. This means that the opposition original vs. derived loses
its pertinence from the moment we recognize that everything begins by following a
vestige or trace, i.e. a certain repetition or textuality. So, whenever I use these traditional
concepts, it should be understood that the duality between the original text and a derived
version is swept away. It is not a matter of a simple hierarchical relation between two
texts, but rather of a displacement of a constellation or a labyrinth. This interweaving of
elements, this system of differences and traces of traces in which no single musical mark
is original nor simply present or absent, could be called music about music. (Music about
music: a form of intermusicality.) (Zorn's) intentional composing of music about music
becomes an act of reflection. In his music, the separation between music and thinking
about music is abolished. Zorn thinks about improvisation, composition and arrangement
through and in his music. He does not use post-structuralist thinking. Post-structuralism is
articulated in and through his music. Post-structuralism as music. Moreover, (his)
intermusicality affects music history. It demonstrates that music history is not a linear
process of a single thread but always a multiplicity of histories. Intermusicality is no
arborescent system but rhizomatic; it has multiple entryways. Zorn uses or invents these
histories; they become his stories.)
I presented two readings: Bacharach as Zorn's parasite and Zorn as a parasite of
Bacharach. In the following, I will focus on the latter (keeping in mind that the other
reading is also always there, following the first as a shadow, a specter). What does it
mean to say that Zorn's project is parasitical on Bacharach's music?
[2] A few definitions to start with. A parasite is 'any organism that grows, feeds, and is
sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its
host'. A parasite is 'a person who habitually takes advantage of the generosity of others
without making any useful return' (cf. Hillis Miller, p.220). Aside from these biological
and social descriptions, 'parasite' also means noise in French, the static in a system, or the
interference in a channel (cf. Noise as Undesirable Sound). Closely resembling the
parasite is the virus. The genetic pattern of the virus is coded in such a way that it is able
to enter a host cell and violently reprogram all the genetic material in that cell (cf. Hillis
Miller, p.222).
This is strong language, in both cases. Is it appropriate to use such pejorative terms in
describing Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach? Is Zorn not giving anything in return?
Also, can this project be considered noise in the sense that it hampers communication (for
instance, between Bacharach's original compositions and the listener)? Is Zorn's
deconstruction of this music a ferocious reprogramming of the host texts in order to make
it express its own message, the uncanny, the alien? I defer possible answers for now
because there is more to be said about parasites. Something more positive, this time.
There are many cases where the presence of a parasite is absolutely required for the well
being of its host (cf. Hillis Miller, p.228). Many parasites maintain fully symbiotic
relations with their hosts. They are called saprophytes and co-exist in a mutually
beneficial relationship with their hosts. The symbiosis leads to new forms of life.
Therefore, it is not always true that parasites destroy their hosts, nor does the host always
enable its parasite to live by feeding it and losing his own life in the process. The noise
on the original work can open ways to a new composition, a new interpretation, a new
outlook.

[3] The English prefix 'para', Hillis Miller writes, indicates 'alongside, near or beside,
beyond, incorrectly, resembling or similar to, subsidiary to'. In Greek, 'para' furthermore
means wrongfully, harmfully, and unfavorably (cf. Hillis Miller, p.219). Hillis Miller
continues, ''Para' is a double antithetical prefix signifying at once proximity and distance,
similarity and difference, interiority and exteriority, something inside a domestic
economy and at the same time outside it, something simultaneously this side of a
boundary line, threshold, or margin, and also beyond it, equivalent in status and also
secondary or subsidiary, submissive, as of guest to host, slave to master' (Hillis Miller,
p.219). There is some resemblance here to the way Derrida writes about the par-ergon in
The Truth In Painting (para ergon, beside or outside the work). Derrida elaborates on
Kant's examples in his discussion of Kant's use of the word parergon in the Third
Critique (paragraph 14). According to Kant, the colonnades of a palace are parerga,
whereas the building land is not. But why would a column be a parergon while a natural
site chosen to build the palace, or the artificial site with its crossroads and other buildings
would not be, Derrida wonders. His answer: 'It is not because [the columns] are detached,
but on the contrary because they are more difficult to detach ... What constitutes them as
parerga is not simply their exteriority as a surplus, it is the internal structural link which
rivets them to the lack in the interior of the ergon' (The Truth In Painting, p.59). What
fascinates Derrida is that the colonnades' status is at once proximate and distant. Kant
places them in the exterior, banishes them to the margin, while they certainly belong to
the interior as well.

[4] There is a remarkable similarity between the parergon and the parasite. Like a
parergon, a parasite is neither simply outside nor inside. In 'The Critic As Host', Hillis
Miller argues that the parasite is always already present within the host, the enemy within
the house, heterogeneity within homogeneity. So, the parasite is inside, but it is not an
insider. It is an outsider inside. Hillis Miller speaks of a relation of intimate kinship and
of enmity at the same time. The same goes for Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. All
the songs on this album are closely connected to Bacharach's originals. (Sometimes the
parasitical music, that uncanny alien, is so close that one does not think anything strange
about it - cf., for example, the opening tune 'Close To You' by Wayne Horvitz. Opening
tune. In a certain way we could call it an ouverture, the French word for both beginning
and opening, an unlocking. 'Close To You' is the beginning of a guided tour, an invitation
by a host - who is simultaneously a guest - to enter his house, an open door to something
strange, but familiar at the same time, to something we have heard before and
simultaneously have never heard before.) Bacharach's music is the food, the raw material
with which something new is created. However, in this new construction, some of the old
text is destroyed as well. (De)(con)struction. The process of destruction and construction
is only possible when the invader can come infinitely close (or already is) and remains
infinitely alien at the same time. Maybe this distance is the difference between Zorn's
project and most of the conventional cover versions of Bacharach's tunes. (Could we say
that these cover versions keep Bacharach's music alive only as a monument, as a dead
relic?) Although the instrumentation and arrangements may be altered, although chords
and melody may be different, the conventional cover versions still represent the originals.
However, without changing chords, melody or structure, Horvitz' 'Close To You' does not
represent, rather, it presents something. It stays very close to the original (the inside) and
yet it sounds entirely different (the outside). Parasitism here is the driving force for
change and invention.
Moreover, there is always room for parasitism because of an openness in the interior of
the music, a possibility available in the materiality of the music itself. No (musical) text
is closed upon itself. The possibility of parasitism - parasitism regarded as (mis)use,
quotation, or imitation, i.e. repeating and presenting the music in a different context - is
always present. The parasite can feed on (parts of) the host, and the (musical) mark
cannot prevent this (cf. (D)(R)econtextualization); it is, in fact, constituted on this ever-
present possibility of parasitism. And, as mentioned before, every host is a parasite in
turn; there is no beginning, no origin.
From one perspective, one could say that Bacharach is asymmetrically involved. The host
(Bacharach) becomes a kind of a hostage when Zorn forces him into his musical world.
(The reception or insertion of another always involves a certain amount of violent
subjection or subjugation.) The inviting host becomes a hostage. The parasite, on his part,
invites the one that invited him; he becomes the master of the host. In other words, the
parasite becomes the host of the host.

[5] Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. Feeding on almost-forgotten hit records from
the past. Certainly a kind of parasitism. Certainly? Why a parasite and not a guest,
assuming that the difference lies in the right of hospitality? Without this right, the
stranger can only break into the home of the host as an illegal, surreptitious guest (host,
here: parasite). How can Zorn obtain this right? First, by asking Bacharach. Asking for
hospitality. However, there is a question of whether any stipulating conditions would, by
definition, ignore the principle of hospitality, so that asking would render the hospitality
incongruous. And secondly, by being granted this right, for example, because he offers
something in return. A reversed welcoming gift. Does Bacharach get something in return
as well? Of course. His music not only serves as a host in the sense of being a victim, a
sacrifice. He is eaten and he eats himself. For example, he benefits from a renewed
attention for his music in the media. Perhaps, the host (Bacharach) was expecting the
stranger. (And for more than one reason I could add, 'on the threshold of his house'.
Musically, he needs to open the door to let others in and play (with) his music on the
border of the inside and outside, since his name is on the edge of obscurity.) Perhaps, he
sees Zorn coming as a liberator, offering him his hospitality. He might take advantage of
a new audience that comes to know his music through Zorn's project. At least, Zorn
promotes him in his liner notes. 'An unbridled genius. More than a great tunesmith, he's a
conductor, a pianist and a singer, a bold arranger with an original vision and sharp ear for
detail, a brilliant producer and a sensitive collaborator'. He has been a source of
inspiration for generations of musicians, Zorn writes. His pop songs are 'deep
explorations of the materials of music and should be studied and treasured with as much
care and diligence we accord any great works of art'. Although this is important, I would
like to focus on the symbiotic relationship between Bacharach's tunes and Zorn's project.
In Dissemination, Derrida writes that each quoted text continues to 'radiate back toward
the site of its removal, transforming that, too, as it affects the new territory. Each is
defined (thought) by the operation and is at the same time defining (thinking) as far as the
rules and effects of the operation are concerned' (Dissemination, p.355). Although it is
difficult to assert that Zorn's project consists of quotations (the recorded songs are
(n)either quotations (n)or interpretations), it should be noted that there is not a one-way
relationship between the original (the host) and the derivative (the parasite). By returning
Bacharach's hit records in a deformed way, by sending them back to their owner (Are
they send back?), Zorn transforms (the perception of) them as well. In and by using the
host texts, they appear in a different way: certain features may come to the forefront that
we did not hear before. Other aspects that were previously believed to be important
characteristics become less so. The small accompaniment in Horvitz' 'Close To You'
provides the listener with a better understanding of how the harmonic and rhythmic
structure is already present in the melody than conventional cover versions. Both
Bacharach's music and Zorn's project (re-, de-, trans-) form each other, contaminate each
others content. Zorn is not a parasite; rather, I would call him a saprophyte. The noise
(literally and figuratively) produced on Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach is a
pharmakon, poison and cure at the same time. On one hand, it hampers communication
between Bacharach's originals and the unsuspecting listener; on the other hand it makes
this communication possible again, as it is presented, for example, in a new form to a
younger audience from another musical and cultural field (rock, and/or avant garde).

[6] Parasite. There is a connection to deconstruction. A deconstructive strategy is

accomplished by borrowing the very terms utilized by the host work itself. Derrida often
works this way, for example, when he uses 'pharmakon' from Plato, 'supplement' from
Rousseau, and so on. Borrowing. Here, it is another word for parasitizing. (Derrida
describes grammatology as a parasitical economy.) Staying very close to the host text
while saying something very different. Derrida makes clear that 'the near' is not opposed
to an 'elsewhere' but to another form of 'the near', something that would theoretically
illustrate the relationship between Zorn's project and more conventional cover versions of
Bacharach's songs. With the greatest attention and accuracy, Derrida rewrites
philosophical and literary texts, but in a different context or framework, so that the
emphasis changes. He enacts or performs the compositional structuring of the host which
results in another text of the 'same kind'. This parasitical relationship brings about
something new. He remotivates certain key words, he removes them from one contextual
field and reassigns them to another, but always with the utmost systematic attention to the
potentials available in the word itself (cf. Ulmer, 1983, p.93-4). However, host and
parasite supplement each other, enable each other to live on, to survive.
This deconstructive strategy, this participation without belonging, this taking part in
without being part of, is characteristic of Zorn's homages in general and of Great Jewish
Music: Burt Bacharach, in particular. 'Close To You' could be taken very literally on a
musically analytical level. It refers to nearness and also to distance ('you' as opposed to
me, 'close' but not identical, the preposition 'to' that always invokes a difference, a
distance). Especially in the bridge of this song, which was reworked by Horvitz, the
mellow voices of The Carpenters resonate. At the same time, however, no one can
mistake this version for the original. Enough alien elements reside, although it is quite
difficult to indicate exactly where the differences begin.

[7] Zorn is famous for his homages. And there are many (cf. Hymen). But each project,
each tribute, evolves differently and with a different musical language as a result, because
the host demands these different approaches. Even if the host transforms into a hostage,
even if Zorn's tributes have a violent side, it is the host who sets the rules. However, the
host cannot sovereignly absorb this specific parasite; it is kicked off balance by it because
the parasite has reprogrammed all the genetic material.
Scritti Politti
[1] The third track on Scritti Politti's debut album, Songs to Remember, is called 'Jacques
Derrida'. (Not a fall back to soul language, but a re-reading of it using some of that style
as Scritti's lead singer and guitarist, Green Gartside, emphasizes.) The lyrics (both music
and words are written by Green) of this song express a deep sympathy for Derrida. (It is
definitely not a bossa nova as the opening words 'I'm in love with the bossa nova' could
suggest, but rather it is a pop song with a slightly artificial sound and an uncommon
compositional structure.) Here is an excerpt from it:

I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida

Read a page and know what I need to
Take apart my baby's heart
I'm in love
I'm in love with a Jacques Derrida
Read a page and know what I need to
Take apart my baby's heart
I'm in love

[2] Are there other (contemporary) philosophers who have a song named after them? I
don't know. And what would Derrida think about this explicit declaration of love? There
is a story that his students played the song for him when it first came out. Thereafter,
Derrida invited Green to come to Paris where they had dinner at the Beaubourg. Topic of
the conversation: the notion of spontaneous and unmediated expression. Green always
distanced himself from expressionist ideas in the arts, from anything that mythologized
thoughts of spontaneity and immediate improvisation, often cherished in the (free) jazz
world. Given his enthusiasm for and knowledge of Derrida's work that is expressed in
almost every interview ('For me, you can't forget Derrida'), it is probable that these ideas
originate from Derrida's critique of the so-called metaphysics of presence, the notion that
there is a transcendental signified that lies beyond everything and guarantees a stable
meaning. This metaphysics of presence seems most obvious in speech; speech often
stands for the direct expression of the thoughts, emotions, and spirit of a subject
completely identical with itself. The transfer of an inner experience of the presence of an
ideal object in a complete intuitive thinking to the external domain of language can only
succeed if the linguistic utterance does not interfere with what the rational subject wants
to say. According to logocentric tradition (Western philosophy), this is achieved by
speech, rather than by writing, which is less immediate, haunted by absence, and thereby
unable to guarantee a stable meaning. Especially in Speech and Phenomena and Of
Grammatology, Derrida comes to terms with this metaphysics of presence or
logocentrism. First he makes clear that both speech and writing are supplements,
supplements of eidos (ideas), audible or visible signs that (re)present something in its
absence. But this is the classically determined structure of the sign. Derrida also puts into
question the provisional secondariness of the (spoken or written) sign. Signs always defer
the presence of what they (re)present and this deferral is endless. There is an endless
chain of signifiers, each signifier referring only to other signifiers. This means that there
is no presence before and outside the sign. Signified concepts are never present in and of
theirselves. Every concept is inscribed in a chain within which it refers to the other, to
other concepts, by means of a play of differences.

[3] In pop music, too, the voice is often considered an index of soul and authentic
expression. Green tries to pervert this idea by the use of his voice. A producer recounts
how Green spent hours in a studio trying to create authentic, 'spontaneous' vocal
inflections. So he delivers up a perfect simulation of his own voice, a simulacrum, an
artificiality of authenticity, a quasi-spontaneity (cf. O'Reilly,
http://www.figure4.co.uk/scritti/intervie/independ.htm). And, as he sings on Wood Beez,
his voice is 'the gift of schizo' instead of a purity of consciousness. 'It's a little bit a voice
of innocence. It's somebody else doing that. I'll step aside and let somebody else have a
go', Green says (cf. O'Reilly). Maybe Green's comments bear some resemblance to
Derrida's critique of Husserl's use of the term 'I'. According to Husserl, someone speaking
uses this term to indicate himself for himself: absolute presence. On the contrary, Derrida
reasons that 'I' is the word by which a speaking subject indicates to himself his own
absence. A subject completely present to himself would not feel the need to speak to
himself. Derrida concludes that a subject is always already permeated by an other.
Green presents no transparent presence of a subject to himself, no pure and unmediated
interiority, but a fragmented subject who is always already manipulating his expression.
Most compositions on Songs to Remember reflect this fragmentation of the individual in
the many different needs, desires, and energies that conflict with one another (Green's
soft, touchingly feminine vocals can be regarded as an example of this). And about
'Jacques Derrida' in particular, Green says: 'It's about how powerful and contradictory the
politics of desire are. About being torn between all things glamorous and reactionary, and
all things glamorous and leftist. Then in the rap it dispenses with both in favor of desire'
('desire is so voracious') (Dwyer, 1982). According to Green, pop music is of the other; it
is the least shut away or hidden otherness. It is the antithesis of sameness. (It's about
criminality, sexuality, madness.)

[4] Language is about meaning, about sense. Viewed in this way, Green sets music
opposite to language. 'I don't think its meaning or its sense are determined by language',
Green says in an interview. Music lies outside the limits of language and logocentrism; it
is disruptive to meaning. Like music in general, rhythm is without meaning and it
transgresses sense. The acquired grammar of rhythm is at once constructive and
destructive joy. 'I do not think that I am 'knowledgeable' of [beats], nor that I've somehow
caught them or tamed them and can put them to my services. The exact opposite: this has
to do with my awe of pop music as measured against the endless signatures and closures
of more idiosyncratic music'. With pop music, there is a flooring of drives, knowledge is
swept away. There is no 'knowledge' of beat, only the unmonotonous insistence of
difference. That is its power; that is why it is 'violent' (Green in: Hoskyns, 1981).
According to Green, pop's assertion of rhythm, its interruption of language, its sexuality,
the way in which it presents identity and dissolves identity, and the means with which it
does so, converges with many postmodern philosophical concerns. 'It is possible to think
about music as something that undoes. In as much as it is not semantic, does not have that
bedrock of meaning, other than having other ways of circumscribing it, it is a
deconstructive mood' (Green in: Toop, 1988, my italics). 'When I met Derrida he said that
what I was doing was part of the same project of undoing and unsettling that he's engaged
in. He's written that what sets the musician apart is the possibility of meaninglessness.
That unsettling has always been my experience of pop, from the earliest moments - pop is
about the abuse of language' (Green in: Reynolds, 1988).

[5] Of course (pop) music has meaning; it has political, economic, social, cultural and
psychological meaning (and I am not only referring to its lyrics here). In this sense, we
can approach music through language, through all kinds of discourses on music. But
Green points to something, a non-localizable place, where music transgresses the power
of language. We cannot understand music in the same way we understand language.
Music is a language, music is text, but it is not the same as a spoken or written language.
Because something in music always escapes comprehension, understanding. Language
fails to make music completely transparent. Music appeals to something that exceeds the
semantic part of language; it appeals to a non-discursive sonority.
In Justification, I examine the way in which Derrida seeks out this non-discursive
sonority, the non-semantic aspect in language, by focusing on the spatial visibility and
audibility of words, thereby creating a disquieting opening in the philosophical discourse
because it is beyond (intended) meaning (signifieds) and about the material differences
(signifiers). Derrida hesitates to call this 'musical', but the mere fact that he suggests a
possibility of connecting meaninglessness to music indicates a correspondence between
his thinking on this subject and what Green says.

[6] How should we judge the remarks of a pop musician, expressed mostly in interviews
for pop magazines? Occasional attempts at in-depth interviews in what are usually
superficial conversations? Up until now, Green did not seem to feel the need to express
his ideas in a more profound and elaborate way. Maybe he does not want to; music is his
means of expression. What becomes immediately clear is the way in which his utterances
are saturated by post-structuralistic and deconstructive jargon ('I am influenced by, or
interested in the work of modern French philosophers'). Although I briefly discussed one
example (Green's use of his voice), closer examination is needed to determine if and how
deconstruction is at work in Scritti Politti's music. However, this is not the right place.
Not the right framework.
The Signature of John Zorn
[1] In Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach, Zorn de- and recontextualizes the music of
this famous songwriter. Or are we already going too fast here, too inaccurate? Who is de-
and recontextualizing? John Zorn? He is neither the composer (in the ordinary sense of
the word) of this CD, nor is he one of the performers. How do we know it is Zorn's? 'John
Zorn: executive producer' the package divulges in small letters. Is he actually involved in
the recording of the material, or is this just his stamp of approval? Or both? It is unusual
and odd that his name is linked to this album. Not the composer, not one of the
musicians, but the executive producer. I don't know of any other example, not even in
house music.

[2] I take a side road for a moment (Is there a main road? Or are there only side roads?) to
show how Zorn thinks about composing. 'Whether we like it or not, the era of the
composer as autonomous musical mind has just about come to an end', Zorn writes in the
liner notes of Spillane. What Zorn wants to say is that artistic works, in general, and
musical works, in particular, are the results of a collaboration among specialized
individuals. So, the music bearing the signature 'John Zorn' (In fact, it is a
countersignature ending a process and referring to a promise made once, confirmed by a
signature under a contract.) is more than the work of the individual, John Zorn, alone; it
is the outcome of a varying collective of individuals. His body of work is not (only) his
body of work. It only exists from the moment that other musicians appropriate it, fill it in
and (with that) transform it (cf. Lesage, no page number). His gamepiece, Cobra, can be
regarded as another example. As a prompter, Zorn roughly determines the structure, but
has no influence on what exactly is played by the performers. Moreover, the players may
choose at any moment to change the direction of the piece and to alter the type of
interaction. Zorn's function then is merely to pass on these changes to the rest of the
performers. Cobra is thus simultaneously reproducing the composer-conductor-performer
hierarchy of traditional 'classical' music and subverting that hierarchy from within the
'composition' itself.
Zorn makes a plea for a less teleological thinking in which the composer is no longer
considered the dominant source of power, the causa prima in an artistic field where
performers, musicians, and also intermediaries, such as critics and organizers, are just
parasites. He wants to draw attention to a larger context, to a complex network of powers
that interact temporarily and are connected very differently, in which music comes into
being.

[3] Zorn implicitly disputes a music history that consists of nothing but a canon of
famous proper names. He invites the music historian to broaden his focus. For the music
historian the stress is on the analysis of a composition as the final result of a creative
process that is connected with one well-known proper name. Zorn demands attention be
paid to the whole production process. To sign a composition with just one name veils the
complexity of the production process that underlies the realization of that musical work;
it veils the non-hierarchical cooperation among various specialized individuals.
Furthermore, it narrows the definition of a musical work (cf. Zorn's remarks on
packaging in Restitutions, Shibboleth or Aporias). In other words, relating an oeuvre to
one single name, the name of the composer, is always arbitrary and inaccurate. Besides,
Zorn is not always the composer in the traditional sense of the word, i.e. the writer of a
score that can then be performed as well as possible. Sometimes he is (just) the deviser of
a concept, the musical designer, the planner (cf. Cobra).
However, in either case the question remains the same: if this collective is so important,
why is it that only Zorn's name is linked to the final product? Why is his name on the
cover in spite of the fact that he is neither the composer, nor one of the performers? In
Het lijk van de componist [The Composer's Corpse], Dieter Lesage suggests a possible
explanation. In his opinion, an artwork is more than just an artistic product; it is also a
commodity. Regarding this, Lesage refers to Walter Benjamin's 'Fetischismus der
Meistername', the fetishism of the master name. Depending on the aura of a composer,
musician, or even an executive producer, 'music of' becomes 'music with' or 'music
produced by'. So, the 1985 album, The Big Gundown, received the subtitle, John Zorn
Plays the Music of Ennio Morricone. The name and picture of this very successful
composer of film music on the cover was probably quite important, at least commercially
alluring. But in the year 1997, Zorn himself was obviously famous enough to link only
his name to CD's on which he does not play a single note.
One could conclude that on the commodity level the proper name 'John Zorn' undergoes
some changes, the principles of which the artist, John Zorn, does not seem to support (cf.
Lesage, p.6-9). 'John Zorn'. Is it a trade name? Zorn is claiming the commodity, the
product, as his, while acknowledging that neither he nor anyone else could make the
same claim about the 'music'. Thus it does become Zorn's music in a certain way,
although it is not his music: he has claimed and acquired property rights to it. And he gets
the credit (the money?).

[4] One more thing. Listen to 'his' music. More than with any other artist, people who
write about Zorn's music stress the eclecticism (Strickland, 1991; Gagne, 1993;
Duckworth, 1995; McNeilly, 1995; Lange, 1997; Blumenfeld, 1999). 'I'm not afraid of
styles; I like them all' (Duckworth, p.444) is but one possible quote that illustrates Zorn's
non-exclusivism. In Great Jewish Music, I connect this incorporation and assimilation of
so many musical styles to his Jewishness. In Shibboleth, Derrida, following poet Paul
Celan, meditates on 'the Jew', having nothing of himself, having no identity of his own,
whose identity consists of having none (cf. Shibboleth, p.62 and p.90). However, what
does Zorn's (counter)signing of a CD mean? It means that he declares the musical
product (and this exceeds the recorded music) his property, although he in fact admits
that it is not 'his' music. His signature is, in a way, the signature of others. So what do we
mean by speaking about 'Zorn's' music? Who is John Zorn? To what does this word refer
if music signed with his name has no identifiable borders and no interior walls? It has no
edges because it has been invaded from all sides, as well as from within, by other names,
other musical powers, other musics. (What is the musical equivalent of quotation marks?
What about parts that do not clearly appear as citations?) Though the word 'Zorn' may be
printed on the cover of several CD's, it must name something without identifiable
boundaries since the music incorporates so much outside within its inside. The parasite
structure obliterates the frontiers of the texts it enters (cf. Hillis Miller, p.243). The name
John Zorn means the loss of all essence, individuality, security. When a CD is, in one
way or another, signed by Zorn, made his property, one can never be certain of its
content; it is not closed in upon itself. It is never 'his' music. What is 'his' music? Does it
exist?
Zorn, Noise, Cage, Pop
[1] In (D)(R)econtextualization, I subsume Zorn (with some strong marginal notes) under
the musical avant-garde, but not an avant-garde which is opposed to popular culture. In
'Ugly Beauty', Kevin McNeilly starts the other way round: he examines the ambiguous
position Zorn holds with regard to popular culture (cf.
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.195/mcneilly.195). On one hand,
this could be explained as a confirmation of the non-localizable position Zorn occupies.
On the other hand, McNeilly's essay opens up new perspectives on Zorn's music. Both
possibilities justify a closer reading of his work.
According to McNeilly, Zorn is working within the context of popular culture and a mass
consumer-oriented audience, but disrupts and upsets them at the same time. He is both
exploiting and exploding (popular) musical conventions and the commercial forms
connected with them. For Zorn, exploding these conventions often means using noise,
abrasive, disjunctive, deafening sounds, McNeilly writes. In other words, he is exploiting
the achievements of punk, hardcore, and heavy metal. But unlike musicians who operate
in these relatively autonomous, and with that, innocuous worlds, Zorn brings noise into
the realm of more innocent types of music such as country and surf music. He simulates
the attributes of popular culture; he is perfectly willing to maintain the trappings of
popular musical culture. However, he arranges those reiterations of musical styles in a
disturbing and confrontational manner, for instance, in his collage and montage
compositions where different styles are put alongside each other. The noise that Zorn
inserts neither cuts across nor undoes these styles; rather, noise becomes a style in itself,
another form of sound to be appropriated.

[2] This can be heard very well in the compositions that Zorn wrote for his band, Naked
City. Trademark: musical blocks without a traditional development, a musical structure
involving a lot of juxtaposition and discontinuity. 'The biggest influences I had were
Stravinsky, who worked in block forms; Ives, who was also interested in weird
juxtapositions and discontinuity in a certain way; and what came off the tube, which I
was brought up on ... The music is put together in a very - 'picaresque' is an interesting
word - I would use maybe 'filmic' way, montage. It's made of separate moments that I
compose completely regardless of the next, and then I pull them, cull them, together. It's
put together in a style that causes questions to be asked, rather than answered ... So it's
put together in blocks and moves from one thing to the other really quickly, and draws
upon many elements or traditions' (Strickland, p.127-8). In another interview, he further
mentions the influence of film and cartoon soundtracks.
Naked City uses all kinds of musical styles, often interspersed with blocks of noisy
improvisational statements. Listen, for instance, to 'Snagglepuss' (a Hanna-Barbera
cartoon figure) from the CD, Naked City. Within the first minute of hearing this tune, the
listener is flung to and fro between a funky riff, rock and roll, Webern-like piano sounds,
and mainstream jazz; musical blocks that are continually interrupted and separated by
noise sections, free jam and loose sounds, bleeps, growls, and roars. Another example
from the same album: Zorn's version of 'The James Bond Theme' is, from the beginning,
defiled and thwarted with a howling electric guitar, an organ and a saxophone. After just
a short time of more than one and a half minutes, the theme explodes into shards of
hardcore punk aggression, a noisy bridge before the theme reappears. In 'Den of Sins', the
roles seem to be inverted. An undertow of violent sound and the wildest barrages of noise
form a base in which a funky theme then joins in for seven seconds. Here, the tempered
music is used as raw material on the same level as any other noise.
This disjunctive form of composition in 'non-sequitur' blocks distinguishes Zorn's music
from noise (and/or noise compositions) per se. Noise becomes musical material just like
melody, harmony, rhythm, and quotations (literal and stylistic). It is given a clear position
within a musical framework.

[3] McNeilly discusses the difference between Zorn and John Cage's attitude to noise. I
will follow his line of reasoning, but with some modifications, adjustments, extensions or
reductions. For Cage, noise is the other of music, an other that has the same status as a
parergon, not simply outside music, and not easily detached from it. At once separated
from music and part of every musical experience, on the outside and on the inside
simultaneously. Noise threatens music, and it threatens the inside of music ceaselessly
when one does not accept these extraneous and non-intended sounds that are always
there. The hierarchical opposition between noise and music is deconstructed in Cage's
work. First (not necessarily in any chronological order), noise is admitted into the realm
of music. Then the situation is reversed: conventional musical sounds appear in
surroundings determined by noise. So, in his work the hierarchical order between noise
and music disappears. And then, this conceptual order is overturned and displaced: his
work consists of a certain - often minimal - organization of sound in which music is just
some (special) kind of noise among other noises. A deconstruction of the border between
noise and music. But also an emancipation of noise, of non-intended sounds, of sounds
that are usually excluded from music (cf. Cage and Noise).
When we consider Zorn as working with noise, we can establish a shift of emphasis. Zorn
does not wish to dispense with the trappings of 'music itself' and its many styles. He is
not so much aiming for an emancipation of noise; at least, this is not his political goal.
For him, noise is not simply haphazard sounds or natural sounds, the audible background
that encroaches on a composition. Rather, Zorn treats noise as a usable musical style
among many other musical styles, another form of sound to be appropriated. Zorn's use
of noise consists not in the dismantling or disabling of music by noise, but in the stream
of cross-talk between noise and other musical styles. Cage's compositions force the
listener to move away from the conventions of traditional music. For Zorn, noise is not so
much the other of music, noise is already part of the musical world. It is reproduced on a
compositional level. Zorn's noise manifests itself in two distinct, though contiguous
forms: collective free improvisations within clearly defined limits and imitations of
existing noise music. Both, however, are intentional and structured, and with that,
different from Cage's approach. Cage obliterates the creative will by using chance
operations, while Zorn adopts the creative powers of both composer and performer ('I
don't appreciate his [Cage's, MC] chance approach - that is the antithesis of what I'm
trying to do. I'm interested in decision making; he's interested in giving the decision
making up to chance, and I think that's a cop-out') (cf. also The Signature of John Zorn).
And where Cage's collocated noises (intended and non-intended) meld together into a
more or less unified soundscape (listen, for example, to Waiting), Zorn's block structures
collide with each other and threaten to come apart from within (cf. McNeilly, p.5).

[4] Exploiting and exploding popular musical conventions. Zorn's music never attempts
to abandon its generic or conventional musical ties. His work is never quite
unrecognizable or alien to an accustomed listener. Rather, those ties are exploited and
disjointed to the point of throwing such a listener off balance while still remaining
recognizable. The listener who knows her or his pop-culture has her expectations jolted,
scattered, smashed and dis-arranged. This music relocates her or his aesthetic perspective
to a moveable feast of possibilities. Zorn thwarts her or his musical expectations; he de-
familiarizes the listener. Anticipated elements are absent or transformed. In this way, his
music motivates the listener to act; it activates the listener. This is the purport of the story
that McNeilly confronts us with. And I agree, although I would avoid speaking about
Zorn's music in such general terms. This alleged effect is much less apparent, for
example, when listening to his Masada or Bar Kokhba projects. However, here I want to
delve more deeply into an apparently logical conclusion that McNeilly draws from these
reflections, a conclusion I do not want to subscribe to without question. According to
McNeilly, Zorn uses and abuses the 'old' order, the status quo of popular culture, in order
to shock the listener to an awareness of her/his/its corroded conditions. By going against
convention, Zorn makes the listener aware of her or his norms. His noise politicizes the
aural environment. I want to point out this subtle shift in position from listener to
composer. McNeilly leads us to believe that it is Zorn's purpose to provoke the listener.
Without a doubt, that is what happens to many people who are introduced to his music
for the first time. And, of course Zorn, will smile meaningfully. But I wonder if this is a
purpose, rather than a consequence of his music. Previously – in following up on
McNeilly's comments – I wrote on the difference between Cage and Zorn and here I
could establish yet another difference (and different from McNeilly as well). For Cage,
bringing noise into the realm of music is (also) a political provocation, an attack on the
establishment and on the conventions of the music world. For Zorn, the insertion of noise
serves, first of all, a musical purpose. The possible de-familiarization is at best an effect
of this purpose. 'The point of [Naked City] was not to confuse people ... although a lot of
people think it was ... For me, it was about writing; it was about having a machine that
could play back anything that I came up with', Zorn says emphatically (Gagne, p.533, my
italics).

[5] Perhaps Zorn's de- and re-territorialization of musical styles has the effect of
dismantling a musical history and categorization (although you can only debate these
categories when you've first accepted them). Maybe (probably) it alters how people tend
to listen. But Zorn does not seem to be that interested in the effects that his music has on
an audience. The listeners 'don't even have to like it'. He is primarily interested in his
music ('Instead of dealing with pitches, I deal with phrases, shapes, genres, quotations,
gestures') and in his musicians. The music must be challenging and attractive to them.
'When they talk about that 'Serious Fun' shit, I think they've got it completely ass-
backwards: They're talking about the musicians up there being serious, and the audience
having fun. Forget it. I think the musicians should be having fun, and the audience should
be taking it seriously. That's really what my music is about in a lot of ways' (Gagne,
p.526).
Perhaps with this relatively minor attention to his public, Zorn relates more to the
classical avant-garde than to the popular culture, although, at least according to
McNeilly, his music moves within the economies of consumption and repetition that
characterize the mass media and the mass-market at work within that popular culture (cf.
(D)(R)econtextualization). Does Zorn belong to both worlds? Or none of them? Or are
the borderlines between avant-garde and popular culture beginning to disappear?
Zorn's Pharmacy
[1] Elsewhere on this site, I elaborate on Zorn as a parasite or saprophyte (see:
Saprophyte), or compare his projects to a part of the female body (see: Hymen). The
(obscure) boundary between inside and outside is constantly at the forefront. In thinking
and writing around or beside his music, another connotation comes to mind. A tumor, an
abnormal or morbid swelling or enlargement on the inside of a living organism, an
excrescence caused by the autonomous growth of the organic tissue. It manifests itself
under the influence of pathogens or injuries and can be separated into two different
phenomena. Hyperplasia is an excessive cell-formation or cell division, an abnormal
multiplication of the cellular elements. Hypertrophy is the excessive growth or
development of cells and the enlargement of a part or organ produced by excessive
nutrition.
A tumor acts like a housebreaker threatening some internal purity and security. In this
sense, Zorn's music works like a tumor. Great Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach works like
a tumor. 'Trains And Boats And Planes' works like a tumor.

[2] Why this attention to biological terms, sometimes or almost invisible things present,
but present as an outside on the inside of the human body? Let's say it is because
references to physical, bodily elements, for example, the morbid illustrations of Maruo
Suehiro that embellish many of his CD covers, have supplemented much of Zorn's music.
The cover of Naked City shows a face distorted with pain, a hand reaching the left side of
a face where a red tornado has blown away the ear. (Or, is it an external tumor caused by
hyperplasia coming from the inside?) One cannot tell by looking at the picture whether or
not this red thing belongs to the body, whether it is on the inside or the outside of it. (The
same holds true for the Chinese or the Japanese characters painted on the head and the
hand - tattoos maybe. Do they belong to the body or not?) Some song titles, for example,
are manifestations of Zorn's preoccupation with the openings of the human body, places
(or non-places because an opening, in fact, takes no place) where the outside is on the
inside and where the inside can touch the outside. 'Rectal Mucus', Zorn's contribution to
Absolut CD #2 - The Japanese Perspective, 'Sweat, Sperm + Blood' and 'Copraphagist
Rituals' in the CD, Heretic. Jeux des dames cruelles, 'Igneous Ejaculation' in Naked City.
Returning to my introductory remarks on tumors, one can find more explicit references to
brain damages in Rituals. Live in Japan ('Abscesses') and in Filmworks VI ('Mechanics
Of The Brain', and especially, 'Brain Scan').

[3] His almost excessive attention to pain and suffering ('The Ways Of Pain', 'Victims Of
Torture', 'Asylum', the album, Torture Garden, and in more than one sense, 'Never Again'
in Kristallnacht) seems to regain a sense of balance in some of the medicine Zorn offers.
Painkiller. The promising name of a band in which he plays. And indeed, in a certain
sense this band acts like a painkiller. The hard core and trash rock - amply present in the
CD's and in live shows - can have anesthetic or narcotic effects. I don't know if the cure is
worse then the pain here. But let's look at it from another perspective. Painkiller widens
the margins of the most dense rock and jazz by its eclectic approach. Zorn does a healthy
job (Zorn as pharmakeus), changing the rusty costumes, injecting them with his
revitalizing sap like a modernizing medicine. Painkiller acts like a purifying tumor,
growing on the inside of a sick organism, breaking it open, enabling a contact with the
outside. Like a tumor, Painkiller is located on the inside without really belonging to it.
But even if it is external, it affects and infects rock and jazz music in its very inside using
its power of maleficent penetration. Maleficent. Threatening. Disturbing. However, it is
also a cure, beneficent and revitalizing.
Zorn's pharmacy contains one more medicine, absinthe. One can either eat it or drink it.
But be careful. The plant, absinthe (wormwood, artemisia) may drive one to madness
when ingested in excess. And the same is true of the brandy that is based on oil of
wormwood and the bitter chemical, absinthe. Excessive indulgence destroys body and
mind and can lead to epileptic paroxysms (cramps). Chronic absinthism, a serious and
well-known disease, resembles alcoholism. For that reason, distillation of absinthe is
forbidden in many countries.
Absinthe (track 5: 'Artemisia Absinthium') is the ambiguous name of a CD by Zorn's
band, Naked City: a fairly sweet liqueur and a dangerous drug at the same time. Listening
to Absinthe is more an intoxicating than disturbing experience. Those who know the
preceding Naked City albums will certainly be surprised. No sharp and short tunes in
which different styles alternate at high-speed, but long-drawn-out sound-scapes without
clear melodies. Only 'Artemisia Absinthium' strikes a note of warning. Here, the noise is
very blatantly present; loud, harrowing, disquieting. Too much listening will contaminate
you or turn you into an addict.

[4] Both Painkiller and Absinthe can be considered a pharmakon, the possibility of both
remedy and dangerous drug. Zorn's music plays within these two opposing values, within
the unity of the same signifier. (Could we say that Zorn's music plays a game analogous
to Derrida's reading strategies?) The remedy is disturbing in itself, it is never simply
beneficial. The beneficial virtue of a pharmakon does not prevent it from hurting. (Listen
to the noisy music of Painkiller.) It partakes of both good and ill, of the agreeable and
disagreeable (the purifying, but almost painful experience of listening to 'Artemisia
Absinthium'). But with Painkiller the pharmakon seems a helpful remedy, whereas it is
harmful, while in Absinthe, it is initially offered as harmful, whereas it is beneficial.
However, both Painkiller and Absinthe, presented as a kind of poison within the rock and
jazz world, are transformed into means of deliverance, cathartic powers, antidotes. Music,
installing itself inside of a (sick, old, but) living organism to distort its well-known
language in order to resuscitate it by introducing something new. A pharmakon, added
and attached like a musical parasite.

[5] Deconstruction: the concentration on passages in which the subject (the author) no
longer has control of the (musical) text, places in which the text can transgress it's own
laws. (And doesn't Zorn, as well as Derrida, show that this is always possible?) The
desire for unity in a text forces both author and listener (reader, interpreter) to keep a
certain balance, for example, between a possible meaning and its externalization.
Deconstruction undermines this by pointing to the places where a text can lose its
balance, primarily by playing with and blowing up the externalizations.
'Trains And Boats And Planes', this meticulous constructed A-A-B-A scheme, 48 bars
equally divided into 4 parts of 12 bars, loses its balance in Fred Frith's version in Great
Jewish Music: Burt Bacharach. Frith plays only two of the twelve bars of the A part, but
he continually repeats them (hyperplasia), instrumentally, so one gets the impression of
listening to a (too) long stretched intro. (If we could call this a horizontal stretch, there is
a vertical stretch as well. The second part, the characteristic third under the main melody,
has changed into a fourth above the melody (hypertrophy), thereby establishing a great
harmonic vagueness.) While the A part fades out, the B part fades in and is repeated six
(!) times. During the sixth fading recurrence, the A part fades in again, thus giving the
suggestion of some sort of A-A-B-A scheme. Frith, however, inserts the melody of the
bridge on top of the melodic part of A, thereby turning the melody of the A part into the
accompaniment pattern of the B part (though without any hierarchical order).
Furthermore, the strict division between A and B (realized in two distinct melodic lines
and two different keys, B flat and G minor, respectively - although one could question
just how different in fact these two keys are) is removed (aufgehoben). No longer
opposites, but one wrapped up in the other.
Frith does not maintain the classical A-A-B-A scheme. His version does not neatly
consist of 4 times 12 bars. He is playing with the musical elements, omitting some parts
while blowing up others so that some parts rise above or project beyond the general level
or surface (taking our departure from the original).
Blowing up. Distending. Hyperplasia. Results: swelling, an increase of bulk, new growth
of tissue. A kind of synonym for a tumor. A kind of synonym for deconstruction. A kind
of synonym for Frith's 'Trains And Boats And Planes'.
The Gift of Silence [donner
les bruits]
I'm wondering if silence itself is perhaps the mystery at the heart of music? And is silence
the most perfect music of all? (Sting, in his speech on the occasion of his acceptance of
an honorary doctorate from the Berklee College of Music on 15 May, 1994.)

[1] What is music? This question investigates the borderline between music and what can
no longer be considered music. It is the question of the frame of music since the frame is
what distinguishes it as music, what 'produces' music. Without it, music is not music. It
can be asked whether the frame is central or marginal, essential or supplemental. The
frame itself is not music. Once the frame encloses the music and makes music music, it is
external to the music. But as a frame of music, it also belongs to the music. Can we say
that the frame is (n)either simply inside (n)or outside music?
What is music? What is the frame of music? In order to answer these questions, music
needs to be pushed to its boundaries. This then raises the question of what takes place on
the borderline between music and non-music; it is a question of the most intimate and, at
the same time, the other of music. It can be said that music is bordered by two distinct
entities. On one hand, there are sounds that we no longer consider music: noise. On the
other hand, there is the absence of sound: silence. (But exactly how different is this 'other'
hand? An important question that will be elaborated upon extensively.) 'Music is
inscribed between noise and silence', says Jacques Attali (Attali, p.19). Therefore, in
order to gain insight into the musical phenomenon, we need to direct ourselves to those
areas where music and noise, music and silence and even silence and noise intersect.
(Another conceivable border will not be addressed here: the border between music and
(spoken) language and the vague areas where these two meet: in Sprechgesang, ritual
chants, proclamations, rap, in projects such as Dieter Schnebel's Glossolalie 61 where the
border between music and spoken language is explicitly questioned.)

[2] Music. Privileged over noise and silence. Opposed to noise and silence. Noise and
silence seem to be on its outside, excluded in and by music. Through the deconstruction
of (hierarchically ordered) binary oppositions, Derrida demonstrates that one pole of such
oppositions cannot exist without the other. Indeed, one part is always already part of (the
definition of) the other as well. As applied to music, noise and silence have always
already been part of music, noise and silence have always already been part of each other.
It is this notion that I will develop further and investigate in this section of the site. In
Deconstruction In Music, I express my desire to indicate deconstruction in music by
music(ians); can music 'read itself' in a deconstructive way? This implies that I am not
solely interested in a verbal, theoretical and discursive deconstruction of the boundaries
of music, noise, and silence. Primarily, my attention will focus on musicians and
composers who, in and through their music, have explored the diffuse spaces between
music, noise and silence, those who have questioned the frame of music out of the
musical (as opposed to the textual, another opposition that could be deconstructed), those
who have rejected the traditional hierarchical relations of music - noise and music -
silence. That is not to say that a musical deconstruction simply seeks to present the
illusion of some pure and simple absence of a frame, or that it would re-frame music with
some perfect, apt and truthful new frame. A deconstructive strategy will consist of
examining whether it is at all possible to create a frame that would indeed lay down an
unequivocal definition. Deconstruction exposes us to the inescapable situation of
uncertainty and indeterminateness that we face when we want to distinguish music from
noise, music from silence, noise from silence.

[3] The works of the American composer, John Cage, have increased our understanding
of the problems involved in defining music, noise and silence. Therefore, his oeuvre will
be prominently featured in this section.
As a way of introducing the outlined problems, I will give attention to the ways in which
various thinkers of music have expressed themselves in relation to defining music. For
the purpose of evaluating the deconstruction of the borders of music, noise and silence, I
have outlined a number of definitions of music that can be found on the page entitled
What is music?
What is Music?
[1] What is music? During the course of the history of Western music, many have tried to
formulate an answer to the question of the ontology of music. In order to distinguish
between music and non-music, repeated attempts have been made to compile a list of
essential properties of music along with the necessary and sufficient conditions. It is not
my intention to represent any or all of the expressed views on this matter in a systematic
or all-encompassing order. Rather, I prefer to paint a brief and approximate picture of
some of the problems that these attempts to define, determine, or discern music have
encountered.

[2] 'Musica ist eine Wissenschaft und Kunst, geschickte und angenehme Klänge klüglich
zu stellen, richtig an einander zu fügen, und lieblich heraus zu bringen, damit durch ihren
Wohllaut Gottes Ehre und alle Tugenden befördert werden [Music is a science and an art
that produces dexterous and pleasant sounds, in order to combine them properly and
present them charmingly so that their euphony may further God's honor and all virtues]',
says composer and music theoretician Johann Mattheson. Philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau describes music as an 'art de combiner les sons d'une manière agréable à
l'oreille [the art of combining sounds in a way that is pleasing to the ear]'. Organist and
composer Johann Gottfried Walther thinks of music as 'die Ton-Kunst, d.i. die
Wissenschaft wohl zu singen, zu spielen und zu componiren [the art of sound, i.e., the
ability to sing, to play, and to compose well]'.
Three 18th century definitions of music. They all share a normative quality that plays an
essential role. 'Geschickt'. 'Angenehm'. ' Klüglich'. 'Lieblich'. 'Agréable'. 'Wohl'. Terms
that we would hesitate nowadays to include in a definition or description of a
phenomenon (of music). Although speaking about music in such terms has not been
completely banned (cf. Nattiez, p.42. cf. Durant, p.58), they are too indistinct and
ambiguous to arrive at a clear and uniform definition.
In contemporary attempts to distinguish music from non-music, more phenomenological,
structuralistic or formalistic descriptions are preferred. Music is harmony, melody,
rhythm, meter, tone, instruments or voice. Music is organized sound. Music is giving
form to noise (cf. Attali, p.10). Incidentally, here too, ambivalent or polyvalent
qualifications turn up: what is 'organized'? What is 'giving form to'? And how normative
are these formalistic qualifications? Can there be music without or outside these
parameters (cf. some of Dieter Schnebel's compositions in No (-) Music).
The American analytical philosopher, Jerrold Levinson, defines music as sounds that are
man-made or arranged for the purpose of enriching experience via active engagement
(e.g., through performing, listening, dancing) where sounds are primarily attended to for
their sonic qualities (cf. Levinson, p.273). On one hand, he stays true to formalism. The
sounds in music are intended for 'listening to primarily as sounds, and not primarily as
symbols of discursive thought' (Levinson, p.272). On the other hand, Levinson expressly
insists on including the intention, aim or purpose in his definition: music is 'humanly
organized sound for the purpose of aesthetic appreciation' (Levinson, p.271, my italics).
Levinson points out that he conceives of music primarily as an artistic activity and not as
a sonic phenomenon to which intention would be irrelevant. Much remains unanswered
in Levinson's definition. For example: what exactly is 'man-made'? According to
Levinson, a birdsong or the rhythmic gurgling of a stream cannot be considered music.
However, what is it if a composer incorporates them into a music piece? What if the
entire composition consists of a birdsong or the rhythmic gurgling of a stream? Does the
composer's intention alone suffice to categorize something as music? And is it possible to
reconsider that view?

[3] Convinced of the difficulties that are involved in adequately defining music, music
sociologists John Shepherd and Peter Wicke conclude that music itself is a discursively
constituted category. That is, this term in itself can give rise to multiple,
incommensurable and contested categories. 'The term 'music' is highly polysemous'
(Shepherd and Wicke, p.208). (Musicologist Carl Dahlhaus no longer speaks of music
(singular), but of 'musics'.)
Moreover, it only becomes more difficult to distinguish between music and non-music
when the context reaches beyond the western world. 'More and more frequently,
ethnomusicological literature stresses that other cultures do not in general have a term for
music as a global phenomenon', musicologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez concludes (Nattiez,
p.54). This epistemological category lies outside the cultural landscapes of such cultures
and is not relevant to them: 'We [the Western world, MC] recognize the worldwide
existence of music, but all of those things that we acknowledge as musical facts are not
necessarily thus categorized by everybody' (Nattiez, p.61). Nattiez, Shepherd and Wicke
seem to agree: there is no unambiguous and intercultural universal concept that defines
music.

[4] Another problem needs to be addressed. Judging by John Cage's composition, 4'33'',
(among others) Levinson concludes: 'It should be apparent that there are no longer any
intrinsic properties of sound that are required for something possibly to be music'
(Levinson, p.271). According to Levinson, there are conditions essential to a piece being
music that are not even directly audible. These observations, which are based on
developments in musical language, can lead to a new definition of music inspired by the
findings of the American philosopher, Arthur Danto. In his essay from 1964, 'The Artistic
Enfranchisement of Real Objects: the Artworld', Danto acknowledges that the works of
Marcel Duchamp and various Pop Art artists have made it impossible to separate art from
non-art on the basis of formal qualities. Danto asks what will ultimately determine the
difference between a Brillo box and a work of art consisting of a Brillo box? Danto's
question amounts to the following: when one of two identical objects is considered art
while the other is not, a certain context is assumed within which these two formally
indistinguishable objects still enjoy their respective status. Danto calls this context the
artworld: 'To see something as art requires something the eye cannot decry - an
atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld' (Danto in
Dickie & Sclafani, p.29). In 1974, George Dickie adds a sociological and pragmatic
definition of a work of art to this notion of artworld: a work of art is a series of aspects
(not every aspect of a work of art makes it a work of art) to which one or more
individuals who act on behalf of the social institution artworld (e.g., the artist himself,
presidents of art institutions, critics, aestheticians, etc.) grant the status of 'art' (cf. Dickie,
p.35). Objects become works of art because (influential) people in the artworld have
declared them to be works of art.
What is said here about art in general can be easily translated to music. Sounds become
music when certain people from the music world (often, the composer at first) deem it
music. This is not a inalterable fact: views on music can be questioned and reviewed at
all times until a new, temporary consensus is reached. Music becomes a social
convention, a 'total social fact' (Marcel Mauss), subject to change over time and by
culture. In order to define music one should include not only sound, but the context in
which sound is produced as well. Such notions as 'the institutional setting' (Shepherd and
Wicke), 'the code' and 'the network' (Attali), 'social conventions' (Durant) and 'social
contexts' (Nattiez), and 'kategorialer Formung' (Dahlhaus), to mention only a few
equivalents, seem to at least temporarily ensure a certain delineation between music and
non-music where formal qualities can no longer hold.

[5] I do not want to elaborate upon problems concerning all that, for convenience's sake,
may be summed up as institutional or contextual theories. In Context, I point out certain
problems dealing with the notion of context. The problem of demarcation (the problem of
inside vs.outside) will recur in the institutional theories, for example, in determining who
can be rated in the artworld and which series of aspects belong to the work of art.
I would like to briefly touch upon another problem. In The Truth In Painting, Derrida
alerts the reader to a hermeneutic circle with the appearance of a vicious circle when
speaking of art. The notion of an artworld already presupposes an idea of what constitutes
art and of the essence of art and its original meaning. The concept of art is already
predetermined or preconceived in the notion of an artworld. 'One makes of art in general
an object in which one claims to distinguish an inner meaning, the invariant' (The Truth
In Painting, p.22). 'What is art?', Derrida asks. 'As long as one refuses to give an answer
in advance to this question, 'art' is only a word. And if one wants to interrogate art, one is
indeed obliged to give oneself the guiding thread of a representation. And this thread is
the work, that fact that there are works of art' (The Truth In Painting, p.32). In most
aesthetic theories (Derrida refers to Hegel and Heidegger), the chosen point of departure
is the fact that there are indeed works of art. Notwithstanding, how are they to be
recognized? Here is where the vicious circle becomes evident: 'There are works which
common opinion [see Dickie's definition, MC] designates as works of art and they are
what one must interrogate in order to decipher in them the essence of art. But by what
does one recognize, commonly, that these are works of art if one does not have in
advance a sort of pre-comprehension of the essence of art?' (The Truth In Painting, p.32).
Problems occur. Circular arguments. Unfounded presuppositions. However, with a
certain approval Derrida quotes Heidegger who states that it is not about escaping this
vicious circle, but on the contrary about 'engaging in it and going all around it' (cf. The
Truth In Painting, p.32).

[6] What is music? Not quite knowing where to start in the hermeneutic circle (Is that still
important?), I will return to the thinkers who have committed themselves to determining
the boundary between music and non-music, the boundaries between music, noise and
silence. Despite the attention for the (cultural and temporal) context of music, despite
artworld theories that result from this attention, defining music remains 'infected' from
the inside by an intra-musical premise, a formalistic quality. All thinkers seem to concur
that music, at any rate, has something to do with sound. (According to American
composer Robert Ashley the 'most radical redefinition of music' would be one that
defines music 'without reference to sound'.) Levinson: 'Perhaps the only thing that all
theorists agree on is that music is necessarily sound' (Levinson, p.274). Nattiez: 'Sound is
an irreducible given of music. Even in the marginal cases in which it is absent, it is
nonetheless present by allusion ... The musical work manifests itself, in its material
reality, in the form of sound waves' (Nattiez, p.67 and p.69). Although music is not
limited to the acoustic dimension (There are other factors that determine whether or not
something is music), we always speak of music in relation to sonority, according to
Nattiez, even when it merely concerns a reference: sound is a minimal condition of
music. To Shepherd and Wicke, it is the melodic, harmonic, rhythmic and timbrel
configurations that lead us to recognize music as 'music' (cf. Shepherd and Wicke, p.10).
They continue: 'We identified sound in music as the material medium that would
ultimately guarantee music an integrity and relative autonomy as a specific signifying
system' (Shepherd and Wicke, p.56). Ultimately, they define music as 'sounds 'in
conversation' with sounds' (Shepherd and Wicke, p.200). Dahlhaus considers the musical
work as 'tönender Sinnzusammenhang' [sounding coherence of meaning] (Dahlhaus,
p.195, my italics). To musicologist Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, specific to music is
'dasjenige, was sie im Reich des Tönens und Hörens ganz allein für sich selber hat' [that
which it disposes of entirely by itself in the realm of sounding and hearing] (Dahlhaus,
p.189). To Eggebrecht, audibility is an obvious aspect of music in which a distinction can
be made between noise, sound, and tone. We are back to the definition of music as
quoted by Jacques Attali in The Gift of Silence [donner les bruits], the introduction to this
section: 'Music is inscribed between noise and silence' (Attali, p.19).

[7] Beginning with the idea that the definitions of music, noise and silence have (at least
also) to do with (the absence of) sound, I will dedicate a number of pages to the
investigation of the relationship between music and noise (Noise as Undifferentiated
Sound and Noise as Undesirable Sound), and of the relationship between music and
silence (Silence and/in Music). A separate page addresses a deconstruction of the
oppositional pair, music-noise, as it (unconsciously) takes place in Jacques Attali's book,
Noise (Music and/as (Dis)Order). One composer who has devoted nearly his entire
musical life to the borders among music, silence and noise is John Cage. A number of
pages are dedicated to his works and his views (Cage and Noise, and Cage and Silence).
In the end, I intend to show how his compositions, 4'33'' and Waiting, deconstruct the
opposition of silence and noise (Music, Noise, Silence, and Sound). On a separate page,
thought is given to the ethics of a deconstruction of the borders between music, silence,
and noise (Silence, Noise and Ethics). Finally, the pages on Cage may lead one to a page
that connects silence to death (Silence and Death), and to a page on which Cage's use of
silence is connected to French poet Stephane Mallarmé's interest in the color white
(Cage, White, Mallarmé, Silence).
Cage, White, Mallarmé,
Silence
[1] A synesthetic experiment. Which color most closely resembles silence? Speech is
silver; silence is golden, as the saying goes. But meanings differ.
Composer R. Murray Schafer argues that if 'white noise' is the total of all audible
frequencies at the same time, then silence could be called 'black noise'.
Conversely, John Cage associates silence with whiteness referring to the paintings of
Robert Rauschenberg, in particular. In 1949, Cage viewed a new series of all-white
paintings by Rauschenberg. ('White on white. The blank is colored by a supplementary
white'.) What fascinated Cage was, as Rauschenberg said, that 'a canvas is never empty'.
The canvasses are 'mirrors of the air', a landing-ground for dust, shadows, and reflections,
not passive, but on the contrary, hypersensitive. The white paintings gave Cage the
courage and 'authority' to compose his silent pieces.
French poet Stephane Mallarmé makes a similar connection between whiteness and
silence. In 'The Double Session' (Dissemination, p.173-286), Derrida refers to a sheet in
Mallarmé's Livre that features the following lines (Dissemination, p.230):

The intellectual armature of the

poem, conceals itself and - takes place - holds in the space that
isolates the stanzas and
among the blankness of the white paper; a significant silence that it
is no less lovely to compose than
verse.

[2] In much greater detail, Derrida addresses Mallarmé's text Mimique in which silence is
an important theme (Dissemination, p.175).

Mimique
Silence, sole luxury after rhymes, an orchestra only marking with its gold, its brushes
with thought and dusk, the detail of its signification on a par with a stilled ode and which
it is up to the poet, roused by a dare, to translate! the silence of an afternoon of music; I
find it, with contentment, also, before the ever original reappearance of Pierrot or of the
poignant and elegant mime Paul Margueritte.
Such is this PIERROT MURDERER OF HIS WIFE composed and set down by himself,
a mute soliloquy that the phantom, white as a yet unwritten page, holds in both face and
gesture at full length to his soul ...
... Surprise, accompanying the artifice of a notation of sentiments by unproffered
sentences - that, in the sole case, perhaps, with authenticity, between the sheets and the
eye there reigns a silence still, the condition and delight of reading.
[3] Mimique. A Pierrot story. The Pierrot character associates silence with whiteness. The
two most remarkable and typical features of the Pierrot are that it tells its story in silence
and that his face is white (neutrality or utter coldness?). Throughout the history of the
Pierrot story, silence and whiteness are inextricably linked.
Mimique is also a text about silence, a text that often praises silence (cf. the fragments
cited above). Elsewhere in Mimique, Mallarmé talks (in concealed terms) about the
surplus value of mime, the groping in silence. In 'The Double Session', Derrida points out
that Mimique resides between two silences 'that are breached or broached thereby' (cf.
Dissemination, p.223). Derrida could mean this in a literal sense: Mimique begins and
ends with the word 'silence'. But (of course) there is more to say. This text on silence
contains a considerable number of silences indicated by its many commas. Derrida notes
that Mallarmé regarded these commas as pause marks and intervals that interrupt the
progression of the sentence. The commas create silences. Thus, silence is present in both
content and form.
Like Mimique, Cage's Waiting can be read or heard as a 'text' that resides between two
silences; the piece begins and ends with bars that contain only rests. Where silence is
made explicit through the corporeality of the words in Mallarmé's text, the silences in
Waiting are strongly emphasized by its subdivision in bars. However, we must think of
Waiting from a traditional perspective, i.e., as starting from sounds, in order to
understand the pauses as hindrances for the progression of the music. If the pauses in
Mimique can be read as fragmentations of the story, Cage inverts what Mallarmé aims for
in this text. The notated piano sounds in Waiting seem to preclude silence; they emerge
from a world that is occupied by silence.
Analogously, a text could be seen as emerging from white space. Mallarmé clearly
experiments with this idea in some other texts. In his poem, Un coup de dés [Throw of
the Dice], the words are spread left and right across the page. (Incidentally, the title of the
poem nicely coincides with Cage's method of composing through the throwing of dice.)
The special typography, the irregular interspaces bring about fragmented word islands in
a sea of white. (The typography of Cage's books greatly resembles this work by
Mallarmé.) The white seems to function as a primeval sea from which the text originates.
The words form small islands that emerge from this primeval sea. They interrupt the
whiteness of the pages. The blank white dominates (cf. Van der Sijde, p.203).

A DICE THROW

WILL NEVER

EVEN WHEN CAST IN ETERNAL

CIRCUMSTANCES

UP FROM A SHIPWRECK
WHETHER
the
Abyss

whitened
slack
raging
at a tilt
flaps a hopeless
wing
its own
too
early falling back in the struggle to trim its flight
and covering the spurts
cutting down the leaps

[4] According to Mallarmé, meaning always is the effect of a play between the words.
The white of the page is thus charged with meaning; moreover, it is the precondition for
any meaning to emerge. Furthermore, the open spaces in Un coup de dés indicate that the
text cannot coagulate into any definitive meaning; the words refer to one another, but
together they do not form a closed structure. Mallarmé calls his typographical play
'espacement' [spacing], a term Derrida adopted in his text, 'Différance' (Margins of
Philosophy, p.3-27). 'The movement of signification is possible only if each so-called
'present' element, each element appearing on the scene of presence, is related to
something other than itself' (Margins, p.13). A sign refers to something other than itself;
therefore, it stands in relation to what it is not. 'An interval must separate the present from
what it is not in order for the present to be itself, but this interval that constitutes it as
present must, by the same token, divide the present in and of itself ... this interval is what
might be called spacing, the becoming-space of time or the becoming-time of space'
(Margins, p.13). Both Mallarmé and Derrida emphasize the role of space, of whiteness, in
the determination of meaning. In Dissemination, Derrida addresses this issue in different
words: 'Languages, as we now know, are diacritical realities; each element within them is
in itself less important than the gap that distinguishes it from other elements'
(Dissemination, p.250).
The space between words, the gap, the white, becomes the precondition for a text to
appear as text. From the diacritical, Derrida will later draw another consequence, namely,
'a certain inexhaustibility [of meaning] that cannot be classed in the categories of
richness, intentionality, or a horizon'. The dissemination, the infinite dispersion of
meanings, escapes the author's intentions similar to the way that (composed) silence
escapes the composer's compulsion to control the world of sounds. Un coup de dés
'reveals' this dissemination in the abundant white, the spaces between the words. The text
joins the white and complies with the blank in the same way the prescibed musical
sounds join the already existing silence in Waiting. Silence. Not an unarticulated
nothingness. No meaningless absence of sounds. Silence must be re-thought. Through
whiteness.

[5] Many of Mallarmé's poems feature a polysemous play on the concept of white. Words
such as 'snow', 'swan', 'virginity', 'foam', 'frigidity', 'glacier', and 'paper' are all associated
with whiteness. Two possible entrances towards the white seem to unfold. First, the white
seems to become a set theme in the associative chain (just as silence becomes thematic in
Mimique), a semantic concept. 'The 'blank' appears first of all, to a phenomenological or
thematic reading, as the inexhaustible totality of the semantic valences that have any
tropic affinity with it', says Derrida (Dissemination, p.252, my italics). An inexhaustible
totality. Although inexhaustible, Derrida seems to assume a totality with regard to the
semantic valences. Polysemy. Second, in Un coup de dés, Mallarmé does not write about
whiteness. Rather, he shows it making it visible through the typography. A non-thematic
position. Un coup de dés attempts to make something visible that cannot be expressed in
words, something that escapes wording. Derrida calls this 'the blank as a blank between
the valences, a hymen that unites and differentiates them in the series' (Dissemination,
p.252). Thus, Mallarmé's whiteness relates to both the totality, however infinite, of the
polysemous series, and to the spaced splitting of the whole, the writing site where such a
totality is produced. However, the latter is not just one extra valence, a meaning that
enriches the polysemous series, an extra signified or signifier. Neither is the blank the
transcendental origin of the series. Derrida calls this whiteness the 'non-theme of the
spacing that relates the different meanings to each other' (Dissemination, p.252). The
blank comes neither before, nor after the series; it intervenes between the semantic series
in general; it liberates the effect that a series exists. Whiteness as/is différance.

[6] Derrida criticizes the limited idea of 'thematicism' to interpret Mallarmé's work. 'If we
can begin to see that the 'blank' and the 'fold' cannot in fact be mastered as themes or as
meanings ... then we will precisely have determined the limits of thematic criticism itself'
(Dissemination, p.245-6). This may immediately refer to the non-thematic white of a
page (a 'falling outside of the text'). But Derrida also points out something else. He
attempts to show that Mallarmé's word associations do not only refer to meanings;
therefore, they can only unjustly be called thematic. Derrida addresses (as does
Mallarmé) the material aspects of a word, something a thematic approach does not
usually do. 'Thematicism necessarily leaves out of account the formal, phonic, or graphic
'affinities' that do not have the shape of a word' (Dissemination, p.255). Phonic or graphic
affinities. Mallarmé plays with connections such as 'cygne' [swan] and 'signe' [sign], or
'vol' [flight] and 'voile' [veil or sail]. This is where the words hesitate between sound and
meaning, and where the musical character of Mallarmé's poetry becomes apparent. A
non-discursive sonority. At times, this creates a paradoxical situation. For example,
blankness or whiteness can connote both virginity (the virginal white of a page) and
sexuality (the naked skin of a white woman). It differs from itself in the same way as
silence differs from itself (the other) in Cage's music (cf. Music, Noise, Silence, and
Sound).
Mallarmé's poetry is a play of articulations, a re-inscription within sequences that can no
longer be controlled. An example. 'White' does not comprise the essence of 'swan',
because 'swan' equally determines the value of 'white'. 'White' and 'swan' have different
connotations. The inexhaustible expressiveness of these words is caused by their mutual
interaction (that only increases when other words are added to the chain). Each word is
the trope of the other (cf. Van der Sijde, p.227). There is no center 'hors-texte', no
transcendental signified that can keep this endless dissemination under control. (A change
from polysemy to dissemination.) 'If there is no such thing as a total or proper meaning, it
is because the blank folds over' (Dissemination, p.258). But this folding over is not a
chance event that happens to the blank from the outside. It is within the blank as well as
outside of it.

[7] Can we make an analogy with Waiting? A first reading might suggest that the opening
and closing bars of Waiting coagulates into a thematized silence. The silent bars take up
an equally important part of the rhythmic structure of Waiting as the bars that contain
notes indicating that Cage treats both in an equal fashion. The theme is silent, i.e., the
composer cannot determine the theme. The theme is infinitely open because every
performance fills it with the random sounds of the environment. This silent theme will
not be limited or controlled. However, it is alternated in a horizontal movement with a
theme from the composer's hand. Silence and sounds take turns, relieving each other in
time. Therefore, they are juxtaposed to each other in more than one way: 'non-sounds' vs.
sounds, non-intention vs. intention, open theme vs. closed theme, nature vs. culture, life
vs. art, etc.
Cage, however, not only composes with silence, he also composes in silence. The silent
parts and the written notes of Waiting both join an always already present silence, always
already resounding sounds. Silence and (musical) sound are no longer each others
antagonists. They are no longer engaged in a sequential play. Silence does not only
harbor an infinite abundance of sounds. Important in this second reading is that silence
has nestled itself in the musical sounds. Silence does not stop when Cage's premeditated
sounds resound. 'Silence has invaded everything, and there is still music', says Cage in
For the Birds. Silence was always already present and it remains present. This is the non-
theme of the duration. In the silent parts of Waiting, a silence on silence opens. Silence is
colored by a supplementary silence; it differs from itself. ('White on white. The blank is
colored by a supplementary white'.)
I call this silence of the second reading arche-silence. Waiting is situated between
silence, a thematization of silence (the general rests), and arche-silence, the rising and
dissolving of differences and meanings (between silence and silence, silence and sound,
sound and sound, etc.), the folds in the musical syntax. Arche-silence is the possibility of
conceptuality, of a system within which every concept refers to other concepts. However,
this arche-silence is not the origin (in the traditional sense of the word) of these
differences. It is not an in-different presence because it is itself always pervaded by
differentiation. The arche-silence does not precede these differences. Everything 'starts'
with the differentiation. Différance. Thus, there can no longer be a matter of origin.
Arche-silence is silence as differentiation: 'The blank [silence, MC] refers to the non-
sense of spacing, the place where nothing takes place but the place. But that place is
everywhere; it is not a site fixed and predetermined' (Dissemination, p.257).
Cage and Noise
[1] Music. Noise. Cage. Noise and music. Noise in music. Music in noise. Noise about
music. Cage about noise. Cage about music as a cage.
John Cage was not the first, nor the last composer to critically question and transgress the
borders between music and noise (in addition to the borders between music and silence
and between silence and noise). Time and conventions will tell whether or not he is to be
regarded as the most important composer in this area. As it stands, however, it is not yet
possible to write about this topic without paying proper attention to Cage's endeavors. At
the onset of the 21st century, he is still an undisputed reference point.

[2] In accordance with traditional music history, Cage's views on music and noise can be
positioned at the end of a long line of developments in the history of music. I confine
myself to mentioning two names that have influenced Cage's ideas. Futurist Luigi
Russolo (1855-1947) was one of the first composers of the 20th century that attempted to
emancipate noise, for which reason he may be regarded as a precursor of Cage (cf. Noise
as Undifferentiated Sound). Cage himself, however, has referred more often to French-
American composer Edgard Varèse (1885-1965). 'Years ago, for instance, after I decided
to devote my life to music, I noticed that people distinguished between noises and
sounds. I decided to follow Varèse and fight for noises, to be on the side of the underdog',
Cage remembers in 'The Future of Music' (Gena and Brent, p.38). Although Varèse still
defined music as 'organized sound' - a view Cage highly contests - Cage did consider him
a kindred spirit since Varèse, more than anyone else in his generation, was clearly and
actively concerned with accepting all audible phenomena as material proper to music.
'While others were still discriminating musical tones from noises, Varèse moved into the
field of sound itself, not splitting it in two by introducing into the perception of it a
mental prejudice' (Cage, 1961, p.83-4). Following Varèse and exceeding Russolo's
undermining moves, Cage crusades against the superior position of 'the concept of music'
in the world of sound. According to Cage, it is this very concept that makes it extremely
difficult to develop an uninhibited and unprejudiced ear for sounds that one does not (yet)
count among music. Instead, one often tries to avoid, banish, or ignore these sounds
precisely because they do not belong to the musical domain. 'There is so much in so-
called classical music that is bound up not with sound, but with theory', says Cage (Gena
and Brent, p.182).

[3] Cage is aware of the problems that these views bring about. 'Musicians will not admit
that we are making music; they will say that we are interested in superficial effects, or, at
most, are imitating Oriental or primitive music. New and original sounds will be labeled
as 'noise'. But our common answer to every criticism must be to continue working and
listening, making music with its materials, sound and rhythm, disregarding the
cumbersome, top-heavy structure of musical prohibitions' (Cage, 1961, p.87, my italics).
Cage composes (and argues in favor of a) music open to the sounds that are outside of it.
A non-obstruction of sounds. The sounds of automobile parts, pipe lengths, and sheets of
metal, for example. Familiar sounds, but sounds that were never before heard as music.
He asks us to free our minds from the old concepts of music and to explore ways to 'let
sounds be themselves'. He opposes the said 'intellectuality' of music, since it stands in the
way of an acceptance of noise. According to Cage, noises are sounds that have not yet
been intellectualized. The ear can hear them directly; it cannot fit them into abstract
preconceptions. (It is the failure of the intention to make these sounds fit that constitute
them as noise.) Sounds should appear without positions of superiority or subordination.
Cage and noise. Cage and music. Resistance and transgression. Challenging dominant
forms of power (musical conventions, definitions). Refusing mastery and being mastered.
Disrupting the exercise of power (of the music world).

[4] Music. Noise. Cage. Noise and music. Noise in music. The concept of music does not
interest Cage. 'If one feels protective about the word 'music' (if this word is sacred),
protect it and find another word for all the rest that enters through the ears. It's a waste of
time to trouble oneself with words' (Cage, 1961, p.190). However, can Cage withdraw
from this concept, this word? Can he - cagey, perhaps dressed up in a caftan - escape
from this cage? Doesn't the problem of closure remain at the heart of Cage's project? The
very gesture that carries his compositions, his ideas, beyond the conceptual closure of
music, the cage called music, re-inscribes them within the limits of closure; they are
bound in a double gesture, one of transgression and restoration. The transgression of the
closure can only proceed by employing the musical language and conceptuality that
restores music to itself. It is music that turns noise into (musical) experience. But Cage's
work is also the mark of an alterity that music is unable to reduce. The deconstructive
working of Cage's compositions leaves music as a fissured concept that is unable to tell
its inside from its outside. Cage's thinking and composing can not only be thought of as
an effort to push the concept of music towards a new border; it comprises the infinite
deferral of its enclosing power.
Music. Cage. Cage: an open framework of various kinds (cf. OED). The concept of music
as an open framework. Impossible to close off. Impossible because an exteriority (noise)
comes to play, brush against, rub, press against the limit itself and intervene in the inside
(music) only to the extent that the inside is lacking. It is lacking in something and it is
lacking from itself (cf. The Truth in Painting, p.56). Impossible because the outside
(noise) is always already on the inside (music).

[5] In spite of the emancipative work of such people as Russolo and Varèse, Cage finds
himself confronted with a musical world that still defines noise as 'sounds of indefinite
pitch'. There is a clear hierarchy in the world of sounds: 'musical sounds' rise above 'noise
sounds'. Cage is viewed with suspicion because he explores this forbidden 'non-musical'
field of sounds. His first move (strategically speaking, though not chronologically) is to
undermine this hierarchical order by introducing noise into the musical world, suggesting
they are equal to musical sounds. However, this first move still leaves music with the
upper hand. Departing from 'musical' sounds, a shift takes place where noise may now
also be listened to as musical sounds. Cage's second move is to no longer take musical
sounds, but rather noise, as his starting point.

[6] 'When Cage opens the door to the concert hall to let the noise of the street in, he is
regenerating all of music: he is taking it to its culmination. He is blaspheming, criticizing
the code and the network' (Attali, p.136). According to Jacques Attali, Cage does
question some of the old codes (the process of musical creation, music as an autonomous
activity), but he does not yet suggest any new substitutions. However, it is my belief that
many of Cage's compositions do initiate a rather radical shift in our attitude towards
music. It is a shift that could be called a deconstruction in music: this strategy of
deconstruction can be identified in the inversion of the initial hierarchy between music
and noise (cf. hierarchical oppositions).
In what Cage calls 'a mental prejudice', music is always the privileged, positive term
while noise represents what should be avoided, excluded, and silenced. Perhaps, one will
never be able to completely banish noise - in the sense of unwanted sounds - however,
one can still strive to do so with all possible (technical) means since it would do more
justice to what it is all about: music. Musical tones are taken to be the principal aspects of
a composition; noise is disrupting, subordinate, a meaningless factor.
Cage shifts the accent from the composing of music to the composing of/with/in noise,
thereby questioning the traditional hierarchy between the two. The point of departure
shifts from 'musical' sounds to 'noise' sounds. In an interview, Cage refers to a workshop
he conducted for composers: 'I had the lights turned out and the windows open. I advised
everybody to put on their overcoats and listen for half an hour to the sounds that came in
through the window, and then to add to them - in the spirit of the sounds that are already
there, rather than in their individual spirits. That is actually how I compose. I try to act in
accord with the absence of my music' (Gena and Brent, p.176). Cage does not depart
from music; his starting point is noise. He wants to create a music that belongs to the
noises of the environment, a music that will take them into consideration. He starts from
the simple fact that we are always already surrounded by sounds. What is important is
how we relate to those sounds. Cage formulates a clear proposition: if we try to ignore
them, they disturb us; if we listen to them, if we accept them, they are fascinating.
Agreeing with this idea requires us to reconsider and adjust our views on music. 'It
becomes evident that music itself is an ideal situation, not a real one. The mind may be
used either to ignore ambient sounds, pitches other than the eighty-eight, durations which
are not counted, timbres which are unmusical or distasteful, and in general to control and
understand an available experience. Or the mind may give up its desire to improve on
creation and function as a faithful receiver of experience' (Cage, 1961, p.32). Two points
of special interest. First, Cage makes clear that all the music we hear is constantly and
inevitably pervaded by noise, by undesirable and/or undifferentiated sounds. Second, the
emancipation of noise is not the exclusive responsibility of the composer or the musician,
but requires an active and transformable attitude on the listener's part as well. When the
listener includes the sounds of the environment in the composition, he in fact becomes
co-composer. Cage demands an open mind from the listener, a susceptible ear for all that
sounds, better yet, for all that sounds and that is excluded from music in the traditional
sense. If we can relate to these 'noise' sounds - sounds that are always already there,
sounds that are always already part of the music, part of the inside - in a 'musical' sense,
then the distinction between music and noise becomes very diffuse, uncertain, arbitrary.

[7] Ambient sounds. Unpredictable by nature. Variable. (Musically) non-intentional. As

such, they raise the question of non-intention, of non-doing, of doing-without-doing. All
these sounds share in the absence of intention, which implies that they do not follow or
pursue a predetermined direction, meaning, or destination. It is important to Cage that the
act of composing does not disrupt this state of relative non-activity. His compositions
must be in harmony with the events of the outside world.
Waiting, a 1952 composition for solo piano, is one of many examples in which Cage uses
noise as his starting point. Waiting starts with 16 bars of rests, which implies that this
work of music also consists of all the accidental noises in the room, whether humanly
produced or not. Within this continuous stream of (non-intended) sounds, Cage's
prescribed tones join in, hesitantly, softly, interrupted, as if they feel diffident to disrupt
the 'music' that is already sounding. Towards the end, the piano sounds have long faded
before the piece reaches its close. (In Dissemination, Derrida writes about the beginning
of Philippe Sollers' novel Numbers: 'The initial capital letter is suspended by the three
dots that precede it; the origin is suspended by this multiple punctuation and you are
immediately plunged into the consumption of another text that had already, out of its
double bottom, set this text in motion' (Dissemination, p.334). Sollers makes us realize
that a text is always preceded by other texts. This idea carries one off to a labyrinth-like
place. There is no origin. Likewise, the origin of Waiting seems to be suspended by the
16 bars of rests. The ambient sounds that are always already present in Waiting, in all
music, are a preceding text in which another text inserts itself. But, of course, these
sounds are preceded by other ones for their part. Any origin is suspended.)
Music no longer drowns out the noise in Cage's works, nor should it; 'musical' sounds and
'noise' sounds relate accordingly to each other. Symbiosis. Each acts as both guest and
host: music is a guest in the domain of the noise and noise is welcomed in the house of
music. Cage makes one aware that every house, every home, has an opening (doors,
windows). The house of music is open; it gives entrance to the stranger, to the guest, to
noise. Cage brings us to accept the other of music, the other that is usually repudiated,
that really should not exist. But conversely, the guest invites the host into his house. The
guest becomes host of the host. Noise becomes the host of music. Cage denounces the
hierarchy that privileges 'musical' sounds over 'noise' sounds. By starting from noise
rather than from 'musical' sounds, he turns the hierarchy upside down. The music appears
in the margins of ambient sounds and becomes an integral and special part of noise;
music is grafted onto noise. Musical sounds become part of a composition that already
contains ambient sounds (on the condition that it does so in a responsible and non-
disruptive manner). But all this happens within the domain of music. Waiting is music. It
is a composition. It is a part of music history, part of an institution. There is no pure and
simple absence of the frame. So, in fact, musical sounds enter the domain of music. They
enter their own home as if they were coming from the outside, as if they were guests,
strangers, noise. They enter their own domain thanks to the guest that is at the same time
the host. What happens? A simultaneous appearance of two irreconcilable hypotheses. It
happens. Not once, but again and again.

[8] 'Nothing was lost when everything was given away. In fact, everything is gained. In
musical terms, any sounds may occur in any combination and in any continuity' (Cage,
1961, p.8). Waiting. Disclosure. Transgression. No longer are noise and music opposing
poles of a contra-distinction. There is no contra-distinction anymore; 'noise' sounds and
'musical' sounds become subspecies of an arche-noise (or, perhaps, we can still just call it
sound), an arche-noise that opens the play of differences. First made conscious, then
subverted, the opposition now dissolves in a play of non-stable meanings, in which
ground and figure easily change places. An endless displacement. An abyss.

[9] Noise and music. Noise in music. Music in noise. For Cage, deconstructing the border
between noise and music is not an isolated endeavor, but a critical questioning of the
border between art and life as well. After a concert, someone from the audience
approached him with the following complaint: 'That kind of music if you call it music
should not be played in a public hall, because many people do not understand it and they
start talking or tittering and the result is that you can't hear the music because of all these
extraneous sounds ... The music could be played and possibly appreciated, in a home,
where, not having paid to be entertained, those listening might listen and not have the
impulse to titter or having it out of decorum squelch it and besides in a home it is more
comfortable and quiet: there would be a better chance to hear it' (Cage, 1961, p.135).
Cage's response makes clear that the opposition of noise-music cannot be perceived
without taking the opposition of life-art into consideration, and that his attention to noise
also serves to transgress that opposition. 'Now what that someone said describes the
desire for special cut-off-from-life conditions: an ivory tower. But no ivory tower exists,
for there is no possibility of keeping the Prince forever within the Palace Walls. He will,
nilly-willy, one day get out and seeing that there are sickness and death (tittering and
talking) become the Buddha. Besides at my house, you hear the boat sounds, the traffic
sounds, the neighbors quarreling, the children playing and screaming in the hall, and on
top of it all the pedals of the piano squeak. There is no getting away from life' (Cage,
1961, p.135). At the root of the desire to appreciate a piece of music 'as such', to hear it
without the unavoidable extraneous sounds, is the idea that a musical work is separated
from the rest of life. Cage objects (cf. Silence and Death). He points out in various ways
that non-intended sounds, sounds that need to be excluded because they are disruptive
and reside outside of the music, are always already part of the music, part of the inside.
The rests at the start and the end of Waiting refer to the problematic difference between
living with all the sounds from everyday life and the intended sounds of music. This
composition does not begin with the first piano sounds, nor does it end with the fading of
the final sounds. Before the piano is first heard, Waiting is already 98 seconds on its way;
after the piano sounds disappear again, the piece still has another 18 seconds to go. The
beginning and the ending of Waiting (that is, the beginning and ending of this piece of
music) is at the heart a play with the demarcation of musical sounds from sounds that do
not (yet) belong to music. Is it already music? Is it still music? A play. A play with
music. A play by music. A play in music.

[10] Noise vs. music, non-intended sounds vs. intended sounds, life vs. art; the
oppositional pairs resonating along with the first opposition form an ever-extending
thread. However, the differences are not cancelled out. Noise and music, art and life do
not really merge in Cage's work. His 'anti-art' still operates within an aesthetic abstraction
similar to art. But the aesthetic isolation and abstraction are questioned. The borders are
permeable, shifting, insecure (cf. Dahlhaus, 1984, p.49).
Cage and Silence
I am trying to describe it ... It was a tone in which all tones resounded while at the same
time it contained all the silence. (Psychologist Silvia Ostertag during a masterclass of
cellist Pablo Casals).

[1] In Cage and Noise, I investigate the way in which John Cage deconstructs the borders
between music and noise. More familiar, perhaps, is the way in which Cage has
concerned himself with the relation between music and silence. 'We should listen to the
silence with the same attention that we give to the sounds', writes Cage. His point of
departure is the simple, but crucial observation that the materials of music consist of
sounds and silence; that to compose is to articulate these two. The only parameter of
sound that is shared by silence is duration. 'If you consider that sound is characterized by
its pitch, its loudness, its timbre, and its duration, and that silence that is the opposite and,
therefore, the necessary partner of sound, is characterized only by its duration, you will
be drawn to the conclusion that, of the four characteristics of the material of music,
duration, that is, time length, is the most fundamental. Silence cannot be heard in terms of
pitch or harmony: it is heard in terms of time length', Cage states in a lecture on Satie
(Kostelanetz, p.81). From this, Cage finds that the underlying structure of music can no
longer be based on harmony and tonality (Beethoven), or on the twelve-tone system
(Schönberg). The underlying structure of music is rhythmic. 'There can be no right
making of music that does not structure itself from the very roots of sound and silence -
lengths of time' (Cage in Kostelanetz, p.81-2).

[2] A central role of duration. A central role of the concept of silence. During the course
of Cage's life, his thoughts on silence have undergone some changes, including the way it
appears throughout his compositions. In his article, 'So etwas wie Stille gibt es nicht'
['There is no such thing as silence'], Eric de Visscher distinguishes three stages that may
serve to mark out Cage's developing thoughts on silence. The stages are a structural
notion of silence, a spatial notion, and silence as the absence of any intention or
purposiveness (cf. Visscher, p.48-54). These three notions will be elaborated upon below.
(One comment: Unlike De Visscher, I do not regard these stages as a chronological
development, but as an analytical tool. In any given time period, Cage may work in
various ways. For example, he may drop some of his ideas while reactivating others from
the past. There is no linear progression; it is more like layers overlapping one another.)

[3] A structural notion of silence.

At first, Cage conceives of silence in a traditional way, as the absence of sound, or as
minimal sound activity. Already, however, silence is not just a negativity to Cage. The
attention to silence aids in uncovering musical structure since this can only be determined
by duration (see above). By assigning the primacy of the musical parameters to duration,
Cage not only opens music to silence, but to all sounds of any quality or pitch. Music
becomes an empty (silent?) concept from which any type of sound may emerge. Silence
acquires an important role: only through silence can the musical material adopt many
types of sounds.
A reversal takes place. A reversal in (thinking on) music. A reversal in the traditional
hierarchy in music where silence is secondary and subordinate to sound (cf. Visscher in
Nauck, p.8). Silence becomes an absolute prerequisite for the introduction of all sounds
to the musical domain. This new (concept of) music originates from silence. A reversal
for sure. However, this structural notion of silence still leaves Cage bound to a relatively
classical attitude as it rests on the definition of silence as the absence of sound. The
relation between sound and silence is horizontal, that is to say, they take turns in
succession, thereby excluding each other. The musical structure rests on their order and
mutual exclusion (cf. Visscher, p.49).

[4] A spatial notion of silence.

Cage's 'Lecture on Nothing', a reading from 1950, signals a shift in his thinking on
silence. He realizes that the important role of silence regarding musical structure does not
yet establish a full recognition of its positive qualities. Cage wants to avoid approaching
silence from a negative point of view, i.e., as absence of sound. At the beginning of
'Lecture on Nothing', he attempts to arrive at a different relationship towards silence.
'What we require is silence; but what silence requires is that I go on talking ... But now
there are silences and the words make help make the silences ... We need not fear the
silences, we may love them' (Cage, 1961, p.109-10). Silence is no longer the absence of
sounds; silence itself consists of sounds. Silence begets sounds. Chiasm. Reversibility.
Through the intertwining of silence and sound, their mutual penetrability now becomes
appreciated. Each retains a part of its antipode; each requires the other as its frame. The
necessary interdependency between sound and silence relates to two principal aspects:
silence is not only the precondition for sound - this means that silence contains sound -
every sound in turn harbors silence as well. (According to Martin Zenck, the 'Lecture on
Nothing' points out that the words of spoken language by which the silence is demarcated
are in fact the precondition for silence.) The latter principle manifests itself especially in
compositions that are on the outer limits of audibility, such as Waiting (cf. Cage and
Noise). In this 'silent piece', silence does not disappear when a tone resounds, rather, it
continuously resonates along with the tones. Here, a vertical conception of silence comes
into play. Sound and silence develop in a parallel way without mutual exclusion; the one
is always already present in the other (cf. Visscher, p.49-50).

[5] A spatial concept of silence. Silence as a space that is always already pregnant with
sounds. And vice-versa! The relation between silence and sound becomes more complex.
To Cage, it no longer suffices to state that silence and sound are mutually dependent in
order to exist, or that sound emerges from silence. Cage reverses this idea: silence
resounds in sounds. Silence becomes more prominent when traces of silence in sounds
are detected. 'Music already enjoys inaudibility (silence)', Cage writes (Kostenaletz,
p.116). After his 'Lecture on Nothing', Cage's thoughts on silence and sound go through a
shift that is embodied in his 'Lecture on Something'. (The opposition of silence-sound,
together with oppositions such as nothing-something, death-life, law-freedom, etc., form
an entire chain of apparent oppositions in Cage's universe that can no longer be thought
as oppositions. As such, they are objects of a strategy of deconstruction in music.)
'It is nothing that goes on and on without beginning middle or meaning or ending.
Something is always starting and stopping, rising and falling. The nothing that goes on is
what Feldman speaks of when he speaks of being submerged in silence. The acceptance
of death is the source of all life. So that listening to this music one takes as a springboard
the first sound that comes along; the first something springs into nothing and out of that
nothing arises the next something; etc. like an alternating current. Not one sound fears the
silence that extinguishes it. And no silence exists that is not pregnant with sound' (Cage,
1961, p.135). Silence is (not) nothing; it is no longer the absence of sound. It consists of
all the ambient sounds that make up a musical space, a space of which the borders cannot
always be clearly defined. Silence is the space in which sounds occur. Sound and silence
are simultaneously present with one constantly carrying traces of the other. Cage now no
longer reverses the hierarchical opposition (where sound or music is primary and silence
is secondary). Instead, he undermines the opposition as a whole. Sound and silence
become two versions of a generalized arche-silence with the result that they both acquire
a different status.

[6] As long as Cage holds onto the structural notion of silence he has no need to give up
the idea of silence as emptiness. However, his merging of silence and life brings about a
dispersion of the difference between silence and (ambient) sounds. This was not just a
theoretical thought construct. Evidence of this can be found in Cage's recollection of an
experience in a soundproof chamber at Harvard University. 'For, when, after convincing
oneself ignorantly that sound has, as its clearly defined opposite, silence, that since
duration is the only characteristic of sound that is measurable in terms of silence,
therefore any valid structure involving sounds and silences should be based, not as
occidentally traditional, on frequency, but rightly on duration, one enters an anechoic
chamber, as silent as technologically possible in 1951, to discover that one hears two
sounds of one's own unintentional making (nerve's systematic operation, blood's
circulation), the situation one is clearly in is not objective (sound-silence), but rather
subjective (sounds only), those intended and those others (so-called silence) not intended'
(Cage, 1961, p.13-4). Silence cannot be the absence of sound: 'There is no such thing as
silence', Cage concludes (Cage, 1961, p.191). Silence consists of all existing sounds
(silence as life) that surround us (silence as spatial dimension) (cf. Music, Noise, Silence
and Sound). This ultimately opens the musical world to the entire world of sounds,
including non-musical sounds (cf. Visscher, p.51). By doing so, Cage also undermines
the distinction between central and peripheral tone properties that were natural for
centuries in European music. Intensity and timbre are no longer subordinate to the pitch
and duration of the tone. They no longer add 'color' or 'spice' to these so-called central
properties; rather, they are to be regarded as independent and equal parameters. The
traditional hierarchy between the secondary tone properties (expression and coloratura)
and the primary, structural parameters (tone duration and pitch) is now implicitly subject
to reconsideration.

[7] Silent music. Like Waiting. This composition does not contradict the properties of
silence. The sounds retain the 'reverberation of nothingness' from which they originate.
Obviously, this silence is not to be understood as ordinary silence. Silence can be full, all
encompassing, indeed, it may even be loud. During the first sixteen bars of Waiting, a
world of sounds unfolds that was excluded from the world of music for the longest time.
Since Cage cannot and will not manipulate these sounds, it is always unclear what these
sounds will be. The tenuous piano sounds that join these ambient sounds from bar 17 on
will not drown them out. The 'silence' remains audible throughout the piano part and is
inextricably integrated in the composition. Silence and (musical) sound are both present
at the same time. One is not reduced to the other. There is no hierarchical relation either.
The sounds of the piano engage into a dialogue with their environment; they join the
already present sounds respectfully, that is, without too much disturbance, and modestly
retreat before the piece reaches its close. A double silence. A first silence frames the
musical piece (a silence framed by the concept of music in turn). A silence around music,
but only experienced through music. A second silence is not a background silence, but
converges with the musical piece. Silence on silence. Silence in music.

[8] Silence as the absence of any intention.

After describing his experience at Harvard, Cage writes that the difference between
sound and silence cannot be a property of an object or a situation since sound is
ubiquitous at all times. Therefore, a division between the two rests on a distinction
between intended and non-intended sounds. In his 1958 reading, 'Composition as
Process', a summary of his ideas on silence, Cage returns to this matter. 'Formerly,
silence was the time lapse between sounds, useful towards a variety of ends, among them
that of tasteful arrangement, where by separating two sounds or two groups of sounds
their differences or relationships might receive emphasis; or that of expressivity, where
silences in a musical discourse might provide pause or punctuation; or again, that of
architecture, where the introduction or interruption of silence might give definition either
to a predetermined structure or to an organically developing one. Where none of these or
other goals are present, silence becomes something else - not silence at all, but sounds,
the ambient sounds. The nature of these is unpredictable and changing. These sounds
(which are called silence only because they do not form part of a musical intention) may
be depended upon to exist. The world teems with them, and is, in fact, at no point free of
them' (Cage, 1961, p.22-3, my italics). Silence no longer coincides with itself, but
transforms into unpredictable and changing ambient sounds from which one cannot
escape. These sounds are called 'silence' because they are non-intentional. It is the
presence or absence of an intention, meaning, or purpose that distinguishes musical
sounds from silence. Silence is not merely the absence of sounds; something is called
silence when there is no apparent connection to the intentions that produce these sounds.
(This means that there is no essential distinction between silent silence and loud silence
according to Cage. They both lack intention.)
Out of respect for these sounds, Cage takes care that his compositions do not disrupt this
state of non-intentionality or silence. He argues in favor of 'a composing of sounds within
a universe predicated upon the sounds themselves rather than upon the mind that can
envisage their becoming into being' (Cage, 1961, p.27-8). Musical sounds should be in
harmony with the sounds of the outside world. Silence becomes a perceivable presence
(i.e., the sounds that surround us) and composing is about finding sounds that respect this
silence. 'When I write a piece, I try to write it in such a way that it won't interrupt this
other piece which is already going on' (Cage in Duckworth, p.15). Cage writes his music
on the sounds that always already surround it. Arche-silence. Not a word, not a concept
that can be defined. Arche-silence is the play of differences (among music, silence, and
sound). Arche-silence makes possible this play of differences.
Music and/as (Dis)Order
[1] Point of departure: music and noise. Music vs. noise. Music constitutes the positive
term, noise comprises the negative term. The negative of musical sound is noise. Noise is
an undesirable sound, the static on a telephone, the unwrapping of cellophane candies
during Mahler. Noise is any sound that interferes; it contaminates what we want to hear.
Music is often defined as a pattern of organized sounds, deliberately created in order to
produce certain effects, while noise is thought of as sounds that occur naturally or
randomly. The steady periodical, stable vibrations of music are in clear contrast to the
non-regular and fragmentary vibrations of noise (cf. Nattiez, p.45. cf Murray Schafer,
p.5).

[2] In Noise, French thinker Jacques Attali apparently develops a similar outlook.
According to Attali, the history of music can be seen as the history of the ordering of
noise in codes. However, the impact of music goes beyond this. Attali regards the ability
of music to bring about discipline among its major functions. Music can be regarded as
an affirmation of the possibility of establishing order in the social. Music is used and
produced in an attempt to make people forget the general violence, to make people
believe in the harmony of the world, and to silence and censor all other human noises
(Attali, p.19). When music banishes noise, it (symbolically) proscribes violence in a more
general sense. Thus, music simulates the accepted rules of society. An example. To
Attali, the entire history of tonal music amounts to an attempt at making people believe
there is harmony in order. '[Tonal] music made harmony audible. It made people believe
in the legitimacy of the existing order' (Attali, p.61). Dissonances (conflicts and
struggles) are forbidden, unless they are merely marginal and resolved in a higher order
and ultimate harmony.
Make people forget, make them believe, silence them. In all three cases, music is an
instrument of power. Attali especially sees supporters of totalitarianism as being very
appreciative of music as a politically and socially regulative tool: 'They have all
explained, indistinctly, that it is necessary to ban subversive noise because it betokens
demands for cultural autonomy, support for differences or marginality' (Attali, p.7). They
advocate a concern for maintaining tonalism, the primacy of the melody; they distrust
new languages, codes, instruments, and refuse the abnormal. Even so, Attali further
expresses, in democracies, music is no less used as a 'bulwark against difference', as an
instrument for controlling noise, as an institutionalization of the silencing of others. The
disciplining capacity merely takes on a less violent, subtler form in these societies. In
both cases, however, the normalization and disciplining of and by music means the
exclusion of noise, of disorder.

[3] The other of music is noise. In an historical overview, Attali observes that noise is
long regarded as a 'threat of death'. Noise is considered a symptom of destruction and
pollution and, on a physical level, a source of pain. Beyond a certain limit, it can become
a deadly weapon: 'Noise is violence: it disturbs. To make noise is to interrupt a
transmission, to kill. It is a simulacrum of murder' (Attali, p.26). If noise is the auditory
devil, then music is the ministering angel: 'The whole of traditional musicology analyzes
music as the organization of controlled panic, the transformation of anxiety into joy, and
of dissonance in harmony' (Attali, p.27). Tonal music in particular absorbs noises and
restores order by repressing the tragic dimension of lasting dissonances. Repeated
dissonances are prohibited and a tonal piece can certainly not have a dissonant ending.
Dissonant music would be the expression of a deficiency and the failure of the channeling
of violence. The term, dissonances, in Attali's argument should be viewed, however, in
the broad sense of all unwanted sounds and any serious infringement on the existing
order. And when Attali addresses music's standardizing and disciplining function, he not
only refers to (tonal) music: it includes the educative role of conservatories, the
hierarchical organization of orchestras, the passive stand of audiences, the rise of all
kinds of organized interest groups, the standardization of production processes, etc. All of
these help to banish dissonances. Consequently, a music world develops, one that has no
use for disorder or noise. It might even be better to say that certain noises are neutralized
immediately after they are introduced into the institutionalized music world, where they
are deprived of any harmful impact and adapted into a comforting and reassuring order.

[4] Attali conceives of music as a form of sublimation. Music can be regarded as an echo
of the sacrificial channeling of violence. Dissonances are removed from it in order to
keep noise from spreading. In this way, it mimics the ritualization of murder in the space
of sound (cf. Attali, p.28). However, it is precisely in this 'channeling of violence' and in
this 'ritualization of murder' that music can no longer maintain itself as the other of noise,
as the exclusively positive term opposed to noise as negativity, as order vs. chaos, as
culture vs. nature. (A wide range of oppositions could be added to these.) Gradually, an
orderly analysis becomes disrupted. Several signals interfere with the reception of Attali's
message. And he is aware of it. Early in his book, Attali already refines his argument on
the disciplining function of music. 'A subversive strain of music has always managed to
survive, subterranean and pursued, the inverse image of this political channelization:
popular music, an instrument of the ecstatic cult, an outburst of uncensored violence ...
Here music is a locus of subversion at odds with the official religions and centers of
power ... Music ... is simultaneously a threat and a necessary source of legitimacy' (Attali,
p.13-4). The subversive element is no less a characteristic of music. An aspect of music
that Attali still tries to displace to the margins of music history (he mentions certain pop
music or music played at Dionysian feasts) seems to reveal itself precisely through the
ritual aspect that music carries with it as a phenomenon that permeates all music. Music's
ambiguous role as integrator and subverter leads to Attali's somewhat casual, but
important remark 'the rupture music contains within itself'. Music affirms society and
disciplines quality. But at the same time it is imbued with subversive elements, always
already carrying the other (noise) with it. Every association that was connected to noise -
destruction, disorder, aggression against code-structuring messages - turns out to be
inseparably connected to what seemed to be diametrically opposed to noise, i.e., music.
(Incidentally, this is not a new or remarkable phenomenon. In Classical Music and
Postmodern Knowledge, Lawrence Kramer writes that especially in the 18th and 19th
century, music was almost exclusively thought to be representing the subversive, the
disorder, the other.)
'With noise is born disorder and its opposite: the world. With music is born power and its
opposite: subversion' (Attali, p.6). This should not be understood as the positive term that
nonetheless brings about its own negative with the negative remaining outside of it.
Rather, the negative is always already a part of this positive term; it is not situated next
to, but right in the middle of it.

[5] Ultimately, Attali observes a new music emerging towards the end of the 20th
century, a subversive music. Music turns against itself. As yet subject to the power of the
economy that music itself helped to create, 'the seeds of a new noise', a new music, loom
up. The entry of noise into music (Attali mentions Luigi Russolo, John Cage, and Jimi
Hendrix as examples) represents only a first stage of this development, the liquidation of
the old codes. Attali points to another practice: making music on one's own without
having a preconceived goal, without holding on to already existing codes and rules. It is a
practice that is concerned more with the process of making music and mutual
communication than with results (cf. Teaching a Supplement). He calls this practice
'composition': 'Composition ... plugs music into the noises of life and the body, whose
movement it fuels. It is thus laden with risk, disquieting, an unstable challenging, an
anarchic and ominous festival, like a Carnival with an unpredictable outcome. This new
mode of production entertains a very different relation with violence: in composition,
noise is still a metaphor for murder. To compose is simultaneously to commit a murder
and to perform a sacrifice. It is to become both the sacrificer and the victim, to make an
ever-possible suicide the only possible form of death and the production of life' (Attali,
p.142-3). Music and noise, order and disorder, stability and instability. They have
become one here, inseparably connected to one another. An order is established in the act
of making music, but this order is once-only, unique, singular, non-compelling, variable.
In 'composition', stability is perpetually called into question. 'Composition' is inscribed in
the permanent fragility of meaning. This music is at the same time, noise. It is at once a
setting of rules and a questioning and undermining thereof. The same and the other
simultaneously. The other within the same.
In her afterword, Susan McClary calls Attali's book 'noise'; it is a noise (non-sense,
disruption) against the neat ordering of institutionalized music scholarship and traditional
(formalistic) musicology (cf. Attali, p.149). To make a slight distinction from McClary's
view, however, it should be noted that this disorder also contains a clear order. Following
linear musical historiography, Attali distinguishes four stages in the development of
music from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century. The disadvantage of such a model,
such categorizing thoughts, is that it excludes exceptions, it has to exclude music that
does not fit in these stages. Does Attali leave out the noise? In complete accordance with
the imperative logic of belief in progress and a certain unifying pursuit that disallows any
subversive or deviant elements, Attali sketches a series of changes in music and in the
music world that leaves little room for alternatives. Ultimately, however, Attali's order
becomes permeated by a disorder. He describes the final stage of the musical
development, 'composition', as 'the permanent affirmation of the right to be different ...
the right to make noise, in other words, to create one's own code' (Attali, p.132). If this
can be understood as doing justice to the other, the particular, the singular, then there can
be no conceivable coordinating order that would encompass this. 'Composition' has
become an ambiguous term, an undecidable in which order and disorder intermingle and
merge.
[6] Music vs. noise. Order vs. disorder. It is not that simple. Order and disorder are both
present within music. Music is order and disorder.
What about the negativity of noise? Despite its connection to 'a threat of death' and 'a
simulacrum for murder', to Attali noise is not an exclusively pejorative term. Noise is the
source of mutations in structuring codes. 'A network can be destroyed by noises that
attack and transform it, if the codes in place are unable to normalize and repress them'.
And he continues: 'Despite the death it contains, noise carries order within itself' (Attali,
p.33, my italics). Noise is not meaningless; it creates (new) meanings. First, noise
signifies the interdiction of the transmitted meaning; it signifies censorship and rarity.
Second, noise, by unchanneling auditory sensations, frees the listener's imagination. The
presence of noise makes meaning. It makes possible the creation of a new order, of a new
code, another network (cf. Attali, p.33). Noise is no longer pure disorder, but is itself
always already permeated by its opposite, order. While music in its quality of channeling
violence always already carries the violent with it, noise always already contains a certain
order. A constant crossover takes place on the border between music and noise that was
once well defined and aptly controlled. 'Catastrophe is inscribed in order, just as crisis is
inscribed in development. There is no order that does not contain disorder within itself,
and undoubtedly there is no disorder incapable of creating order' (Attali, p.34). Noise
clearly does not lead towards anarchy, but to new order recreating a system of differences
on a different level (Attali, p.34). A profound identity between noise and differences.
Remarkable. Earlier in his book he describes music in the exact same way as he sets
music and noise alongside each other: 'Music responds to the terror of noise, recreating
differences between sounds' (Attali, p.28). This last comment already seems to indicate a
reversal of the earlier statement that music is a 'bulwark against differences' (see above).
Does music function as an opposition against indifference (noise) or rather, against a
radical difference (noise)? Or, is noise an opposition against the indifference of an
existing code that has already become weak through use? Moreover, there is this
statement: 'First, music - a channelizer of violence, a creator of differences, a sublimation
of noise, an attribute of power - creates in festival and ritual an ordering of the noises of
the world. Then - heard, repeated, regimented, framed, and sold - it announces the
installation of a new totalizing social order' (Attali, p.23). Here, music is first presented
as the instigator of differences (Between noise and music? It remains unclear here.) only
to subsequently suppress each and every difference (noise?) with brute force. Attali
regards music 'as a succession of orders (in other words, differences) done violence by
noises (in other words, the calling into question of differences)' (Attali, p.19). Music
should perhaps be associated with a stable maintenance of differences, whereas noise
would represent the development of a new system of differences. However, when this is
about an internal liquidation of codes where music creates the internal conditions for its
own rupture, the distinction between noise and music becomes very unclear again.

[7] Attali proves to have varying thoughts in several passages about music, noise, and
how they relate to each other. Could it therefore be appropriate to think of Attali's book
as a 20th century composition in which the transmission of a message is disrupted
(willfully or unwillfully) by a subversive noise? The noise of deconstruction? In a most
general sense, the first notion that presents itself to the reader of Noise is the idea of
putting music in opposition to noise. Noise is the radical other of music. The statement,
'Music is inscribed between noise and silence' (Attali, p.19), reads as though the borders
of music, noise and silence are clearly marked or can be clearly marked. Three coexisting
entities. Above, I outlined the ways in which the borders between noise and music
dissolve in his argument. While noise is characterized by the adjective 'subversive',
music, too, turns out to have a subversive side. Where initially noise is equated to
disorder, it also brings on order from within its own core. In yet another passage, Attali
seems to want to label noise as a secondary category that merely exists by the grace of an
antipodal positivity: 'A noise is a resonance that interferes with the audition of a message
in the process of emission. A resonance is a set of simultaneous, pure sounds of
determined frequency and differing intensity. Noise, then, does not exist in itself, only in
relation to the system within which it is inscribed: emitter, transmitter, receiver' (Attali,
p.26-7, my italics). Here, much more emphatically than in the preceding remarks, noise
seems to merge as negativity into a general category of music, a hierarchical relation in
which noise is designated a less prominent place constituting a negative part of music. In
the same paragraph, however, Attali writes, 'All music can be defined as noise given form
according to a code' (Attali, p.25). Here, Attali defines noise as the general category of
which music is a subspecies. Music seems to require noise in order to define itself. 'The
fundamental status of music must be deciphered through that of noise: Noise is a weapon
and music, primordially, is the formation, domestication, and ritualization of that weapon
as a simulacrum of ritual murder ... In the space of noise it symbolically signifies the
channeling of violence and the imaginary, the ritualization of a murder substituted for the
general violence, the affirmation that a society is possible if the imaginary of individuals
is sublimated' (Attali, p.24 and p.26-7, my italics). And in the same part of the text, he
calls music 'a channelization of noise'. In these citations, noise precedes music. Or, noise
seems to reveal itself here as a kind of arche-noise in which music, noise, (and silence)
become manifest as (hardly) distinguishable categories. Arche-noise. This also
legitimizes Attali's pronouncement that 'the theory of noise ... should thus precede the
study of the artifact that is the musical work ... The political economy of music should
take as its point of departure the study of the material it highlights - noise' (Attali, p.26).
The road to music runs through noise; better yet, noise is the road that leads us to the
music since the codes for music rest in noise (cf. hierarchical oppositions).

[8] What characterizes noise and music - both contain order as well as disorder - also
applies to the musician. Especially the social position of the musician reveals a certain
ambivalence, an equivocality that is not an oppositional pair, but rather, a mutual
pervasiveness.
In many pre-Socratic cultures, musician, priest and officiate was often a single function.
The distinction between musician and non-musician, clergy and laity represents one of
the first social differentiations and divisions of labor. Shaman. Musician. He holds a
special social function, an exceptional position, a unique status. He is a part of society as
much as he is outside or above it: 'The musician is at the same time within society, which
protects, purchases, and finances him, and outside it, when he threatens it with his
visions. Courtier and revolutionary' (Attali, p.11). On one hand, the musician affirms the
existing order through his alliance with political power, while on the other hand, his
music, in its quality of transcending the everyday, remains dangerous, disturbing, and
subversive. 'The musician, like music, is ambiguous ... If an outcast, he sees society in a
political light. If accepted, he is its historian, the reflection of its deepest values. He
speaks of society and he speaks against it' (Attali, p.12).
Ancient cultures produced a caste of musician-priests who were endowed with
supernatural or civilizing powers; reputed medicinal effects of music allowed musicians
to function as therapists. In other ancient civilizations (Islamic societies, Persia),
musicians were often slaves or prostitutes who were not allowed to sit and have dinner
with common people at the same table. But even in these societies the musician's status
was dual, simultaneously excluded (relegated to a place near the lower end of social
hierarchy) and superhuman (the genius, the adored and deified star) (cf. Attali, p.12).
The musician. Part of society and outside it, often at the same time. In many respects, the
musician resembles the pharmakos that Derrida speaks of in 'Plato's Pharmacy'
(Dissemination, p.128-134). Therefore, it is not remarkable that Attali also refers to this
figure: 'The musician: the sacrificed sacrificer; the worshipped and excluded Pharmakos;
Oedipus and Dionysos' (Attali, p.30). Like the pharmakos, the musician, too, is on the
borderline between saint and cursed, benefactor and criminal. He assuages people and
grants them a temporary escape from everyday life, but at the same time he remains an
outcast prone to scorn and humiliation. In medieval times, the Church adopted an
ambivalent stand with respect to his magical practices, recognizing him as beneficial
insofar as he healed, harmful insofar as he incarnated the powers of evil. In the Dionysian
rites of ancient Greece, the musician was a subversive, at odds with the official religions
and centers of power. Sometimes, however, society tolerated these rites, or attempted to
integrate them into the official religion (cf. Attali, p.13). Musician and pharmakos: both
are on the borderline of being tolerated, even appreciated, and expelled.
Throughout the 18th century as well, the musician found himself in the dual position
between order and subversion. On one hand, he still maintained a certain loyalty towards
his patrons. Linked to courtly powers, 'his music is a reminder that, in the personal
relation of the musician to power, there subsists a simulacrum of ... an order imposed on
noise' (Attali, p.48). On the other hand, he becomes aware of the fact that he could
associate himself with economic powers other than just the courts. A burgeoning
autonomy allows the musician to relate to the existing powers in a far more critical
manner than before (cf. Attali, p.50).
Although Attali recognizes and situates the duality of the musician's position primarily in
the pre-industrial era, the same characterization holds true for many contemporary
musicians. Many pop stars, for example, function as idols or even gods in our secularized
society. Adored and worshipped. Many fans want nothing better than to take on the role
of pop star. As they develop from small time musicians to star celebrities, these pop stars
represent the idea of 'the American Dream'. By doing so, they confirm an existing
hierarchical order that allows anyone to reach the top if they adhere to the rules of the
political and social game. Still, the same musicians relate to subversive elements that
remain inseparably attached to music, a rebellion against the existing order (free sexual
morality, use of drugs, obscene or blasphemous lyrics, etc.). The musician is the symbol
of the marginal, of disorder, and of subversion as well. Often, this is precisely why he is
envied. Protector and criticizer of the existing order and at the same time neither one, nor
the other. At once music and noise.
Music, Noise, Silence, and
Sound
[1] Cage says there is no such thing as silence. If so, what is silence? Is silence sound?
Noise? Music?
In 'Weltenlärm, Schweigen, Stille', Thomas Macho asserts that the modern world has
become much louder (acoustical pollution). This would be partly due to the extensive
industrialization of our society. On the other hand, our world has become more musical
as well: the omnipresence of music suppresses and neutralizes noise (as undesirable
sound). Macho believes that the musical avant-garde of the 20th century responds in three
different ways to this twofold acoustical expansion, two of which are relevant here. First,
the dismantling of tonal relations by the Second Viennese School has prepared and
enabled an invasion of noise on the musical world. In other words, the battle against
tonality has also been a battle against the suppression of noise by and in music. (A
strange situation occurs. Noise is suppressed by noise. Noise outside the domain of music
is suppressed by noise - that can contain the same sounds - within music.) Second, the
composers from the Second Viennese School set out to explore the effect and the
functioning of silence. According to Macho, the focus on silence constituted a new
music. He (understandably) mentions Cage's composition 4'33'' as an example par
excellence. 4'33''. A composition in three parts where each movement is to be played
according to the simple instruction 'tacet' (be silent).

[2] In complete accordance with tradition, Macho puts these two concepts (noise and
silence) in near diametrical opposition to each other. However, it is precisely Macho's
example - 4'33'' - that can be understood as undermining this seeming opposition. After
his experiment in the anechoic room, Cage concludes that both the sounding and the
silent parts in a piece of music are filled with sound. (Inside a soundproof room, Cage
still heard two sounds - his blood flow and his heartbeat, and this brought him to the
realization that silence does not exist.) He believes it is ignorant to think that sound has
silence as a clearly defined opposite. According to Cage, silence is all the sounds that we
do not intend. Silence means the entire range of sound. 'There is no such thing as absolute
silence. Therefore silence may very well include loud sounds and more and more in the
twentieth century does. The sound of jet planes, of sirens, et cetera. For instance now, if
we heard sounds coming from the house next door, and we weren't saying anything for
the moment, we would say that was part of the silence, wouldn't we?' says Cage in an
interview (Kostelanetz, p.166).
I don't know if I would answer Cage's rhetorical question in the affirmative. Perhaps I
would say that sounds were intertwining here with silence. But that is besides the point.
The important idea Cage brings forth is that silence always contains sounds. Sounds as
part of silence. Silence includes loud sounds. Silence becomes something other than
itself. It becomes sound, the ambient sounds that the world is never without. Absolute
silence does not exist; there are always sounds as long as we live and are able to hear
them (cf. Silence and Death). And music? Music itself is just an ideal situation because it
would require us to ignore ambient sounds including undifferentiated or undesirable
pitches and timbres (cf. Cage, 1961, p.32).

[3] Cage's music is made up of sounds, that is to say, both those that are written down
and those that are not. The ones that are not written down appear as silences in the score,
and open the doors of the music to sounds that are present in the actual setting.
Hospitality. Cage's music as a host, inviting the stranger, the other, to enter its home.
Cage compares his music to the glass houses by Mies van der Rohe and the wire
sculptures of Richard Lippold. The glass houses reflect their environment. And through
Lippold's network of wires one can see other things or people. These works revealed to
Cage that there is no empty space, similar to the way he experiences the impossibility of
empty time in his own works. There is always something to see; there is always
something to hear. Even if we would so desire, we still would not be able to establish
silence. Until we die there will be sounds (cf. Cage, 1961, p.7-8).
This idea, this silence, 'drones on' in Cage's most silent piece, 4'33''. First, this
composition implies that 'music' consists of all the accidental sounds in the room
regardless of whether or not humans produce them. Second, what is written as a silent
passage is actually filled with extraneous sounds (noise) because pure silence is
physically impossible. Thus, all the music we hear consists of sounds that are both
intentional and unintentional - not only what is written in the score, but also what is
inadvertently produced in the auditorium during a performance of the piece. As such, the
'silent' piece, 4'33'', refers to its alleged opposite: the 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence
exist because it cannot exist.

[4] The omnipresence of music in the modern world (cf. Macho) dis-ables silence, i.e.,
the time to think, reflect, and dream, the time to recuperate and to analyze. It makes
silence suspect. In actual fact, the omnipresence of music results in a silencing of people
through music: they are not allowed and are (therefore) unable to hear silence (noise).
Cage's silent music returns the listener to this silence, these sounds, this noise. Listening
begins with being quiet. After awhile, one notices that nothing is as loud as silence.
(There exists something like droning silence.) In other words, music leads to silence, and
silent music allows for loud sounds. Whenever we are engaged in silence we will
encounter sound time and again. Silence is not other than sound, not separate from sound;
it is not the opposite of noise. Silence is (a kind of) sound.
4'33'' forces us to rethink the concepts and our experience of music, silence, noise and
sound. Could we then say that 4'33'' puts the terms silence and sound under erasure, sous
rature? Could we say that we should put this binary opposition under erasure meaning
that both silence and sound are inadequate to describe a more general play, a différance
in/through which they function? (But can we speak here of a binary opposition at all?
Maybe it would be more appropriate to speak of a quaternary opposition. Four terms can
be considered here: silence, sound, music, and noise.) Or do we have to say that silence
and sound are just the silent and sounding forms of the play of arche-silence? Arche-
silence. Not a thing, not a presence, but the movement that produces the differences
between music, sound, noise, and silence. A non-originary origin. For Cage, (the concept
of) silence in music refers to all those sounds that are not intended, that appear as rests or
general pauses in a score. What remains is the idea that no sound can be excluded from
the domain of silence anymore. That is why we have to rethink silence. 4'33'' makes us
rethink silence. As a piece of music, 4'33'' frames the silence, supplying it with a context,
giving silence something to say. Music, 4'33'', gives silence sens. (I deliberately use the
French term 'sens' here, referring to both meaning and direction.) Without music, without
4'33'', silence is perhaps lost, without meaning or direction and therefore
un(re)presentable*. 4'33'' makes us hear the silence, makes us hear the noise within
silence ('sens' also refers to the senses). 4'33''. A deconstruction in music, a
deconstruction of the binary oppositions between music and noise, music and silence,
silence and sound. A deconstruction of music by/in music. Music is most often opposed
to silence or noise, and defined in terms of sound. Once the oppositions are deconstructed
as 4'33'' does, it is no longer possible to define music either in terms of sound or in
opposition to silence or noise. Not so much an act on Cage's part; deconstruction takes
place in the piece itself. Cage's essays, lectures and interviews are (merely) verbal
elucidations of this. Deconstruction takes place in the music. The music deconstructs.
The music is deconstructed. Silence is deconstructed. And it took 4 minutes and 33
seconds.

* I thank professor Finn for putting my thoughts in this direction.

Noise as Undesirable Sound
[1] In Noise as Undifferentiated Sound, I discuss the idea that there is no stable basis for
a distinction between music and noise. That page focuses on the boundary between music
and noise for the most part from a physical perspective. Shifting the emphasis to the
receiver's side opens a new outlook on this distinction. Noise as Undesirable Sound. No
complete overview. No new theory. Just a few rudimentary, rough remarks and questions
to open a space in which the relationship between music and noise can be rethought, in
which the boundary becomes less distinct, maybe even less relevant. Prolegomena. Four
short exploratory reflections which bring us to John Cage whose compositions
deconstruct the boundary between noise and music.

[2] Noise is the negative of musical sound. Noise is an undesirable sound around or
during musical performances: the coughing and rustling during a concert, the interference
of (antiquated) audio equipment, the scratches on a worn-out LP. Noise interrupts the
things we want to hear. We experience sound as noise when it prohibits or hampers our
contact with music. Generally, noise is a resonance that interferes with the transmission
of a message in the process of emission; it is the term for a signal that disturbs the
reception of a message. Sounds are noise when they disturb our concentration (or sleep),
when they are physically harmful to us (high sound volume). On a biological or physical
level, noise can be a source of pain. In Noise, Jacques Attali enumerates some
consequences of excessive sound in the immediate environment: diminished intellectual
capacity, accelerated respiration and heartbeat, hypertension, slowed digestion, neurosis,
altered diction. The eardrum can be damaged, even destroyed, when the frequency of
sound exceeds 20,000 hertz, or when its intensity exceeds 80 decibels (cf. Attali, p.27).

[3] Noise related to (high) sound volume. On a physical level the idea of undesirable
sounds seems clear. Greater problems occur when we move to noise as a contextual
phenomenon. Categorizing sound as noise, then, means assigning a status to it that is
relative to established norms for permissible and proscribed (musical) sounds. Here, there
is no stable basis for noise; it is bound to a context. A sound is experienced as undesirable
- i.e., as noise - in a specific context, while the 'same' sound may be accepted as music in
a different context. When I hear my neighbor's typewriter while I am listening to a CD of
Bach's Cello Suites, I will think of it as disturbing. However, the sounds from the
typewriter 'as such' do not have to be the cause of my discomfort. When I listen to Satie's
Parade, I appreciate the typewriter sounds as musical sounds; they are part of the
composition. Noise exists in relation to the context within which it is inscribed.
Two things more emerge from this short example. First, 'unpitched sound' is not always
noise; it can be a musical sound as well. The distinction between music and noise based
on the difference between periodic and non-periodic vibrations does not hold. Second,
noise seems to be synonymous with undesirable sounds here. When accepted (as music),
the same sound is no longer noise. But is it possible to demarcate the border of these
undesirable sounds? And can listeners to music, visitors to a concert, banish every
undesirable sound? Would a soundproof room with the most advanced audio equipment
be an option? Perhaps, we might then be able to avoid undesirable sounds and
background noise (unless we are diverted by the sounds of our body during very soft
passages). But is it possible to avoid interference in the 'music itself'? Do the sounds of
the bellows from an accordion, the breathing of singers, or the sounds of fingers sliding
across the frets of a guitar belong to the music or should they be excluded? Indeed, is that
at all possible? Some composers think of background noises made by musicians and
instruments as an essential part of the composition. What about the humming and panting
that is inextricably bound to the performances of such musicians as Glenn Gould, Keith
Jarrett and Art Blakey? What about the applause, the enthusiastic hissing and shouting of
the audience on live recordings? Stage sounds on live opera recordings? Movie
soundtracks that (necessarily) include street sounds and dialogues? And what if
background noises are part of the composition as is found in some works of John Cage
(cf. Cage and Noise) and Luigi Nono (cf. Silence and/in Music)?

[4] Many re-releases on CD's contain the following 'warning': 'The music on this
Compact Disc was originally recorded on analog equipment, prior to modern noise
reduction techniques. This Compact Disc preserves, as closely as possible, the sound of
the original recording, but its high resolution also reveals limitations in the master tape,
including noise and other distortions'. A standard phrase, perhaps illustrative of our
current-day appreciation of sounds. Refinement of hi-fi equipment and recording
techniques leads to a 'new' aesthetics that aims at the exclusion of errors, hesitations and
other unwanted sounds. (The whole of these unwanted sounds could be summarized
under the common denominator 'noise'.) Or, as Jacques Attali puts it: 'The absence of
noise has become a criterion for enjoyment' (Attali, p.124).

[5] The world has unmistakably become louder since the Industrial Revolution. Our ears
are exposed to a greater intensity of decibels. More noise on a physical level. However, a
parallel development takes place concurrently: a 'musicalization of culture' as George
Steiner calls it in his book In Bluebeard's Castle. The development of audio equipment
and all kinds of reproduction methods has enabled us to avoid every undesired sound by
covering it with a layer of music. (Or could this music in turn be experienced as
undesirable sound?) No doubt, this musicalization, this omnipresence of music in our
society, has its positive sides. Music at work, reportedly, even leads to an increase of
economic productivity. I want briefly pay attention to two other consequences of this
musicalization of culture. On one hand, many people have come to fear silence: even the
supposed absence of sound is disturbing and needs to be suppressed under a carpet of
sound. On the other hand, the omnipresence of music has markedly reduced our tolerance
towards 'other' sounds, towards noise.
Is another relationship with noise conceivable? As one of many composers, John Cage
has sought to open our ears to 'non-musical' sounds in his compositions. According to
Cage, the qualification of sounds as non-musical or noise is not so much related to
intrinsic sound properties as it is to our attitude towards sounds that we do not instantly
consider to be musical. When we pay attention to sounds that we usually prefer to ignore
- the same attention we reserve for musical sounds - we might experience these sounds as
far less disturbing. Cage begins his text, The Future of Music: Credo, with: 'Wherever we
are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it,
we find it fascinating' (Cage, 1961, p.3). The more one realizes that the sounds in our
environment are musical, the more music there is. Applied to the musical practice: 'A
cough or a baby crying will not ruin a good piece of modern music' (Cage, 1961, p.161).
When a sound becomes undesirable because it interrupts or hampers music, we may try
to banish it. Cage, however, seems to drive at a change in our attitude towards noise in
relation to music. Since it is virtually impossible to filter out each and every noise, why
not try to relate to these sounds in another (a more positive?) way?

[6] Four brief thoughts on noise as undesirable sound. Four thoughts ending with a
rethinking (maybe even a disruption) by John Cage - a rethinking or disruption he mainly
articulates in music - of the boundary between music and noise. In Cage and Noise, I
enter at length into a possible deconstruction of the boundary between music and noise in
Cage's compositions.
Noise as Undifferentiated
Sound
[1] Noise as undifferentiated sound. This is the starting point: 'We might assume that it is
possible to distinguish between musical sound and noise in acoustic terms: musical sound
results from regular, periodic vibrations; noise results from non-periodic vibrations ...
The distinction is based on the opposition between 'pure and simple sounds' on one hand
and 'complex sounds' on the other' (Nattiez, p.45). Nattiez comments that the French
language even employs an official physical definition of noise: noise is an erratic,
intermittent or statistically random vibration. A sound has been considered as noise for a
long time if its originating frequency was non-periodic and therefore of no determinate
pitch. (Theodore Gracyk speaks of the doctrine that certain timbres are inappropriate for
music making. He refers to the 19th century ideal of 'purity in articulation' where any
richness of the contributing overtones was considered unwelcome noise (cf. Gracyk,
p.114).) Non-periodic vibrations. Complex sounds. I call it noise as undifferentiated
sound. As a starting point.

[2] Futurist Luigi Russolo was one of the first in the early 20th century to put the
institutionalized division between music (Russolo mostly uses the term 'sounds' instead of
'music') and noises on the agenda. Russolo's essays on modern music all revolve around
the main statement of his 1913 L'Arte dei Rumori. Manifesto Futuriste [The Art of
Noises: Futurist Manifesto]: 'We must break out of this limited circle of sounds and
conquer the infinite variety of noise-sounds' (Russolo, p.25). His main and simple
question: If music is sound, then why does not music employ all the varieties that sound
has to offer? According to Russolo, the traditional division between music and noise is
based on the notion that music is a succession of regular and periodic vibrations. Noise,
in contrast, seems irregular and fragmentary. Russolo questions this sharp distinction
between music and noise and provides two arguments to support his position. The first
concerns duration. 'The production of a sound requires not only that a body vibrates
regularly but also that these vibrations be rapid enough to make the sensation of the first
vibration persist in the auditory nerve until the following vibration has arrived, so that the
periodic vibrations blend to form a continuous musical sound. At least sixteen vibrations
a second are needed for this. Now, if I succeed in producing a noise with this speed, I will
get a sound made up of the totality of so many noises - or better, a noise whose
successive repetitions will be sufficiently rapid to give a sensation of continuity like that
of sound' (Russolo, p.37). Here, Russolo tries to overcome the idea that musical sounds
are continuous while noise is discontinuous. He undermines the sonorological difference
between music and noise with respect to duration. By doing so, he is effectively
introducing noise into the musical realm. The emancipation of noise has assumed an
acoustic legitimization where noise is understood as a special kind of musical sound.
His second argument concerns timbre. Each sound is made up of a number of sounds
(secondary vibrations, various harmonic sounds, overtones). Now Russolo states that
noise is produced when 'the secondary vibrations are more numerous than those that
usually produce a sound' (Russolo, p.39). His conclusion: the difference between musical
sounds and noise must be only gradual. 'The real and fundamental difference between
sound and noise can be reduced to this alone: noise is generally much richer in harmonics
than sound' (Russolo, p.39). And he immediately continues: 'But, since these harmonic
sounds always accompany a pre-dominant fundamental tone, every noise has a pitch'.
However, giving pitch to noises does not mean depriving them of all irregular movements
and vibrations of time and intensity. It rather assigns a degree or pitch to the strongest
and most prominent of these vibrations. Harmonics are generally understood as sounds
above the fundamental tone. They are produced by other vibrations, faster and shorter,
which exist along with the principal vibration. With musical sounds, the fundamental
tone is the lowest tone. This is not necessarily the case with noise, where the
'fundamental' tone is rather the loudest tone. There may exist lower (but softer) tones.
The tone that characterizes the pitch in noise could therefore be an overtone of a weaker,
lower fundamental tone (cf. Russolo, p.27 and p.79).
Russolo goes one step further here than in his first argument where noise could still be
considered a separate case, a special sound within the musical domain. This second
argument turns the relation between noise and musical sounds around. Here, musical
sound is regarded as a special kind of noise, a noise where the lowest tone is at once the
fundamental tone. While this could also apply to noise, it is by no means essential. Music
or musical sound thus becomes a special phenomenon within the domain of noise. Music
is no longer the domain within which noise needs to secure its place. Rather, noise
becomes the framework in which music takes up a special (and still privileged) place.
Arche-noise.
A futurist manifesto and other essays. Writings on music. Discursive expressions.
However, Russolo's disruption and subversion (a deconstruction) of the boundary
between music and noise is first of all manifested in his music. Unfortunately, the bulk of
his work, in addition to musical instruments that he specially designed, was lost during
the First World War. His ideas about a new music, a noise music, required a new method
of notation as well as new instruments. In order to enrich the musical domain with new
sounds, timbres and microtones, Russolo created the first musical synthesizers, the so-
called intonarumori, or noise instruments that consisted of 'howlers', 'roarers', 'cracklers',
'gurglers', etc. His deconstruction of the relationship between music and noise articulates
itself within music; it is a deconstruction through music.

[3] Noise as undifferentiated sound. The idea that musical sounds result from regular,
periodic vibrations and noise from non-periodic vibrations has remained widespread until
long after Russolo's death in 1947 (to date?). However, 20th century electro-acoustic
research reveals that the spectrum of most musical sounds is non-periodic. This means
that noise may well have the same acoustic structure as musical sounds (cf. Nattiez, p.45-
6). Furthermore, there is a reciprocal relationship between volume and sound quality.
Increasing the amplitude of a sound wave alters its characteristic pattern and thus its
timbre. It exposes more overtones, both harmonic and non-harmonic; the sounds become
more complex (cf. Gracyk, p.109). Musical sounds become noise (from 'simple' to
'complex' sounds) when the volume increases. The alleged opposition between music and
noise based on physical differences becomes less clear; it becomes less of an opposition.
When we attempt to exclude noise from the realm of music on physical grounds, when
we try to assess the essential difference between the two as accurately as possible, the
difference dissolves and disappears. The boundary between music and noise becomes
uncertain and undecidable. This also happens when we try to restrict ourselves to a single
tone. The tone, or, rather, the sinusoidal tone, is the smallest musical unity to which all
sounding phenomena can be retraced. However, we cannot perceive sinusoidal tones.
Unavoidable, there are always overtones present due to the space in which the tone
necessarily resounds, and because of the way our ear functions. (A tone constantly
fluctuates; it continuously differs from itself. Therefore, in its vibrating quality, a tone is
nothing but a changing quality, Derrida explains in D'un ton apocalyptique adopté
naguère en philosophie, p.18-26.)
In Positionen, Frank Hilberg distinguishes three problems where a physical distinction
between musical sounds and noise is made. The first problem occurs with ultra short
sounds. We hear tones or sounds that last too short as a click without a real pitch (i.e.
noise), even where the sound structure is periodic and the sound spectrum is set up
harmonically. A second problem arises when we talk about timbre, the basis upon which
we are able to distinguish between instruments. It is precisely the non-stationary,
discontinuous and aperiodic sound progression (noise) that determines the characteristics
of an instrument. Or rather, it is the combined play of continuity and discontinuity that
leads to a recognition of a specific instrument. The third problem is that every sound, be
it a musical sound or noise, can be broken down into sinusoidal curves with the
consequence that the distinction between musical sounds and noise can no longer be
called qualitative; there is only a difference in degree (cf. Hilberg in Nauck, p.37).

[4] I stop here. No more examples although the list could be extended. The boundary
based on a physical difference between music and noise is constantly transgressed. Each
sound immediately proves to be pervaded by noise; noise is at all times a part of every
musical sound. If noise is the outside and music the inside, we must conclude that the
outside is always already on the inside. And this conclusion (which is not a conclusion in
the conventional meaning of the word, not the final word, the definitive outcome) goes
beyond the idea of the emancipation of noise, the extension of the concept of 'music' as
an acceptance of sounds that were previously rejected as noise, beyond the idea that no
sound can any longer be excluded from the domain of music. Noise was and is always
already part of musical sounds. That's a difference between deconstruction and
emancipation.
Silence and Death
[1] In various interviews and essays, Derrida recalls an inflammation of his middle ear
that he suffered in his childhood, and he associates it with death. His mother prayed in
despair to God as the dangerously ill boy laid in his bed. Derrida links his lurking
deafness, paradoxically manifested in hearing too much noise, to the danger of dying (cf.
Han, p.6-7). An impending silence (or too much noise? Noise and silence seem to play
exchangeable roles), and an impending death are conspicuously linked together.

[2] In a soundproof room, John Cage finds that he cannot escape from the sounds in his
body. This leads him to think that as long as we live we cannot experience absolute
silence. There will only be silence in death. Since it is impossible for us to experience our
own death, we cannot experience silence either. With his statement, 'Until we die there
will be sounds', Cage explicitly links death to silence. Perhaps, we may understand
silence, think silence, but the experience of absolute silence remains an aporia to us.
Silence, like death, can be conceived of as the impossible crossing of a border. We arrive
at a border we cannot cross, an aporia, an impossible passage; or rather, the experience of
a non-passage, an experience other than that consisting of opposing an other concept. A
relation to an non-opposable other, that is, an other that is no longer its other. We are
engaged in a certain possibility of the impossible (cf. Aporias, p.12 ff). In Aporias,
Derrida points to the impossible yet unavoidable experience that 'my death' can never be
subject to an experience that would be properly mine, or that I would be able to account
for. Cage arrives at a similar conclusion concerning silence. The I can never experience
absolute silence.
Death and silence. Connected to each other through the same impossible experience.

[3] Silence can be understood in two ways. On one hand, there is audible silence, a
silence that stays within the order of the audible; it remains constitutively hearable. This
category contains what Cage calls 'unintended sounds'. ('Silence means the whole lot of
sound; it is all of the sounds we don't intend'.) It also includes sounds that are almost
impossible to perceive either because the source is too far away, or because their
frequency is extremely high or low. A few examples. In 1976, Cage composed Branches,
which makes use of amplified plant materials. Cage was interested in sounds from nature
and had found that the spines of cacti, when touched and amplified, reverberate. Recent
radiographic studies show that the universe is filled with a cacophony of sounds
originating from sudden changes in the atomic structure of exploding gases. Additionally,
pulsars also produce sounds. Music scientist Wilfried Krüger and nuclear physicist Jean
E. Charon discovered harmonic relations (overtone sequences) on a microscopic level in
the so-called quanta of atoms, in the spin of electrons, and in the structure of molecules.
Photo-acoustic spectroscopy has enabled us to hear the sound of a rose when the blossom
springs from the bud; it sounds like the drone of an organ, reminiscent of a Bach toccata.
Indeed, even an old symbol of silence, the deep-sea, turns out to be full of sounds (cf.
Berendt, 1990, p.43-62). All these are examples of the order of the audible in-audible.
Even Dieter Schnebel's book, MO-NO. Music to Read, remains within this category of
audible silence. MO-NO. Music to Read contains many signs that appeal to our auditory
senses enabling and inciting us to enter the domain of hearing-through-imagination (cf.
No (-) Music - D. Schnebel). Contrarily, absolute silence refers to everything that falls
outside the range of the audible. It has no structure of audibility; it is other than audible.
This silence implies the silence in death, the silence of death, death as silence. ('Man
fears the absence of sound as he fears the absence of life', says composer Murray
Schafer.) Absolute silence is death; it is an aporia. Death is the experience of the non-
passage and absolute silence brings us to a similar impossible passage, a similar aporia.

[4] Cage's thinking on silence remains within the order of the audible. To him, silence
consists of ambient sounds, non-intended sounds. This is why he is able to think of
silence as related to life instead of death. According to Cage in silence one hears the
sounds of life. 'At my house, you hear the boat sounds, the traffic sounds, the neighbors
quarreling, the children playing and screaming in the hall, and on top of it all the pedals
of the piano squeak. There is no getting away from life' (Cage, 1961, p.135). Silence
means the whole world of sounds. Life. Silence is life for Cage. Furthermore, this audible
silence remains within the domain of duration. ('Silence cannot be heard in terms of pitch
and harmony: it is heard in terms of time length'.) This silence is of a different order than
the absolute silence that escapes life, and (with that) time. Death as silence, silence in
death goes beyond duration: 'One always dies in an untimely way. The moment of death
no longer belongs to its time', Derrida writes (Aporias, p.49, my italics). Absolute silence
is not connected to time anymore; it is beyond time.

[5] Silence/sounds vs. absolute silence. Audibility vs. inaudibility. Life vs. death.
Oppositions we cannot overcome. Borders we cannot cross. And the hierarchy is clear.
Life and audibility are the privileged terms. Absolute silence and death are secondary,
thought out of the primary terms. What always remains to be asked is how the essence of
death is defined in terms of life, Heidegger explains in Sein und Zeit [Being and Time]. In
Aporias, Derrida elaborates upon Heidegger's existential analysis of Dasein and death. He
determines how death is subordinated to life in Heidegger. Derrida quotes Heidegger:
'Within the ontology of Dasein, which is superordinate to an ontology of life, the
existential analysis of death is, in turn, subordinate to a characterization of Dasein's basic
state' (Aporias, p.29). A hierarchical order thus delimits the field, an order structured by
an uncrossable edge, the edge between life and death, between here and there. Heidegger
stresses that the existential analysis stands purely on this side. Derrida: 'It is on this side,
on the side of Dasein and of its here, which is our here, that the oppositions between here
and over there, this side and beyond, can be distinguished. In the same direction, one
could say that it is by always starting from the idiomatic hereness of my language, my
culture, and my belongings that I relate myself to the difference of the over there'
(Aporias, p.52). Derrida's analysis of Heidegger: talking about death consists of
privileging 'this side'. Life is conceived of as prior, a plenitude; death is the negation of
this. Situated on the margin of the privileged term life, the subordinate term death
designates an undesirable, dispensable deviation. Derrida, however, reverses this logic:
'Rather, it seems to me that one should say the opposite: it is the originary and
underivable character of death, as well as the finitude of the temporality in which death is
rooted, that decides and forces us to decide to start from here first, from this side here'
(Aporias, p.55). We are left with no other choice than to start from this side. The
impossibility to start from yonder side implies that we are forced to relate to 'over there'
from 'here'. It is death itself that imposes this necessity on us. Therefore, death is not
subordinate to life in Derrida's view. Rather, life is secondary to death. It is the
primordiality of being-toward-death, being-until-death, or being-to-death that makes life
secondary to death. (In some of his other works, Derrida calls attention to Freud who
poses similar suggestions. Freud, too, observes that life is generally the positive term
while death is its negation. Yet, Freud argues that man's death instinct is the most
powerful life force. This death wish, manifested in a compulsion to repeat, makes the
activity of life instincts a special case within the general economy of repetition and
expenditure. Freud redelivers death to life, a striking reversal.)
After Derrida first reverses the hierarchical opposition of life and death, he then proceeds
to disintegrate the opposition altogether. He effectively contravenes the assumption as
though there would be two contrasting forces at work here. 'The theme of immortality
[the death principle, MC] ... is not opposed to being-toward-death, it does not contradict
it, it is not symmetrical with it, because it is conditioned by being-toward-death and
confirms it at every moment' (Aporias, p.55-6). As death can only be thought from our
being-to-death, so does the death principle always determine our being-in-life.
Consequently, our aspiring for immortality is pervaded by our awareness of our
impending death. It is precisely this one certainty, the certainty of our death, that fuels
our desire for immortality.

[6] 'Until we die there will be sounds'. The link to sounds that determine and confirm our
life as life is imposed on us by an unattainable absolute silence. It is precisely this
unattainableness that forces us to engage in sounds. Therefore, we are always connected
to the possibility of absolute silence through our connection with sounds. Music turns
silence (death) into experience. To experience the aporia. We are always already on the
other side of the here. As sounds and absolute silence mutually pervade and determine
each other, the clear opposition sounds vs. silence disintegrates. Sounds and silence are
not each other's opposite; they do not exclude each other. One is always pervaded by the
other. 'And who will not recognize here the crossing of borders?' (Aporias, p.58).
Silence and/in Music
[1] It is clear that musicians know about silence in music. Empty bars or parts of bars
occur in virtually every musical piece. Rests are an inseparable part of any composition.
On a more modest and subtle level, silences mark the transition from one musical
sentence to the next by way of caesura. Silence also demarcates the beginning and the
end of a piece of music.
In musical theory, silence is not always referred to as the point where musical sounds
actually cease to exist. Moments of silence are experienced during sustained fermates,
extreme pianissimo's, or when a complex harmony dissipates into a sparing use of the
tone material. One becomes aware of silence in music that 'sound from afar', usually
indicated by the instruction 'come da lontano'. (A great amount of music by Russian
composer Alfred Schnittke opens and closes with scarcely audible sounds. His music
resides between the not-yet-audible and the no-longer-audible. It seems as though his
music is already there before the listener can hear it and continues to resound long after
the listener has registered the last tones. Through this 'non-ceasing' music, which
resounds beyond the limits of its audibility, silence acquires a different form of musical
Dasein.)

[2] This brief and incomplete summary immediately shows the heterogeneity of silence.
Silence and silence do not necessarily match. For that reason alone, silence deserves
more attention. As Martin Zenck concludes in 'Dal niente - Vom Verlöschen der Musik'
[On the Extinguishing of Music], however, the attention to silence is a peripheral moment
in composition and music analysis. By no means is its status equal to sound (cf. Zenck,
p.15). The pause in music, identified as an absence of sound, is the exception to the rule
that has music designated as the center of the musical spectrum. Eduard Hanslick's
famous definition of music as 'die tönend bewegte Form' ['form propelled by sound'] in
no way indicates a music that is present in its absence, in non-sound. Sound and silence
relate to each other as the essential versus the supplement, as the primary versus the
secondary. It seems that not the tritonus (the augmented fourth), but rather silence is the
true 'diabolus in musica' in Western music. Contrary to the tritonus, silence was never
banned, but its raison d'etre has been thoroughly questioned up until the 20th century. Its
function was mainly dramatic or rhetoric. Silence is subordinate to sound, and has for the
longest time (still?) been regarded as something less significant.

[3] An example of how silence remains secondary to sound and music in the theory of
music can be found in Thomas Clifton's essay 'The Poetics of Musical Silence'. 'To focus
on the phenomenon of musical silence is analogous to deliberately studying the spaces
between trees in a forest: somewhat perverse at first, until one realizes that these spaces
contribute to the perceived character of the forest itself, and enable us to speak coherently
of 'dense' growth or 'sparse' vegetation. In other words, silence is not nothing. It is not the
null set. Silence is experienced both as meaningful and as adhering to the sounding
position of the musical object' (Clifton, p.163, my italics). Clifton seems to focus our
attention on the meaning of silence within music. In a certain sense, an emancipatory
move. Upon closer consideration, however, this reading loses significant cogency. Clifton
leaves the traditional relationship between sound and silence intact. He continues to
operate within the existing hierarchy where silence serves sound. Similar to the spaces
between trees, silences that surround tones enable us to hear the sounds. 'The significance
of silence is therefore contingent upon a sounding environment', Clifton continues
(Clifton, p.163). Silence remains dependent on the world of sound because it is only there
that it can acquire meaning. In a summary of the various ways in which silence can
function, Clifton discusses 'examples of the way silence is used to express how the music
is speaking' and 'the adherence of silence to the grammar of the musical statement' (cf.
Clifton, p.173). In both cases, silence is clearly still in the service of sound. Clifton does
try to convince his readers of the importance of silence within music, but this importance
ultimately serves the sounds, the music. Silence is no longer empty, that is to say, without
meaning, but its autonomy - i.e., its non-sound based value - is left unrecognized.

[4] At the start of the 20th century, the composers of the Second Viennese School,
Arnold Schönberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg shared a similar outlook on silence.
Still, signs of a changing attitude towards silence can be found here. Many compositions
by Berg lack a clear closure; rather, they fade into a distance, a void, an infinitude. With
that, Berg joins the tradition of many composers from the Romantic era who worked with
sounds 'come da lontano', sounds that originate in the distance, thereby suggesting a
certain infinity. Even when we no longer hear sounds, the music is still present. However,
Berg still thinks of silence as a special and peripheral moment. It only becomes apparent
in very special areas of his music, particularly towards closures. And can we maintain
that Berg emancipates silence? Clifton rather describes the experience of Berg's fading
tones as a sensation of resistance toward the moment when the music will reside only in
recollection (cf. Clifton, p.175).
Is silence frightening? Does it make us think back longingly to the moments when it was
filled with musical sounds?

[5] With Webern, too, sound remains the primary aspect of composing even though the
presence of multiple rests within his works disperses the sound to a great extent.
However, this does not seem to be the result of an intended use or a conscious
emancipation of silence, but of the way in which the tone material is processed.
Dedication to a previously chosen twelve-tone row implies that variation is primarily
reserved for the rhythmic part. It is obvious that rests will then play a more important role
(cf. Veselinovic-Hofman, p.4). Nevertheless, Webern's work definitely presents an
emancipatory moment with regard to silence. In his Variationen für Klavier, opus 27, for
example, he treats silence as sound: the performer is instructed to speed up during a rest
before pausing. (I am referring to the third part of the composition, bars 43-45. An
accelerando in bar 43 is maintained in the silent bar 44. The initial tempo is taken up
again in bar 45 that begins with a rest.)

[6] A third example. Schönberg. Is silence structurally revalued in his Sechs kleine
Klavierstücken, Opus 19, no.2? The piece begins with a rest. A rest after silence, after the
silence that is outside the composition, after the solemn silence with which the piece is
welcomed. (Below the score, Schönberg indeed asks for a long pause after each
movement, a pause that is not motivated by considerations of performing practice.) This
rest is not an accidental phenomenon or a necessary respite, but an event deliberately
considered in the framework of the composition (cf. Veselinovic-Hofman, p.3). The rests
that alternate with the third g-b in the rhythmic motif from bar 1 (a pianissimo third on
the border of audibility) form an essential part of the musical sentence. When the
sounding third breaks the silence, and the silence in turn breaks the sound, the two
engage in a mutual relation that knows no hierarchical distinction. Still, a problem
remains. This line of reasoning can only be sustained as long as one knows the score.
Veselinovic-Hofman rightfully points out that the first pause cannot immediately be
recognized as a musical moment, a moment within the composition, through listening (cf.
Veselinovic-Hofman, p.3). Even though the rest serves a structural function within the
work, the listener who is not familiar with the score will most likely assume Opus 19,
no.2 starts with the first sounding third at the second beat of the first bar. (It seems that
the listener only becomes aware of the importance and impact of silence - silence
regarded as the absence of 'musical' sounds within a musical work - when these sounds
are extremely delayed as in John Cage's composition Waiting.) The opening rest in Opus
19, no.2 becomes significant at the moment when sound occurs; therefore, according to
Veselinovic-Hofman, silence remains supplementary to sound. The change that takes
place in this piece, however - a change that is noticeable only when the score is studied
(and possibly kept in memory during a subsequent listening) - is that the rest acts
essentially supplementary with respect to its hierarchical relation to sound. The rest
remains subordinate to the 'musical' sounds, but no longer functions as an amorphous,
meaningless silence; the significance of the rest is the absence of sound (cf. Veselinovic-
Hofman, p.4).
Silence remains supplementary to sound in Opus 19, no.2. The rests in this composition
by Schönberg signify the absence of sound. Although they are 'essentially
supplementary', the hierarchical order remains intact. But can something else also be
heard in this work? Is another reading possible? A cautious proposal. Schönberg makes
us aware of the idea that music does not necessarily need to start with a tone or a sound,
that there is silence before, after and in or during music, that silence is music. Is silence
subordinate to sound within Schönberg's composition, or does sound require silence in
order to manifest itself as sound? When the repeating thirds slowly and waveringly join a
field of silence, they may very well signify a reversal of the hierarchically ordered
system. The music defines itself by what it is not (silence, non-music). Sound becomes a
special moment in the world of silence. As the white on a page is necessary for the words
or notes on that page to appear, so silence is the precondition for sound. However, the
white is not only the pureness of the blank page. It is also the space between the notes,
the dimension within which lateral connections between notes take place (cf. Cage,
White, Mallarmé, Silence). Analogously, it is only through silence that the difference
between separate sounds can be experienced. Silence immediately resides within the
musical domain. Music is always already permeated by silence. Music is also silence.
Perhaps we just never (consciously) heard the silence in music.

[7] According to Zenck, the 20th century exhibits a radical change of the paradigm
according to which theorists and composers appreciate the hierarchical relation between
sound and silence. I am not concerned with passing final judgment on whether or not this
change takes place in Opus 19, no.2, or whether Schönberg's composition is the first in
which a reversal in the hierarchical relation between sound and silence possibly takes
place. The extensive presence of rests and silence in his composition enables one to read
Opus 19, no.2 with this possible reversal in mind. First reading: sound above silence.
Silence assumes its contours through sounds that outline its boundaries (make it sound).
Something needs to sound in order to know that there is silence in between or around.
Second reading: silence above sound. Analogous to the idea that in a material sense, it is
the spaces between the words that make a text possible as a text, silence constitutes the
condition for the musical sign. It is a space that provides a condition for music to spread,
a Da-sein that promotes the development of sounds. 'What makes a wheel a wheel is the
space between the spokes' (Lao-Tse).
Many 20th century composers have brought the long-lasting order in the hierarchy of
sound and silence into question. A great deal of music is sufficiently ready to realize an
inversion of this hierarchical position at the level of the compositional process. Two
examples on this website. In Cage and Silence, I expand this idea on the basis of a work
by John Cage. And in No (-) Music, several 'silent' works of German composer Dieter
Schnebel are discussed. His Nostalgie: Solo für 1 Dirigenten, a silent solo for one
conductor, opens up the visual, i.e. non-audible, potential of music. His book MO-NO.
Musik zum Lesen [MO-NO. Music To Read] contains signs (drawings, texts, graphic
scores) that incite the reader (listener?) to compose and to hear imaginary music, thereby
opening the domain of the un-heard, the merely imagined-heard, the domain of
inaudibility and silence, to the realm of music.
A third example is discussed below.

[8] More or less by coincidence, more or less at random, I will focus on a string quartet
by Italian composer Luigi Nono entitled, Fragmente - Stille, An Diotima. This piece
hovers between sound and silence. In other words, the sound is mediated by non-sound
while the silence is mediated by sound. This enables a twofold reading: one that takes
sound as the primary aspect of the work; the other starts from silence with sound as its
supplementary component.
Fragmente - Stille, An Diotima consists of short fragments that are separated by long
silences. Both the title and the score make one suspect that silence occurs where the
music fades away during long fermates and pauses. (The tempi are indicated with
extreme accuracy throughout the score. However, the fast tempo changes and the large
number of silences immediately negate this metrical recording.) The silence spreads in
between the fragments with the result that the composition becomes extremely
discontinuous. It seems as though all these fragments are attempts to emerge from a no-
longer-wholeness or not-yet-wholeness to something more substantial, something longer,
an uninterrupted unity. The constantly appearing silences prohibit the sound islands from
growing together to a greater whole.
However, by listening to the music and studying the score, one can hear and see
something entirely different. The stability of the first interpretation is undermined. No
longer assuming sound to be the primary aspect, but rather, starting from silence this
work does not consist of bits of music whose continuity is constantly disrupted. When
rest, quietness and silence become the norm and sounds make up the secondary element,
this work actually proves to display another discontinuity. It is not so much the silence
that works its way between the sounding fragments; rather, the sounds break the ongoing
silence. In other words, the less we hear the closer the music reaches the inaudible, and
the more continuous the work becomes. This also emphatically shows in the often
hesitating tones, tones without vibrato, or tones that are produced without a strong bow.
The silence seems to pervade the sound here, becoming audible with the sound as a
shadow or a specter. (To return to the primary attention to sounds for a moment: when
the conventional sound of a string quartet appears, there is still something new to be
heard: the quality of this sound to which normal perception has long become accustomed
can again be experienced consciously in this context. No longer are the 'unusual' sounds
in Fragmente - Stille, An Diotima deviations from the norm. Rather, the conventional
bow techniques strike one as particularities within a multitude of sound options.)
The silence generates the continuity that is at times interrupted by the sounds. With
regard to the sound fragments, this could mean that we allow the fragments to remain as
fragments without having them dissipate into a larger sounding unity (In an essay on
Nono and Hölderlin, Peter Andraschke points out that 'Fragmente' may also hint at the
bits of text by Hölderlin that Nono uses. Wrenched from their 'original' context, they
acquire a new openness in the domain of the silence. It is there that their heterogeneous
character reveals itself without being adopted into a new meaningful construct, precisely
because they are indeed not being adopted into a new, meaningful construct. Text and
music are not unambiguously interrelated; they do not by any means 'read' or reflect each
other. Hölderlin's text fragments are not recited nor sung. They are merely present as
concealed fragments in the silence that is neither silent nor meaningless. They are just
there, at the top of the pages, accompanying almost every bar number, inside the musical
work, but at the same time on the outside. They are just there for the performers, but
should not be taken as programmatic performance indications.) Fragmente - Stille, An
Diotima. No sustained development. No ongoing increase nor decrease of suspense. No
tension curve for the ear to be clearly observed. The title of the piece does not suggest
some other, complete work. It does not forget the silence as its place of birth. It remains
connected to that dimension throughout. However, this is not self-evident to Nono, nor
does he consider it an easy task. Silence, to him, is intangible. It cannot be manipulated; it
is what escapes his power. The composer has to allow a force that escapes his intentions
and active contributions precisely in the space where he would want to be in charge: the
world of the sounds.
Silence assumes a different quality in this second reading. It is no longer the temporal
absence of sound. ('There is more sound volume in many silences than in a fortissimo
from a Beethoven piece', Nono states.) Rather, it is an open space from which new
sounds can emerge again and again. In this sense, silence can join the fragments. Until
the next fragment, the listener has the opportunity to listen again to the sounds in his
memory that have already faded. With that, the 'absence of sounds' becomes at least
equally important as the sounds themselves. According to Nono, this space of silence is
not amorphous. It can be experienced differently every time it is heard with a susceptible
fantasy for dreamy spaces, for sudden ecstacies, for unspeakable thoughts, for quiet
breathing and for the silence of timeless singing (cf. Nono's preface to the string quartet).
Different sounds emerge from these constantly changing silences. However, it is silence -
the 'absence of the sound' that is not a nothingness and that should not be thought of as an
absence - that deserves attention for this very reason. All silences (in Fragmente - Stille,
An Diotima) are different and all are filled with their own meanings. They are there to be
listened to (cf. Zenck, p.20-1. cf. Broers, p.302-5).

[9] The encounter with this process of listening, the encounter with silence, can be
considered a principal idea of Fragmente - Stille, An Diotima. Music itself accomplishes
the rearrangement or reversal of the initial conceptual hierarchy between sound and
silence. A deconstructive strategy. Deconstruction at work within music.
Silence, Noise and Ethics
[1] In Music, Deconstruction, and Ethics, I cite Lawrence Kramer's observation that
music was connected to a 'logic of alterity' in previous centuries. Music represents the
other, the irrational vs. reason and the rational, the female vs. the male, fragmentation vs.
unity, etc. Music is synonymous with the subordinate, the secondary, the subversive, the
supplementary, the marginal. Music as the other. When music as the other can bring us in
contact with the other other, it is ethically charged.

[2] In Noise, Jacques Attali presents music as the opposite of the other. Music is a
representation of the same, the self, the existing order, that which holds a dominant
position. By taking this position, Attali, like Kramer, assigns an ethical-political function
to music. Music disciplines and normalizes. It banishes subversive noise. It brings about
order (differences) in a world that would otherwise be characterized by indifference and
chaos. 'The code of music simulates the accepted rules of society' (Attali, p.29).
Disciplining takes place in musical education that passes on existing conventions. It can
be observed in the hierarchical organization of a (classical) orchestra that puts itself in the
service of conductor and soloist. Attending a concert requires us to comply with a code of
conduct. In short, music is a means of social control.
Technical developments have enabled musical disciplining to deeply penetrate our lives.
Music is omnipresent. It has replaced natural background noise; it invades and even
annuls the noise of machinery. Music has become a background noise to life. What is the
effect, the result of this 'musicalization of culture' (George Steiner)? Attali removes any
misunderstanding: music is a means of silencing people! The radio forbids any impulse
one might have to sing. The volume drowns out conversation. Popular music in particular
(in text and/or music) conjures up a harmonious life. (Specters of Adorno.) Silencing
requires the total infiltration of music. 'One must then no longer look for the political role
of music in what it conveys, in its melodies or discourses, but in its very existence.
Power, in its invading, deafening presence, can be calm: people no longer talk to another
... Today, the repetitive machine has produced silence, the centralized political control of
speech, and more generally, noise. Everywhere, power reduces the noise made by others
and adds sound prevention to its arsenal. Listening becomes an essential means of
surveillance and social control' (Attali, p.122).

[3] The omnipresence of music bans or prohibits subversive noises. It silences people.
But it also makes silence impossible. Many thinkers on music deem silence disturbing
and connected to speechlessness, impotence, an inward escape, and the refusal to assign
meaning (cf. Schlünz in Nauck, p.31). Silence is 'what frightens us the minute we find it.
Fear of the fact that nothing is happening, of emptiness, of a confrontation with oneself,
of death and of life' (Schlünz in Nauck, p.32, my translation). According to Walter
Zimmermann, the experience of listening to a piece of music that can be intellectually
understood differs from the experience of listening to silence and noise (in music) in that
the latter forces the listener to rely upon his own resources because a basis for any other
possible orientation is missing. Zimmermann mentions the silent pieces as well as the
intense stratification and almost unidentifiable digressions in the music of John Cage as
examples of music that has no univocal line that a listener can detect. The emptiness or
chaos that the listener then experiences can leave him in absolute despair (cf.
Zimmermann in Nauck, p.5). At the same time, however, Zimmermann and other authors
make different associations with silence: carefulness, tolerance, and meditation
(Schlunz), a space for reflection (Zenck), and inner concentration (Zimmermann).
Perhaps, the musicalization of culture protects us against all sorts of negative experiences
that silence may unleash in us. Apparently, however, it also deprives us of the
opportunity to contemplate and to accept.

[4] How can one escape the imposition of silence through music?
Attali strongly advocates the practice of making music (just for) oneself, especially a
music that can dissociate itself from existing rules, codes, and limitations. The silencing
of people is prevented when they participate in the practice of music making and
particularly a music making that requires their own creativity instead of repeating already
existing compositions (cf. Music and/as (Dis)Order and Teaching a Supplement).
Walter Zimmermann identifies another escape: 'silent music'. He refers to some works by
John Cage as examples. According to Zimmermann, the sound of structured music that
completely absorbs time and space produces passivity in the listener and disables him
from hearing other sounds (random noise). John Cage's 4'33'', three tacet movements
totaling 4 minutes and 33 seconds, allows these sounds to (re-)enter the domain of music
(in the form of silence) and instills an awareness into the listener's mind of already
existing sounds. (Zimmermann thus talks about a noise-making music that leads to
silence, and a silent music that permits noise.) He 'reads' Cage's music as an ethical-
political battle against a music that leaves one passive and dependent, that obstructs
thinking and offers no opportunity for reflection; in short, against a silencing of people.
Cage, in speech and in practice, admits silence (and with that, noise: cf. Cage and
Silence) as a trace of the other of music into the musical domain. Therefore, his music
may be called 'pre-eminently political' (ethical perhaps?) (cf. Zimmermann in Nauck, p.4-
5).

[5] Silence/noise as the other of music. How to think through the opening towards this
other, the admission of the other of music within music? How to think through this form
of hospitality? (According to Derrida, ethics coincides with the experience of hospitality.)
Could we think of Cage's music as an example of an ethics of deconstruction in music? In
Music, Deconstruction, and Ethics, I state that recognition of the other opens the ethical
dimension of deconstruction. 'To get ready for this coming of the other is what I call
deconstruction', says Derrida in 'Psyche: Inventions of the Other' (Waters and Godzich,
p.56). Deconstruction acknowledges traces of the other without absorbing, assimilating or
reducing it to the order of the same, the order of the calculable and the familiar.
Is Cage, by integrating noise and silence within music or the musical, reducing the other
to the same? We arrive at a paradox. A 'double bind'. Cage can only focus attention on
the other of music by admitting the other to the very domain of music. This is the
precarious balance between recognition and appropriation of otherness: a full assimilation
will deny the other while a full affirmation of the differences will preclude every contact
with the other. Even if the other resides outside of music in the traditional sense (but it is
not at all clear that it does), it cannot dispense with the concept of music if we want to
give attention to it. Noise and silence, while escaping the musical, can only be
experienced through the musical. This is why Derrida does not wish to think of the
invention of the other and the invention of the same as binary opposites. 'The invention of
the other is not opposed to that of the same, it's difference beckons toward another
coming about ... the invention of the entirely other, the one that allows the coming of a
still unanticipatable alterity and for which no horizon of waiting as yet seems ready, in
place, available' (Waters and Godzich, p.55). An unanticipatable alterity. Could we think
of the random sounds that are allowed to enter 4'33'' and Waiting, that form an integral
part of these compositions, as a receptivity to the advent of an unanticipatable alterity?

[6] Cage's music gives both silence and noise a voice by supplying them with a context.
(They cannot exist without a context.) His work turns silence and noise into experience,
into something we can come to, surrender to, lose ourselves in; it re-shapes our attitude
towards silence and noise. Cage re-writes the cont(r)acts between music, silence and
noise so that we can experience the relations between them differently and thus 'think'
them otherwise. His work is ethical because it offers hospitality, hospitality to the
stranger that does not speak the language of music, to a hostis called silence or noise. (In
Latin, 'hostis' means both stranger and enemy but it can refer to 'host' or 'guest' as well.)
But this hospitality cannot exist without borders, without a certain sovereignty. Cage
(Cage's music) can offer hospitality because (his) music has a house of its own, its own
domain, although its borders are undecidable, insecure, shifting. ('Deconstruction must
neither reframe nor dream of the pure and simple absence of the frame', Derrida writes in
The Truth In Painting.)
Perhaps music has become a phantom name for Cage. Remnants of the old concept of
music live on, but its contours have faded; its meaning has changed. And right there, in
that flexible, fluent environment, the other appears. Or rather, the concept of music
changes because the other appears. Cage invites the other into the house of the same, the
domain of music. His music is once more an 'invention of the other', an openness to the
call of the other. ('To invent would then be to 'know' how to say 'come' and to answer the
'come' of the other', says Derrida in 'Psyche: Inventions of the Other'.) Through this, the
music of Cage permanently disrupts our habits of listening. In its encounter with the
accidental, the unmanageable, the unintended, his music keeps referring to what is and
what remains intangible.

[7] Cage does not merely introduce new sounds or noises to the domain of music. His
compositions demand attention to noises that are always already present in music, that
reside and resonate in the margins of the music, but that have been disavowed or
suppressed. Cage points us to the other of music within music. 4'33'' draws explicit
attention to unintentional sounds that music can never exclude, and that are always
already part of every composition. The other does not reside outside the same, but is an
inextricable part of it. The hostis was always already inside the house of the host, the
uncanny already part of the familiar. Noise as an inextricable part of music. This implies
the possibility of a reversal of the relationship between noise and music. Cage's Waiting
is an exemplary instance of this reversal. Where musical tones were once the norm, in
Waiting they appear in a context that is dominated by random noises. Cage's written notes
seem to be deviations within an enormous diversity of possible sounds. This
heterogeneity has no order in itself, but is revealed only by virtue of its break from the
conventions of musical order, and therefore remains connected to it. It is the music, the
musical frame, or perhaps the expectation of music that turns noise (and silence) into
experience, into objects of attention. Context. Demarcation. No hospitality without
exclusion.

[8] According to Derrida, the 'invention of the other' cannot be compared with a
traditional notion of 'capacity to invent'. Contrary to the capacity to invent, the invention
of the other withdraws from every plan or conceptualization. Any conceptual meaning
should be abandoned as much as possible, or at least delayed. An encounter with the
otherness of the other can only occur in a state of passivity or susceptibility. Cage
recognizes and admires this susceptibility in the work of Morton Feldman, composer of
many pieces that are extremely long and contain hushed volumes and slow tempos, that
seem to arise hesitantly from a silent ground. 'He has changed the responsibility of the
composer from making to accepting. To accept whatever comes, regardless of the
consequences' (Cage, 1966, p.129).
No planning. Susceptibility. But does this mean no activity? Derrida says it is necessary
to prepare for the coming of the other, which indicates a conscious and deliberate effort
to arrive at this passivity. Response-ability. Inert passivity does not promote a
relationship with the other. It leads instead to indifference. An active will to engage with
whatever escapes any anticipating apperception is required to move into this
susceptibility, a responsiveness and alertness to the possibilities that we randomly
encounter, a combined play of improvisation and strategy. 'Letting the other come is not
inertia open to anything whatever ... I still call it invention because one gets ready for it,
one makes this step to let the other come, come in' (Derrida in Waters and Godzich, p.55-
6).
Do Cage's unconditional acceptance and Derrida's active passivity drift apart here? Let's
see what Cage has to say about the role of the listener with regard to 4'33''. 'The
performance ought to make clear to the listener that the hearing of the piece is his own
action - that the music, so to speak, is his rather than the composer's' (Cage in Gena and
Brent, p.22). With this comment, Cage gives more freedom to the listener, but also more
responsibility. In its non-articulatedness 4'33'' provides the listener (and the performer as
well) with the freedom to add value and meaning (or none at all!) to the piece. It is the
responsibility (response-ability) of the listener to assign meaning and sense to this music.
Even though it no longer has the same provocative effect it had back in 1951, 4'33'' still
demands a willingness of the listener and prompts him to think and reflect. Additionally,
it also has the virtue of installing a way of listening that does not allow for jumping to
conclusions, but that demands a quiet and simple listening to sounds. Could this way of
listening be described as a susceptibility to the other, passive in its dedication to the
sounds that present themselves, and active in its alertness to and preparedness for a
diversity of acoustic events?
Specters of Bach
'The deconstructive reading does not point out the flaws or weaknesses or stupidities of
an author, but the necessity with which what he does see is systematically related to what
he does not see ... It is an analysis that focuses on the grounds of that system's possibility.
The critique reads backwards from what seems natural, obvious, self-evident, or
universal, in order to show that these things have their history, their reasons for being
the way they are, their effects on what follows from them, and that the starting point is
not a (natural) given but a (cultural) construct, usually blind to itself' (Dissemination,
p.xiv-xv).

[1] This section will demonstrate how deconstruction works (is at work) in musical
praxis, in the practice of composing and making music, using German organist Gerd
Zacher's Die Kunst einer Fuge ['The Art of a Fugue'], a musical reflection on
'Contrapunctus I' from Bach's Die Kunst der Fuge. This entails a different approach than
that of many musicologists who try to connect deconstruction to music. More often than
not, musicologists apply deconstruction in a way that sheds a different light on historical
musical compositions. They apply a deconstructive strategy that is predominantly aimed
at assigning a new interpretation to existing music (cf. Of New Musicology). My
objective, by contrast, is to show that deconstruction is and has always already been part
of the musical praxis, without it ever having been expressed in any such (philosophical)
terminology. Zacher's project is an attempt to comment on a musical praxis - not by
means of a theoretical statement, as many musicologists have sought to do, but within the
very language upon which it is commenting. In my view, Zacher's musical commentary
can be regarded as deconstructive. Deconstruction. A practice that can be found
anywhere. But it is not (merely) the conscious activity of a subject. Therefore, it cannot
simply be said that it is Zacher who deconstructs 'Contrapunctus I'. Whenever a
deconstructive strategy is put into practice, it activates a dissemination that is already
inscribed into the text itself. In a sense, Zacher has translated the musical deconstruction
into sounds. He points us to it. He makes it audible. However, the textuality of a text is
what first enables the deconstructive practice (both here and elsewhere, text and music
are frequently interrelated. cf. Music Is a Text.)

[2] Specters of Bach. Why this title? First of all, every serious musician has to deal, in
one way or another, with Bach's legacy. The musical world still bears, to an incalculable
depth, the mark of this legacy (Jörg Zimmermann speaks of the 'uncontested significance
of the paradigm Bach'). The reasoning can go in either of two ways. On one hand, Bach
remains a reference point for many contemporary musicians and composers. They follow
this specter (he is not 'really' there). They follow, honor, imitate, and parody Bach as they
please. How? By playing, rearranging, and quoting (literally or stylistically) his music, by
playing with the notes B flat, A, C, and B (in German b-a-c-h), etc. But what if, and this
is the other side, this came down to being followed by (the specters of) Bach? Perhaps,
these followers are persecuted by the very chase they are leading. There is no escape, no
freedom of choice. The spirit of Bach is continuously present. (But what is the presence
of a ghost? The opposition presence-absence does not seem able to adequately define
spectrality.) He constantly watches over their shoulders. Where will the specters of Bach
take these followers?
In Die Kunst einer Fuge, it is not clear who is following (or pursuing) whom. Is Zacher
haunting Bach as he confronts him with nine other composers in this project who all lived
after Bach? Is Zacher haunting Bach's legacy with nine unconventional interpretations of
'Contrapunctus I'? (And we have to find out if 'interpretation' is the right term here.)
Zacher, as it were, produces its spectrality (both invents and brings up to date,
inaugurates and reveals, causes to come about and brings to light at the same time, there
where it already was without being there). But maybe it is the nine other composers who
haunt Bach 'through' Zacher, exposing his work to musical languages that were not
known to him. Or, is Bach the one who haunts and pursues Zacher? Does Bach's spirit
oblige a church organist to concern himself with his music at some point? Is Zacher being
pursued by the effective history (Wirkungsgeschichte) of Bach and by its incorporation
into certain conventions? It is not a matter of choosing. All positions require attention.
Die Kunst einer Fuge seems as if it is made up of specters in which it functions as a host,
assembling them into the context or frame of a single work. But the work, in turn, is a
haunting specter as well. A specter is not only a revenant (present past), the coming back
of something. (Incidentally, how appropriate is it to speak of a specter coming back?
Something comes back, only now as a specter, in other words, as something different
than itself, than what it used to be.) In addition, a specter is also an arrivant (present to
come), an announcement of something that is about to come. It is not certain beforehand
whether a specter testifies to a living past or to a living future. Another possibility:
Zacher is haunted by the specters of Schumann, Ligeti, Kagel, Adorno, etc. Revenants,
the ghosts of 'the other'. At the same time, Zacher, for his part (for instance) haunts the
dominating discourse (the prevailing, accepted interpretations). This haunting may be
thought of as an arrivant because it breaks open a new interpretative dimension, a future
(not seen as something that is yet to come, but as a fundamental openness of the present).
Die Kunst einer Fuge as the ghost of the others.

[3] Specters of Bach. Why the plural form? Because it reflects their heterogeneity; there
are more than one. Consider, for example, all the scores, their effective history in the
form of numerous performances and interpretations, biographies, studies on his
composition techniques, etc. There is not one Bach. A legacy is a living thing and that
means it immediately and necessarily brings about heterogeneity. With regard to a Bach
interpretation, it could be that one must filter, sift, or sort out several different
possibilities that inhabit the same text. 'If the readability of a legacy were given, natural,
transparent, univocal, if it did not call for and at the same time defy interpretation, we
would never have anything to inherit from it. We would be affected by its cause - natural
or genetic' (Specters, p.16). This does not mean that any interpretation is always possible.
In their plurality, the re-readings of Bach organize themselves, they are not dispersed at
random. But they disorganize themselves as well because 'the original' addresses
disparate demands; there is no single good reading of Bach's work. Furthermore, it is
important to note that this heterogeneity does not divide different types of discourse or
interpretation; rather, it is at work within Bach's text itself. And it is the claim of
deconstruction to reveal the heterophony of a text.
[4] Why specters? According to Derrida, we should distinguish between a spirit and a
specter. The latter possesses a body. A specter is a certain phenomenal and carnal form of
the spirit. However, the phenomenality that renders its spectral apparition to the spirit
disappears right away in the apparition. It is difficult to determine what exactly a specter
is (cf. Specters, p.6). Following Derrida, one could say that Bach's spirit incarnates itself
mostly in his music. In doing so, his music becomes the specter. And what about the
phenomenality of music? Let's assume we're dealing with the sounds here. It is clear that
they disappear shortly after their appearance. However, in a certain sense, some of Bach's
music is lost with every performance. The choices that a performer makes involve the
exclusion of aspects that are present in the work or the music. This means that some
things must disappear in the apparition. Each performance makes the music audible. But
the music can ever be reduced to it. Each interpretation will always be haunted, rather
than inhabited, by the meaning of 'the original'. This seems to move in the direction of the
idea that the score can lay claim to the designation of 'phenomenality'. Without delving
too deep into this problem, one could think of the score as the specter of the specter. The
sounds find their carnal form in the score. It should be clear, however, that one cannot be
reduced to the other.
The specters of Bach. In the following pages, the attention will again be divided between
the score and the sounds.
Specters. Perhaps, what we call music is nothing more than a familiarity with the
inescapable originality of the specter.

[5] The arrangement of this section. Gerd Zacher's Kunst einer Fuge provides a brief
outline of Zacher’s project. It also speaks in favor of the proposition that it is the
textuality of 'Contrapunctus I' that allows for multiple interpretations. It is possible to
browse to five other pages from this page that more fully elaborate five of the ten
interpretations Zacher plays. The page entitled Die Kunst der Fuge offers a short
introduction to Bach's final work. In Contrapunctus I, a number of musicological
analyses of this fugue are deconstructed. The chapter also makes clear that deconstruction
is and has always already been at work in this first counterpoint of Die Kunst der Fuge.
Three pages are more or less interrelated. Of Interpretation, Of the Critics, and the page
on Adorno (to whom Die Kunst einer Fuge is dedicated) all pertain to certain conventions
in the praxis of interpretation and with how they are exceeded. These pages complement
each other or address the same problem from different perspectives.
Together with his attention to a series of mostly 20th century composers and the
reference to Adorno, Zacher uses a verse from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda as a motto.
A separate page is devoted to this as well.
Bach, nine other composers, Adorno, Neruda. Zacher's project can be thought of as a
kaleidoscopic chain of associations, demarcated and enclosed only for pragmatic reasons.
T.W. Adorno
[1] Die Kunst einer Fuge is dedicated in its entirety to Theodor W. Adorno. Although
Zacher, in a personal correspondence, indicates that he was particularly fascinated by
Adorno's Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie ['Introduction to the Sociology of Music'], I
will mainly refer to a different volume of collected essays.

[2] Adorno's volume, Prismen [Prisms], which includes the essay, 'Bach gegen seine
Liebhaber verteidigt' ['Bach Defended Against His Devotees'], was first published in
1955. It reacts against an image of Bach that musicologists had built during the 1950's,
namely that of a brilliant, but traditional (anachronistic, restorative) composer of church
music. 'In him, it is said, there is once again the revelation - in the middle of the Century
of Enlightenment - of the time-honoured bounds of tradition, of the spirit of medieval
polyphony, of the theologically vaulted cosmos' (Adorno, 1981, p.135). Caught up by an
inappropriate nostalgia for the church composer, music historians have turned him into a
neutral, innocuous cultural monument. Adorno presents a totally different Bach. For him,
Bach is a composer whose music rebelled against the church and broke through the
narrow confines of the theological horizon. Rather than traditional, his music may be
called modern, full of chromaticism and dissonances, mind-broadening compositional
inventions, and new musical techniques (for example, the well-tempered system, a model
of rationalization and subjective control in the Enlightenment). It is already announcing
the change to the harmonic-functional music of the Viennese classics, Haydn, Mozart,
and Beethoven. His music reflects 'the emancipation of the subject to objectivity in a
coherent whole of which subjectivity itself was the origin' (Adorno, 1981, p.142). For
Adorno, the advancement of history is marked by the subject that liberates itself from
every objective order. He looks at Arnold Schönberg's free atonal music as a (temporary)
end point. Bach is at the onset of these developments; as such, his shadow (his specter?)
is cast before him.

[3] According to Adorno, the image of Bach as a reactionary and conservative composer
has its parallel in certain ideas on the interpretive praxis (of Bach's works) that prevailed
during the greater part of the 20th century. Every performance should be as authentic as
possible; interpreters should faithfully approach the composition as it must have sounded
in Bach's day. Differentiation is puritanically suspect. Subjective and anachronistic
interventions must be avoided. 'At times one can hardly avoid the suspicion that the sole
concern of today's Bach devotees is to see that no inauthentic dynamics, modifications of
tempo, oversized choirs and orchestras creep in; they seem to wait with potential fury lest
any more humane impulse become audible in the rendition' (Adorno, 1981, p.142-3).
This all takes place under the guise of 'objectivity'. Adorno believes the fallacy of these
purists (in Einleitung in die Musiksoziologiee he calls them Ressentiment-Hörer,
'resentment listeners') is that they equate objectivity with the historic first rendition.
Adorno's first objection to this is that Bach was fairly flexible towards varying
performances of his works. Like other composers of his time, Bach in large measure
abandoned sound to taste, to subjective impulses. His second objection is that it is not at
all clear whether a first performance or (an attempt at) a reconstruction of it would do
justice to the intrinsic substance of his music. Adorno suggests that as Bach left the
choice of instruments for his most mature instrumental works open (The Musical Offering
and The Art of Fugue), he may have done so because he sensed a contradiction between
his musical ideas and the sounds that were available in his time. Perhaps, Bach waited for
sounds that would fit them.

[4] Adorno continues to speak about the relationships between the work, the score and
the interpretation of the music. Music defines itself through the tension between the
essense of the composition (the work) and its sensuous appearance (the interpretation).
The object of interpretation is precisely this: to identify a work with its sensuous
appearance. Yet, this can only be done by means of subjective labor and reflection. (Is the
meaning of a text inherently implicit or concealed within the text itself, or is it the act of
reading that produces meaning?) On this account, the demand for objectivity made by
music historians becomes impossible. 'Objectivity is not left over after the subject is
subtracted' (Adorno, 1981, p.144). So much for the relationship between work and
interpretation. But Adorno immediately brings in a third component, the score: 'The
musical score is never identical with the work; devotion to the text means the constant
effort to grasp that which it hides' (Adorno, 1981, p.144). 'The intrinsic essence of Bach's
music' (Adorno's words) is not equal to the score. It is concealed in the score and can
only be recognized through intensive study of the score.
According to Rose Subotnik, these thoughts strongly evoke the deconstructive
formulation of a text that is 'not identical with itself' (cf. Subotnik, p.226). Subotnik refers
to a passage in Derrida's text, 'Différance', in which Derrida states that a 'signified
concept is never present in and of itself, in a sufficient presence that would refer only to
itself' (Margins, p.11. cf. Subotnik, p.233). Derrida comes to this conclusion after further
elaboration on De Saussure's explorations of the differential character of the sign. The
identity of the sign depends upon its differing from other signs; it depends on a network
of oppositions through which each sign is distinguished and related to other signs. In this
sense, a sign derives its meaning from what it is not; its meaning is never present within
itself. Unlike Subotnik, I believe that this is something other than what Adorno tries to
say. He is far removed from the idea that a note adopts meaning in relation to other notes.
The passage appears more to reveal a kind of hermeneutics, a plea to track down latent
and obscured meanings ('the effort to grasp that which it hides'). Deconstruction is
expressly not after meanings that lay concealed behind or deeply within the text; rather, it
directs its attention to what lies on the surface of the text itself (its materiality).
Can Adorno's work be related to deconstruction? It will be very difficult, if not
impossible, to reconcile Adorno's insistent attention to 'the composition's essence' and the
problamizing of fixed centers and essences in deconstruction. A deconstructive reading of
Adorno's statement, 'the musical score is never identical with the work', seems only
possible when we overlook what Adorno means by 'the work': the intrinsic essence of
music. What then - i.e., when we overlook - could 'never identical' imply? First, a deficit
of the score: a score never succeeds in fully expressing what it wants to present. It is
precisely the score itself that disallows an immediate presence. This can still be in
agreeance with Adorno's ideas. Second, a surplus: a score cannot be reduced to an
original presence or intention. (Zacher's readings of Bach occupy the space between
Bach's intentions and the score, between what Bach commands and cannot command in
(his) musical language.) What is written bears a certain autonomy beyond the author; it is
not dependent on his intentions. A score always means more: the opportunity to come to
an exhaustive and closed formalization, valuation or meaning must be ruled out. Here, we
seem to abandon Adorno's advocated meaning of the phrase. Third, the question could be
asked as to what exactly 'the work' is. What is 'the intrinsic essence of music'? Is there
one single essence? Is the essence immutable or is it historically evolving? Can we ever
grasp it since the only way to eventually grasp it is precisely through a score or through
everchanging performances? Can it only be grasped through that which it conceals (the
score as precondition for the work)? Can the essence even be the différance - that which
makes possible the presentation of the being-present, without ever being presented as
such, that which is never offered to the present (cf. Margins, p.6)? Or am I bringing
Adorno into a context here in which perhaps he feels ill at ease? How deconstruction is at
work in the philosophy of Adorno needs further elaboration.

[5] Adorno regards true interpretation as an x-ray of the work. 'Its task is to illuminate in
the sensuous phenomenon the totality of all characteristics and interrelations which have
been recognized through intensive study of the score' (Adorno, 1981, p.144). The claim
puts a great deal (perhaps an impractible amount of pressure) on the interpreter or
performer. To demand that the totality of all characteristics and interrelations be heard is,
at best, to ask for an ideal situation. Is it possible to determine the boundary of this
totality? Will not every interpretation, every specific reading of a text, every 'Entbergung'
unavoidably leave much unaddressed, concealed? Every interpretation adds new meaning
to the text. This seems an infinite process. By playing 'Contrapunctus I' ten times in
succession, Zacher admits to the fact that one interpretation can never reflect all the
possibilities that Bach's score and ideas offer. Each version opens a new listening
perspective.

[6] 'The entire richness of the musical texture ... must be placed in prominence by the
performance instead of being sacrificed to a rigid, immobile monotony, the spurious
semblance of unity that ignores the multiplicity it should embody and surmount' (Adorno,
1981, p.145). Bach's compositions can only come out well when the performers are
capable of a clear rendition of the multi-layered structure and the complex voicings.
Adorno sees the realization of this in the adaptations, transcriptions and instrumentations
of Webern and Schönberg. ('What a composition once meant can only be communicated
again in a composition; the arranging composer is then the true interpreter of the classic
work, his most faithful 'medium', and his instrument of analysis', Hans Rudolf Zeller
writes (Metzger, 1980, p.90). Accurate analysis and a new design at the same time; a
space between tradition and innovation.) Unsuspected aspects of the work can be
revealed in precisely these adaptations; this is how the work is paid tribute. 'Justice is
done Bach not through musicological usurpation but solely through the most advanced
composition which in turn converges with the level of Bach's continually unfolding work
... his heritage has passed on to composition, which is loyal to him in being disloyal; it
calls his music by name in producing it anew' (Adorno, 1981, p.146). Thus ends Adorno's
essay. Ends? It actually seems more to appeal to a new opening. It calls for action,
creativity. Bach's work is not a finished product, nor is it the conclusion of a creative
process; on the contrary, it is an impulse for creativity.
Let's look at that fascinating parenthese, 'loyal to him in being disloyal'. Adorno does not
ask us to forget about history (Bach). Nor does he ask us to revise Bach's work by adding
or deleting notes. That is not what disloyalty is about. Conversely, loyalty is not about
representing his work as authentically as possible either. That would mean to betray the
work in which Bach expressed himself because it is open to various interpretations by
definition. Music is not a transparent or formal system that banishes ambiguity to be a
pure expression of the composer's intentions. To pay tribute to Bach's work means to read
his works while bearing in mind the musical accomplishment of our own time. Bach's
musical ideas still have power of expression because they were capable of developing;
that is to say, they have receded from him in a certain sense. It is precisely by exposing
perspectives of his work that Bach could not expose, that we remain loyal to his musical
heritage. And disloyal at the same time. Loyalty and disloyalty are interrelated.
Is this Adorno? Or is it my 'Derridean reading' of him? 'Inheritance is never a given, it is
always a task', Derrida writes in Specters of Marx. This probably more refers to a position
one takes than to the work that such a position presupposes, prefigures, or calls for. The
fact that we are heirs does not mean that we own or receive Bach or Bach's work. In order
for this inheritance to become meaningful to us, we need to find out what it still holds for
us in our current time. Inheritance asks for an active participation and for a necessary
transformation. 'This inheritance must be reaffirmed by transforming it as radically as
will be necessary. Such a reaffirmation would be both faithful to something that resonates
in Bach's [Derrida writes Marx's] appeal ... and in conformity with the concept of
inheritance in general' (Specters, p.54). First, it is implicit in the spirit of Bach's work that
it can be transformed. Second, interpreting Bach automatically means transforming,
selecting, filtering: iterability unavoidably leads to transformation. But this is
paraphrasing Derrida. What about Adorno? Could we say that aesthetical arguments led
him to ideas that bear some resemblance to Derrida's?

[7] It should be clear by now why Zacher dedicated Die Kunst einer Fuge to Adorno.
Like Adorno's essay, Zacher's project reacts (explicitly or not) against the wave of
historization that prescribed the exegesis of Bach's oeuvre throughout the 1950's and
1960's. (Undoubtedly, both entertain a political component next to the aesthetic
argument. Adorno makes a connection between notions on performing old music and
reactionist ideology. Zacher opposes his conservative colleagues that scorn him. cf. Of
the Critics.) Like Adorno, Zacher turns against the idea that an authentic performance
praxis would adequately correspond with the inherent sense or meaning of a work. Both
refrain from objectifying the past as past. Both can only see justice done to the past
through a contemporary actualization. In Zacher's work, this is expressed in a number of
different versions in which 'Contrapunctus I' adopts many kinds of musical ideas from
fairly recent past.
There is, however, also a difference. Adorno's thinking is still about interpretations, about
ways to make contemporary sense of an older text. Zacher does not really seem to
practice interpretation (cf. Of Interpretation). It is not (only) the appropriation of past art
into a new context. Bach's text opens perspectives to Zacher from which counter-readings
become not just possible, but plausible. His project deconstructs 'Contrapunctus I'. When
deconstruction is practiced, it establishes the place(s) of difference already inscribed in
the text. Die Kunst einer Fuge reveals unnoticed aspects in the conventional readings of
'Contrapunctus I'. It may give rise to a range of shiftings and replacements that are, in
principle, inconclusive. Due to the various changes of perspective, destructive and
constructive aspects are at work at the same time. I would call the nine versions after
'Quatuor' encounters or invitations, rather than interpretations.
Sons brisés - J. Allende-Blin
[1] Die Kunst einer Fuge by Gerd Zacher. Ten times Bach's 'Contrapunctus I' from The
Art of Fugue. Ninth interpretation: 'Sons brisés', dedicated to Juan Allende-Blin.
Allende-Blin was born on February 24, 1928, in Chile. After studying in Santiago, he
moved to Germany in 1951. There, he entered the Detmold Musikakademie where he met
Zacher. Later, he became a pupil of composer Olivier Messiaen. Zacher's 'Sons brisés'
(broken, or dissociated sounds) is based on the organ work of the same name from 1967,
by Allende-Blin, which is the third and last part of the cycle Échelons. Sons Brisés is
dedicated to the German painter and poet Lothar Schreyer. The potential connections
incorporate and exceed the musical domain. Zacher dedicates his ninth interpretation of
Bach's 'Contrapunctus I' to Allende-Blin. So there are lines of communication between
Zacher, Bach and Allende-Blin. Another line, a national line, is connecting Allende-Blin
to poet Pablo Neruda, whose citation serves as a motto for the explanation of the ten
interpretations ('Si me preguntais en donde he estado debo decir 'Sucede'' - 'When I am
asked where I have been I must reply: it happens'). Both were born in Chile. And Zacher,
too, lived in that country for awhile, in the same house as Allende-Blin.
Some trans-historical musical lines: Zacher - Allende-Blin, Zacher - Messiaen, Allende-
Blin - Messiaen, the triangles Zacher - Messiaen – Bach, and Zacher - Allende-Blin -
Bach. The trans-national line, Germany - Chile - France. Trans-national lines in
combination with artistic lines: Allende-Blin - Schreyer, Zacher - Neruda.

[2] In 'Sons Brisés', Zacher uses the bellows of the organ 'like the hourglass to measure
the flow of time'. In order to reveal the episodic proportions of 'Contrapunctus I' (The
places where the subject does not sound. 'They successively consist of 6, 2, 4, 5, 3, and
finally 7 times 2 bars'), he inflates the bellows of the organ every time the theme of the
fugue appears by resetting the control so that new air is admitted. The air pressure
diminishes when the control is again switched off. He then plays on one air until the next
entrance of the subject. The longer the episodes, the less air is left in the bellows. As the
organ runs out of wind, the pipes whistle, gasp until they slowly go out of tune. The last
sound that is heard is a slow disintegration of the last chord, as though the organ breathes
its last.
Two short comments should be made here. First, Zacher - like Bach - establishes the
subject as a rallying point, the place where everything is fine again. Everything is alright
as long as the fugue remains a fugue; that is to say, as long as the voices of the subject are
at work (and relate fugally to each other). In 'Sons Brisés', the subject joins two
successive, very alienating episodes together; the subject needs to restore the unity. The
German language has one word for both 'fugue' and 'joint': Fuge. Fuge can therefore be
associated with (ad)joinment, adjustment, articulation of accord, or harmony. The
expression, 'mit Fug und Recht' commonly means 'within rights', 'rightfully', 'rightly'.
Listen to the first 45 seconds of 'Sons Brisés'. No problem. As long as the fugue remains
intact as a fugue, as long as what constitutes a fugue as fugue can be heard, it does not
deviate from 'the original'. However, in the relatively free episodes, where the fugue can
no longer be regarded a fugue in the narrow sense of the word, something else originates.
It is there that the fugue gets out of joint. That means, it becomes disjointed, twisted, and
out of line, beside itself, in the wrong or the injust. It does not proceed as it is supposed to
proceed; it is deranged, out of its hinges. The German expression for this is 'aus der
Fuge', or 'aus den Fugen gehen'. Where the fugue gets out of joint ('wo die Fuge aus den
Fugen geht, wo die Fuge aus der Fuge ist'), the pipes of the organ begin to whistle in
falsetto and out of tune. But, there are no fugues without episodes. Is Zacher, then,
explicitly saying that every fugue becomes disjointed at some point? Thus within
'Contrapunctus I', 'Sons Brisés' establishes a basis for criticizing a reading of Bach's first
counterpoint in The Art of Fugue as unproblematic, simple, uniform, etc.
Second comment. The status of the episodes. According to an analysis of 'Contrapunctus
I' by Alan Dickinson, 'a subtle oscillation of primary and episodic phrases makes itself
felt'. The hierarchy is clear. The subject is primary, the episodes are secondary. All
analyses first focus on the development of the subject. They all seem to rely on
distinctions between the central and the marginal, the essential and the inessential. 'It is in
keeping with a singleness of conception, in which a prodigal cultivation of material and a
resourceful exhibition of one motive may equally be means to creative fulfillment, that
the intervening episodes are primarily connecting passages. Their purpose is to lead from
one entry to the next, and this usually means leading into the next key' (Dickinson, p.11,
my italics). According to Derrida, to deconstruct is, first of all, to reverse the hierarchy.
Better yet, it is to show that the text in which these hierarchical oppositions seem to
appear may give rise to a counter-reading. 'Sons Brisés' and Zacher's explanation on the
CD form an initial impetus for this. Incidentally, a reversal may also take place in the
Dickinson citation. The episodes are mere 'connecting passages', but, according to
Dickinson, they are nonetheless very important because they function (among others) as
preparations for a modulation. (This is probably best heard in bar 48 of 'Contrapunctus I',
where a modulation to A is prepared through Bm7 and E7.) According to Dickinson, it is
precisely the episodes themselves that guarantee the progression of the fugue. Stated
differently, what are presented as secondary passages (also by Dickinson) prove to serve
an essential function.
A reversal takes place in 'Sons Brisés'. The subject itself has become a connective
passage. The appearance of the subject, which allows air to enter once again, enables the
reconnection of the episodes rather than having them enter into the realm of pure silence.
The subject takes over the function of the episodes in the way described by Dickinson.
Additionally, the title, 'Sons Brisés', 'broken sounds', explicitly refers to what takes place
in the episodes. This is precisely where 'it happens': the strange effect of the organ sound
being sucked, as it were, into a funnel. Here, 'Contrapunctus I' transforms into 'Sons
Brisés'. In this sense, the episodes may hold as primary and essential. Finally, Zacher, in
referring to the numerology that is often associated with Bach, starts his explanation of
'Sons Brisés' with the remark that 'Bach carefully planned the length of episodes. They
successively consist of 6, 2, 4, 5, 3, and finally 7 times 2 bars'. It seems that Zacher wants
to point out to us that Bach did not simply regard the episodes as secondary material, but,
in fact, treated them with the greatest care. By focusing our attention on this, by
emphasizing the proportions of the fugue, Zacher achieves that the episodes lose some of
the subordination that the term 'connecting passages' might suggest.
[3] 'It is not worthy of further attention. Only a few contours are still remotely
discernable. Or are they already hallucinations? The fugue enters the realm of
remembrance'. Zacher ends his explanatory notes almost mystically, poetically. Ghostly.
A specter, too, can only be vaguely discerned. It is something that one does not know,
precisely, and one does not know precisely whether it is. Not out of ignorance, but
because it no longer belongs to knowledge. It cannot be perceived very clearly. An
hallucination perhaps? A resonance?
What, then, precisely is the specter here? First possibility. Just as a specter appears only
in the absence of what it represents, so does 'Sons Brisés' appear only in the absence
(although at the same time it is very much present) of the first counterpoint of The Art of
Fugue, this being there of an absent or departed one. 'Sons Brisés' as a specter. Second
possibility. 'Contrapunctus I' is the specter, the revenant, returning from a past ('the fugue
enters the realm of remembrance'); it is an appearance from a bygone time. 'A
masterpiece always moves, by definition, in the manner of a ghost', writes Derrida
(Specters, p.18). But it is transformed here. Disguised as 'Sons Brisés' ('only a few
contours are still remotely discernable').
Let's try to approach it from a different perspective. What is the status of 'Sons Brisés'?
Could this version be called a specter of the specter, a trace of the trace? 'Contrapunctus I'
(the specter) is haunted by the spirit of Allende-Blin's Sons Brisés. The result: 'Sons
Brisés'. Or, should we put more emphasis on the uniqueness of 'Sons Brisés'? 'Sons
Brisés' as 'the reapparition of the specter as apparition' (Specters, p.4). It is a repetition,
but it also appears for the first time. The ghost comes by coming back. It features both
'Contrapunctus I', which comes back for the ninth time and appears for the first time, as
'Sons Brisés'. In its own materiality. Independent, on its own. As in the other versions of
Die Kunst einer Fuge, 'Contrapunctus I' is present and absent at the same time. It
resonates, it resonates in 'Sons Brisés'. Resonance. Both the canny and the uncanny are at
work, both presence and absence. What resonates is not really there anymore; yet it refers
to something familiar. The resonance is the presence of something absent and has a
quality of strangeness and otherness.
Die Kunst der Fuge [The Art
of the Fugue]
[1] Sometime near 1747, Johann Sebastian Bach began working on what will later
become known as Die Kunst der Fuge. When he died three years later on July 28, 1750,
the work was left unfinished. Below the unfinished nineteenth contrapunto, a quadruple
fugue, his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, writes with a good sense of drama: 'Über dieser
Fuge, wo der Nahme BACH im Contrasubject angebracht worden ist, ist der Verfasser
gestorben ['While working on this fugue, which features the name BACH in the counter
subject, the author died']. Bach died while bent over the score from which the four final
notes, bes-a-c-b, form the name of Bach in German. But wouldn't dying invite the
possibility of a return? As, perhaps, a specter or a ghost?

[2] The notation form, in particular - four separate staves, three of which are in the C-clef
and one in the F-clef - has led to a reasonable consensus as to Bach's intention for this
work. Many believe that Bach had a clear pedagogical purpose in mind (cf. Heinrich,
Leonhardt, Panthaleon van Eck, Schlötterer-Traimer). They agree with Johann Nikolaus
Forkel's analysis from 1802: 'Incidentally, the work consists largely of variations. It was
the author's intention to show what could be done with a fugal theme'. Already in 1756,
six years after Johann Sebastian died, his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, comments on the
work in similar terms: 'I may be permitted to observe this much: that it is the most perfect
practical fugal work, and that every student of the art, with the help of a good theoretical
instruction book, such as the one by Marpurg, must necessarily learn from it to make a
good fugue, and thus needs for his instruction no oral teacher, who often charges dear
enough for imparting the secret of the fugue'. (From an advertisement in which Carl
Philipp offers the engraved copper plates of the fugal work for sale). Die Kunst der Fuge
may be understood as a concrete musical expression of insights into the composition of
fugues with which Bach had familiarized himself during his life. The notation form
chosen becomes understandable from the viewpoint of a teacher wanting to show clearly
the development of the individual voices (cf. Leonhardt, Schlötterer-Traimer). 'Kunst'
(art) refers, in this case, to 'Entwurf' (plan or concept) or 'Aufstellung' (placing or set up),
a demonstration of possibilities. For quite some time therefore, the study and analysis of
the work has been more highly regarded than the actual performance of it. This, in fact,
elicited a musicologist to say that it is does not matter whether one listens to Die Kunst
der Fuge with one's ears, or imagines the music by reading the score (cf. Panthaleon van
Eck). A remarkable thought. The audible performance becomes secondary or
supplementary to the written score; any concrete musical realizations may be dismissed
as mere vehicles of thought. The essence of Die Kunst der Fuge is said to lie in the score,
instead of the score serving as a tool, a supplement, that would bring us to the sounds.

[3] As is often the case with Bach's music, Die Kunst der Fuge lacks clear instruction on
instrumentation, dynamics and articulation. Indeed, even the order of the various parts is
not unequivocally clear. This tolerance for variation in instrumentation, for the
substitution of one section by another or for varying the beginning and end points, should
not be taken for mere carelessness or disinterest with regard to the choice of detail.
Rather, it may represent a vast difference in perception. The earlier composers - dating
from the time before the first Viennese School - took an entirely different approach
toward the concept of structural wholeness - an ideal that becomes imperative only in the
19th century German music. Moreover, in Bach's day, performers knew quite well how to
determine tempo and dynamic level, how to phrase the music, how to ornament, etc. For
that reason, very little was written down. As a result, free areas accumulated in
conventionally fixed aspects of Die Kunst der Fuge through the passage of time. White
zones, so to speak, in the musical texture. It seems as if Bach frequently left his notation
open as an invitation to all kinds of changes, a trait that lends both flexibility and
endurance to his music. Because we are left with only 'bare' notes, many different
interpretations of Die Kunst der Fuge have been produced. There are performances by a
string quartet, by various orchestra strengths, by church organ, by four voices, by two
harpsichords.
In the second part of his Composition as Process lecture, entitled 'Indeterminacy', John
Cage speaks about possibilities that occur when parameters are lacking. According to
Cage, structure, method, and form of The Art of the Fugue are all determined. (As
indicated above, this statement is questionable. The order of the individual fugues is
subject to change.) Frequency and duration are also determined. However, the material
properties timbre and amplitude are not provided; these are indeterminate. This is what
arouses Cage's special attention. With regard to the volume, he says that this
indeterminacy 'brings about the possibility of a unique overtone structure and decibel
range on each performance of The Art of the Fugue'. Regarding timbre, the function of
the performer is 'comparable to that of someone filling in color where outlines are given'.
It may be questioned to what extent these and further remarks of Cage put Gerd Zacher
on the track of his project. Although Zacher never refers to this lecture, Cage's reflections
seem to have almost paved the way for Die Kunst einer Fuge. First of all, Cage explains,
each performer can stay fairly close to the conventions (he mentions the transcriptions by
Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern). But he may also execute his colorist function in a
way that is not conventional, and give a performance that could be called arbitrary. He
can follow the dictates of his ego, e.g., his taste. Or, of his subconsciousness (as in
automatic writing), more or less unknowingly employing certain operations that are
exterior to his conscious mind (cf. Cage, 1961, p.35).
Could it be that Bach's music is, for the most part, independent of the performance
practice conventions? Could it be that nothing is necessarily sacrificed if these
conventions are not taken into consideration? Cage points out that there is considerable
room for maneuver in the shaping of this music. And Zacher agrees and lets us hear the
results. In a first reading which is more conventional. In nine subsequent readings in
which he colors the given outlines in less conventional ways.
Alt-Rhapsodie - J. Brahms
[1] Die Kunst einer Fuge. Ten interpretations of the first contrapunto of Bach's The Art of
Fugue. Ten interpretations, dedicated to ten different composers, baptized with the names
of one of their compositions.
Zacher's third performance is named after Johannes Brahms' work Alt-Rhapsodie, which
was completed in 1869 and was written for a (male) choir, orchestra and solo alto.
Brahms' composition is based on three stanzas from Goethe's poem, Harzreise im Winter,
and is subdivided into three distinct sections. The rhapsodic nature of the composition is
stressed especially in the third part: the choir sings a form of choral in support of an alto
solo which is allowed to express itself more freely compared to the other voices. A
rhapsody: A work having no fixed form or plan, a string (of words, sentences, tales), a
composition of indefinite form (Oxford English Dictionary).
In 'Alt-Rhapsodie' Zacher revalues the alto part in Bach's composition. (Zacher's
reference pertains more to the title of Brahms' composition and the nature of a rhapsody
than to any similarities in sound. The nature of a rhapsody: stately, solemnly. 'Alt-
Rhapsodie' lasts almost two minutes more than 'Quatuor', 'the most unambiguous
exposition', dedicated to Bach.) Analysis of 'Contrapunctus I' made it clear to Zacher that
the alto is the least developed voice in the piece. Apart from a pseudo attack in bar 48, the
subject is exposed only twice in the alto, both times before bar 27, i.e. approximately
before the first third of the fugue. Only during the two intermezzi in bars 27-8 and 36-9 is
the alto bound to a canonic progression (with tenor and bass, respectively). Other than
that, it plays a somewhat free, but subordinate and servile part (even though it has the
least number of bars containing rests). 'From the viewpoint of strict formal construction
(for which The Art of Fugue is renowned) this alto voice is poor: it begins with the theme,
then it becomes an accompanying part, servile, episodic ... and falls silent. It begins
again, again with the theme and at the same pitch as the first time, but again it becomes
an accompaniment, still more subservient, merely episodic'.
In 'Alt-Rhapsodie', Zacher sets the organ register in such a way that the three other voices
become subordinate to the alto voice (Alto voice: Tremulant. The three other voices all
Quintade 8'). Even in the parts where the alto only slightly contributes to the progression
of the fugue, without its developing significantly on its own, it bellows loud and clear
above the other voices. Zacher supports this by saying that the subordination becomes an
advantage in the final part of the fugue because it enables the alto to develop far more
freely than the treble, tenor and bass who are bound to the strict rules of the fugal
progression. Hence, the alto breathes more life into the 'Contrapunctus I'. 'Having twice
begun the theme, it never again has its say before the end. But one can hear how this part
lives, how it rises and falls, how free it is, far freer in its servitude than any of the others'.
By emphasizing the freely moving alto, Zacher bestows a rhapsodic nature upon the
fugue, rendering it a musical fantasy. 'The laurels go to the rhapsodies who disqualify the
parts of a ... text whose mechanics are unknown to them', Derrida writes (Margins,
p.189).
[2] To what extent can this interpretation be read as a deconstructive strategy? On the
basis of conventional analyses, it could be posited that the voice exposing the subject is
the dominant voice; the subject's role determines the frame, the departing point in the
analyses. The other two or three voices are subordinate to the subject's voice at that
moment. When the subject is not heard, the voices that relate in a canonic way amongst
each other are in a privileged position with respect to the other voice. Hence, a series of
hierarchical oppositions come into place where one voice takes up a superior position
with respect to the other. In a sense, this hierarchy is necessary in order for the text to
secure its thematic unity. However, this is precisely what deconstruction reacts against.
'To deconstruct the opposition is first of all to overturn the hierarchy', says Derrida
(Positions, p.41). This is exactly what happens in Zacher's third interpretation. He
reverses the hierarchy in 'Alt-Rhapsodie', where the central is put in opposition to the
marginal, the essential to the supplementary. 'Why favor the alto voice in this way? -
Because it was so underprivileged'. In revaluing the alto, he calls into question the
dominance of (one of) the other voices. The supplementary, faint, undeveloped voice
acquires a positive appearance in 'Alt-Rhapsodie', free and lively. 'It is the ferment which
keeps the whole Fugue alive'. The opposition does remain intact, but the attention shifts
from the previously dominant voice to the previously subordinate voice. However, the
reversal of the hierarchy, the attention to the dominated voice, does not simply bring
about a new hierarchical relation; rather, it leads to a subversion of the distinction
between the essential and the subordinate. After all, what would the central be if the
marginal were capable of becoming the central? In conjunction with its reversal, the
hierarchy is subverted and dislocated.
Deconstruction shows that the priority of the dominant term can be reversed by actually
staying close to the text. Because previous readings (both performances and analyses,
with the understanding that the former is also a kind of analysis) have separated the text
into essential and marginal elements, the text has acquired an identity that the text itself,
on account of its marginal elements, is able to subvert. The common interpretation -
where the voice that plays the subject's part is privileged over the other voices - is
deconstructed in 'Alt-Rhapsodie'. The voice that is least subjugated to the rules that a
fugue lays down - rules that determine the fugal nature, rules that turn a fugue into a
fugue - is placed in the forefront by Zacher. But it is the text - 'Contrapunctus I' - that
enables such a deconstruction. The text allows for such a reading on account of its
textuality: the impossibility of a fixed signifying context, in addition to its materiality
which no signification can resolve or replace.

[3] The explanatory notes on the third interpretation begin as follows: 'Here, for the first
time, the interpretation could be described as a misuse of the Fugue'. Misuse. The
derivative, the debased version of the term 'use'. The idea of misuse implies the
possibility of a proper use. Misuse is an accident that sometimes befalls use. By
activating the very term, misuse, Zacher confines himself to a widespread hierarchical
opposition, namely the distinction between readings and misreadings. This understanding
inevitably rests on a certain notion of identity and difference. It assumes that correct
readings preserve, reproduce or maintain the identity of a text, while misreadings distort
it; they produce or introduce a difference. However, when we apply this general idea to
music and to 'Alt-Rhapsodie' in particular, the question remains as to what would be a
'correct reading'. First of all, it is difficult to determine what the musical text actually
comprises. The score? If so, when would the identity of the musical text be maintained?
At the first reading ever? By the reading that Bach advocates? In neither case can Zacher
say that his third interpretation misuses the fugue for the first time. Is the identity of a
musical text maintained when the right notes are played? Zacher does not play any
'wrong' notes in this version either. When it is played on the right instrument? In that
case, the previous two interpretations ('Quatuor', dedicated to Bach, and 'Crescendo',
dedicated to Schumann) are already misuses, as well. Or, would Zacher perhaps indicate
that this third version is the first one that is really far removed from the conventional
interpretations? That 'Alt-Rhapsodie' significantly deviates from the existing
conventions? But is it really a matter of misuse? Did the conventional performances, in
fact, maintain the identity of the text? Each performance differs from all others to some
extent; apparently, however, there can be only one 'correct' performance (or none at all:
perhaps, every performance of a score is a misuse by definition because it transforms the
identity of the score). Are then all performances, except that one (which one?), misuses?
The possibility to misuse a score in a reading, an interpretation, a performance, an
analysis. According to Jonathan Culler, all readings are, in fact, misreadings, since no
reading can escape correction. The history of readings is a history of misreadings. In
order for this history to take place, there must have been a certain instability, non-self-
identity, or non-transparency of the text in question. Why present another reading if we
agree that one particular reading is the only correct one? Interpreters are able to discover
features and implications in a text that previous interpreters neglected or distorted. (A
rhapsody. A string of tales.) This process may continue infinitely; a misreading is the
unavoidable fate of reading. A correct reading becomes a special case of misreading for
Culler; a misreading that is temporarily accepted as a correct reading, 'a misreading
whose misses have been missed' (Culler, p.178). This line of thought leads to a radical
complication of what used to be a precise and rigorous distinction. The irreducible
possibility of misuse and misreading must always be taken into account; they are, in fact,
always at stake. (We need not conclude that understanding is impossible, for acts of
interpretation that seem perfectly adequate for particular purposes and circumstances
occur frequently.)

[4] A misuse of the Fugue. One must assume that Zacher refers to conventions in the
performance praxis of 'Contrapunctus I'. These conventions depend upon socio-
institutional conditions, i.e., non-natural power relations that can be analyzed,
transformed, deconstructed. Zacher disrupts a certain consensus by showing the
possibilities of a differential play in the reading of a text. Only when seen from the power
basis of conventional structures can the 'Alt-Rhapsodie' be regarded a 'misuse'. Zacher's
comment is evidence of the force and function of these conventions. However, the fact
that misuses are possible, is also evidence that the context is neither absolutely solid, nor
entirely closed. It contains a margin of play, of difference, of openings. 'Alt-Rhapsodie'
prompts one to consider the processes of legitimization, validation, and authorization that
produce differences among readings, differences that enable certain readings to expose
other readings as misreadings. In general, inversions of hierarchical oppositions expose to
debate the institutional arrangements that rely on hierarchies and thus open possibilities
of change (cf. Culler, p.179). A rhapsodie. A work having no fixed form.
Contrapunctus I
[1] Bach's The Art of Fugue consists of 18 contrapuncti. Zacher plays only the first one,
'Contrapunctus I'. Although many music theorists regard the first contrapunto as a fairly
simple fugue that meets standard qualifications, the various analytical interpretations
show strong differences. The object of investigation is invariably the score, the score as
text, as writing. The same text allows for a series of different readings (and it is not
merely a shift of focus - for example, paying attention to harmonic, melodic or rhythmic
aspects - that leads to these varying results). The ineradicable heterogeneity of this text
not only divides different discourses, but is at work within an individual discourse.

[2] Dieter de la Motte states that a common analysis of this fugue would lead to the
following result (De la Motte, p.23-30) (cf. the score):

Bars 01-16: Exposition. Subject respectively in D minor (alto), A minor (soprano), D

minor (bass), and A minor (tenor)
Bars 17-22: Episode
Bars 23-35: Development. Subject in D minor (alto), A minor (soprano), and A/G minor
(bass)
Bars 36-39: Episode
Bars 40-43: Development. Subject in D minor (tenor)
Bars 44-48: Episode
Bars 49-59: Development. Subject in D minor (soprano), and D minor (bass)
Bars 60-73: Episode
Bars 74-78: Development. Subject in G minor with close in D (tenor)

De la Motte presents this first, rough division as an obvious starting point. 'The initial
form scheme specification is a necessary, but not a difficult task, a risk-free undertaking'
(De la Motte, p.28, my translation). An exposition, 4 developments and 4 episodes. An
easy traceable structure according to De la Motte. Panthaleon van Eck, however, makes
quick work of this underestimation. He discerns two additional episodes, namely bars 27-
8 and 53-5, bringing the total to 6. Gerd Zacher seems to share this view in his
explanatory notes to Die Kunst einer Fuge. 'Bach carefully planned the length of
episodes. They successively consist of 6, 2, 4, 5, 3 and finally 7 times 2 bars'. In other
words, he discerns 6 episodes as well. 4 Episodes? 6 Episodes? It is not my intention to
side with either party. It is extraordinary that at a first rough division, various experts
already have different views on 'Contrapunctus I'. Would one of the readings be expressly
erroneous, or is this where the musical text's openness would already present itself? Let's
continue with De la Motte's analysis.

[3] To De la Motte, 'Contrapunctus I' seems an odd beginning for an art of writing fugues
for several reasons. First, he perceives an unusually small tonal range. More often than
not, the subject appears in the key of D minor (or on the dominant of D minor, A minor).
Second, De la Motte acknowledges an exceptionally sloppy treatment of the subject. In
only three out of the ten times that the subject appears it answers to the subject that was
exposed in the beginning. (For convenience, I will pass on the question as to whether
there can be a matter of a recurring motive at all. Is recurrence not something different
every time? Wouldn't the subject adopt a different meaning every time because the
context or intention changes? In 'At This Very Moment In This Work Here I Am',
Derrida examines Levinas' frequent use of the phrase, 'at this very moment'. Derrida
points out that 'the other' already manifests itself in the repetition of this phrase. Because
the context constantly changes, the meaning of the phrase also changes. 'The 'same' 'very'
of the 'at this very moment' has remarked upon its own alteration, one which will have
ever since opened it up to the other' (At This Very Moment, p.22).) These comments from
De la Motte should be viewed critically. It would indeed seem remarkable that the alto
voice subject recurs in D minor (bars 23-27) since Bach usually modulates to another
key. However, it is not especially remarkable that Bach rarely modulates in a given fugue
(cf. the first fugue in C from Das wohltemperiertes Klavier).
As to De la Motte's second comment, Schlötterer-Traimer asserts that the subject may
undergo several changes (Zacher, incidentally, seems to agree with this). The most
important change is the so-called tonal, or plagal response. The interval D-A with which
the dux (the voice introducing the theme) opens in the exposition becomes A-D in comes
(the response, the second voice that exposes the same theme one fifth up after the dux has
come to a close). The tonal response is opposed to the real response, the exact
transposition that would lead to the A-E interval. In the exposition, the comes starts in D
minor in bar 5, moves to the dominant A minor (leading note G sharp) in bars 6 and 7 to
return again to D minor in bar 8. For a second time, De la Motte's comments, presented
as obvious conclusions, are in need of differentiation.

[4] More pressing analytical problems with respect to the subject in the bass in bars 32-
36, where the rhythmic pattern is maintained while the intervals have undergone great
changes, come to light. According to Panthaleon van Eck, the listener is even confronted
with the question as to whether he is still able to identify the melody presented here with
the subject (cf. Panthaleon van Eck, p.41). This seems to be quite an exaggeration since
the contour of the subject has been kept completely intact. Still, I would like to dwell
upon this passage a bit longer. Following De la Motte's analysis, there are two
possibilities here. The first holds that a comes in the A-key is suggested in bars 32-33.
The second would be to regard the subject in bars 32-36 as a dux in G minor, where the
first, third, and fourth notes are 'wrong'. (Alan Dickinson makes a slight connection
between these two possibilities by stating that the bass entry, which is intended to appear
in the dominant, drops halfway to the subdominant, thereby enhancing a sense of
development.) Going by the note material (the score), De la Motte hesitates between a
comes and a dux.
Zacher, too, goes into the same issue, albeit, indirectly; I will partly join him on that
course. In 'Der verdrehte Baß in Contrapunctus I aus der Kunst der Fuge', he states that
between bars 29 and 44, Bach 'deconstructs' (actually, he uses the words, 'grundlich im
Frage stellen', 'to question thoroughly') the concepts dux and comes. In bars 29-33, Bach
passes off the comes in the soprano as a dux. The passage opens with a dux signal - a fifth
leap - however, it deviates from the comes in bar 5 by the second note only. In bars 40-
44, Bach reverses this idea. The tenor is then a dux with an allusion to the comes (the
fourth leap of E-A in bar 40); only the first note differs from the opening of
'Contrapunctus I'. But reading against Zacher, based on the notes in bars 29-33 it could
just as well be stated that the theme actually does appear in the dux, with only the B flat
in bar 32 denying a perfect modulation. It looks as though Bach wrote neither a dux nor a
comes here. And at the same time he wrote both. Careful reading thus brings about an
undecidability.
But let's continue with Zacher's reading. Like De la Motte, Zacher encounters problems
analyzing the subject in bar 32-36. The theme opens in bar 32 as a comes (in A minor,
similar to the first comes in bar 5) and turns via a broken F sharp minor triad into the
subdominant G minor. Interesting, but incomprehensible to Zacher. Can there still be a
matter of a dux or a comes here? Bach seems to disable any analysis that would graft
itself onto either of these two notions. Still, Zacher looks for a solution. Based on the
score, he finds that the bass in bars 32-36 (with the exception of bar 33) is identical to the
tenor dux that appears as a comes in bars 40-44. He refers to a rhetorical trope
(metalepsis) that holds that what precedes can only be understood through what follows.
The past does not determine the future; it is the other way around. Time is out of joint.
Derrida calls this a spectral moment. It is a moment that no longer belongs to time, if one
understands by this the linking of modalized presents (past present, actual present: 'now',
future present) (cf. Specters, p.xx). An analysis that ultimately allows Zacher to drag this
bass theme into the domain of the dux. Nevertheless, additional problems remain here as
well. The tones in the tenor that belong exclusively to the dux (bar 41) are transformed to
tones in the bass that would seem appropriate to the comes (bar 33, where only C sharp
makes up for a deviation from the comes in bars 5 and 6. Zacher believes that Bach
replaces the C by a C sharp with attention to the F sharp in bar 34, in order to avoid the
problematic interval, C-F sharp, the diabolus in musica). Time and again, the musical text
refrains from a definitive determination. Both De la Motte and Zacher's interpretations
miss out on a potential meaning of the text. The musical text escapes all attempts to pin it
down in a final meaning, not by initiating another discourse, but on the basis of the same
analytical notions.

[5] I will return once more to the passage between bars 29 and 44. According to Zacher's
analysis, the comes in bars 29-33 is followed by a dux in bars 32-36 and by a dux in bars
40-44. This is peculiar, considering the meanings of both words. Dux may be translated
as leader, predecessor, head, or chief, while comes represents follower, companion. In the
present passage, the follower precedes the predecessor. In other words, the leader
becomes the follower, the companion becomes a leader. No longer is the dux the cause
producing a logical effect in the comes; it is the other way around. A comparable reversal
of cause and effect occurs in Zacher's description of the relation between the dux in bars
32-36 and 40-44. In the terms of metalepsis, the 'explaining' fragment (bars 40-44)
follows the effect (bars 32-36) and is projected a posteriori as its 'cause'. The cause is
'discovered' after the effect has occurred. Something strange is going on. In the
conventional distinction between cause and effect, the cause is the origin, logically and
temporally prior to the effect. But if the effect is what causes the cause to become a
cause, then the effect may be treated as the origin (cf. Culler, p.86-8).
Zacher tracks down several significant displacements in his analysis. But even if we no
longer follow Zacher, displacements still come to the forefront, for example, when we
refrain from deciding between comes or dux in bars 29-33, and assume a fundamental
undecidability instead. Dux and comes merge here. The leader is at once follower, the
companion simultaneously is the predecessor.

[6] It is not my primary intention to compare the analytical comments of De la Motte,

Zacher and myself to derive a ruling. I am primarily interested in the functioning of this
strategy. Conflicts within a text seem to be reproduced as conflicts in and between
readings of that text. Analytical readings transform the difference 'within' into a
difference 'between' mutually exclusive positions. A deconstructive strategy is rather
directed towards 'a careful teasing out of warring forces of signification within a text'
(Barbara Johnson, cited in: Culler, p.213). My aim is to question some of the
presuppositions and decisions by which a complex pattern of internal differences is
translated into alternative positions or interpretations. I want to emphasize that the
differences between interpretations are based on a repression of differences within a text,
the way in which a text differs from itself. This becomes clear in the analysis of the
subject in terms such as dux and comes. Which reading is the best? The desire to come to
a decision is precisely what is in question: our inclination to exclude possibilities that are
manifestly raised by the musical text in order to arrive at clear and coherent positions, but
that nonetheless pose a problem (cf. Culler, p.247). Deconstruction attends to structures
within a text that resist the reduction of a text to a coherent scheme. This is also where
the ethical implications of deconstruction arise. They consist in a concern for what must
be suppressed in a text in order for the analysis to achieve some kind of 'validity'.
Methods, such as the analytical duality dux-comes, have developed or evolved in ways
that (systematically) obscure, deny or disavow the heterogeneity of the musical text. The
result is that music comes to mean only what (privileged) methods allow it to mean (cf.
Ferrara, p.xvi). Deconstruction, by contrast, allows the heterogeneity of a text to come to
the forefront without again absorbing it in a coordinating, all-inclusive discourse.

[7] According to De la Motte, Bach frustrates attempts to establish whether we are

dealing with a dux or a comes in various places. That decision often needs to be
postponed. For example, three dux entries are written one major second too high. They
begin with a fourth leap, on account of which they could be considered a comes, until it
shows later on that they are actually a dux. Their tonal position thus becomes clear only
in the second bar (cf., for example, bar 40 ff). Besides, two comes entries and one dux
entry modulate (in bars 5, 13, and 39 respectively) in the last quavers, for which reason
they would be 'incorrect'. Finally, the appearance of the subject in bars 32-36 is more or
less undecidable (cf. De la Motte, 24-5). However, neither De la Motte nor Zacher
mention a similar undecidability towards the end of 'Contrapunctus I' (bars 74-78) where
the theme in the tenor at first seems to start in the dominant A minor (bar 74; compare bar
5), then shifts to the subdominant G minor (bars 75-77), to finally conclude in D (bars 77-
78). Although the resolution of the subdominant to the tonic recurs in more contrapuncti
of The Art of Fugue, Dickinson nonetheless speaks of a 'reluctant surrender', as the
resolution of IV to I remains problematic. Again, it is unclear as to whether this is a
comes or a dux. Bar 74 seems to verge on a comes (cf. bar 5). However, this premise
needs to be adjusted in the following bars where the subject continues as in bars 40-44
and 49-53. Zacher opted for a dux that only deviates in the first note. The quavers in bar
77, however, deviate from the operative subject (they appear one major second too high).
They make the decision for a dux difficult once again, unless we settle for five deviating
notes (the first, and last four) out of a total of thirteen.
In summary, only three out of ten entries correspond with the theme that was introduced
in the exposition. De la Motte finds it remarkable that these difficulties occur in the
opening piece of Die Kunst der Fuge, after all, a work with a strong pedagogical
commitment, a thesaurus for the writing of fugues (cf. Heinrich. cf. Die Kunst der Fuge
[The Art of the Fugue]).
He adds another argument. 'It is striking that the counterpoint loses significance in the
course of the fugue (the theme also appears less and less). What is started in bars 5-8
plays a role in bars 10-11, 14-16, 24-26, and 50-51 and therefore determines the
beginning; it appears briefly once more in the middle section and is completely absent in
the remaining part' (De la Motte, p.25, my translation). De la Motte concludes that the art
of writing fugues is somewhat postponed in the first counterpoint. Incidentally, Carl
Dahlhaus, in response to this analysis, comments that the lenient melodic treatment of the
theme and the counterpoint is compensated by stricter rhythmic connections that
interweave the individual voices, keeping them together. The rhythmic patterns thus seem
to function as motives. Dahlhaus believes the problem to be in the subordinate position of
rhythmic figures in relation to interval structures in many analyses. Many theoreticians
disregard the development of rhythmic patterns. In addition, Dahlhaus wonders whether a
consistently executed (he uses the term 'obligatory') counterpoint should belong to the art
of writing fugues. Would that not rather be a stereotypical mannerism that should perhaps
be avoided? Both music theoreticians, therefore, observe a certain 'non-identity' in
'Contrapunctus I' (that is possibly or partly counterbalanced in the rhythmic course), but
they value this differently. De la Motte experiences it as a deficiency and an inadequacy,
while Dahlhaus leaves the possibility open that Bach's superiority would gain additional
stature through this. Dickinson, however, begins his modest analysis of 'Contrapunctus I'
with the comment that Bach 'relies on the variable harmony of free counterpoint to color
the flow of entries in tonic and dominant' (Dickinson, p.120). No counterpoint or free
counterpoint? Again, it is not the decision that matters to me here. The textuality of the
text installs the absence of an ultimate meaning. With that, the infinite play of
interpretations may commence. Of course, this does not mean that every interpretation is
equally convincing or adequate (cf. the amount of episodes in 'Contrapunctus I'). Within a
certain context, within certain conventions, one interpretation may be preferred to
another. And some interpretations are more powerful than others. However, the co-
existence of different interpretations (be they analytical readings or performances) is only
possible by the grace of the undecidability of the text itself.

[8] One small remark to close with. In Silence and/in Music, I state that the attention for
silences is a peripheral moment in music analysis. In my discussion of the analyses of
'Contrapunctus I', it appears that I am confirming the idea that no attention is given to the
(toccata-like) breakdown in bars 71 and 72; indeed, a very noteworthy moment.
However, I compensate for this in No (-) Music - D. Schnebel where I elaborate upon
Zacher's tenth version of 'Contrapunctus I', which is based entirely on the rests in bars 71
and 72.
Of the Critics
[1] In 'Zugänge. Gerd Zacher's Festival Die Kunst einer Fuge', Richard Hauser compares
the project with Glenn Gould's recording of The Art of Fugue. Both are innovative and
controversial and for that reason they are met with opposition. 'With depreciation, if not
with ostentatious disapproval, Gerd Zacher's Die Kunst einer Fuge, Johann Sebastian
Bachs 'Contrapunctus I' in ten interpretations, is received. Gone is the devout shiver for
what the maestro wrote last' (Hauser, p.116, my translation). There is ignorance. Five of
the ten interpretations are released on an album (LPR) by a label that otherwise only
produces entertainment music. Utterly inappropriately, the record is sold as 'psychedelic'.
(According to Zacher, his project falls between two categories at a major record
company. What exactly is this, baroque music (Bach) or avant-garde (the influence of
current composers)?) There is protest. Hauser reports threats of withholding (financial)
support and a ban to perform at certain venues.
Is it this bad? Zacher denies it. Other pieces that he has played met with greater
resistance. He also receives quite a few positive reviews. But there is certainly
opposition, still in the years after the first performance in 1968. A quote from the January
18, 1971 Heidelberger Tageblatt: 'Thanks to the 'Institute for Church Music'
(Kirchenmusikalischen Institut) and the Church of the Holy Spirit (Heiliggeistkirche)
something curious was offered; something curious that one should know in order to
immunize oneself for future modernisms of this kind'. Zacher claims to expose the
structure of 'Contrapunctus I'; instead, he confronts the listeners with his own personal
taste in an objectionable manner, according to the journalist (my translation).
What is the problem? It looks like Zacher's project exceeds a convention within the music
world, a convention that involves the interpretation of another's work. People in the
music world believe that Zacher's performances of Bach's 'Contrapunctus I' go way too
far. Desecration. Blasphemy. Ethically unacceptable. Hauser arrives at a similar
observation: 'Zacher's interpretation comes up against a border of what is called the
official music business' (Hauser, p.117, my translation). (In Art and the Aesthetic (p.105),
American philosopher George Dickie writes: 'We are not prevented from interacting with
works of art by psychological forces within us, rather we are barred from interaction with
many or most works by conventions governing particular situations'.)

[2] Zacher reacts against a dominant discourse of musicians, musicologists (the academic
culture), and the press (media). (In a concert program, Juan Allende-Blin writes about the
opposition Zacher faced when he was appointed cantor and organist in Hamburg in 1957.
During the services, Zacher plays a lot of 20th century music and works by Jewish
composers. However, the musical institutional environment (specifically 'Die Deutsche
Orgelbewegung', 'The German Organ Movement') is still preoccupied with a racist and
reactionary state of mind, stemming from the Second World War. A few proponents of
this movement campaigned against Zacher because he engages himself in a kind of music
that is still entartet ('degenerate') to them. In addition, a dean described Zacher's choice of
repertoire as a revolt against God, rather than a song of praise, a 'musica diabolica' rather
than a 'musica sacra'.) Zacher haunts the dominant discourse, a discourse that is always
haunted by what it excludes, fights, or tries to suppress. In that sense, Zacher may be
regarded as a specter. And ghosts are often met with fear and (therefore) with hostility.
Attempts will be made to conjure (away) the ghost who risks coming back. But how to
denounce or exorcise this specter (a specter with many spirits: those of Adorno, Neruda,
Schnebel, Brahms, etc.)? How to chase it away? Preferably not by some counter-magic,
but by means of critical analysis. According to his critics, Zacher does not understand
Bach as well as other interpreters understand him. Representatives of the latter (who are
equally persecuted by the shadow of that great specter who keeps coming back) are busy
teaching him a lesson here. Zacher is an unworthy heir with no understanding of the
essentials of Bach's (last) will and testament. He has not read Die Kunst der Fuge very
well. That would be the most effective denunciation, one that would be based on an
analysis of 'Contrapunctus I', leading to statements about a correct interpretation, to a
standard that could be used to establish that 'wrong' interpretations might be excluded.
(One may wonder whether this dominant discourse, this discourse of domination, is
governed by an actuality of the correct interpretation (presence), or by an ideality
(absence), the pursuit of an interpretation 'in the spirit of Bach'.) But these people seem to
want to hide from the potential - capacity and possibility - of what may be called the
spirit of music: heterogeneity, the possibility of multiple interpretations. The conjuration
appears to be fragile. It is based on a fundamental arbitrariness. Or on power.
There is also something paradoxical in this pursuit. It is precisely in the attempt to chase
away this specter, in the denunciation of Zacher, that he gets attention, that he is
presented. A convocation of the specter that one wants to conjure away. 'One chases
someone away, kicks him out of the door, excludes him, or drives him away. But it is in
order to chase after him, seduce him, reach him and thus keep him close at hand'
(Specters, p.140).

[3] For the most part, the conventional interpretation praxis of music seems to take its
lead from a certain respect for the (intention of the) composer or the score. One can only
honor Bach by imitating him as accurately as possible. In Textes pour Emmanuel
Levinas, a Festschrift, a homage or commemorative work, Derrida throws a different
light on this assumption. In his contribution, entitled 'At This Very Moment In This Work
Here I Am', he responds to the ethical appeal of Levinas' texts. According to Levinas, the
ethical work must be given in radical generosity. The work must be sent out from the
same to the other without ever returning to the same. In order for this to happen, the other
must receive the work ungratefully because the movement of gratitude returns to the
same (philanthropy). Thus, according to Derrida's reading, the work of Levinas works by
generously departing from the proper name and signature of Emmanuel Levinas towards
the other. Levinas' work is possessed by a dehiscence, where the work bursts open and
goes to the other without returning.
So when Derrida wants to honor Levinas, he must adjust his text in such a way that it
does not return to the same (Levinas), but instead goes to the other. He has to be
ungrateful. (But this is not an ingratitude that still belongs to the circle of
acknowledgment and reciprocity.) How? By writing a faulty text. (Faulty. But not in the
conventional sense. No deliberate mistakes. 'Faulty' by writing otherwise. Against the
grain.) Yet, it should be clear that the ingratitude and faultiness are not directed against
Levinas; there is no external critique. They are the necessary conditions for being loyal to
Levinas' work. In order to maintain the ethical moment, Derrida must commit an act of
ungratefulness against Levinas' work. He must show how the work does not work (cf. At
This Very Moment, p.13-18. cf. Critchley, p.108-18).
Something similar is happening in Zacher's project. In other words, I am suggesting an
analogy here between the tandems, Derrida-Levinas and Zacher-Bach. This is articulated
in the two moments of reading that are at work in Die Kunst einer Fuge. The first
moment is a repetition of Bach's text, an interpretation that tries to say the same as Bach:
'Quatuor'. In fact, this is ultimately returning the text to its author. But it also (already)
shows how Bach's text generously goes to the other; it shows that already a certain
unboundness and heterogeneity is taking place here ('although still at home, he is already
on his way'). The most obvious example is probably that several musical parameters have
not been prescribed in the score. The fundamental openness of the text can be heard in
each interpretation. (Is it through the act of repetition of the same that one gains access to
the other?) The second moment (in fact, they are nine different moments) is the
ingratitude that is required to maintain the alterity of the first moment; it says something
different. It shows how Bach's work does not work. The transition from the first to the
second reading is obvious. It is marked by a shift in dedication. In the double sense of the
word. As devotion and as a token of esteem. Zacher calls the others, asking them to help
or inspire him.
Polylogue. Multiphony. Other languages come in to disturb the first one. They haunt it.
They dislodge the language of mere translation (cf. Levinson in Of Interpretation). An
interrogation of the link between musical difference - the other as other musical language
or composing procedure - and interpretative difference. In these nine other interpretations
nothing is rendered to Bach. An other music? The contribution of the other composers
constitutes a surfeit of un-heard alterity, the other to all the different conventional
interpretations. The other is inscribed within the empire of the same. Through these
composers, Zacher reads Bach's text beyond the dominant interpretation. He commits
faults, he lets some errors slip by, he fails to read as he should. The second moment is a
faulty violence that leaves some flaws in the work. This is not accidental but essential to
the ethical event of the text. The violence is not directed against Bach, but a possibility
always already at work in Bach's composition. ('Bach acquired the habit of always
keeping his composition open to all kinds of interchange. This lends both flexibility and
resilience to his music'.) It is not violence in the strict sense of the word. (For example,
nothing is added to or subtracted from the text. The question can be posed if we can
speak of 'violence' at all here. Maybe it is only violent from a conventional or non-
deconstructive perspective.) It is not a passage beyond Bach's language; it interrupts
within the 'original' language; it interrupts from within that language.
Zacher's critics seem to have an ethical concern rather than aesthetical (an ethical
problem that is countered with aesthetical arguments). Die Kunst einer Fuge is not stating
the contrary of Bach's work, rather, in honoring it, it evokes the other; the risk of
contamination must be regularly accepted. It is the possibility of the fault - which is not a
fault in the ordinary sense - that is fascinating. Die Kunst einer Fuge is about
responsibility, the ability to respond to the call of the other. To pay attention to the other,
to the non-articulated and the non-thematized in the dominant discourse. The ethics of
deconstruction. In music. Through music. An other music?
Of Interpretation
[1] Why a page on interpretation? Why pay attention to such a complicated concept,
especially in relation to music? The reason is more simple than the task I put before
myself. In the explanatory notes on Die Kunst einer Fuge, Zacher consistently speaks
about 'his ten interpretations' of 'Contrapunctus I'. Still, I believe that his project goes
beyond the 'normal' meanings of the concept of 'interpretation'.

[2] Many analytical philosophers distinguish between the use of the concept of
interpretation in a linguistic (philosophical) discourse and in a music(ologic)al discourse,
although it is difficult to base this distinction on exact characteristics (see, for example,
Hermerén in Krausz, p.17-20). When applied to discursive texts, interpretation commonly
functions as an explicative or an elucidating explanation of a (written or spoken) text. It
facilitates understanding. Interpretation: the act or process of explaining, the power of
elucidation. Philosophical interpretations of a text include reconstruction of the chain of
arguments, identification of gaps and missing premises, exposure of hidden assumptions,
discussion of different ways to deal with or eliminate contradictions in the text, etc. An
attentive interpretation may disclose an orderly (limited) series of meanings that are
inherent a priori in the text itself. One thing is clear: the original text is not clear enough;
it needs further explanation.
What is said here with regard to linguistic (philosophical) texts may also apply to works
of art. Critics offer interpretations of them. (I am leaving aside here the debate about the
boundary between description and interpretation.) Critical interpretations ascribe
meaning, explain, and relate, aiming to provide an account of the importance of a work
and its function (cf. Levinson in Krausz, p.34).
In deconstruction, these notions of interpretation are problemized or carried to their
extreme. Deconstruction does not try to elucidate texts in the traditional sense, for
example, by attempting to grasp a unifying content. Neither does it want to supply all
sorts of additional features (supplements). Deconstruction acts against the assumption
that a single interpretation would be able to concretely and conclusively lay down the
meaning of a text. The textuality of a text cannot be locked into one single interpretation.
A text always has cracks and fissures by which it is unavoidably exposed to the outside.
It is open to another reader, to ever changing interpretations. (Derrida emphasizes the
active and transformative character of interpretations. To him interpretation is an active
translation; it (under)mines the organism and the history of the domestic text, just as it
punctuates its end, like the registered trademark of a labor that is finished, yet still in
progress (cf. Dissemination, p.357).) In addition, each reading places a text in a new
context, a context that is always open. This means that a context never determines
absolutely one interpretation, nor can it comprise a clearly demarcated construct of
interpretations.
How far can and should one go with interpretation? No matter how much one tries to
convey (musical) ideas as accurately and carefully as possible, it is impossible to protect
them against effects that seem strange, incomprehensible or even repulsive. It does not
mean that these effects are based on wrong interpretations. Neither does it mean that the
act of interpretation is completely randomly determined. (Derrida emphasizes the
importance of a scholarly competence in reading and understanding, knowledge of the
works of an author, a familiarity with multiple contexts that determine a given text, and
so forth. This form of scholarship is also advocated by Zacher.) However, the nature of
the restrictions with which one should comply cannot be set down in general terms once
and for all. Liberties that cannot be permitted within a certain context become acceptable
and interesting in a different context that, in turn, has restrictions of its own (cf.
Dissemination, p.63-4).

[3] What does interpretation mean in the realm of music? In The Interpretation of Music -
nineteen essays on the aesthetic, cultural, and historical aspects of musical interpretation -
, analytical philosophers of music find it very difficult to formulate an adequate answer to
this and they certainly do not succeed in delivering any univocal answer. Most of the
contributions in the book start from the premise that interpretation is synonymous with
performance, the act of bringing a musical composition to sound. However, Michael
Krausz and Jerrold Levinson distinguish between interpretation and performance. With
that, we arrive at the triplet, work-interpretation-performance. According to Krausz,
numerous performances may embody a single interpretation, understood as the
explanatory analysis that precedes a performance (cf. Krausz, p.76). Levinson elaborates
this point by arguing that a performance is never a fully transparent reproduction of an
interpretation. Furthermore, he observes that the reverse may also be true. One
performance may lead to several interpretations; performances may trigger the
formulation of interpretations. Levinson states that interpretations aim to explain (or
elucidate) the meaning or structure of a work, while performances at best highlight these
(cf. Levinson in Krausz, p.38). So what both authors advocate is that several singular
events may converge, connect, and concentrate at the same point of departure. (This point
then becomes the same and an other at the same time.)
Levinson further stresses the more neutral nature of a performance. 'Performers provide
us with access to discourse we do not have access to otherwise'. In this, he compares
them with another kind of interpreter, namely translators. According to Levinson, both
transmit rather than explain (Levinson in Krausz, p. 37). (It should be clear that this
notion is not at all shared by proponents of deconstruction.) Göran Hermerén agrees with
him on this. 'The purpose of a P-interpretation [performance, MC] is to present the work,
or rather a version of the work, to the listener. This is different from the purpose of
explaining the work, of showing what the common, unifying theme or thesis (if any) of
the work is, of relating this work to other works, of placing it in a literary, social, and
political context, and so forth'. Furthermore, a performer cannot be selective; he has to
play all the notes. An interpreter of (musical) texts, on the other hand, has no need to
comment on each line in the text (Hermerén in Krausz, p.19).

[4] Would Zacher's project be an interpretation or a performance? One thing to consider

is its neutral nature (cf. Levinson). One can hardly say that Die Kunst einer Fuge serves
only to transmit; Zacher certainly does not intend to create the most neutral intermediary
for Bach's work. The ten different versions of 'Contrapunctus I' are also ten analyses of
the composition. Every time, a different aspect of the work is elucidated; every time, a
different angle presents a new thesis; every time, the work encounters other works. These
analyses, however, do not precede the played versions. Rather, interpretation and
performance coincide.
I will briefly return to textual interpretations and analyses. An analysis is situated 'hors-
d'oeuvre', outside the work. There is a clear distinction between an analysis that operates
as an external (meta)language and the work that it describes. But the authority of each
analysis (or interpretation) depends, in large part on the discourse at work within the
work. Analysts feel secure and in control when they succeed in showing that the work
actually features elements that present the views they are defending. The border between
inside and outside becomes problematic here. Each analysis prolongs and develops a
discourse that is authorized by the text. So its external authority is derived from its place
inside. It can always be read as a part of the work rather than as a description of it (cf.
Culler, p.199). The analysis is at once outside and inside the work. Is this also the case
when we speak about music? Or about Die Kunst einer Fuge? As noted before, it is
difficult to draw a line here between interpretation and performance. It is not a case of
interpretation in the sense of explanation or pure transmission. It is (also) an analysis,
albeit not in a scholarly way. Does a musical interpretation, an analysis in music, a
performance, resides outside or inside the work? What, then, is the work? These are some
of the questions that are raised by Zacher's project. Die Kunst einer Fuge asks for all of
these concepts to be re-evaluated. They follow us. They persecute Die Kunst einer Fuge.
As though they are specters. Arrivants. Revenants.
And, there is still more. The border between interpretation/performance/analysis and
composition fades in Die Kunst einer Fuge. By citing Bach and using associations with
works of other composers, a new composition, so to speak, is generated. More so than in
the case of Derrida's texts, the border between one's own contribution and the work of
someone else gets blurred. It no longer seems possible to make a clear distinction
between 'Zacher's' and 'someone else's'. The border between interpretation (citation) and
autonomous composition shifts. The 'original' text remains intact; Bach remains present.
Titles, dedications and musical means refer to other composers. However, the
combination also clearly indicates Zacher's presence. His signature can be heard
throughout the work, without having the effect of absolute domination over the musical
material. The individuality of the other composers sounds strange in this work, as though
it originates from another context. Zacher's individuality sounds strange in this work, as
though it originates from another context. Bach's individuality sounds strange in this
work, as though it originates from another context. Presence dissolves in absence.
Presence dissolves in presence.

[5] A discursive text can be understood in several ways. It can be supplemented in

various ways. Certain ideas can be connected, others disconnected. The focus of interest
can be placed in various areas; one may look for different levels of meaning behind the
literal meanings, etc. Similarly, a score leaves a great deal of freedom to the interpreter.
We are accustomed to having several interpretations of one musical text. In music, it
seems difficult to speak of the one correct explanation or interpretation that would reveal
the 'true meaning' of the score.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of disputes within musical discourse about correct and not
so correct interpretations, readings and misreadings, understandings and
misunderstandings. One only needs to take a quick glance at the debates regarding the
proper instrumentation of Die Kunst der Fuge and the order in which the fugues should
be played to find evidence of a true Historikerstreit (dispute between historians). (cf., for
example, an extensive overview in Ugo Duse's book Musica e Cultura - Quatro diagnosi.
Important theorists such as Heinrich Schenker insist that there can only be one correct
interpretation of a work of music.) Even if there seems no reasonable expectation that this
view of one strict interpretation could obtain reality, it does serve as an ideal.

[6] Die Kunst einer Fuge is not an interpretation in the traditional sense of the word. The
difference is that Zacher is not interpreting in one direction in order to establish the one
true interpretation of 'Contrapunctus I'. Nor does he intend to expose an (original)
meaning that would reside outside of Bach's text. Zacher does not intend to reproduce a
polysemic web. His interpretations are not an explanation or a hermeneutic quest for the
deeper layers in Bach's composition that would lead to a fundamentally finite gamut of
possibilities; neither do they intend to determine understanding (Verstehen) or meaning.
Rather, there is dispersion and multiplicity (due to numerous connotations) in Die Kunst
einer Fuge; there are multiple readings, attention to material properties (cf. for example,
the fifth interpretation, entitled 'Timbres-durées', where the length of the notes determines
the composition, and also the whole idea of intermusicality that is active in Die Kunst
einer Fuge) and undecidability. Dissemination. No 'vouloir-dire', not a quest for the
meaning, the intention or the truth of a text. Zacher makes the multiphony of the text
audible. His readings are snapshots in time, a temporary fixation in an ongoing process of
structuralization, never the last word. Die Kunst einer Fuge not only offers a critique of
the interpretation cult (of authenticity) within Western culture, but implicitly sets up an
encounter between this culture and alternative views.

[7] Although a single correct performance of a musical work may perhaps be an

unrealizable ideal, some philosophers in The Interpretation of Music do specify a number
of preconditions that need be satisfied in order for a performance to be 'true'. What are the
appropriate (ethical) constraints of the performer's freedom? Levinson is guided, for the
most part, by the question of 'how various prescriptions of rhythm, tempo, dynamics, and
so on should be precisely realized within their permissible ranges' (Levinson in Krausz,
p.35). According to Robert Martin, performances may vary within the constraints of the
composer's instructions and the rules and conventions of the performance practices that
change over the years (cf. Martin in Krausz, p.123). Both considerations raise as many
questions as they try to answer. What are 'permissible ranges'? Where and when are they
exceeded? And who decides on that? Levinson, for example, does not want to engage in
interpretations in which the performer blatantly and knowingly departs from a work as it
has been constituted in an effort to comment on the work in some way, since the
permissible ranges then become even more vague. (He mentions rhetorical pauses,
interpolated bits, sudden improvisations, excisions, reorchestrations, reharmonizations.)
Pertaining more specifically to Die Kunst einer Fuge is Hermerén's question of 'how far
one should go in the attempts to find new ways of performing the music of the old
masters' (Hermerén in Krausz, p.25). He finds himself unable to answer this. Perhaps,
J.O. Urmson's remark in the same book may serve as a conclusion, 'Where the limits of
legitimate interpretation lie will, no doubt, never be agreed ... but there are limits'
(Urmson in Krausz, p.161). According to the above, the coordinates of these limits can be
set by the score, the composer's intentions, and the conventions; the score and the
intentions seemingly being the most stable. But, how fundamental is the score? Levinson
cites the example of pianist Paul Jacobs, who felt the need to correct a couple of
supposed mistakes in Arnold Schönberg's Drei Klavierstücke, Opus 11. A certain fidelity
to the instructions in the score has thus been overruled here. There is strong suspicion that
the composer has made some mistakes (cf. Levinson in Krausz, p.35). What is the
performer's obligation to the composer? Urmson provides us with some possible answers
that, again, only seem to add to the problem. 'It is his duty', he states, 'to interpret it in the
way in which he believes the score sounds best in accordance with the understanding of
musical notation current at the time of composition; it is his duty to interpret it in the way
in which he believes it sounds best, even if this involves some departures from the
instructions contained in the score; it is his duty to interpret it according to the known
views of the composer on interpretation at the time of composition; it is his duty to
interpret it in a way that would be approved by the composer if he heard the performance,
however surprising to him' (Urmson in Krausz, p.162).
In this same line of argument are the questions raised by Hermerén. 'What is the purpose
of the interpretation? To discover what the composer wanted, to suggest a reading that
illuminates a contemporary moral or political problem, to propose the most aesthetically
rewarding approach, to rally the masses around common goals, ... to defend the object of
interpretation against criticism, to describe the historical, social, psychological conditions
for the creation of the work interpreted, and so on?' (Hermerén, p.13).

[8] It is not clear whether Levinson and Martin would consider Die Kunst einer Fuge as a
series of interpretations within 'permissible ranges'. Zacher seems not to be seeking the
most adequate, correct, or best interpretation of 'Contrapunctus I'. He seems much more
focused on (intrigued by) the infinite multiplicity of Bach's text, on opening unknown
listening perspectives, on the confrontation between this and other texts or methods of
composition. In doing so, he exceeds the accepted conventions of the interpretation
praxis. But then, the ten versions of Die Kunst einer Fuge are not a deliberate deviation
from 'Contrapunctus I'. Zacher does not change a single note in the score. No
reharmonizations, no excisions, no interpolations. (He adds something without adding
something!) Despite his taking advantage of the absence of detail and specifications
regarding instrumentation, dynamic markings, etc., his work cannot be understood as a
play between the incompleteness of the score and the resulting possible multiplicity of
interpretation practices. This can sooner be heard when various performances, for
example, performances for string quartet or harpsichord, are compared. Neither can we
say that Zacher's project consists of several arrangements or adaptations of
'Contrapunctus I'. Again, none of the notes have been altered. Die Kunst einer Fuge
involves an exploration of the limits and supplements to Bach's composition. However, it
not only delimits, it also introduces the possiblity of opening new areas of listening
experience. To deconstruct 'Contrapunctus I' is to search for the inaudible within the
audible. Zacher deconstructs when examining musical traces, marks, and differences as
they occur during composition and as they are inscribed on the musical text. Although
Zacher speaks about 'this series of interpretations' of 'Contrapunctus I', it is important to
note that the idea of interpretation can no longer be viewed in the traditional sense.
Perhaps, in this respect it would be better to speak of encounters, invitations, play.
[9] One reason for the possibility of deconstruction, the possibility of dissemination, is
that the author can no longer guard his or her works once they are made public. Texts
then become independent in a certain sense and the original author's intent may lose
pertinence; it may even be ignored. Texts do not coincide with the author; they are traces
left behind in passing. Still, many authors clearly leave their marks in their texts.
'I, Marcel Cobussen, state ...' tries to leave not much room for ignoring the author's
intention. Returning to music, the same may be said about Die Kunst der Fuge. Bach's
signature is decidedly present in 'Contrapunctus I'. The masterly treatment of the fugue
represent Bach at the height of his powers. Still, Zacher shows that Bach's position can be
challenged. By forcing the issue of the interpretation of 'Contrapunctus I', the work
escapes the mark of the original composer. The work is first expropriated (withdrawn
from its original context) and then appropriated by the praxis of another (in fact, many
others). The question is: who is really appropriating 'Contrapunctus I'? Derrida clearly
leaves his mark in texts that he deconstructs, but this is not so much the case with Zacher.
Once again, I emphasize: Bach's notes remain unaltered. And Zacher's own input
becomes unclear because he works with specific compositions of different composers in
each of the ten performances (cf. Gerd Zacher's Kunst einer Fuge). To whom are we
listening? Who has the last word? Bach? Zacher? (One of) the others? But why decide?
Timbres-durées - O.
Messiaen
[1] Gerd Zacher. Die Kunst einer Fuge. Johann Sebastian Bachs 'Contrapunctus I' in
zehn Interpretationen.
The fifth interpretation is called 'Timbres-durées' and dedicated to Olivier Messiaen. One
would assume it is reminiscent of Messiaen's electronic work by the same name;
however, an explanatory note by Hauser (a written explanation by Hauser to a written
explanation by Zacher to a musical 'explanation' by Zacher) suggests that this
performance is at first based on a piano etude, 'Mode de valeurs et d'intensités', that was
of great importance to Messiaen. (The composition forms the second part of the
composition, Quatre études de rythme. 'Étude' can be understood in two different ways
here. The term either refers to technical exercises for a pianist, or it pertains to Messiaen
who contributed something entirely new to modern piano literature with this work.)
'Mode de valeurs et d’intensités' consists of three individual layers. (This is visible in the
score by the use of three staffs.) Messiaen connects sound intensities to duration, the
values of the notes. The predetermined relationship between the pitch and the tone
duration remains unaltered throughout the course of the entire piece. (In dodecaphony,
the order of notes is fixed by the series while its parameters are free. By contrast, the
parameters pitch and duration of each note in 'Mode de valeurs et d'intensités' are fixed,
but its order in relation to other notes is free. It may be regarded a prototype of a
generalized serialism.) Thus, twelve pitch-tone duration pairs are established that
continuously take turns on the three voices. 'There are three twelve-note groups or series,
each consisting of all the notes of the chromatic scale. Each note is fixed in a register, so
that the first group covers the upper range of the keyboard from top E flat down to B
above middle C, the second group, the middle range from the G above this to the second
A below middle C, and the third group, the middle to lower ranges from the second E flat
above middle C to the lowest C sharp on the piano. There is, therefore, some considerable
overlapping of the ranges, although no note occurs in more than one group in the same
register. Each group is assigned a chromatic series of twelve durations - the first group,
from one to twelve demisemiquavers, the second, from one to twelve semi quavers, and
the third, from one to twelve quavers. These durations, in ascending order of value, are
assigned to the notes of each group in descending order. The lowest notes on the piano,
which have the greatest sustaining power, are therefore the longest and the highest are the
shortest. As some durations are inevitably common to more than one group (the quaver,
for instance, occurs in all three), there are a total of twenty-four different durations'
(Johnson, p.105).

[2] Zacher adopts Messiaen's process of composing in a slightly modified way. 'Each
note value is given its characteristic tone color: quavers and semi-quavers, the bright
Cymbal, crotchets and minims fundamental Principal, all longer notes are garish in color
(Krummhorn and Sesquialtera)'. Slightly modified. Unlike a pianist, a church organ
player cannot control the volume. Therefore, Zacher changes the tone color. However,
one could, of course, say that by changing the volume of a note on the piano, one also
changes its tone color. That is why I speak of a slight modification.
Since Bach made less use of tone duration differences than Messiaen, the play between
note values and tone color in 'Timbres-durées' is less sophisticated and refined than that
of 'Mode de valeurs et d'intensités'. But the confrontation between two musical languages
that were strictly separated before (intermusicality), the confrontation of Messiaen's
working method with a text by Bach is without doubt very disturbing. The subject
appears fragmented when the three quavers are suddenly assigned (played with) a totally
different timbre than the preceding minims and crotchets. The course of each voice
independently, which is of such importance in playing or listening with understanding to
fugues, is completely distorted, even more so as the rhythmic variation increases.
Seemingly uncontrolled and imperceptible to the ear, the voices tumble about themselves.
'Contrapunctus I' becomes spectral music, bringing timbre to the same level as melody,
harmony, and form.

[3] 'Timbres-durées' may be called a deconstruction in the most literal sense: destruction
and construction at the same time. As does Derrida's deconstructive strategy, Zacher's
interpretation also destabilizes the musical text from the inside. It works with and out of
the vocabulary of the source text, but it transgresses the order of conventional
interpretation. Bach's text becomes divided against itself, dislocated. Yet, it is important
to point out that this interpretation (Derrida would call it an act of violence) is not
directed against Bach. It would not be possible if the musical text were 'not of itself
unbound and hence open to the wholly other, to its own beyond, in such a way that it is
less a matter of exceeding that language than of treating it otherwise with its own
possibilities' (At This Very Moment, p.17). Bach's work is possessed of a dehiscence;
through Zacher's reading the work bursts open and goes unto the other. Performing the
ethical (cf. Music, Deconstruction, and Ethics). 'Timbres-durées' is a destruction of
'Contrapunctus I'. But Zacher also emphasizes its constructive nature. 'As the eye sees an
overall form even in a picture made up entirely of dots, here the points of time together
form the original model of the fugue'. It is a new, albeit a temporary, construct based on
the 'original' text.

[4] According to Zacher, 'Timbres-durées' may be called a spectral analysis of the fugue.
A spectral analysis. Analysis of a spectrum in order to acquire qualitative and/or
quantitative data about the medium from which the spectrum originates. In astronomy, a
spectral analysis provides insight into the composition and structure of celestial bodies.
The same holds for a spectral analysis of white light. Separated by a prism, white light
falls apart into its 'component colors'. 'Timbres-durées' may be understood similarly.
Zacher's spectral analysis of the duration structure reveals the rhythmic structure and
construction of the fugue. Regarded as such, one could speak of a 'decomposition' of the
fugue - it falls into its rhythmical components. 'The entire texture is analyzed in the
minutest detail, so that the element of time seems to be dissected'. Decomposition.
'Contrapunctus I' breaks out of the unity proposed by Bach. The web is unraveled; a
structural element (rhythm) is exposed. However, the object is not to explore (for the sake
of theoretical curiosity), nor to restore (with an eye on future reconstruction), nor to
destroy (the destruction of the source text). 'Timbres-durées' is transformative
(transfigurative). Zacher examines the possibility of a different interpretation. (Can it still
be called an interpretation?) The decomposition brings the openness of Bach's text to our
attention, the possibilities of deformation, innovation, and active transformation.
Although this transforming and reforming is not the same as destroying, it cannot be done
without a certain degree of violence. Its nature, however, is clearly affirmative. It stands
open to the other, to what a conventional analysis would (has to) ignore (cf.
Deconstruction - an Affirmative Strategy of Transformation).

[5] A spectral analysis. An analysis of music usually involves words. 'Timbres-durées',

however, is not a traditional musicological analysis; rather, it is an audible analysis, an
analysis in musical terms, an operative analysis at a church organ. It is a decomposition, a
deconstruction of music in and by music. With 'Timbres-durées', Zacher not only escapes
the conventional performance praxis, but also rises above the common musicological
interpretations. In doing so, he inaugurates a different kind of analysis, an outlook on
'Contrapunctus I' that is based on its rhythmical units. ('The different rates of momentum
are clearly evident'.) His analysis, however, is totally different than that of Dahlhaus (cf.
Contrapunctus I). By considering the rhythmical figures as motives, Dahlhaus points out
the relationship of the individual voices which brings the unity of 'Contrapunctus I' to
light. By contrast, the unity in Zacher's rhythmical analysis is disrupted, the voices
disintegrate, the mutual relations become diffuse and opaque. Precisely by suspending
conventional notions of unity and thematic coherence, he is able to expose aspects of the
fugue that are inherent in it, but that, as of yet, have gone unnoticed.
Hence, 'Timbres-durées' may also be called a spectral analysis, spectral music, in a
different sense. It is spectral in the sense of being ghostly. The fifth interpretation is
spooky, eerie; it is a spectral apparition. To reveal this, Zacher needs to abandon a
scholarly reconstruction or interpretation according to dominant conventions. That is the
only way he is able to perform this analysis. 'There has never been a scholar who really,
and as scholar, deals with ghosts. A traditional scholar does not believe in ghosts', says
Derrida (Specters, p.11). To paraphrase the imperative that follows: it will always be a
mistake not to read and reread Bach and to go beyond scholarly reading. It will be more
and more of a mistake, a failure of theoretical and music(ologic)al responsibility (cf.
Specters, p.13). Scholars are not always in the most competent position to be open to
spectral analysis. They will perceive 'Timbres-durées' as strange, alien, perhaps even
frightening. (Zacher would rather describe Die Kunst einer Fuge with such phrases as
'make friends with', 'acquaintance', and 'to become fond of'. It is precisely through
selective listening that music is violated. Zacher's spectrum of the ten interpretations
disallow the listener to shut his ears for the unexpected aspects of this music.) With
'Timbres-durées', Zacher surpasses ordinary scholarship. He takes responsibility. He
takes it in music. By offering hospitality to the other(s). Through/in/by music, the other in
music, an other music. By paying honor to the heterogeneity of Bach's text. (His 'outside'
already resides within Bach's music.) Through a very accurate handling of the musical
notation, he brings elements to light that remain concealed in a conventional scholarly
reading of the score. The more accurate he (re)(de)constructs, the closer he gets to the
imponderable.
'Timbres-durées'. Deconstruction in music. Referring to deconstruction, Derrida says:
'The issue, then, in undertaking, practically and theoretically, these new modes of
articulation, is to fracture a still quite hermetic closure' (Positions, p.83-4).
Pablo Neruda
[1] Die Kunst einer Fuge. Ten interpretations of Johann Sebastian Bach's 'Contrapunctus
I'. Ten encounters, ten dedications to ten different composers of which seven are from the
20th century. Ten dedications? Not really. The entire project is dedicated to the German
philosopher Theodor Adorno. 'To Theodor W. Adorno (for his 65th birthday)'. So, there
are eleven dedications. Eleven dedications and ... a quote. Immediately after the
dedication to Adorno one finds the opening lines of a poem by Chilean poet Pablo
Neruda. 'When I am asked where I have been I must reply: it happens'.

[2] 'When I am asked where I have been I must reply: it happens'. The first two lines of
the poem 'No Hay Olvido (Sonata)' [There's No Forgetting (Sonata)], a poem from the
second volume of Residencia en la tierra [Residence On Earth], written between 1931
and 1935.

No Hay Olvido (Sonata) There's No Forgetting (Sonata)

Si me preguntais en donde he estado
debo decir 'Sucede'.
Debo de hablar del suelo que oscurecen las
piedras,
del rio que durando se destruye:
no se sino las cosas que los pajaros pierden,
el mar dejado atras, o mi hermana llorando.
Por que tantas regiones, por que un dia
se junta con un dia? Por que una negra noche
se acumula en la boca? Por que muertos?
If you should ask me where I've been all this
time
I have to say 'Things happen.'
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
on the river ruined in its own duration:
I know nothing save things the birds have lost,
the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.
Why this abundance of places? Why does day
lock
with day? Why the dark night swilling round
in our mouths? And why the dead?

Si me preguntais de donde vengo, tengo que
conversar con cosas rotas,
con utensilios demasiado amargos,
con grandes bestias a menudo podridas
y con mi acongojado corazon.
Should you ask me where I come from, I must
talk, with broken things,
with fairly painful utensils,
with great beasts turned to dust as often as not
and my afflicted heart.

These are not memories that have passed each

No son recuerdos los que se han cruzado
ni es la paloma amarillenta que duerme en el
olvido,
sino caras con lagrimas,
dedos en la garganta,
y lo que se desploma de las hojas:
la oscuridad de un dia transcurrido,
de un dia alimentado con nuestra triste sangre.
other
nor the yellowing pigeon asleep in our
forgetting;
these are tearful faces
and fingers down our throats
and whatever among leaves falls to the ground:
the dark of a day gone by
grown fat on our grieving blood.
He aqui violetas, golondrinas,
todo cuanto nos gusta y aparece
en las dulces tarjetas de larga cola
por donde se pasean el tiempo y la dulzura.
Here are violets, and here swallows,
all things we love and which inform
sweet messages seriatim
through which time passes and sweetness
passes.

Pero no penetremos mas alla de esos dientes,
no mordamos las cascaras que el silencio
acumula,
porque no se que contestar:
hay tantos muertos,
y tantos malecones que el sol rojo partia
y tantas cabezas que golpean los buques,
y tantas manos que han encerrado besos,
y tantas cosas que quiero olvidar.
We don't get far, though, beyond these teeth:
Why waste time gnawing the husk of silence?
I know not what to answer:
there are so many dead,
and so many dikes the red sun breached,
and so many heads battering hulls
and so many hands that have closed over kisses
and so many things that I want to forget

from: Neruda, P.; Selected Poems. A bilingual edition, edited by Natheniel Taru (reprint
1982).

[3] According to René de Costa, the dominant difference between the poems in the first
and the second Residencias is one of tone: the difference between describing an
experience and relating it. The second volume is instilled by an attitude that, in spite of
the fact that all things must die (the main theme of the first Residencia), life goes on and
is not so bad after all. Let's accept it as it is. Neruda would like us to forget all that
metaphysical posturing of the past. To forget, not to remember. To survive, not to
philosophize. To write a poetry of the present, of the circumstantial here and now, of life
not death. This seems to be Neruda's ambition in 'No Hay Olvido (Sonata)' (cf. de Costa,
p.76-8).
To forget, not to remember. Life, not death. A poetry of the present. If de Costa is right,
why would Zacher have chosen this poem? Probably the ten encounters and dedications
already provide (for) an answer. They make Zacher's view quite clear, very audible:
interpretations of 'old' music cannot be restricted to a reactionary historicism, the ideal of
the historically first rendition (cf. T.W. Adorno). Die Kunst einer Fuge can teach us how
interpretations of 'old' music are able to open up the revenue of surplus value in music.
That's what a score is: it does not merely fix 'the economic property of a focus, but
regulates the possibility of play, of divergences' (The Truth in Painting, p.6). The score
regulates the possibility of new interpretations, new performances, new encounters. Die
Kunst einer Fuge: receptive to the advent of the other. The ability to respond to the call of
the other. 'Sweet messages seriatim through which time passes and sweetness passes'.

[4] De Costa states that in the first two volumes of Residencia en la tierra Neruda is
speaking out against the elitist attitude of later modernism. Impurity, in contrast to
refined writing, the everyday as opposed to the extraordinary, the real as opposed to the
ideal. Neruda provides a voice for what is voiceless (cf. de Costa, p.84).
What about Zacher? Does he occupy a position similar to that of Neruda? First, he
provides with many voices what is in fact voiceless: the score. And second, he gives
voices to what was silenced in the dominant discourse, silenced in the dominant practice
of interpretation. A responsible musician is receptive to those who cannot speak for
themselves. Receptive. Zacher not only knows how to play, to provide with a voice what
is voiceless, he also knows how to listen, listen to the silent, concealed voices of the
other, listen to other voices. An attentive musician, allowing himself to be interrupted
because others are calling. He is invited to listen and he has accepted the invitation. The
musician becomes a listener, the listener a musician. These are not opposing positions
anymore.

[5] 'Si me preguntais en donde he estado debo decir 'Sucede'. 'If you should ask me where
I've been all this time, I have to say 'Things happen'. (Or should we opt for Zacher's
translation: 'When I am asked where I have been I must reply: it happens'. Or this one:
'Ask me where have I been and I'll tell you: 'Things keep on happening' (Belitt, p.44-45).
The Spanish text immediately gives rise to different translations, different meanings,
different time adjuncts.)
This sentence reminds me of Derrida's 'Letter to a Japanese Friend' in which he tries to
explain deconstruction. Deconstruction is not an act or operation. It does not return to an
individual subject. Deconstruction takes place, it is an event that does not await the
deliberation, consciousness, or organization of a subject. It deconstructs it-self. And it is
the 'it', which is not the reflexivity of an ego or of a consciousness, that bears the whole
enigma (cf. Wood and Bernasconi, p.3-4). 'Deconstruction takes place'. 'It happens'. The
first-person narrator is addressed as a self-conscious ego, someone who knows, someone
who took the initiative to go or hide. But he simply (apologetically?) replies: 'Sucede'.
Things happen. It happens. It takes place. No personal, conscious legitimization. No 'ego-
logical' explanation. It happens. However, one thing should be clear: 'The 'it' is not here
an impersonal thing that is opposed to some egological subjectivity'. Says Derrida.
Should Neruda agree? And should Zacher?
'Why waste time gnawing the husk of silence?'
Quatuor - J.S. Bach
[1] Gerd Zacher's Die Kunst einer Fuge. Johann Sebastian Bachs 'Contrapunctus I' in
zehn Interpretationen, opens with the interpretation 'Quatuor', dedicated to Johann
Sebastian Bach. Actually, Bach immediately appears in a double position, a double bind.
On one hand, he supplies the 'original' material for Zacher's entire project; on the other
hand, he is presented as 'only' one of the ten composers to whom 'Contrapunctus I' is
dedicated.

[2] 'Bach himself advocated and practiced organ playing in 'real Quatuor' on three
manuals and pedal'. Zacher then presents his first interpretation of this four-part fugue 'à
la manière de monsieur Bach'; Bach could have played the fugue in this registration.
Because each voice is assigned a different timbre, they can all be clearly distinguished
and their development easily followed. 'Quatuor' assumes that each voice in a fugue is
equally important; therefore, all should be actualized in an equal manner. The first
interpretation introduces, so to speak, the 'given subject'. 'This version represents the
most unambiguous exposition of the course taken by the voices. The listener recognizes
familiar things, but he is also able to perceive new features without hindrance. Although
still at home, he is already on his way'. The listener is still kept close to the 'source', close
to the dominant discourse or the dominant representations and ideas, close to the
conventional interpretation-praxis. It is the 'first' access to structures that are relatively
stable and from which the most venturesome interpretations will have to begin. So, the
listener is still at home.But he is also already on his way. How should we understand this
important addition? Each performative interpretation transforms that, which is
interpreted. Every interpretation contains a double instance of forgetting and
remembering; every interpretation adds something to preceding interpretations. However,
it also needs to ignore some aspects in its attention to others. Therefore, each repetition
(for instance, of a score) is by definition a transformation with the understanding that
what is being delivered (the score) is never a given, but rather a task. In other words, it is
more about the working than about the work. (Roland Barthes thinks of a text as a
'production' rather than as a 'product'.) Music is always at work; performances and
replays are not copies of an original. Re-enactments are not returns; they point us in a
forward direction. This post-structuralist notion of repetition is very different from a
nostalgic desire for repetition of the same; it breaks with any notion of the original and
the copy (cf. Game, p.184).
The listener recognizes 'Contrapunctus I'. He recognizes it, for instance, by the
conventional registration, but at the same time he hears it for the first time. Every
performance is marked by a certain singularity.

[3] 'Although still at home, he is already on his way'. Could there be more significance to
this? Could it relate, for example, to Zacher himself? By playing the fugue as faithfully as
possible to the original, Zacher seems to hold on to a way of thinking that highly regards
origins. At the same time, however, he challenges this approach, given that the work was
(probably) not written for church organ. Baroque expert, Gustav Leonhardt, has
established somewhat convincingly that Bach intended Die Kunst der Fuge for
harpsichord (cf. Leonhardt. cf. also Dickinson). Zacher, too, then is both still at home and
already on his way. However, he himself puts emphasis on his being at home. For
instance, with regard to his registration. In his liner notes, he speaks about 'a registration
following conventional models'. Only the alto voice that opens the fugue would allow for
a double reading. 'Only the alto, as the voice which begins the cycle, is given an element
to attract attention'. The registration of the alto is namely an Acoustic 8', formed by the
combinations of Nasat 2-2/3' and Octave 4'. In a first reading, the alto may count as male
belonging to the Principal family, i.e., as the highest of the three under parts. In a second
reading, the alto is the female contralto by the imaginary 8', the fundamental note, and,
therefore, the lower top part.
A spectral rumor resonates. The alto as a specter. Let's take a closer look at the
registration of the alto voice. An Acoustic 8', formed by the combinations of Nasat 2-2/3'
and Octave 4'. '4'' means that the notated note sounds one octave higher. '2-2/3'' refers to a
fifth (although not the first fifth in the overtone series). In other words, it is not the
fundamental that sounds, but only tones from the overtone spectrum. The overtones
produce the fundamental instead of the other way around. The '8'' is only present as a
sounding simulacrum. It is not really there. (When two tones are played, one also hears
two other tones; the tone that is the sum of the frequencies of the played tones and the
tone that is the result of subtraction. The frequency of 4' subtracted from the frequency of
2-2/3' gives 8'.) The Acoustic 8' only resonates in the play of Nasat 2-2/3' and Octave 4',
the play of the overtone spectrum. It is there, but it is not really there. A being there of an
absent one. A specter. Spectrality. Spectral music uses the overtones of a fundamental. 'If
there is something like spectrality, there are reasons to doubt this reassuring order of
presents (present-past, present-present en present-future) and, especially, the border
between the present, the actual or present reality of the present, and everything that can
be opposed to it: absence, non-presence, non-effectivity, inactuality, virtuality, or even
the simulacrum in general, and so forth', Derrida writes (Specters, p.39).

[4] But is the alto the only voice with a deviant registration? When listening to the piece,
one does not so much notice the deviating alto as the tenor voice. 'The tenor, as 'taille', is
played on the reeds'. But what kind of 'taille' is this? ('Taille' means 'tenor' in French
music up to the Baroque period, but it can also mean 'waist'.) Female? In our body-
centered culture, the waist is considered the region between the lower and upper part of
the body. Although an important link, the female waist in particular should contain the
least amount of volume. That is exactly the sound of the tenor in 'Quatuor': somewhat
shrill, but also thin. The least clear. Also the softest. In his written comments, Zacher
points out that the alto voice deviates from convention, but as one listens, the attention is
first attracted by the rather strange tenor. Zacher's registration implies a hierarchical
relationship between equal voices. At any rate, the four individual voices can be clearly
distinguished, an effect for which Zacher consciously strives. 'The voices are
characterized, so that each can at once be recognized by its tone color'. But by doing so,
is Zacher not 'already on his way' for the very reason that such a registration goes against
the accepted organ praxis?
A distinction can be made between heterogeneous and homogeneous polyphony (cf.
Zimmermann, p.218-228). Polyphony may be described as a musical style in which all
concurrent voices each possess a somewhat distinct individuality. This individuality is
most distinct in heterogeneous polyphony (e.g., Cantus Firmus), where all voices bear a
clear mark of their own. In contrast, homogeneous polyphony is mainly characterized by
a unification of melodic motives. This is the case when, for example, all the voices have
the same subject. (It seems remarkable that the polyphonic ideal of the individualization
of voices is undermined and dislocated from within by competing compositional
intentions in the urge to repetition and the joy of recognition.) The homogeneity of
motives is a distinguishing feature of a fugue. The individual development of the separate
voices seems subordinated to the harmonic structure.
It is in conformity with accepted organ praxis that a homogeneous piece asks for a
homogeneous registration. Zacher, however, employs a heterogeneous registration for
'Quatuor'. When listening to Zacher's 'Contrapunctus I' in real Quatuor, one is reminded
primarily of a four-part fugue with at least two heterogeneous constituents: on one hand,
the treble, alto and bass as homogeneously bundled voices, and the tenor as a kind of
heterogeneous solo-voice on the other. When we activate Zacher's comments from the
liner notes, we could even opt for a three-layered heterogeneity with the alto regarded as
a separate voice as well. However, the melodic material, i.e., the subject, is the same for
all voices and therefore does not give rise to such audible heterogeneity. Although still at
home, Zacher is already on his way. In a subtle way, Zacher introduces a homogeneous
piece of music to the field of heterogeneous polyphony. The 'most unambiguous
exposition' appears to contain what could be the most obscured ambiguity. In a sense,
'Quatuor' turns out to be just as deviant as the other nine interpretations.
No (-) Music - D. Schnebel
[1] Die Kunst einer Fuge. Organist Gerd Zacher plays Johann Sebastian Bach's
'Contrapunctus I' ten times. The project ends with a performance entitled, 'No (-) Music'.
No musical sounds. Not audible. 'No (-) Music' is based on the rests in bars 71 and 72
where 'everything audible vanishes'. 'Bach says, 'In all devotional [andächtig] music God
is constantly present in his grace'. The German word 'andächtig' (devout) is derived from
the term 'denken' (to think). Thinking must accordingly be considered as a gift bearing a
promise (even, when no music is sounding)'. Zacher appeals to our imaginative powers,
where our attention to the music no longer needs to be fuelled by actual musical sounds.
Just a few motions (is Zacher conducting here?) bring the imaginary music to life.
Unconventional motions. (Pictures portraying these motions are included in the CD
jacket.) 'The gestures themselves ... go beyond the usual indicative movements in
conducting practice with professional musicians: here the signs are given in such a way
that they evoke memories of the nine times repeated music. One can hear in one's head'.
Zacher appears from behind the organ, goes into the presbytery and begins to mime, to
dance, to gesticulate, as though he were a conductor without musicians. His gestures
speak in music. Unconventional gestures. But not arbitrary. The motions of his arms are
determined by an imaginary placement of the four voices in four different directions,
showing the skeleton of the fugue without music. Often, Zacher has a surprised look on
his face: where will the theme turn up this time? But this is just play; seemingly
improvising, he accurately represents the course of the voices in his pantomime.

[2] 'No (-) Music'. Dedicated to the work of German composer, Dieter Schnebel. The
silence of this tenth version presents the possibility of a double reading. First, - although
Zacher makes no mention of it - 'No (-) Music' could bear a reference to Schnebel's
composition Nostalgie: Solo für 1 Dirigenten ['Nostalgia: Solo for One Conductor']. This
is a (musical) performance of at least ten minutes where the gestures of the conductor
indicate an interval of time, bringing the music to an imaginary existence. Nostalgie is an
'elaboration of a conductor solo of Visible Music I. The (choreo-)graphically represented
score indicates many different conductors' motions: the actual conducting (cueing,
keeping time), the converting of the music into motions, and, also, the sheer painting of
the music which is hardly practiced. The conductor acts, in part, entirely for himself and,
in part, for and with imaginary ensembles nearby or from afar. Thus, this self-projection,
this solo that is arranged in such grand fashion, brings about a purely gestural music
where sounds have been lost. 'In other words, nostalgia' (Schnebel in: Metzger, 1980,
p.124, my translation).
Second, 'No (-) Music' can be grafted onto Schnebel's MO-NO, Musik zum Lesen [MO-
NO, Music to Read], which is also a silent project. MO-NO is a book that consists of
images that may lead to imaginary music. 'This reading-book and picture-book offers
neither literature nor simply art for the eye, confined to the page. Rather MO-NO is
music, a music to read; more precisely: music for a reader. The reading of the book is
intended to stimulate music in the listener's head. In reading the music he is alone: mono;
as such he becomes the performer of music, makes music for himself' (Schnebel, 1969,
cover text). The book contains texts that incite the listener to listen to sounds that enter
'from outside' (wind, voices, rain, birds). Additionally, it describes sounds that need only
be imagined, a product of the reader's mind. The book contains notes but these should not
be considered in a conventional way, as when they refer to musical sounds. The notes
need merely be looked at in order to lead to imaginary landscapes. 'So the book sets out
to lead the reading hearer (the hearing reader) to the music of sounds which surrounds us,
and also to bring him into direct contact with that imaginary music which always arises
within us, from sounds both real and unreal' (Schnebel, 1969, cover text).

[3] MO-NO makes one become aware of sounds around us, outside, in one's immediate
surrounding, in oneself. MO-NO is about music, but also about what we cannot
immediately call music but nonetheless are able to approach as music, i.e., sounds in our
memory, in our head, language, conversations. Among other things, MO-NO's intention
is to make one aware of these sounds, to absorb them with attention, to listen to them, to
realize that they do not stop when we sleep or are unable to pay attention to them. What
could the consequences of MO-NO be for 'No (-) Music'? Is 'Contrapunctus I' still
resounding in the tenth version where there is only 'stillness'? It mixes with other sounds
as it still resounds in our minds. Do they interfere with it, or, rather, do they add a new,
unexpected dimension? 'Contrapunctus I' is not only (not even at first instance) 'read'
throughout Schnebel's work. It is precisely on account of Schnebel that we can hear
'Contrapunctus I' in our own version, connected to our impressions from the previous
nine interpretations, connected to other favorite versions that we know, to ambient
sounds, to non-musical experiences and memories, etc. Every listener creates his own
private version and context of 'Contrapunctus I'. An endless dissemination? (However,
the question could be asked as to how coercive, how prescribing, how directive, Zacher's
performance of 'No (-) Music' is.)

[4] In his explanatory notes to Die Kunst einer Fuge, Zacher refers to another connotation
of 'No (-) Music'. 'No (-) Music' also refers to the centuries-old, classical Japanese
(music) theatre called Nô (a word that is written with the Chinese character for 'being
able to', 'art', 'talent'). He writes: 'In Japanese Nô Theatre, all audible and visible events
are arranged according to the syllables Jo (slow), Ha (stillness, meditation, presence), and
Kiu (quick)'. Zacher adds that both the theme and the entire fugue unfold according to
this tripartition. However, there is another path to follow. Nô is a combination of modest
optical art, dialogues, and heterophonic music. The music is usually performed by eight
choir singers and three or four musicians, with the intention, for the most part, of creating
a certain atmosphere. Dance and dialogues are generally performed by a leading actor,
the shite ('he who does') and a supporting actor, the waki ('side'). While the expensively
dressed, often masked shite has the entire stage at his disposal, his more modestly decked
out counterplayer is relegated to the right section of the stage. The supporting actor can
never play the lead. He remains the subordinate figure who finds himself literally in the
margin; the waki is the margin. The waki seems to be a companion (comes) who supports
his master (dux) as he performs his heroic deeds. At times, he describes the situation and
asks questions to incite the shite to tell stories, to sing and dance. The shite cannot
operate without the waki! The latter enables the performing and acting of the shite. What
seems secondary, a supporting role, a side, becomes a prerequisite for the actions of the
leading actor. The secondary, the marginal, is essential and necessary for the furthering of
the plot. This is not to say that the secondary has now become primary; the waki can
never become a shite. But the distinctions between the marginal and the central, the
inessential and the essential are subverted or at least less clear.
Nô is the art of leaving out. A meager set - the only permanent decoration is a painting of
a pine-tree on a wooden panel behind the stage - the near absence of props, the minimal
gestures, the stylized dance movements and the measured singing give rise to a
sublimated aesthetics. Small changes in the position of the shite's mask suggest different
facial expressions, the lifting of a hand indicates crying, a slight touch on the sleeve of a
partner signals a fervent embrace and it takes only five steps to cross an ocean. Most
gestures exemplify the text and represent actions and feelings. They are never realistic;
rather, they are symbolic and they are subject to strict conventions. In other words, they
largely appeal to the spectator's imagination. The play carries him into a world where
dream and reality intermingle. Here, a comparison with the motions of a conductor urges
itself upon us. A conductor directs the musical plot with numerous modest gesticulations
and subtle nods. Bound to conventions. Symbolic. It could be questioned whether he can
be identified with the shite or the waki. Can he be considered as the driving force behind
the music, or does he function in the margin, at all times subordinate to the sounding
result? And what if there is no sounding result as is the case in 'No (-) Music'? When the
conductor and the audience no longer communicate through musicians, when the
communication becomes 'immediate', the audience needs to resort to its own imagination
for the most part. Does this increase the involvement of the conductor or does his
participation at least become more clear? In 'No (-) Music', Zacher indicates the course of
the voices through his gestures. In this sense, his gestures are less abstract (abstruse) -
and also less conventional - than 'normal' conducting gestures. They direct our conception
of the non-sounding music. Still, the spectator (listener) will need to rely on his own
memories, fantasy, and imagination. The role of the conductor remains undecidable, shite
and waki, (n)either shite (n)or waki.

[5] There is yet another way to 'read' the tenth interpretation. Zacher does not only want
to emphasize an inner perception of music. In an attempt to question (to deconstruct) the
hierarchical opposition between the auditive and the visual (the musical and the extra-
musical?) that is active and obvious in music, he directs our attention to the subordinate
visual aspect of music. Zacher also seems to foreground the production of music in
performance, the articulation of bodily energy. This notion is strengthened by the fact
that the church organ has continuously obscured his body. 'No (-) Music' is the first
(visual) contact with the musician and makes the muscular movements of arms and
fingers in this interpretation, as well as retroactively in the other interpretations, almost
palpable. They were concealed up until then. However, in this performance, the visual
comes to the aid of the auditive and sends it in the direction desired by Zacher (more or
less). A paradox. Precisely at the moment where the listener needs to concentrate most
intensely on the music - because 'nothing' is sounding - Zacher introduces the visual to
the music. Although 'No (-) Music' is still about music, still about sounds, still in music,
the focus of attention shifts to the visual aspect in/of music. Just like MO-NO.
Visual features of music. For example, the score. Zacher refrains from looking at the
score as a transparent and neutral intermediary; rather, he looks at it from the viewpoint
of its own materiality. His article, 'Der verdrehte Baß [the distorted bass] in
Contrapunctus I aus der Kunst der Fuge' is dedicated to John Cage, the composer who
taught Zacher 'to enjoy the eyes'. The article campaigns against those who substitute the
three C-clefs and one F-clef from the original score by G-clefs and F-clefs because they
are easier to read: 'The translation to modern keys is already a matter of interpretation and
conceals the intention of the author. When Die Kunst der Fuge is played after this
example, one takes one's departure from a revised score and attempts to interpret it.
However, all that has come down to us from Bach is the original score, which explains
more. In fact, the old keys stand in direct connection to the structure of the thusly-notated
composition'. ('There is a well-grounded suspicion that the decline of the multiple
counterpoint is connected to the decline of the ability to read old keys, because these keys
specifically represent the ability to hear the different voices') (Zacher in: Metzger, 1993,
p.7 and p.11, my translation). (Incidentally, in his analysis of 'Contrapunctus I', Alan
Dickinson also assumes that Bach wished to demonstrate 'the inner, informative logic of
his new fugal series to the eye' (Dickinson, p.117).) By way of illustration, Zacher returns
to the idiosyncratic version of the subject as it appears in bars 32-36 in the bass (cf.
Contrapunctus I). Ultimately, he concludes that this must be a dux. He comes to a
plausible explanation based on visual grounds, viz., the optical relation between the bass
in bars 32-36 and the tenor in bars 40-44. When the tenor is notated in a clef other than C,
this optical similarity disappears. With this, also an analytic understanding disappears
that affects a performance.
As a matter of interest, Zacher cautions against the assumption that he (or Bach) would
place the auditory second to the visual aspect. 'It is clear that the aesthetic pleasure with
regard to the score is of immediate use for the composition: eyes, fingertips and the ear
collaborate in a complex manner ... What is brought to light in bars 29-43 is a
composition method, which activates the properties of the score for the sounding
expression of the piece. The introduction of optic counterparts brings about acoustic
counterparts, which could not have been established with conventional means. They are
only challenged by the risk of 'extra-musical' components. I put the word 'extra-musical'
in quotes because notes represent music de facto and actually sound in the perception of
the inner ear' (Zacher in: Metzger, 1993, p.9, my translation).
Zacher points out that notation is not a neutral code. It only seems neutral because we
have grown accustomed to a connection between music and writing with respect to most
Western music. The illusion of neutrality is maintained by failing to stress the notation's
own materiality (among other things by making use of a typography that does not attract
much attention, something that many 20th century composers have since changed). To
Zacher, notation is not an automated plan for communication or an unquestionable
diagram, but an area of invention that leads a secret, shadowy life behind the sounding
music. Notation, when regarded as an intermediary between a sender and a receiver,
becomes an essential, rather than a secondary matter. Zacher puts more emphasis on the
materiality of notated text, at times in separation from its function as a means that allows
us entrance to musical sounds. His ideas move between attention to the materiality of the
score and its function. On one hand, the score refers to something different than itself; on
the other hand, it can never fully erase its own trace as material inscription. It is a useful
and necessary, but also dangerous and imperfect aid. A supplement. It is supposed to
represent, but it may (will) also transform that which it represents. This is what Zacher
points at in his campaign against the modern notation methods of 'Contrapunctus I'. Thus,
Zacher arrives at an insoluble exteriority with regard to the notation; it is an outside in the
inside of musical discourse. The outside (the material exteriority, the score) has always
already affected the integrity of the inside. It is not something that is added subsequently
to something else; rather, it is always already outside of itself in an inside, an inside that
is separated from itself at the same time (in the delay to immediate presence). It is not a
representation of music that could be given to us in independence of this outside (cf.
IJsseling, p.58). With his attention to a particular visual aspect of music, i.e., the score,
Zacher deconstructs the boundary between inside and outside, between the intra-musical
and the extra-musical (cf. Music Is a Text).
Gerd Zacher's Kunst einer
Fuge [Art of a Fugue]
'It is necessary to read and reread those in whose lines I mark out and read a text
simultaneously almost identical and entirely other' (Positions, p.4).
'A masterpiece always moves, by definition, in the manner of a ghost' (Specters, 18).
'I had already thought for a long time to explore a musical work from the past from the
inside: a creative exploration, which is at the same time an analysis' (Luciano Berio in
reference to Sinfonia)

[1] The German organist and composer Gerd Zacher calls one of his projects from 1968
Die Kunst einer Fuge. Zacher plays the 'Contrapunctus I' from Bach's Die Kunst der
Fuge ten times in succession in ten different ways on church organ without changing a
single note of the original text. (Only once does Zacher deviate from the original score.
Towards the end of the seventh variation he plays F - E - G - F# instead of the prescribed
F - E - G - F, an allusion to the musical spelling B-A-C-H.) Zacher's first interpretation
follows Bach's 'text' as accurately as possible, a 'close reading'. (In Quatuor - J.S. Bach it
is described exactly how accurate this 'first reading' is.) Next, Zacher takes the
'Contrapunctus I' on a journey through the history of music and re-reads it nine times.
Each time a different analysis. Nine times an allusion to already existing compositions.
Nine times dedeicated to a different composer. After the 'Quatuor' for Bach, follows
'Crescendo', dedicated to Robert Schumann, 'Alt-Rhapsodie', dedicated to Johannes
Brahms, 'Harmonies', dedicated to György Ligeti, 'Timbres-durées', dedicated to Olivier
Messiaen, 'Interferenser', dedicated to Bengt Hambraeus, 'Improvisation ajoutée',
dedicated to Mauricio Kagel, 'Density 1,2,3,4' dedicated to Edgard Varèse, 'Sons brisés'
dedicated to Juan Allende-Blin, and 'No (-) Music', dedicated to Dieter Schnebel.
Following the terminology in Simon Critchley's The Ethics of Deconstruction with regard
to a deconstructive praxis, this project can be understood as a strategy of 'double reading'
(or better: a tenfold reading). The first reading repeats the dominant interpretation of the
text, while the others, arising from a repetition that is implicit in the first, transgress the
order of 'commentary' and show how the text is divided in itself. This reading and writing
strategy reveals how the closure of a text is irreducibly flawed. Deconstruction. The text
is shown to possess certain breaks, which are the marks of an alterity that the text is
unable to reduce. Deconstructive reading continually finds patterns of dislocation at work
within texts, opening up multiple lines of thought that cannot be assembled as one.
'Within the undecidability of a double reading, a certain decision or event announces
itself, a heteronomous moment of alterity that interrupts the text and maintains itself as an
interruption or blind spot within discourse' (cf. Critchley, p.61 and p.74-6). Die Kunst
einer Fuge shows how deconstruction, i.e., the instability within a network of signs, can
be used to turn a text against its dominant reading. It is a series of interpretations that
affirm play instead of deciphering a truth or an original performance.
[2] A tenfold reading. In the first reading, 'the voice of the same' repeats Bach; it is a
commentary that let us hear how Bach's work sounds. It counts on a very strong
probability of consensus regarding the performance of the score. It seems to unveil,
reflect or reproduce the text, a performance without any risky initiative. Nevertheless,
such a 'repetition' already causes a dislocation, a shifting or transference, a heterogeneity
since it always takes place in a particular context ('Although still at home, he is already
on his way'). This commentary is already an interpretation. Already, an alterity opens in
the repetition; repetition and first time. Each time it is the event itself.
The readings that follow reveal the voices of thers. These voices say something different
than Bach and let us hear, so to speak, how the work does not sound. In a sense, the nine
interpretations following 'Quatuor' violate the repetition and the commentary of the first
reading. Upon listening to these versions, the listener who is familiar with Bach's music,
feels alienated and deprived. Zacher remains loyal to Bach's work in that he doesn't
change a single note. At the same time, however, Bach is very far away during some of
the extremely radical deviating interpretations. Zacher's rendering, therefore, remains
inside and outside the composition at the same time.
He starts out by playing the fugue recognizably enough to make an audience feel
comfortable to a high degree with the result that the following nine interpretations
undoubtedly induce an equal degree of discomfort. The familiar suddenly becomes
disconcertingly alien; what seemed close turns out to be infinitely distant. This is because
the text is dislocated (deconstructed) from the inside. With all his respect for the 'original'
text, Zacher nonetheless breaks in unabashedly, reforms it and puts it in contexts whose
differences result in a maximum distance. Zacher accurately follows different paths and
ways out, labyrinthine roads that present themselves in and out of the text, the
'Contrapunctus I'. He makes connections that are 'literally in the text' but that disconnect
its conventional ties. He does not bring the text to its ultimate fulfilment (if that is at all
possible in music), but rather, to an abyss, to a space where the other can be met.

[3] In the explanatory notes of the CD recording of Die Kunst einer Fuge, Zacher justifies
his method to a degree. 'Bach specified nothing further regarding The Art of Fugue -
neither details of instrumentation, dynamic markings (which were a concern of the next
generation), the system of tuning (equal temperament is merely a supposition),
articulation, nor many other factors affecting the music. He put together ('composed')
only the naked structure. Putting together implies comparison, which can give rise to
another, unforeseeable result'.
Zacher makes optimal use of the possibilities offered to him by the score, precisely
lacking added information. Where Bach's inheritance is unspecified, Zacher adds his own
commentary. (But is it 'his own' commentary? I will return to this.) What is omitted by
Bach is the condition allowing Die Kunst einer Fuge to be realized by Zacher. What is
missing in Bach's delivery of the score propels a multiplicity of possible interpretations.
Multiplicity tied to an absence.
Zacher's project inscribes certain 'remarks' that touch upon Bach's text in the angles and
corners of 'Contrapunctus I', both within it and outside it. But what is the status of its
relation to the first piece of The Art of Fugue? What does it believe to be adding to 'that'
text? Die Kunst einer Fuge is not a simple commentary on 'Contrapunctus I': it is in
'Contrapunctus I'. It engages the listener in the process of textuality - in the play of
meanings. It is not so much demonstrating textuality as it is inviting the listener to
playfully enter the either/or between several readings (the ten interpretations) or texts (the
confrontation of 'Contrapunctus I' with a specific work by one of the composers used by
Zacher). (Viewed from the (traditional) linear history of music, it becomes less important
to categorize Bach, Brahms, Kagel, Schnebel, etc. It is no longer about designating a
space to any of these composers; I want to stress the notion of a continuous shifting
(différance). It is about the possibility of having two (or more) spaces or times connecting
with each other ('time is out of joint'). Bach's 'Contrapunctus I' occupies a space that is
independent of, for example, Messiaen's or Schnebel's work but the conjunction opens up
an non-chronological musical logic. With that, Die Kunst einer Fuge is a good example
of intermusicality.) The result of Die Kunst einer Fuge is not a new unified reading or an
alternative unity. The different positions (commentaries, interpretations) are not just
alternatives, as a pluralistic view would have it, but are interrelated and embedded. The
difference between polysemy and dissemination (cf. Dissemination).
Zacher leaves the score intact, but lets hear how the musical language allows for
dislocation, admits the other or has to admit the other, on account of its nature and
textuality, while staying close to the score. (He does so in ten different ways but there
could undoubtedly have been a hundred, which is a further indication of the fundamental
openness of a text as well as an illustration of the idea that no text can ever fully be
deconstructed. Die Kunst einer Fuge presents and pretends no closeness, but a peut-etre,
a 'can be' or a 'may be'. The suggested possibilities offer a proposal. They are an open
corpus, always lacking conclusion.) There is here a remarkable agreement with a
statement in Derrida's text, 'At This Very Moment In This Work Here I Am'. Derrida
indicates that the method of dislocating should be 'in such a way that the text holds
together, but also that the interruptions 'remain' numerous (one alone is never enough).
One sole interruption in a discourse does not do its work and thus allows itself to be
immediately re-appropriated' (At This Very Moment, p.28). It is precisely the multiplicity
of readings that makes us understand the functioning of textuality, the impossibility of
fixing meaning, the lapsing of a dominant discourse. Zacher offers a range of
interpretations, which together have the advantage of not fixing the music in one
interpretation, thereby in effect warranting dissemination. Instead of searching for unity,
attention is shifted to the plurality of the text; there is no question of attempting to present
any kind of unity. Each reading is partial by definition. It is an investigation of a part of
the inexhaustible possibilities of each text (texte pluriel).
The heterogeneity of a text originates in re-reading, in repetition. Being capable of
iterability is a property of every text (cf. Context). However, an active effort on the part
of the reader (the listener, the performer) is required, who needs to see the other in the
repetition and to participate in the act of alteration. An interaction needs to take place
between text and reader during which the difference of the text from itself becomes
apparent in the reading. Not a difference between (several interpretations), but a
difference within (one text). In other words, this difference is not what distinguishes one
identity from another. Far from constituting a text's identity, it is rather what subverts the
very idea of identity, infinitely deferring the possibility of adding up the sum of a text's
past or meanings and reaching a totalized, integrated whole. Difference is what makes all
totalization of the identity of a self or the meaning of a text impossible (cf. Johnson, p.4-
5).
More than in language, one becomes aware from the onset that meaning of and within
music cannot be posited unambiguously. Still, this observation does not render the above
comments on the heterogeneity of a musical text redundant. First, it is important to
realize that multiple interpretations of one and the same musical piece are only possible
because the musical text cannot correspond with itself (the score is always heterogeneous
by definition). Second, there is desire in musical praxis to arrive at performances that do
as much justice as possible to the way the composer 'intended' his composition (cf.
Gustav Leonhardt's The Art of Fugue. Bach's Last Harpsichord Work, in which he
attempts to prove that Bach wrote Die Kunst der Fuge for harpsichord). A desire for
clarity, a desire to lay down. It is a desire that goes against the working of a text by
definition.

[4] The nine interpretations that follow 'Quatuor' may be violating this first reading. Let's
call them 'contaminations', the stain or poisoning by the contagion of some improper
body (bodies). But how can Zacher make the other (in this case, the language of other
composers) resound in Bach's music without violating the text (the score)? A possible
answer might reside in the functioning of the text itself. The other can only resound when
the text is unbound and, on that account, open to the other in such a way that it is not so
much a matter of rising above the text as it is a different approach to it from within its
own possibilities (cf. At This Very Moment, p.27).
The thoughts or self-expression of a composer never completely correspond with the
score he ultimately writes down or the resulting sounding notes. The musical language is
never a transparent representation of his thoughts; it escapes (on that account) his control
to a certain degree. For example, his music appears in a different context each time. The
suggestiveness of music, music as an uncertain sign, makes this unavoidable, but it is
precisely what bestows vigor upon music. Because Bach expresses himself in musical
language (has to express himself in some kind of language), his work partially escapes
his thoughts. Trying to follow him loyally in an attempt to reconstruct his 'true intentions'
necessarily means being disloyal to the medium Bach used to express himself. The
heteronomy of the musical language enables a composition to appear in ever-changing
contexts and adopt new meanings. Would Bach have expressed himself in music if he
had been seeking a completely adequate and transparent expression of his thoughts?
Could he?
(Musical) language itself is always already open to the other. However, it is up to the
reader (the performer, the listener) to make this otherness visible, audible and palpable.
Derrida on this: 'Your reading is thus no longer merely a simple reading that deciphers
the sense of what is already found in the text; it has a limitless (ethical) initiative' (At This
Very Moment, p.25). Derrida immediately adds two asides to this statement. Even if one
cannot read beyond the dominant interpretation, a certain dislocation will still have taken
place because the context will be different with each reading ('although still at home, he
is already on his way'). Besides, the responsibility of the reader does not imply any
autonomy in any way. The reader is always bound to the text he is reading. It is the
heterogeneity of the text that enables different readings.

[5] Die Kunst der Fuge already harbors the other. The musical language already bears an
opening to the other. Still, (or all the more so), Derrida makes an ethical appeal on the
reader (the performer) to invoke the other in the act of reading. Is Zacher opening our
ears for 'the other' in 'Contrapunctus I' through his ten different interpretations? The
signifier - 'Contrapunctus I', here - remains the same throughout, but a choice for one
interpretation would unjustifiably neutralize its textuality, its heterogeneity as text. To
want to hold on to one single meaning is both violent and impotent: it destroys the
heterogeneity while at the same time prohibiting entrance into that very heterogeneity (cf.
Dissemination, p.98-99). Die Kunst einer Fuge offers the opportunity for exploring new
listening perspectives with specific attention to the melodic (for example, 'Alt-
Rhapsodie' and 'Improvisation ajoutée'), the harmonic ('Harmonies' and 'Interferenser') or
the rhythmical ('Timbres-durées' and 'Density 1,2,3,4'). ('It is thus not a question of
arrangements: none of the original text has been altered. Rather have the techniques of
interpretation been employed: division among the departments of the organ, registration,
articulation, tempo, voicing - even if sometimes they are developed to the point of
extreme clarity'). Zacher presents his project as an exploratory expedition: 'Entdecken
heisst, die Decke wegnehmen vor den Augen und Ohren' ['To discover means taking
away the covers before the eyes and ears'].

[6] Is it not deconstruction's aim, its effect, to reveal the heterophony of a text, and is this
not precisely what Zacher is doing? He calls upon Psalms, chapter 62, verse 12: 'Once
God has spoken; twice have I heard this'. Zacher refers to the Jewish principle that is
embedded in the verse. The word of God is (perhaps) univocal; however, every text is
open to multiple (maybe unlimited) interpretations. In the section On Deconstruction, it is
established how Derrida shows that words are caught in chains of words (homophony) or
chains of meanings (homonymy) that cannot not go beyond the author's intention (cf.
Dissemination and Pharmakos). An author may overlook or ignore certain meanings or
associations that do function in the text or in the act of reading; he does not control the
language. But are these resounding 'new' meanings or word associations within or outside
of the text? Derrida implicitly raises the question of whether such limits can be drawn at
all. 'In a word, we do not believe that there exists, in all rigor, a ... text, closed upon
itself, complete with its inside and outside' (Dissemination, p.130). The lack of the
system is not to blame here. It is precisely the condition of a text as text to enable an
opening to other texts, words, etc. Once written, a text becomes irrevocably exposed to a
never ending play of meanings, a grafting of pieces of the text onto other texts, making
connections that the author did not actually intend, changing of context, implanting other
texts, etc.
Analogous to Derrida's philosophy, Zacher's work causes us to experience how
'Contrapunctus I' can lead us into a labyrinth of an (in principle) infinite series of
references to compositions and specific composing techniques, as well as to philosophy
and theoretical discussions about interpretation (Die Kunst einer Fuge is dedicated to
Adorno and particularly follows his text 'Bach defended against his Devotees'), to poetry
and from poetry on to Chile (Die Kunst einer Fuge contains a reference to Chilean poet
Pablo Neruda). Roughly, two paths can, therefore, be distinguished along which the
dissemination in Die Kunst einer Fuge takes place; a musical and a discursive path
which, however, are only distinguished analytically here for the sake of convenience. The
heterophony is first of all a property of the text itself, (the score of) Bach's 'Contrapunctus
I'. But Zacher makes the heterophony heard by having the specters of other composers
haunt him. Zacher's Die Kunst einer Fuge 'is constituted by specters of which it becomes
the host and which it assembles in the haunted community of a single body' (Specters,
p.133).

[7] Zacher can be compared to the god, Hermes. In Greek mythology, Hermes is the
messenger, the intermediary, the one who transmits something that someone before him
had already thought, spoken or written down (cf. Plato's Supplements). Zacher seems to
occupy the same position as Hermes did, only in a much more diffuse way. He delivers
Bach's text 'Contrapunctus I' in a way Bach himself can no longer do: in and as music. He
also functions as intermediary between the listeners and the gods who now carry the
names of Schumann, Kagel, and Varèse. Zacher's position is, therefore, complex from the
beginning; he transmits multiple messages at the same time.
Both intermediary positions have one thing in common: Zacher's voice seems
permanently absent in his own work, always hidden behind the voices of other
composers. But the composers are also absent. The voice of Brahms is heard in the
absence of Zacher's voice, which in turn resounds in the absence of Brahms' voice.
Whichever voice one hears, it always seems that of the other (cf. Neel, p.14-17). On
closer inspection, we cannot automatically presuppose a clearly traceable 'ego' in the text
on account of Zacher's name above the title by which the work is elevated, so to speak, to
his ownership. It is unclear (undecidable) as to whether Zacher speaks to us through
others or that the other composers speak to us through Zacher. To reduce the textuality of
Die Kunst einer Fuge to the proper name of Gerd Zacher is to foreclose the opening
announced by what may be called a 'polylogue'.
However, Derrida also points out that Hermes' role is more complicated than presented
above. Hermes is not only a messenger, but also Zeus' substitute when he is absent. As
substitute, he is not only capable of representing and repeating (the words of) Zeus, but
he is also in a position to completely replace him. Here, Hermes' paradoxical position
comes to light. On one hand, he is 'the other' in his relation to Zeus and Zeus' message.
On the other hand, he adopts as it were, the figure of the one whose presence he
establishes through his absence; Hermes becomes 'the same' as Zeus. In supplementing
Zeus, Hermes at once becomes the other and the same, opposed to and corresponding
with Zeus. With the distinction, the messenger imitates the supreme god (cf.
Dissemination, p.90-3. Cf. Plato's Supplements). Zacher is also amidst a similar play of
shiftings, of non-identity and equivocality. Zacher is a messenger; he substitutes for other
composers in their absence while he establishes their presence through their absence as
their representative. He takes a previously existing text by Bach and acts as if nine other
composers read the text from the context of their own compositions. (It could be asked
whether the text actually exists before Zacher - or anyone else - does something with it.)
Zacher then forwards this to the listener in a 'neutral' way. However, Zacher is, of course,
much more than a subordinate messenger and substitute. He constructed the message; he
composed it. The readings of 'Contrapunctus I' by Schumann, Kagel or Varèse did not
exist before Zacher handed them over to the listener. Not in that format. He is not a
neutral, innocent transmitter. Zacher interprets his composers of choice, their works and
methods, and transforms them by doing so. Just like he transforms 'Contrapunctus I'.
Zacher is both performer and composer. A composer also in the literal sense: 'com-
ponere' means putting or bringing together. It is an extremely opaque play where the one
who is speaking is never clear: Zacher, one of the nine composers, or Bach, after all. Or
is it a poly-stylistic heterophony in which different musical languages are simultaneously
expressed?

[8] Ten 'interpretations' of Bach's 'Contrapunctus I' from The Art of the Fugue. Ten
encounters. I enter at length into five of them: Quatuor - J.S. Bach, Alt-Rhapsodie - J.
Brahms, Timbres-durées - O. Messiaen, Sons brisés - J. Allende-Blin, and No (-) Music -
D. Schnebel. And you can listen to them as well.
The Truth In Teaching
From Prof. Pasler I learned that as students interrogate themselves, taking a critical
stance toward the sources of their work as musicians, they should be encouraged to
become aware of the possibility that theoretical discourses current in other arts,
humanities and science disciplines could have important implications for their work. As
part of CSEP, I began to realize that the fields of critical theory and cultural studies,
including the emerging areas of feminist musicology, ethnic studies, 'queer theory' and
other post-colonial and post-modern discourses, were becoming central to an
understanding, not only of what the students were doing, but of my own activity as
composer, improvisor, and my emerging role as scholar (George E. Lewis in Zorn, p.96).

[1] A Ph.D. dissertation on deconstruction in music. Five times around or beside music.
Five 'chapters' on the philosophy of Jacques Derrida and on different parts of the musical
body. Five. Or better, four plus one. This one. This is the one. Connected to and separate
from the other four. Separate because it starts from a different institution, a different
discourse, a different plateau. In the other four parts of the site I relate to, react to, join
some musicological works; this one is in some way connected with the pedagogical
institution, with texts on education. What keeps me busy here is the possible relationships
between deconstruction, music and pedagogy. What can deconstruction mean for music
education? How can deconstruction be connected with music education? How is
deconstruction always already connected with, that is, present within music education?
Can we rethink music education through deconstruction? How can or how does it
influence music teachers, students, and the teaching material? These questions will
occupy me here. They will lead me/us. They will take me/us on a journey of which the
destination is unknown. Perhaps we will never even reach a destination. For example,
when we consider the destination of this journey as the clear and unambiguous answers to
the questions posed. In this sense, it is already quite different from conventional ideas on
education whose criteria of success are determined mostly by calculable needs or
outcomes and calculated use (cf. Blake et al., p.147-8). Does this mean, then, that we will
not learn anything from this journey? Or, is this already a first concealed opening to a
different kind of learning, a different kind of education in which deconstruction is
present(ed)? I will return to this. Later. At another place.

[2] Why a section on deconstruction and music education? Why turn to a discourse, why
come to an assemblage that is quite far removed from the musicological? Why this 'hors
d'oeuvre', this side dish or this ring? The answer is, first of all, personal and private. My
probing deeply into deconstruction, deeply into the philosophy of Derrida (which is not
the same), seems to influence many different fields of my (musical) life. Deconstruction
is not something that stops at the borders of my academic work, at the borders of the
university campus, or when I turn off my computer and play the piano. I realize how
deconstruction influences my way of teaching jazz music (that is to say, how
deconstruction is present and 'at work' in teaching jazz music), how it influences the
teaching material I am composing for my students, and how it thus influences my
students as well.

[3] 'If deconstruction takes place everywhere, it takes place, where there is something'
(Letter to a Japanese Friend, p.4). Something. Just something. This means that
deconstruction is therefore not limited to meaning or to text in the bookish sense of the
word. In many different places Derrida warns us against the idea that deconstruction is
'only' a particular reading strategy of philosophical texts. 'I would say that the most
effective deconstruction is that which is not limited to discursive texts and certainly not to
philosophical texts, even though personally - I speak of myself as one agent among others
of deconstructive work - and for reasons related to my own history, I feel more at ease
with philosophical and literary texts', Derrida says (Brunette & Wills, p.14). And he
continues: 'Beyond an institution, the academic institution, for example, deconstruction is
operating, whether we like it or know it or not, in fields that have nothing to do with what
is specifically philosophical or discursive, whether it be politics, the army, the economy,
or all the practices said to be artistic' (Brunette & Wills, p.14-5). Elsewhere he relates this
more explicitly to the pedagogical institution: 'Deconstruction - or at least what I
proposed under this name that could just as well had been another - thus is, in principle,
always oriented to the teaching system and its functioning in general' (Politiques de la
philosophie, p.65, my translation).
One more station. In The Truth in Painting, Derrida addresses the necessity of
deconstruction: 'Following the consistency of its logic, it attacks not only the internal
edifice, both semantic and formal, of philosophemes, but also what one would be wrong
to assign to it as its external housing, its extrinsic conditions of practice: the historical
forms of its pedagogy, the social, economic or political structures of this pedagogical
institution. It is because deconstruction interferes with solid structures, 'material'
institutions, and not only with discourses or signifying representations, that it is always
distinct from an analysis or a 'critique'. And in order to be pertinent, deconstruction works
as strictly as possible in that place where the supposedly ‘internal’ order of the
philosophical is articulated by (internal and external) necessity with the institutional
conditions and forms of teaching' (The Truth in Painting, p.19, my italics).
Could we substitute here 'music' for 'philosophemes' and 'the musical' for 'the
philosophical'? Could we extend this 'necessity of deconstruction' to the realm of music
education, in particular the teaching of jazz music? This is what I wish to examine here
on this part of the site. However, in order to do so, I have to go beyond Derrida's
writings. First, because he has not written anything about music (education), and second,
because he writes in only very guarded terms and rudimentary sketches about the practice
of teaching. How does deconstruction enter the classrooms of a music school where jazz
music is taught? How can and does it influence thought on jazz (education) of both
teachers and students? And what could this mean for the teaching material? These
questions might take deconstruction to places where it is still concealed, unnoticed, not
yet recognized. Here we are; this is the place, the space, I would like to open.

[4] Why 'The Truth In Teaching'? Why this provocative, presumptuous, perhaps
exaggerated title? It might be a reaction against the provocative, presumptuous, perhaps
exaggerated pretensions of education in general. The purpose of education, schools,
teachers is to tell the truth, i.e., to discern and decide between the true and the false. The
pedagogical fiction is that it is possible for the subject to know the object of knowledge.
As Derrida points out in GREPH, the ideal of an educated person held by a given era is
always predicated on the basis of a theory of truth (cf. Ulmer, p.167). The concept of
logocentrism - the dominance of the word in a conception of knowledge that involves
truth based on presence - fits. Education - in its various forms - is still dedicated to the
achievement of universally applicable goals pre-defined by the grand narratives:
emancipation, democracy, enlightenment, empowerment, truth (cf. Usher & Edwards,
p.210). And for a long time, truth means the correspondence between knowledge, or
insight, and the object to which it addresses itself, the close(d) correspondence between
the representation and the real (cf. Deconstructive Sociology).
I would like to rethink this idea of truth. To me, truth means something else. I think there
is no extra-discursive 'real' outside of text. The world does not consist of ready-made
objects that can be put into representation. And theory cannot be seen to operate as a
model to be tested for adequacy to the real. I want to dispense with the pretentions of
theoretical machinery for the production of this kind of truth (cf. Game, p.4-16). A (my)
deconstructive strategy consists in dismantling knowledge claims to this kind of truth.
For that, I summon the assistance of Jasper Neel's deconstructive re-reading of Plato's
Phaedrus, or his deconstructive re-reading of Derrida's deconstructive re-reading of
Plato's Phaedrus in Dissemination. In Phaedrus, Plato, through Socrates, condemns
writing calling it a pharmakon, a drug or poison. Writing is not the gateway to true
wisdom, to Truth, but only its semblance. However, as I show more extensively in the
section entitled Writing Above Logos, in order to do this, the one device Plato must have
is writing. The only way he can speak in his own absence, speak with somebody else's
voice, and speak out of his own time is in writing. As much as Plato would like to have
truth precede and validate text (the correspondence between the real and its
representation), even in his own system it emerges from text and is validated by the
ability of one discourse to silence another (cf. Neel, p.23 and p.53). In Phaedrus, Plato
offers to lead us out of the morass created by writing into the realm of truth. But what is
the source of his power? It is precisely writing! Plato wants to give us Truth, but he
cannot. He has to replace it with what it is not, i.e., writing. He wants to use writing to
reveal Truth, but has to fight against the haunting possibility that Truth is writing, that
truth is only in writing.
Writing cannot close itself down in the presentation of truth. And I think the same goes
for teaching. Neel, Derrida, and Plato show us that the Real or Truth are products of our
writing practices. On another plateau, Truth is produced in education and teaching (i.e.
truth as a product of texts and textuality as well). It is not something that exists before
teaching, something first discovered and than passed on by education.

[5] But this is still the 'old' truth. We are still dilating on the conventional ideas about
Truth. What about this other idea of truth, this rethinking of truth? Let's continue. Let's go
on without ever arriving at this 'new' truth. Différance.
As Derrida already brings forward in the beginning of 'Plato's Pharmacy', Plato is not
simply condemning the writer's activity precisely by using this word, pharmakon, which,
besides poison, can also mean remedy or medicine. The truth of the pharmakon is not that
it means drug and poison or that it means medicine and remedy. The truth of the
pharmakon (the truth of writing) is that open space in which it can mean many things.
'One is always tempted by this faith in the idiom: it supposedly says only one thing,
properly speaking, and says it only in linking form and meaning too strictly to lend itself
to translation. But if the idiom were this, were it what it is thought it must be, it would not
be that, but it would lose all strength and would not make a language. It would be
deprived of that which in it plays with truth-effects ... in truth what is at stake (that idiom)
is the abyss' (The Truth In Painting, p.7). In Plato, Derrida and Writing, Neel argues that
Plato clearly recognized writing as a forever-open opening. Its words are open spaces
waiting to be filled (by other words), yet never finally filled up. By rethinking Derrida's
essay on Plato, Neel states that Plato's 'condemnation' in fact saves writing by creating
the opening in which truth becomes possible. 'The catch is that the Platonic frame of
reference can open a text to the possibility of truth only by making truth a possibility; for
truth to remain itself, it must remain forever a possibility, never an actuality. Thus, truth
as a possibility depends on the impossibility of truth's appearing' (Neel, p.80.) (cf.
Derrida's phrase in The Gift of Death: 'To think the possibility of such an event but not
the event itself'.) Impossible, for writing is never finished. Plato reveals truth as the one
thing beyond closure. Truth occurs in the impossibility of closure. 'Rather than a place or
a destination, rather than the shelter of some closed and complete revelation, truth
becomes an opening' (Neel, p.82).

[6] The Truth In Teaching is about this impossibility of closure, about opening. The Truth
In Teaching is about teaching that is always already multiphonic, an interplay of voices. It
is about the difference between teaching the 'old' truth and the 'new' truth, the difference
between teaching as the 'old' or as the 'new' truth. It is about the difference between
giving a lesson where what is given is clear and the unforeseeable, unexpected,
impossible gift, present in each lesson. It is about the difference between musical texts
that try to produce closure, that attempt to fix, and texts that invite a further writing and a
rewriting (writing in a broad sense, including for example playing, reading, acting). The
Truth In Teaching is about what this means for the teacher, the student, and the teaching
material, when teaching means to give (safe) time, space, place for the advent of the
other. That is, to really give a lesson is not a matter of intention and intentionality and, at
the same time, impossible without the intention to give.

[7] These few exploring, outflanking, but hesitating, deferring, and above all, dispersing
remarks should sketch the outlines of a section that contains in its very heart the most
impudent proposal to a deconstructive music. Music 'composed' deconstructively on
purpose. 'My own' music. (I stress 'composed' and 'my own' because each performance of
this music means an expropriation at the same time). On purpose? Is that possible? Does
deconstruction not withdraw from any intention? (Deconstruction is not an act or an
operation, not the reflexivity of an ego or of a consciousness, Derrida explicitly writes in
Letter to a Japanese Friend.) Let's say for the moment, rudimentarily and cautiously, I
attempted to 'compose' music that defers the possibility of closure for as long as possible
(somewhat like the poems of Mallarmé, perhaps).
In the 'heart' of this section of the site, there is an invitation. An invitation to meet music
in a different way, or, perhaps, to meet different music. An invitation to whom? Some
time ago, the invitation was extended to two professional musicians and some music
students. And you can hear and read how they reacted to this invitation (cf. Intermezzo).
However, that is still a safe place for you. Hidden. Anonymous. So, now here it is an
invitation to you too - you, the reader, already the participant of this play. An invitation to
complete an always temporary closure in order to experience the openness of
'deconstructive music'. An invitation to (re)(de)compose 'my' music. Let me present it - as
Plato did - as a pharmakon for a diseased desire for the closure of truth.

[8] Around this heart, around this center - a center that can easily change into a
periphery, a supplement, a margin - around this item that is, after all, just an intermezzo,
around this proposal for some (deconstructive) teaching material, I have 'composed' other
texts that (hopefully) open a space for rethinking (music) education, for thinking (music)
education otherwise, for encountering already existing thoughts on (music) education
otherwise.
Education: From Modernism to Postmodernism is, for the most part, an introduction to
rethinking education in general, based on literature search. Proposals for what is called a
new or post-modern pedagogy circle around invention instead of reproduction as the aim
of teaching and learning, making an opening to the call of what is usually marginalized in
education. Paying attention to what is excluded or marginalized immediately touches on
an ethical component, always already present in education. I elaborate on the ethical
implications of so-called post-modern pedagogy in Education and Ethics. Teaching a
Supplement enters at length into particular examples of what regular education
marginalizes: non-compulsory education, adult education, music education, jazz
education. In On Jazz Education, I begin by writing about my own experiences as a jazz
music teacher at a music school in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The two main questions
posed on that page are: What does it normally mean to teach jazz music? What could it
mean to teach jazz music once we accept (and take the consequences of this
understanding) that the concept of 'jazz' is an unstable concept, difficult to define,
impossible to demarcate?
What are the pedagogical implications of a deconstruction of 'jazz'? An example of what
this could imply with respect to teaching material is given on the page called Intermezzo,
the name of a 'composition' that exceeds conventional jazz structures, harmonics, and
patterns, but that still belongs to the jazz idiom. Rethinking (jazz) education, the concept
of 'jazz' and teaching materials also means to reconsider and revise the role of the teacher.
Some initial steps toward this end are described in The Role of the Teacher and To Give
a (Music) Lesson.
Education and Ethics
[1] Books on postmodernism and education, such as Thinking Again (Blake, Smeyers,
Smith, and Standish), Postmodernism and Education (Usher and Edwards) and
Postmodern Education (Aronowitz and Giroux), increasingly touch on ethical questions.
'Education is always a moral matter' (Blake et al., p.153). For instance, talk about
effectiveness - a major issue in late 20th century discourse on education - is not as
sceptical about ends as it pretends. It imports substantive ethical values of its own under
the guise of ethical neutrality. 'There is no neutral or natural place in education', Derrida
writes (Politiques de la philosophie, p.61). Another example. The authors of Thinking
Again warn us that giving a lesson is to teach, but it is also (idiomatically) to punish.
Every teacher operates within a field that accommodates many undecidables: initiation
(training or education, indoctrination or enlightenment), discipline (behavioral or
academic), responsibility (conformity or freedom). Is education, this initiation into a
culture, a step towards autonomy or, contrarily, a step away from autonomy? Both? Both
at the same time? If not ethical, these questions at least contain an ethical component.
'Curricula must be defensible in terms of the relationship - ethical and political - that they
establish between the institution and the needs, wants, aspirations, obligations or rights of
students or pupils' (Blake et al., p.91). Education means being swung between the right to
learn, to gain knowledge, to be free, and the wrong of being controlled, indoctrinated,
being given biased knowledge, being denied freedom, etc.
Connecting education and ethics implies responsibility. In accepting responsibility for the
other (the student) and the (lack of) freedom it entails, the teacher realizes herself or
himself as an ethical subject. The real violence in education (and ethics) seems to be
indifference toward the other.

[2] In Du droit à la philosophie in particular, Derrida thinks through the issue of

education. And the subject of responsibility continually surfaces in these texts. He raises
many questions on the ethical implications of education, questions that articulate the
space uncovered by/through/in deconstruction. Questions such as: 'How to educate the
Other as Other? In which space? How to let the other be and what then does 'to let' really
mean? What direction can or must this relation from me to the Other follow? What to do?
What 'letting be' [laissez-faire] would be of the order of latitude, not of laxity (laxness)?
Which knowledge has to pass? What kind of knowledge do we engage in respect of a
know-how to take inspiration from the other? Which guidelines to give? Listening?
Letting be?' (Cahen, p.56-7, my translation).
These are not rhetorical questions; they are open, unanswered, perhaps unanswerable.
Perhaps they can (only) form a horizon against which the teacher should look at his
relationship to the student and the teaching material. Questions that keeps one alert, on
the alert.

[3] Derrida's deconstruction opens up ethics that are sensitive to the demands not of
identity, but of difference. 'Deconstruction is set in motion by the responsibility to the
rights of the different. Unlike mainstream thinking, it does not heed the call of Being,
presence, and the same, but keeps its ear alert to the call of the Other' (Blake et al, p.66).
French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard expresses himself in similar words. He speaks
of a responsibility to recognize and expose differends through the construction of frames
of reference in which the claims of those who have been denied a voice may be heard.
The alterity of another calls us to account for how we understand things. In a form of
justice that is sensitive to diversity, the question of the just and the unjust must remain
permanently open. Lyotard defines this as an attitude of respect. Affirming the obligation
imposed by the advent of the other fractures the I, dispossesses it, and opens the I onto
the other. Lyotard's assertion can be summarized as follows: Live together in difference,
not indifferently, in respect for the irreducibly distinct other. But both Lyotard and
Derrida emphasize that their rethinking of ethics makes no appeal to any essence of the
human that might provide a paradigm for judgment, no description that might provide a
rule for the formulation of prescriptions. There is no predictable content or form to act
(teach) justly, no golden rule; ethics is context, specific and always singular. Both
thinkers defend not the universal rights, but the rights of the particular, i.e., that which is
excluded and marginalized by the rule of the same (cf. Blake et al., p.67-8).

[4] In the appeal of the other, the ends and goals of one's actions are called into question.
What can the foregoing mean for education? That certain kinds of knowledge are
marginalized (they are irrelevant or incompatible with socially required knowledge)
seems intrinsic to education. (In Du droit à la philosophie, Derrida draws our attention to
the dominance of a pedagogical discourse saturated with technocratic terms such as
'usefulness', 'output', 'cost-effectiveness', 'finalization', etc.) Ultimately, education is
always an act of violence, as well; every selection of subjects to be taught automatically
excludes other subjects. How can education ever be ethical; how can it ever be responsive
to the other? How to listen to the voices of others? Without much elaboration, Aronowitz
and Giroux, as well as Usher and Edwards, ask from postmodern education to listen to
the other. Blake et al., fear that this post-structuralist ethical imperative leads to
'pedagogical paralysis'. They regard this kind of ethics as more procedural than content-
oriented (cf. Blake et al., p.71). But despite their objections against some implications - in
their eyes too far-reaching - of post-structuralist ethics, they try to think through the
positive sides these ethics have for education. I will follow their arguments, but omit the
paragraphs with which I do not agree, thereby letting my thoughts crawl in the sediments
of their texts, to solicit new thoughts, new meanings from it.
The law of difference allows that any narrative constructions or stories we tell about
ourselves, the world and others are always open to re-description, so the self is never
bound within a single, or even necessarily coherent, narrative. It is important to always
bear in mind that history, culture, community, etc. are in themselves not homogeneous
concepts. Education should support a refusal to restrict ethico-political choices to the
dictates of scientifically regulated norms, and should support the fostering of the courage,
skill and patience in order to shape creativity and liberating alternatives. A post-
structuralist education should constantly interrogate the games of truth, thereby allowing
other narratives to enter pedagogical space; thus, for the person receiving education, there
is not only more room, but there are also more rooms (cf. Blake et al., p.70, 72, 80).
Post-structuralist ethics should predispose us against the over-zealous teacher who tries to
mold the student according to a preconceived form. No aspiration of masterful control,
but a kind of humility; while making explicit what (s)he stands for, the teacher shows the
weaknesses of her or his own position. Responsive openness. And this responsiveness is
a dimension of responsibility. In Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critic of Cynical
Reason], German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk calls this 'groping'. This kind of thinking
wants to preserve the 'being different' of the subjects. Groping leads to the discovery of
the unknown, the other(ness). Sloterdijk's thoughts seem to fit in quite well with post-
structuralist and deconstructive ideas on education. They do not advocate dispensing with
the pedagogical canon, but rather handling it in a creative and responsive way. For this,
one also needs to be introduced to that which is outside of the dominant paradigm. A
permanent openness to and a permanent search for the other; groping to discover the
unknown.

[5] This is not the place to enter at length into the consequences of this for music and
music education. With 'my composition', Intermezzo - to which I refer in several pages of
this section on education - I cautiously suggest some teaching material to transgress and
transform the dominant paradigm in jazz education. Perhaps it is not so much specific
teaching material (only) that can thus open an ethical dimension in music education.
Perhaps it has much more to do with our attitude towards all music. (With 'our' I mean
not only teachers and students, but also musicologists, music theorists, administrators in
music institutions, music critics, etc.) Often, music is identified with patterns and
structures which are quantifiable and available primarily through scores. Both
musicology and music theory, in particular, have developed a whole repertory of
concepts, frameworks, methods of analysis, etc., to map music. And only what is
quantified, structured, mapped, and analyzed is teachable. A deconstructive (re)reading of
music opens a space beyond positivistic knowledge. Deconstruction in music - a
vocation, a response to the call of the other, as Derrida calls it - opens and breaks the
closeness and oneness that characterize traditional thinking on music by putting forth the
fundamental uncontrollability, ambiguity, heterogeneousness of music. Perhaps we do
not have to search so much for unexpected, unforeseen music to question and transgress
the boundaries of the institution music education. Perhaps pieces such as Intermezzo can
be regarded as an introduction to a teaching material that deconstructs the common
repertory used in jazz education. This is not meant to preclude a return to so-called jazz
standards. The hope is to inspire playing and listening to these standards in another way,
beyond conventional structures, improvisations, licks, etc. (An analogy can be drawn
with the way in which John Cage could open his ears for the 'old sounds' again. In his
'Lecture on Nothing', Cage says: 'I begin to hear the old sounds - the ones I had thought
worn out, worn out by intellectualization - I begin to hear the old sounds as though they
are not worn out. Obviously, they are not worn out. They are just as audible as the new
sounds. Thinking had worn them out. And if one stops thinking about them, suddenly
they are fresh and new' (cf. Cage and Noise).) It is certainly not the music 'itself' that
prevents this. Perhaps - if we listen carefully, if we learn to listen carefully, if education
can really open our ears - all music always already opens a space in which we can
encounter the unforeseen, the unexpected, the (im)possible, the insecure, the
heterogeneous, i.e., the other. Derrida and others show how deconstruction is - in many
different ways - always already going on in every text (every music); is it our fear of
insecurity that often closes our eyes and our minds to the advent of the other? Education
and music could ensure the possibility of receiving the other.

[6] I would like to end with a thought of German composer Wolfgang Rihm. According
to Rihm, music is a process that, by accepting the contingency and coincidence in the
intuition of composing, unremittedly stays open for mutation. Sound as material for
mutation implies contingency: sounds are subjected to an 'orientated process' that is both
purposeless and open at the same time. Composing is a permanent mutation; it always
liberates. Rihm is talking about composing as the infinite exploration of unforeseen
possibilities. There is always another (possibility). There is always an other (music).
Education: From Modernism
to Postmodernism
[1] In Postmodernism and Education, Robin Usher and Richard Edwards write that
'education is perhaps the most important way we relate to the world, to the way we
experience, understand and attempt to change the world and to the ways in which we
understand ourselves and our relations with others' (Usher and Edwards, p.4). A few
pages later, they resume their basic assumption by stating that education is assigned a key
role in the forming and shaping of subjectivity and identity so that subjects become fully
autonomous and capable of exercising their individual and intentional agency, bringing
out the inherent potential to become self-motivated and self-directing (cf. Usher and
Edwards, p.24-5, my italics). ('Bringing out' is a well-chosen description considering the
etymology of the word 'education': Latin e-ducere, meaning to lead someone or
something out of something. One could say that a teacher leads a student out of the dark
into the light, the light of knowledge. The truth in teaching, (also) the main title of this
section of the site, could be understood as bringing the world into unconcealedness, a
lighting.)
These phrases are suffused with a spirit of modernity and modernism. 'Education can be
seen as the vehicle by which modernity's 'grand narratives', the Enlightenment ideals of
critical reason, individual freedom, progress and benevolent change, are substantiated and
realised. The very rationale of the educational process and the role of the educator is
founded on modernity's self-motivated, self-directing, rational subject' (Usher and
Edwards, p.2). People become free human beings precisely through education; they
become free from, for example, animal-like tendencies. To a great extent, education is
considered in terms of autonomy and rationality. At the very heart of the project of
modernity is the notion of the necessity to educate, of education's historical role to
enlighten and emancipate.
However, besides (being at the same time) an instrument for emancipation and
enlightenment, education is also an instrument of power, control, and legitimization.
'[The] dictum about the necessity to educate is a clear assertion of the legitimacy of those
who possess 'true, valid knowledge' not only to pass this on to others who do not possess
it but tell others 'what to do, how to behave, what ends to pursue and by what means'. In
other words, what is being established here is not only the necessity to educate, but also
that the purpose of this education is to shape the very conduct of life. Education, then, is
expressed through a 'legislative discourse which confers the power to fix the limits and
boundaries that define what is to be included and what excluded in the service of creating
the 'rational' man to live in a rational society' (Usher and Edwards, p.126). What Usher
and Edwards are pointing at here is that education is not just a neutral instrument to
impart knowledge. Education is a device of power and control whose chief purpose is to
reproduce the dominant values of society and to legitimize its authority. Educational
narratives not only tell us where we belong, they put us where we belong. (As related to
music education, one could say that the teaching in music schools and conservatories
does not simply pass along information on music. Implicitly, the existing stylistic
hierarchies are legitimated, as is the myth that most people are not really very musical in
comparison with a tiny minority who is.)

[2] It can be said that Western pedagogy culminates in Hegel's philosophical didacticism.
According to Shoshana Felman, the Hegelian concept of 'absolute knowledge' - which,
for Hegel, simultaneously defines the potential aim and the actual end of dialectics, of
philosophy - is 'what pedagogy has always aimed at as its ideal: the exhaustion - through
methodical investigation - of all there is to know; the absolute completion - termination -
of apprenticeship. Complete and totally appropriated knowledge will become, in all
senses of the word, a mastery' (Felman, p.77). She quotes Jacques Lacan who writes that
from the Hegelian perspective, the completed discourse is an instrument of power, the
scepter and the property of those who know. What is at stake in absolute knowledge is
the fact that discourse closes back upon itself, that it is entirely in agreement with itself
(cf. Felman, p.77).
Captivated by the 'grand narrative' of truth and progress through truth, modernist
education provides a means of mastery and control. (French philosopher Gilles Deleuze
speaks of transition from a disciplinary society to a control society.) Certainty is valued
above doubt. The resolution of problems is given priority over the desire to question.
Concepts tend to be examined in terms of a search for definitions, as though they can be
strictly determined. And the teacher's role is that of model and authority, a concrete
embodiment of the ideal self with which the student must identify: the teacher - the one
who is supposed to know - versus the student - the one who doesn't know and who thinks
(s)he is supposed to learn what the teacher knows. Derrida writes that the scientific
discourse is organized by a relation 'oriented from the unknown to the known or
knowable, to the always already known or to anticipated knowledge' (Writing and
Difference, p.270-1). Universities, conservatories, and (music) schools are there to tell the
truth, to judge, to discern and decide between the true and the false, between the beautiful
and the ugly, between music and noise, etc.

[3] Can we escape from the model or the project described above? Are we caught in this
model as soon as we enter the pedagogical space? Or, to formulate it more precisely, is
this view on education true, i.e., is it complete or is there more to say?
The effect, the result, the consequence of the described pedagogical pose of mastery is
(ex)closure. The desire to overcome ambiguity leads to assertions of certainty that
exclude and oppress. According to Usher and Edwards, education is the means of
eliminating otherness. It is a manifestation of violence insofar as it attempts to reduce
difference, contingency, provisionality and play to one in the same. Education is a site
where meanings are reduced to a single, determinate meaning, where otherness is brought
under the control of reason and difference is reduced to sameness (cf. Usher and
Edwards, p.139). (One could add that education first constitutes otherness and difference
as the other of the same. Both difference and otherness are effects of education.
Education produces itself (the same) by producing its other.) But this is only one side of
the picture. Usher and Edwards show, too, that education is in fact ambiguous. It both
seeks and rejects closure. It is both closed and open. 'Education is also a site where the
play of meanings escapes the violence of logocentric closure. The educational process is
incarcerating, yet hermeneutical and critical. It always contains within itself the potential
to question dominant forms of knowledge and totalizing explanations, and to tear away
the veils within which these are enshrouded. It has the potential to question the status of
the definitive, the certain and the 'proven'. It is a site where the play of difference can
escape the 'fundamental immobility' and 'reassuring certitude' of logocentric closure, a
site of endless dissemination' (Usher and Edwards, p.139). This means that the attempt to
make education into a controlled and controlling project is never total. That which eludes
the totalizing grasp always makes education ultimately uncontrollable. Every pedagogical
exposition is open and therefore uncontrollable because it always adds something to what
it transmits. Change instead of reproduction. Between change and reproduction. The
principal working of iterability. The questioning of the logocentric closure opens the
possibility of a multiplicity of perspectives, of infinite encounters or engagements. (This
does not mean that we are in the hands of nihilism and relativism. But we can no longer
rely on an appeal to a transcendent and invariant set of values. Norms are not to be found
in foundations. We need to question the idea that there must be a center to our thinking, a
stabilizing element in the structure. The consequence of this for postmodern education is
that it provides no new definitive perspective from which a new set of prescriptions and
techniques for organizing teaching and learning can be generated. It is about particular,
singular responsibilities.) For Usher and Edwards, perhaps this most characterizes a
postmodern perspective (cf. Usher and Edwards, p.26).

[4] If we accept this view, education can neither be thought of as inherently

transformative, nor inherently oppressive. Rather, it has both a transformative and an
oppressive potential, and these are always in contention with each other. (Education will
always provide some kind of closure, some anchoring of meaning, if only in the sense
that all thinking necessitates making distinctions, inclusions and exclusions, and setting
up hierarchies. But this is always bound to be temporary.) Rethinking education and
pedagogy must expose the ambiguous and contradictory processes of the possibility for
an open encounter and an excluding oppression. So, if we can escape from the pedagogic
model based on rationalism and autonomy, I neither want to answer in the affirmative,
nor in the negative. It is a matter of shifting accents whereby new perspectives, new
engagements, can be shown. It is certainly not a rejection of all education and pedagical
practices, but a critical and continual questioning of their premises, structures,
articulations and consequences. Nevertheless, the pedagogical approach, which makes no
claim to total knowledge, is of course quite different from the still very dominant
pedagogical pose of mastery. This posture, however, is deconstructed (disrupted,
transformed) from the inside instead of criticized from outside the pedagogical space.

[5] How to rethink education? How to think and approach education otherwise? What
could a shift from a traditional, modernist pedagogy to what Gregory Ulmer calls a 'new
pedagogy' look like? What is the space opened by this new pedagogy, informed by post-
structuralism and deconstruction?
For Usher and Edwards, the postmodern can be defined as the attention to the repressed
of modernity. And to them, the excluded other is precisely the continual questioning. 'The
work of change is always in 'process', inherently incompletable and constantly open to
question. This questioning, in which education can play a potentially significant part,
involves opening oneself to the call of different, marginal and transgressive 'voices' and
engaging in sustained critique of logocentric regimes' (Usher and Edwards, p.135).
'Rather than tight definitions therefore, we find a constant struggle without end or
resolution to deconstruct, construct and reconstruct meanings ... Concepts can more
usefully be thought of as terrains which can be occupied by a number of shifting and
conflicting points of view' (Usher and Edwards, p.201). This means that education can no
longer be dedicated to the achievement of universally applicable goals - truth,
emancipation, democracy, enlightenment, empowerment - pre-defined by the grand
narratives. Education should be more diverse in terms of goals and processes: 'Instead of
reducing everything to the 'same', it would instead become the vehicle for the celebration
of diversity, a space for different voices against the one authorative voice' (Usher and
Edwards, p.211).
Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux support the views and recommendations of Usher
and Edwards. They too criticize the intellectual standardization and exclusive
preoccupation with the high-cultural canon in modernist education. They argue in favor
of postmodernist claims of 'intellectual validity of marginal discourses in the sciences and
social sciences, especially those that refuse, on philosophical or ideological grounds, to
observe accepted algorithms of inquiry' (Aronowitz and Giroux, p.17). Like Usher and
Edwards, they plead for forms of pedagogy that open a space for plurality and that
develop a 'radical ethics that rejects finality and certainty for the voice of difference and
dialogue': 'Listen to the voices of others', they proclaim (Aronowitz and Giroux, p.188).
(Postmodernist refusal of reverence for traditional intellectual forms is even related to
hypertextuality. According to both authors, hypertextuality escapes the 'straightjacket of
linear text, to make of thought, a collage of insight'.) What Ulmer calls 'new pedagogy', is
called 'border pedagogy' by Aronowitz and Giroux. In border pedagogy, cultural and
social practices are no longer mapped or referenced solely on the basis of the dominant
models of Western culture. It shifts 'the emphasis of the knowledge/power relationship
away from the limited emphasis on the mapping of domination and toward the politically
strategic issue of engaging the ways in which knowledge can be remapped,
reterritorialized, and decentered in the wider interests of rewriting the borders and
coordinates of an oppositional cultural politics' (Aronowitz and Giroux, p.119).

[6] Gregory Ulmer starts from a slightly different position and motivation. He
paraphrases Derrida's point that the ideal of an educated person that is held by a given era
is always predicated on the basis of a theory of truth. But if Derrida is right, what might
be the ideal of an educated person proposed by post-structuralism that puts into question
the very notion of truth in which the claims of truth to objectivity and neutrality are
exposed as effects of an apparatus of power, Ulmer wonders (cf. Ulmer, p.168). Ulmer
tries to find a way out of the dominant paradigm by seeking a 'new pedagogy' that does
not accept that teaching and learning involve just the transmission of a fixed content. He
tries to rethink the space in which the discourse of ideas takes place. Ulmer's new
pedagogy involves a 'displacement of educational transmissions from the domain of truth
to that of invention'. To invent. A shift of emphasis from reproduction to that of
translation or transformation. (What is the problem of reproduction in a (jazz)
improvisation? In attempting to repeat in an improvisation what has already been
repeated by others, the student knows that he cannot fully master the prior repetitions and
that his improvisation will finally be exposed as incompetent. The more a student tries to
make an improvisation repeat exactly others that should precede and enable it, the more
his improvisation is haunted by the infinitely differing play between the example and his
substitute. In part, this explains his desire to be told what to do, so that he can do it and
avoid having to improvise (cf. Neel, p.169).) For the student, this is not necessarily a
matter of 'genius' or originality, but of 'searching through the places or topoi to find
materials for one's own text' (Ulmer, p.179). The teacher can no longer act as the faithful
transmitter of a tradition. (S)he should become a worker in a process of transformation. In
that way, the classroom can become a place of invention, rather than of reproduction (cf.
Ulmer, p.163-4).

[7] The classroom as a place of invention. The teacher as a transformer. The student as a
kind of bricoleur, a handy-man. What does this mean? What does this mean for music
education? (Afterall, as an academic and a music teacher, I want to say something about
giving a music lesson.) Students take up the thoughts (speech, writing, music) of others
and make them their own. They take possession of this plurality of voices and are
possessed by them at their own pace, in their own place, thereby soliciting new thoughts,
new meanings, new music. Working on language, working on music opens up
possibilities for a different kind of language and music. Neglecting this working, both
teachers and students would have nothing to say that has not already been said; they
would merely reproduce the thoughts, truths, musics of others. Working on language,
working on music, to make it one's own, to remake it as one's own, means to reject
finality and to render account of the play of différance. To invent means to interrupt, to
disrupt already existing languages, already existing musics, to underwrite the possibility
of an other language, an other music (cf. Finn, 1995, p.5-9).
Could this be meant by invention and plurality? In any case, that is how I like to think
about teaching and learning (music). I pursue it and I am haunted by it. Do I have a new
method, a new theory? No. Yes. Maybe. Probably not. No new 'grand narrative' on
(music) education. No covering theory to transform pedagogy. I can only stammer a
proposal, a proposal that is local, temporary, particular, singular. A proposal to make
music, to make music-making possible, to make the possibility of music possible.

[8] I teach music. 'Jazz'. Besides teaching piano and music theory, I offer combo lessons.
I prefer working with teaching material developed by myself, Intermezzo, for example,
which is at the same time a composition and not a composition. (There is a special page
on Intermezzo, on which I elaborate on this (non) composition. Here I just summarize.)
The framework or outline of Intermezzo consists of eight different musical motifs. It is
not immediately clear which member of the combo should play which motif. It is also not
immediately clear if motif 1 is a bassline or a vocal part. Nor is it clear beforehand where,
for example, motif 4 should be played, if at all. All motifs can both be principal themes
and accompaniment. And in fact, the motifs only appear as an occasion, pretext, or
indicator for (collective) improvisations. No transparency, no finality, no fixed content.
With every performance Intermezzo is (re-)invented, transformed. Intermezzo is a way of
opening up to (through) the play of différance. This means that the students are not only
performers or interpreters; they are composers, as well. Instant composers. Of course, the
musical result is grafted onto the music and the play of other composers and musicians,
but it is something of their own as well, something new, transforming a certain kind of
silence into music. It is an excess, i.e., it exceeds what already has been played and
composed. The emphasis shifts from imitation and reproduction to invention. The
students are on a journey, but they don't know where they are going until they get there.
And the teacher? (An elaboration on this subject can be found in The Role of the
Teacher.) What about me? Am I, in the words of Ulmer, a 'faithful transmitter of a
tradition'? I will not deny that I am part of a tradition, a musical tradition, a pedagogical
tradition, a cultural tradition, an intellectual tradition, etc. But teaching Intermezzo means
putting myself as a teacher, and my knowledge at stake. I don't know what is going to
happen in and with the music or the motifs. Learning takes place on the basis of what the
students come out with, what they decide on. So, it is even difficult to say what it means
to teach Intermezzo. Maybe it is nothing more than creating a (safe) space where people
can engage with music in a creative, less traditional, but also unstable way. Maybe it is
creating a (safe) place to put aside mastery and control, a (safe) place for a continual
questioning. Perhaps the meaning of 'e-ducere' should be transformed, as well: instead of
leading someone from the dark into the light, from one place to the other, I opt for
showing someone that there is light in the darkness (and perhaps that there is some
darkness in what (s)he regards as light).
To Give A (Music) Lesson
[1] What does it mean to teach music? What does it mean to give a music lesson (and this
can be something altogether different from giving a musical lesson, or giving a lesson
musically, even from giving a music lesson musically)? To give a lesson. Does it occur to
you that what I am talking about here is a gift? A gift. Not a present. Not an object. The
lesson is the gift. The gift does not exist before the lesson is given. It is not (a) present.
The gift takes place in the lesson; the lesson takes place in the giving. In Given Time,
Derrida writes about different gifts. 'There would be, on one hand, the gift that gives
something determinate (a given, a present in whatever form it may be, personal or
impersonal thing, 'natural' or symbolic thing, thing or sign, nondiscursive or discursive
sign, and so forth) and, on the other hand, the gift that gives not a given, but the condition
of a present given in general, that gives therefore the element of the given in general. It is
thus, for example, that 'to give time' is not to give a given present, but the condition of
presence of any present in general' (Given Time, p.54). This page is about what it means
to give a (music) lesson. What does, what can, what should, this giving mean with respect
to teaching (music)?

[2] Let's start with the question 'How innocent is teaching?', for example. How generous,
how unconditional, is the gift of teaching? Don't harbor too many illusions, too many
expectations, about this. 'To give' means, in fact, 'to exchange'. I give a lesson, and in
return I get paid. (How many lessons would I give if I was not paid to give this present
that is not a real present?) The educational institution, the state government, maybe the
students (or their parents) directly give me money in return for my gift, my teaching.
But I ask more. I ask the students to pay me back for my efforts. I ask them to reproduce
correctly what I teach them, for example, during exams or (public) recitals. I ask them
(unconsciously) to accept and confirm my authority. Sometimes I am longing for
compliments and status. In Thinking Again: Education After Postmodernism, Nigel
Blake, Paul Smeyers, Richard Smith, and Paul Standish mention another aspect of this
'economy of exchange', another possibility. 'Teaching and learning must be determined in
accordance with learning outcomes and objectives ... The efforts of teacher and pupils are
directed by these outcomes. What is to be learned is made clear to the students while
these processes must in turn be transparent and available to scrutiny ... What is learned is
quantifiable. The teacher is a transmitter of learning content ... Efficiency and
effectiveness become eminently rational criteria in this smooth-running system of
circulation' (Blake et al., p.81-2, my italics). My gift, the gift of a teacher, is incorporated
into an economic circle. Viewed in this way, my expenditure remains within the circle of
calculation of the economic system, an economy of retribution and exchange (the re-
merciement).

[3] How can giving be different from delivery? How can giving be free from reciprocity
or exchange? Is this at all possible? In Given Time, Derrida enters at length into these
questions and encounters a paradox, i.e., he leads his readers into the realm of a paradox.
He tries to rethink what it means to give, what a gift means. For Derrida, the gift is
annulled each time there is restitution or countergift. The real gift, truely giving, is
annulled in the economic odyssey of the circle as soon as it appears as gift or as soon as it
signifies itself as gift. As soon as giving a lesson is regulated by institutional rituals, it is
no longer a pure gift; it is no longer gratuitous, purely generous. It becomes prescribed,
programmed, obligated, in other words, bound. And a gift must not be bound, in its
purity, nor even binding (cf. Given Time, p.137). If I give a lesson because I am required
to do so, then I no longer give. 'If there is a gift, the given of the gift (that which one
gives, that which is given, the gift as given thing or as act of donation) must not come
back to the giving ... It must not circulate, it must not be exchanged, it must not in any
case be exhausted, as a gift, by the process of exchange, by the movement of circulation
of the circle in the form of return to the point of departure. If the figure of the circle is
essential to economics, the gift must remain aneconomic. Not that it remains foreign to
the circle, but it must keep a relation of foreigness to the circle, a relation without relation
of familiar foreigness (Giving Time, p.7). Not that it remains foreign to the circle. An
important nuance. Derrida immediately admits that it will be impossible to stay out of the
economic circle once and for all. What he wants to investigate is how this circle can be
kept open to 'something else', to the other, by disturbing the path of the gift. In
reconsidering what it means to give a (music) lesson, one does not need to look outside
the lesson. Derrida's proposal: The gift must not present itself as a gift; it must not be a
present. For this to happen there must be unawareness so that gratitude does not
reciprocate for the gift. There must be a radical forgetfulness, not only on the part of the
donee, but on the part of the donor as well, so that there remains no sense of pride or
debt.

[4] But what would giving a lesson be, if it does not appear as gift, a gift without
intention to give? After all, to give seems to presuppose that the gift arrives and becomes
present. Isn't it useless to deal with a gift that denies this possibility? This is the paradox.
In the best kind of giving (a lesson, for example), what is given must not be recognized as
a gift because recognition returns us to the circle of reciprocity. But neither the demand
nor the gift it elicits can be foreign to calculation. 'The gift is not pure of all calculation or
all parade' (Given Time, p.142). Once again, although the teacher or student must not
perceive or receive the gift, the gift of the lesson, as such, this does not (and maybe
cannot) mean that one must forget completely that one is teaching. Derrida calls attention
to something to which one must not pay attention (one is requested to forget). But, more
important, he calls attention to something that always already escapes notice and
intention, in the case of giving a lesson, the notice and intention of the teacher. What is
the teacher presenting to her or his students? What exactly is (s)he giving to them? The
teacher offers her or his students texts, whether oral or written, whether discursive or
musical, whether by directly informing or through questioning, whether verbal or in tones
and in notes. And with texts and the textuality of texts we are entering the realm of what
Derrida calls dissemination, the play of differences in writing, in and between books or
verbal and musical utterances. In almost all his work, Derrida shows how words have
multiple meanings, meanings that always exceed what a writer or speaker (teacher)
intends or can even imagine in advance. The text will almost surely 'say' things the
teacher did not expect, perhaps what (s)he would not even choose or want the text to say.
This dispersal of meanings is an irresistible force, which cannot be repressed. In Given
Time, Derrida calls this a 'dissemination without return'. Whatever return the text could
have made or whatever return the teacher might have counted on, the structure of
dissemination of a text, of a lesson, surpasses the phantasm of return and marks the non-
return of the legacy - and, therefore, a certain condition of the gift - in the lesson, in text,
in writing itself. 'We are unable to do otherwise than take our departure in texts insofar as
they depart (they separate from themselves and their origin, from us) at the departure'
(Given Time, p.100). Derrida emphasizes, however, that this does not imply that the
teaching subject is a giving subject or that writing is generous. Both the one who teaches
and his or her writing never give anything without calculating, consciously or
unconsciously, its reappropriation, its exchange, or its circular return. But throughout and
despite this circulation, there, where there is dissemination, a gift can take place, along
with excessive forgetting that is radically implicated in the gift (cf. Given Time, p.101-2).

[5] Where do these thoughts bring us? First, that to give, in fact means, to forgive. In
truely giving, one releases the other from the debt for which (s)he is responsible. Second,
true giving is not embodied by the manifestation of a transcendental embedded ability,
but by a more radical movement handing itself over to a certain inability. The gift has to
do with the impossible, with what does not present itself. The gift is not a present. It is a
tout-autre which does not allow itself to be domesticated or appropriated. Third, giving
confronts us with a certain indefiniteness or unpredictability of reality. A (impossible)
submission. By being at the mercy of the other, one loses control of the gift as something
reliable or presentable. I am talking about an anonymous and pre-subjective process of
writing in which effects are disseminated without any traceable intentional control. In her
or his dedication to texts and textuality, the teacher shows the readiness to risk herself or
himself as an intentional subject, to lose herself or himself without controlled exchange
value in the différance of meanings that her or his teaching, her or his texts implement.
Dissemination is that which does not come back to her or him. It means breaking with
exchange as a simple form of reciprocity. It is a giving without reserve, a dissemination
with no clear outcomes or calculable returns. Giving a lesson is a dissemination in which
effects go beyond what could ever be seen. The nature of the gift is excessive in advance,
a priori exaggerated.
On the page called Intermezzo, I make a proposal for a teaching material, for a musical
language and musical exercise that draws the obvious conclusion of this dissemination.
'My composition', Intermezzo, goes beyond controllable outcomes, beyond the economic
circle. It vexes any controlled exchange and explicitly jeopardizes any intentional control
by a music teacher or by its 'origin' (the composer). Perhaps, one could call Intermezzo an
open text, like so much poetry, open to the play of dissemination. Of course, even
relatively closed musical texts cannot escape this dissemination. But Intermezzo is not so
much about a multiplicity referring to several different interpretations, a pluralism of
signifieds, as it is about the irreducible plurality of signifiers. It is not a solidly
constructed edifice that would rather not admit any infringements. With Intermezzo, I
hope to have given a writing, a 'composing' that is open, that invites further 'composing'.
Is not the gift first of all Intermezzo, precisely to the extent to which it would be
incapable of speaking adequately of the gift?
[6] 'The event of the gift must always keep its status of incalculable or unforseeable
experience, without general rule, without program, and even without concept' (Given
Time, p.129). An unforseeable experience. What does that mean for knowledge, the heart
and legitimization of education? In Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight,
Shoshana Felman tries to open a space for a different kind of knowledge, a knowledge
that is not authoritative, that does not have a mastery of itself, a knowledge 'that does not
know what it knows and is thus not in possession of itself' (Felman, p.92). She sees this
kind of knowledge in the works of Freud, especially in his recourses to poetic texts.
Freud bears witness to poetic knowledge, Felman explains, because he recognizes that,
like the poets, he cannot exhaust the meaning of his texts. He, too, partakes of the poetic
ignorance of his own knowledge. As far as signs are concerned, man is always mobilizing
many more of them than he knows, Freud declares. This Freudian pedagogical imperative
can be called a poetic pedagogy. Poetic in such a way as to raise, through every answer
that it gives, the literary question of its nonmastery of itself. In pushing its own thoughts
beyond the limit of its self-possession, beyond the limitations of its own capacity for
mastery. In passing on understanding that does not fully understand what it understands.
In teaching insights not entirely transparent to the teacher herself or himself (cf. Felman,
p.96). Freud and Felman are taking us here to the realm of the unconscious. I would
rather call this the gift of writing, of text(uality), the unconditional gift of a lesson.

[7] An unforseeable experience. In Thinking Again, the authors quote with approval
Simone Weil who considers waiting for truth against active pursuit and planning. Weil
writes that we do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them, but by
waiting for them. We cannot discover them by our powers, by our knowledge or by our
mastery. And if we set out to see these gifts, we will find instead counterfeits. Weil opts
for a move from receptivity to creativity in which we do not acquisitively seek, but go by
the way of dispossession (cf. Blake et al, p.84). But of course, to defer planning, to enter
a different side of pedagogy and knowledge, carries a risk, the risk of failure. Educational
policy and practice have generally suppressed this risk, seeing only its unruly side. Where
learning outcomes are safely predetermined, a circle of calculation can be sustained.
Blake, Smeyers, Smith, and Standish rail against a strong preoccupation with outcomes;
it is the beginning that one must attend to. One should teach and learn without
predetermined results and to occassionally renounce the claim to know. An education
apart from the perfectability of the smoothly functioning cycle of economy is also a
resistance against totalizing claims. The awareness of the workings of dissemination in
teaching provides a sense of home as a place with dispersion within (and hence, the
familiar as the uncanny). It opens the possibility of a teaching without reserve (cf. Blake
et al, p.154-5). (Where could this ideal become more real than in art education, and
especially art education for amateurs? In On Jazz Education, I will make clear that this is
often not the case.)

[8] Finally, an unforseeable experience has something to do with responsibility. Can a

pedagogy that wants to explain or map everything (Is this at all possible?) that leaves no
space for the gap of undecidability - can such a pedagogy appropriately hand down
responsibility? To be responsible presupposes to decide without legitimization, without
the ability to fall back on knowledge and prevailing standards. Responsibility means a
submission to an act that is neither controlled, nor calculated. With that, it breaks through
the circle of the same and demands a sacrifice (a gift) from the economic; oikonomia, the
law of the own oikos, the own and safe home, is cancelled out. The gift of a lesson
represents a different economy, an aneconomy that more deeply engages otherness and
responsibility. This different economy makes way for different ideas, different teaching,
different teaching materials.
We have to be aware that the phrase 'to give someone a lesson' already opens into fields
of undecidability. To give someone a lesson means both to teach and to punish. To teach
is to initiate, but does that include indoctrination or enlightenment, conformity or
freedom? In this undecidable space, any conscientious teacher must determine her or his
practice. In part, what is given in teaching, in the initiation into a culture, is a gift that
cannot be refused. What students come to know in this way precedes the possibility of
their autonomy (cf. Blake et al, p.88). It is precisely the space between indoctrination and
enlightenment, between conformity and freedom, where the responsibility of both teacher
and student must be situated.
Intermezzo
[1] Intermezzo. The name of 'my composition', the name of my proposal for
deconstructive teaching material. Someone asked me why I chose this title. I did not
know what to answer because I really did not know the answer. Perhaps I chose it
unconsciously. Perhaps the title chose itself. Anyway, I started to think about it.
Intermezzo. An interlude. Coming from the Latin intermedius, that which is between. Or
coming from intermissio, a break in continuity, a temporary or spatial cessation, an
intermission, a pause. That was initially, and for quite awhile, the intention of this part on
music education: to be an intermission, a pause between the other parts. An excursion. A
wandering. A non-necessary interruption of the main story. A short text intervening
between the main parts of this dissertation. Maybe some kind of ornamentation, i.e., what
is only an adjunct, and not an intrinsic constituent in the complete presentation of the
project; what comes 'besides' or 'outside' the work itself. A par-ergon or an hors d'oeuvre.
Gradually, however, as the thoughts and texts expanded, they penetrated the essential
parts of the dissertation, and started to become a full part of it. But the subject of this part
is still quite different from the parts in which deconstruction in music is articulated. So
this part is no longer outside the main parts because it is a main part itself but, on the
other hand, not really of the same kind. Perhaps one could say, it is in-between the ergon
and the par-ergon. An in-between. An intermezzo.

[2] I realize that I took this issue, this problem of inside and outside, this undecidability,
with me while working on 'my composition'. That is why Intermezzo might be a proper
name for this 'work', although the word is loaded, loaded with a music historical heritage,
loaded with often pejorative connotations. The term 'intermezzo' was used during the
18th century for comic interludes sung between the acts or scenes of an opera seria,
literally the serious work, with subjects often taken from Greek or Roman ancient history
and mythology. Intermezzi were meant to reconcile the public with the demanding music
of the opera seria. Usually they had simple harmonies, homophonic accompaniments, a
general melodiousness and a symmetrical phrase structure. Could we not say that
intermezzi were a kind of parerga, musical interludes besides or between the principal
work? Could we not say that an intermezzo had the structure of a supplement, that which
is added afterwards to an already complete whole? (But just how complete is this whole
when you need a supplement?)
Since the early 19th century, the term has been used for movements or sections as well,
generally within larger works. Here too, however, the name has some negative
undertones or overtones. A contemporary of Haydn described his instrumental music as
follows: '[Haydn] has likewise movements which are sportive, folatres, and even
grotesque, for the sake of variety; but they are only the entre-mets, or rather intermezzi,
between the serious business of his other movements'. Robert Schumann calls the middle
section of the scherzo in the opus 11 sonata, an intermezzo with the addition 'alla burla
ma pomposo', to be played in a burlesque manner. And in the operatic scores and theatre
music of the 19th and 20th centuries, intermezzi may simply function as points of
relaxation within a score with which they often have no musical or dramatic connection.
Although less serious, less prominent, the supplement or parergon has entered the work
as a more or less inextricable part of it.
More important is the change of position the intermezzi held throughout history. The 18th
century practice of separating completely the subject matter and dramatis personae of the
opera seria and those of the intermezzo, so as to permit the latter's performance with a
variety of serious works, made independent intermezzi possible. In the 19th century,
Schumann and Brahms composed numerous independent intermezzi. An independent
intermezzo. What does that mean? A piece of music that is situated in-between, a time-
span or space coming between (inter-medium, inter meaning 'between', medius meaning
'in the middle'). But between what? The serious parts, the main parts, the parts around
which everything revolves, the works itself, have disappeared. What remains is the
supplement, the addition, the non-necessary addition. The supplement has substituted for
the main work. The supplement has become the main work. The parergon has become the
ergon. The intermezzo no longer designates a localizable relation between two 'banks',
but a transversal movement that swept one and the other away (cf. Deleuze and Guattari,
p.25).

[3] Intermezzo. Strange word. 'Inter' means 'between'. But 'mezzo' also signifies
'between'; for example, in 'mezzosoprano', the voice between the soprano and the alto, the
voice halfway (mezzo) between the soprano and the alto. What about 'my' Intermezzo?
Let's say Intermezzo is halfway between composed and improvised music, halfway
between (post)modern jazz and (post)modern chamber music, halfway between free and
conventional jazz. Halfway, however, is by no means a median. It does not mean going
from one thing to the other and back again. It is a transversal movement in which the two
ends are never touched; the music never coincides with either one of the two poles.
Intermezzo is like a hymen: it is a fusion that abolishes contraries, but also the membrane
that keeps them separate. But why not listen to it first? Here are three versions of it, two
played by two professional Dutch musicians, trumpet-player Eric Vloeimans and cello-
player Ernst Reijseger, the third one played by an amateur jazzband, with which I worked
at the Rotterdam School of Music (SKVR). So two things will already be clear. First, that
Intermezzo is not written for a previously determined ensemble: the number of musicians
and the choice of instruments are open. Second, that Intermezzo changes form with every
performance.

[4] Intermezzo consists of eight different motifs (inspired by (mainstream) jazz music)
and (verbal) elucidation. First, the composed musical fragments are proposed to the
musicians. The motifs can be played in any desired order. The choice and order of the
fragments, as well as any possible repetition of them, are left to the discretion of the
musicians themselves. (If the ensemble is large, if the musicians are unexperienced, or if
the musicians have not worked together many times previously, it might be practical to
appoint a prompter.) It is not compulsory to play all the motifs in one version of
Intermezzo. The motifs can either be played after or on top of each other. This is possible
because all the phrases (except one) share the same single harmony. Improvisation can or
may enter the work and seduce it into new directions.
The above instructions can have one or more of the following effects. (a) The principal
theme and the sub- and accompanying themes are no longer evident beforehand. This can
change even within one version of Intermezzo. (b) The binary opposite and hierarchical
relationship between solo instruments and accompanying instruments become less clear.
More so than in traditional jazz music, their function can change within one performance.
(c) Beginning and closing off are arbitrary to a great extent. There is no apparant opening
theme that is repeated near the end in order to close the circle, as is in jazz standards. In
theory, the composition can be expanded infinitely. (d) The use of only one chord or
harmony subverts the compelling linearity of the classical II-V-I progression found in
traditional jazz music. Viewed in this way, Intermezzo knows no development.
(According to The New Grove Dictionary of Music, the 18th century intermezzo's poetry
differs from that of opera seria, mainly in its greater irregularity, its loosely woven plot,
and its quasi-improvisatory dialogue. Furthermore, they frequently had a disjunct vocal
line and a constant repetition of short phrases.)

[5] Intermezzo is not a linear composition, but rather an associative network, a rhizomatic
composing and performing that opens up several directions, an infinite web of possible
routes. I could call it unstable music. Where stable music is aimed at laying down
certainty and permanence (for example, in musical notation), unstable music is transient,
fleeting, intangible, and playful. The result is impossible to predict. (In A Thousand
Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari write about a deterritorialized sound block
without a point of origin, an always different diagonal (technique, creation) running
between the harmonic vertical and the melodic horizon since it is always and already in
the middle of a line.) Intermezzo is in a constant state of evolution, a constant becoming,
never solidified, never definitely fixed. This means that every version is a premiere, a
voyage with an unknown destination. For the musician, this means that it is primarily the
process of exploration, the constant exploration of musical space, and not the product,
that is precious. I would like to emphasize the process of creation over the finished art
object. Intermezzo is meant to set out on a voyage of exploration that has no end, and
thus, no goal. The musician might not know where (s)he is going until (s)he gets there.
The outline of the project only emerges with any clarity as (s)he progresses with it (cf.
Small, p.218 and p.227).

[6] I need a short break here. A temporary interruption (intermitto). An intermezzo. And I
fill it with a modest remark about the word 'composition'. Each time I write the word
composition in relation to Intermezzo, I have to use quotation marks in order to make
clear that Intermezzo is a composition (I've put together several fragments), and at the
same time, it is not. ('In general, the term 'composition' is applied only when people
engaged in making music consider themselves to be following a detailed and specific
scenario created by someone acting in a capacity quite distinct from that of the
performers themselves'. Or 'Composition is the action or act of disposing or arranging in
due order the parts of a work of art'. Both quotes from two different dictionaries don't
really apply to Intermezzo.) I can only refer to composition in the sense of acknowledging
the inadequacy of the term. Using the term composition, however, seems both impossible
and unavoidable. An aporia. But using the quotation marks means dropping the taken-for-
granted assumptions about it. To call Intermezzo a 'composition' (But what does it mean
to call something a 'composition'? How can I call it a 'composition'? How to pronounce
the quotation marks?) means calling it a space-between, the space between category and
reality. Categorial schemas and institutionalized discourses try to channel these non-
classifiable remainders into authorized categorical meanings: it is either this or that. The
praxis I'm opting for, would consist of honoring and nurturing, acknowledging,
inhabiting, and speaking from the space between category and reality. It is the space
which puts these classification systems into question, which challenges and changes
them. The space between category and reality presents me with, puts me in the presence
of, the other in all its particularity. The space-between is as such an ethical space, a space
of the specific encounter with others and otherness (cf. Finn, 1996, p.166-177). And this
space-between questions, in the same movement, the possessive pronoun. 'My'
'composition'. Intermezzo only exists when other musicians appropriate it, fill it in and
(with that) transform it. I am no longer in control of 'my' 'composition'. I no longer own
it. It is not 'my' 'composition' (cf. The Signature of John Zorn).

[7] Why Intermezzo? Why did I develop teaching material like this? (We have to keep in
mind that Intermezzo is first intended as exercise material.) I have the modest pretension
that such teaching material as Intermezzo can be a relatively safe way for students to
learn to deal with and play with uncertainties because Intermezzo increases musical and
social uncertainties - especially compared to the playing of jazz standards - (not only for
the students, but for the teacher as well; he loses part of his authority because he does not
know, cannot know, the outcomes).
But before I continue, I have to say that it is absolutely not my pretension to claim to be
the only one who 'composes' in this way. Freer forms of jazz music that occurred in the
1960's and some 20th century avant-garde music know similar 'structures' or composing
processes. That music, however, I can only analyze and study from the outside, and
afterwards as a relative outsider. By composing on my own, I experience the process in
another way, at a different level; I become a part of it.
Let's say that Intermezzo is a space-between (intermitto is to leave a gap or an interval of
space), where certitudes must be abandoned and creativity and change are possible. In
addition, working with phrases that can be played in random order after each other or in
random quantity on top of each other requires more attention to the contribution and
performance of the other(s). Freedom and 'unfreedom' at the same time. Each player is
free to choose the motif (s)he wants to play, but in accepting responsibility for the
other(s), (s)he is unfree at the same time: what is demanded by the other(s) is a radical
generosity, a constant interrogation of oneself, an unremitting orientation towards the
uncanny. However, there is a freedom in this unfreedom as well. The other makes me
free because (s)he confronts me with a possibility that I could not have chosen without
him/her. If the right choice were to show itself to me in its full glory, I would be
enslaved, but the right choice is good because it provides me with this opportunity (cf.
Blake et al., p.65). Intermezzo, being singular each time, demands to reinvent each time
the responsibilities involved in order to respond to the singularity of the event. This is not
done by ignoring previously developed concepts, but by going beyond them, to resituate
them with no previous guarantee whatsoever of success. Rather than an unproblematized
technocratic repetition of and obedience to traditional authority, it is a dialogue with or
interrogation of some privileged aspects of certain jazz music. (In this sense, Intermezzo
is not only music, but philosophy as well. 'It is the promise of a philosophical event to
practically question a social or discursive state that certain people would gain to have
naturalized and dehistoricized, by unsettling it or participating in its transformation, and
to pose the question of the historicity of these structures', Derrida says in an interview. Is
it time to reconsider the borderline between musical praxis and philosophy, between
empiricism and theory?)
Intermezzo does not suture a system of rules that can be formalized. It is always an
opening. On one hand, in the meaning of a nonclosed system, an opening left to the
freedom of the players. And on the other hand, this opening means an advance or an
invitation extended to the other(s). This openness involves an understanding that does not
merely seek the closure of certainty, but it seeks an openness to new experiences with
new and multiple meanings. The aim then becomes 'to accept the possibility of
uncertainty and unpredictability whilst recognizing difference and otherness. Here, also,
is what education in the postmodern might emphasize' (Usher & Edwards, p.30).

[8] Intermezzo displays a doubleness, an ambiguity. First, the interpretation of the

performers is of utmost importance. An openness to the other arises because each
musician is conscious of the fact that the choice (s)he made could easily have been
another. Second, 'compositions' like Intermezzo show, perhaps more explicitly than many
others, that this plurality and heterogeneity of conceivable (performable) versions is made
possible by the 'composition' itself, by the 'composition' as text. Heterogeneity manifests
itself in the space between text and reader. Intermitto.
Of Jazz Education
[1] Besides my work as an academic, as a philosopher of music, I also teach. I give
instruction in piano, theory, and combo at the Jazz School of the Rotterdam School of
Music (SKVR), a public facility supported by the local government. Students, all
amateurs between 16 and 60 years old, become acquainted with jazz music during a four
year course, each year at increasing levels of difficulty from K-12. The vast majority of
these students has no intention of making a career of music; for them, it is a leisure
activity and they do not intend to obtain a degree in music. Each week the students have
an instrumental lesson, a theory lesson, and - perhaps most importantly - a combo lesson.
Generally, the repertoire is taken from The Realbook or from related 'jazz bibles'. These
books contain mainly jazz standards, schematically notated: above a melody line of
rhythmically simple notes are a series of chord symbols. This summary information
should in the end lead to a well-sounding piece of music. The formula with which most
of these standards are usually played is: (intro) - theme - improvisations on the prescribed
harmonies - theme - (outro). Often the theme is a standard song in 32-bar form, the A-A-
B-A form of so many popular songs, or in the 12-bar blues form. It is played in unison by
the sax and/or trumpet player, or sung by a vocalist accompanied by the rhythm-section
consisting of bass, drums, piano and/or guitar. In an improvisation, the musician places
new melodic lines over the given harmonies of the song or the blues. This is done by
embellishing or making slight alterations (paraphrasing), or by creating entirely new
melodic lines (chorus-phrase). The solo improvisations are played one after another,
generally in a pre-established order. The degree of complexity increases when there are
different chords within a theme, when the chords follow each other more rapidly, when
more extended (altered) chords are used, when tempos are increased, when greater
deviations to the famous and basic II-V-I pattern occur, etc. The entire formula is based
mainly on 1940's bebop.
Although improvements are always possible, the Jazz School students are generally very
satisfied. During the 2000-01 school year, the Jazz School accommodated eleven combo's
(approximately 70 students). Still there is a problem. Or better to say, I, as a teacher at the
Jazz School, have a problem. This problem has to do with the narrowing definition of
what jazz music is or can be, a reduction of jazz music to the bebop and hard bop styles
of the 1940's and 1950's. (Admittedly, there are a few opportunities to teach Latin jazz or
jazz-rock at the Jazz School. The Latin jazz (mainly Jobim's bossa nova's) that is played,
however, generally has the same structure as the above-mentioned jazz standards. In fact,
they already belong to the corpus of jazz standards. Maybe they belong to this corpus
because they have the same structure.) What is the consequence of narrowing definition
of jazz in jazz education? In my opinion, the student's expectations are confirmed too
soon. Along with that, the concentration on making music together, on listening to the
other(s) and responding to each other decreases in the long run. In the teachers' search for
appropriate songs (not too difficult, not too fast, interesting enough for every member of
the combo), (s)he arrives at the more-of-the-same problem, something that undoubtedly
has to do with the limited compositional skills of the average bebop musician. As jazz
expert Joachim Berendt asserts, a composer of jazz music is often a jazz musician who
simply writes 12-bar blues or 32-bar song themes, supplying himself and his players with
materials for improvisation. It is not very striking that in terms of harmony and melody,
jazz does not offer much of a revolutionary nature (cf. Berendt, 1992, p.161).

[2] What about this personal and local sketch? Why this rudimentary case study? What I
write in this section on music education is not all-inclusive. What I try to do is to find
some inroads into music (jazz) education and to rethink certain assumptions or
conventions. I would like to uncover a space where questions can be asked, where
obsolete principles are renounced, where something that goes without saying becomes
less obvious. Questions about teaching, about teaching material, about jazz. On this page,
I would like to point out some spaces where jazz education can be reconsidered. Just by
asking some questions.

[3] Let's consider, for example, the question 'What are you teaching when you are
teaching jazz music?' What is jazz music? What have Scott Joplin's ragtimes, just to
mention one example, with their functional harmonics, fixed meter and swinging rhythm,
but without any improvisation in common with the (total) harmonic liberties and wide
arches of rhythmic tension of free jazz? What has the 'free counterpoint', supported by a
rhythm still very close to European march music of the New Orleans style, to do with the
cross-over of pop and jazz in the songs of Michael Franks; the 1930's Swing era and its
development of big bands with the 1990's jazz-dance and rap music of US3?
Jazz is essentially an eclectic form of music. It was a hybrid right from the start; let's say,
for the sake of convenience, it is a mixture of, or interaction between Western
instrumentation, melody, and harmony and African (or Afro-American) rhythm,
phrasing, and production of sound. The distinction between purity and eclecticism simply
involves that what may seem pure today came into existence so long ago that we have
forgotten how eclectic, how impure it used to be. Especially since the 1980's, jazz
unceasingly fragmented and transcended stylistic limits. It exploded categories and
ignored delimitations in an incessant process of blending and intermingling with pop and
classical music, two equally hybrid terms.

[4] In The Jazz Book. From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond, Joachim Berendt tries to
formulate a definition of jazz. According to Berendt, there are three main aspects of jazz:
swing, improvisation, and sound (sonority and phrasing). All these characteristics are
important, but their mutual relationships change. This is part of jazz evolution, but makes
it very difficult at the same time to define jazz definitively. To mention just a few
examples: some recordings by Count Basie's band do not contain a single improvised
solo. Yet, no one questions its jazz character. In many free-jazz improvisations, swing
recedes. We still call it jazz. The ragtime pianists had swing, but hardly any
improvisation and no sonority. The early New Orleans bands did have jazz sonority, but
they had more march rhythm than swing. Nevertheless, both ragtime and New Orleans
belong to the jazz roots (cf. Berendt, 1992, p.454).
On one hand, Berendt tries to save the borderlines of jazz music by bringing in his three
main jazz aspects. On the other hand, he readily admits that the borders between jazz and
other music styles are blurred, particularly since the 1980's: 'Free jazz and world music,
bebop, minimal music, rock, New Orleans jazz, trash rock, tango, hip-hop ... The
message of eighties jazz was, Anything goes' (Berendt, 1992, p.47).
On one hand, his laborious effort to define jazz can be regarded as a classical attempt to
demarcate. (This even makes him say things he probably did not want to convey. Before
coming to his careful and balanced definition of jazz - jazz as a musical style in which at
least one of the parameters swing, improvisation, and sound are at stake - he firmly
declares that 'improvisation is indispensable to jazz' (cf. p.157).) On the desire to
demarcate, Derrida writes: 'This permanent requirement - to distinguish between the
internal and proper sense and the circumstance of the object being talked about -
organizes all philosophical discourses on art ... This requirement presupposes a discourse
on the limit between the inside and the outside of the art object' (The Truth In Painting,
p.45). The issue here is the difference between the ergon, the work 'itself', and the
parergon, that which is outside the work. It seems necessary to know how to define the
intrinsic, the framed, and what to exclude as frame and as beyond the frame. And Berendt
makes an attempt.
On the other hand, he seems to know that parerga have a thickness (cf. The Truth In
Painting, p.60), that they have an internal and an external border, that the boundary
between inside and outside is not a clear-cut, narrow line; that this makes it difficult at
times to decide whether or not a parergon belongs to the ergon after all. Let's take, as an
example, the 'no wave' or 'noise music' (both of which are Berendt's terms) of guitar
player, Elliott Sharp. In The Jazz Book, Berendt considers Sharp a jazz musician. But, in
general, his 'cyberpunk' and 'industrial noise' give more occasion to observations and
interviews in more rock-oriented magazines such as Keyboard and Guitar Player. With
respect to 'real jazz' (whatever that may be) - jazz that is on the inside, demarcated by the
internal borderline - Sharp's music merges into a general domain of 'other' music.
Considered as music with much improvisational and free jazz elements to it, however, it
merges into the domain of jazz music. Sharp's music is then separated from the outside,
from the 'other' music. Could his work be an example of 'parergonal music'? It is written
in and on the margins of jazz music. (N)either inside (n)or outside jazz. It is not a matter
of decision here. 'Deconstruction must neither reframe nor dream of the pure and simple
absence of the frame' (The Truth In Painting, p.73).

[5] Before I come to the question of what these difficulties in defining jazz music can
mean for jazz education, I first want to pay attention to some opinions about jazz
education in general. Advocates and opponents. Musician and Professor of Music George
Lewis, for instance, writes in favor of jazz education in schools if it is done in the right
way; that is, if creative development is guaranteed above the learning of clichés (cf. Zorn,
p.91ff). Berendt states that jazz schools, conservatories, and courses are important
because they further the knowledge of jazz and they help young musicians to build a
vocabulary (cf. Berendt, 1992, p.51). But Berendt also has his doubts: 'Today's young
musician is besieged by hundreds of books containing transcriptions, exercises in
improvisation, studies in scales, theories of harmony, analyses of chords, examples of
patterns, etc. The situation was strikingly different in earlier decades. What bebop
innovators used to learn largely orally and intuitively, spending night after night at clubs
and listening to records over and over, many of today's young musicians acquire
rationally - and that's how it sounds: docile and diligent, very accurate and technically
brilliant, but with little feeling and expression ... Making jazz an academic pursuit seems
to promote the very thing people originally wanted to avoid: an institutionalization of
facelessness' (Berendt, 1992, p.50-1). Composer and professor Christopher Small agrees
with him: 'The fact that there are now ... formal courses of training for jazz musicians
may signal the end of jazz as a living force; an art that is truly living resists its
codification, the establishment of canons of taste and of practice, that schools, by their
nature, impose' (Small, p.198). Lewis notes that many jazz musicians often express
ambivalence as to whether schools are the right environment for studying jazz. They fear
and even hate the process called 'academicization' (cf. Zorn, p.80). These musicians warn
against the overuse of now widely available compilations of precomposed jazz patterns,
or 'licks' - a practice that can be deemed to be a direct product of the academicization
process. The main complaint is that so-called 'riff books' amount to approved lists of
melodies that musicians often feel obliged to reproduce, often verbatim, as part of an
ersatz improvisation. And indeed, Lewis writes, 'many of these riff books do bear
formidably erudite titles ('Structures for Jazz'), which announce a somewhat suspect
strategy of classicization and canonization' (Zorn, p.82). As drummer Marvin 'Smitty'
Smith very expressively says: '[The jazz education institutions] formulate everything.
Like, you play lick number 37 combined with licks number 152, 338, and 1012 and you
have a perfect phrase for the first four bars of 'All The Things You Are'' (Berendt, 1992,
p.51). And although Berendt starts to say how important jazz clinics, master classes,
courses, workshops, and conservatories are, he concludes that (1) the decisive part, i.e.
swing, cannot be taught and (2) they cannot impart someone how to live jazz (cf. Berendt,
1992, p.51 and p.193). Lewis' critical comments are also directed at the many jam
sessions, which, though still important as forums for the maintenance of tradition, often
degenerate into sites for the exchange of canonized 'clichés'. Perhaps the symbol of this
reification of traditional forms, used by both students and professional musicians, is The
Realbook, which serves a very important canonizing function in the world of jazz
pedagogy (cf. Zorn, p.88-9).
Between the advocates and opponents of jazz education stand people, such as
saxophonist Eddie Harris, who maintain that intimate, nearly automatic familiarity with
'clichés' is not negative by definition. However, it should be regarded not as an end in of
itself, but as a legacy of common practice. It should be used as a springboard for the
creation of a more personal approach. Harris writes about the complex interaction among
the conceptions of literature, orature, tradition, canonization, personality and innovation,
the interaction between clichés and creativity (cf. Zorn, p.82-3).

[6] How can I combine my description of the Rotterdam Jazz School with these critical
remarks on both jazz education and the attempt to define jazz? What role could
deconstruction play here? And what should we do with Small's 'accusation' that 'the
standardization of teaching is no more than a sign of the standardization of musical
practice throughout the world of western music' (Small, p.197)? Is standardization
possible? Justifiable? Berendt, in particular, shows that every attempt to fix jazz music
must fail because the term 'jazz' is too heterogeneous; it is at all times open to extension,
inclusion, transgressing its own borders. When Derrida states that deconstruction is
always already going on, not only in (philosophical) texts, but also in non-discursive
institutions, - 'Deconstruction is not a discursive or theoretical matter, but rather a
practico-political one; and it is always produced in structures which are called
institutional', Derrida writes in The Post Card - could he mean that the institution jazz is
always already under deconstruction, deconstructed from the inside and not from some
external critique or analysis? Berendt's struggle to define jazz makes clear that the
signifier 'jazz' never arrives at a stable signified, a stable meaning, and it will never be
definitively clear where jazz ends and 'non-jazz' begins. This is an excess in the interior
of the concept of 'jazz'. Not an accidental excess, but one that is constitutive of it. It is
constitutive of a word or a concept that it is iterable, repeatable at another time, another
place, another context, i.e., cut off from its 'original' referent or signified. Therefore, an
absolute embedding, a clear and stable center, is impossible to guarantee. Each repetition
is also a displacement that leads to different meanings.

[7] If the concept of 'jazz' is an unstable one, it has consequences for jazz education, as
well. What connects my personal experiences at the Jazz School with the objections of
the authors and musicians cited above, is the narrowing of the concept of jazz and its
practical consequences. Teaching jazz music often means teaching the jazz forms that
were current and valid in the 1940's and 1950's. Starting from this idea, the possibility of
reverting to the jazz bible, The Realbook, in order to teach the jazz classics presents itself
and, following naturally from this, to attend to typical jazz-patterns, scales, and licks. A
desire for safety, clarity, stability, predictability, univocality. Standardization
(definitions) required for accountability, 'measurability'.
According to Gregory Ulmer, the central concern for an education that takes notice of
post-structuralist ideas like deconstruction is 'how to deconstruct the function of imitation
in the pedagogic effect' (Ulmer, p.174). Approvingly, he refers to several modern social
analyses that describe education as a device of power and control whose chief purpose it
is to reproduce fixed values. Deconstruction of imitation, however, does not imply
abandoning imitation altogether (if that is at all possible). Far more prudent, far more
subtle, Derrida asks how to reconcile the respect and the transgression of institutional
limits. Granted, there is nothing in Derrida's writings about jazz and jazz education. Yet,
he unfolds a space which makes possible such a writing where one is not simply writing
one's own text but writing on 'his'. Repetition and transformation. Elaborating on his
writings, writing at first in the margins of his texts, will gradually assume a text of its
own that expresses new thoughts. My experiences while writing this text. Perhaps a
natural way of learning to play jazz music. In learning jazz, one begins by copying
(perhaps by being forced to copy). The student repeats, often without understanding, in
order to enter into the practice. Once (s)he is well on his way, understanding can dawn.
Deconstruction questions the limits of this initiation, for example, by asking how the
creativity (perhaps even autonomy) of the learner relates to such an initiation. It is a plea
in favor of invention, not without concepts, but by going each time beyond the concept,
without any guarantee or certainty. It is about risks; that is, it both traces and invokes
risks - where things do not go according to a preconceived plan. It is about questioning
such concepts as functional harmonies (II-V-I patterns) and tonality, fixed meters and
beats, conventional musical structures, conventional ways of playing instruments,
successive solo's; in short, jazz and jazz education in the narrow sense. It opens a space
for free tonality, arches of rhythmic tension and pulses, an infinite exploration of musical
structures and the use of instruments, collective improvisations and complex interplay of
different notated patterns so that one can barely tell which one of the musicians is leading
at any given moment. This manner of thinking questions the borders among jazz, rock
and classical music, which is not to say a submersion into nothingness or indifference,
but into an affirmative openness toward the other. On one hand, this type of jazz
(education) remains in touch with jazz as defined in the narrow sense; on the other hand,
jazz is used as a starting point, or even as merely one component among others.

[8] An efficient and rigorous deconstruction must, at the same time, develop a critique
concerning the actual institution of jazz (pedagogy) and engage in a positive, affirmative,
and provocative transformation of jazz education. This, by no definition, means that
current jazz education (the Jazz School at the SKVR) must be replaced or abandoned
altogether; I do not advocate disposing of such jazz bibles as The Realbook but rather,
learning to read them in a creative and responsive way. For this, students also need to be
introduced to what is outside the dominant paradigm. Although new ways of teaching
jazz music must be explored, I think that jazz and jazz education continually replace and
transform themselves. Not a return of contemporary jazz (education) to its 'roots', but a
move in other directions. That is why the struggle is never simply for or against jazz
education, but between certain forces and their solicitations and implications, within and
outside of the academic institutions. It is in this sense that deconstruction has radical
institutional implications. Because deconstruction is never 'concerned only with signified
content, but with the conditions and assumptions of discourse especially, with
frameworks of enquiry, it engages the institutional structures governing our practices,
competencies, performances' (Culler, p.156).
The Role of the Teacher
[1] Intermezzo. The name of one of my 'compositions'. Better, the name of a piece
between composition and improvisation. Inter-mezzo. Even the composed parts, eight
short motifs, are contaminated by improvisation: which musician plays which motif at
which time is not established in advance. (On the page entitled Intermezzo I enter at
length into this piece of music.) This means that the finished art object barely exists:
Intermezzo is an activity, a process in which at no stage it can be considered a completed
work of art. The musicians take the listeners (and themselves) on a journey of
exploration. The audience negotiates every twist and turn with them, every precipice and
danger (one can never exclude the possibility of failure). Intermezzo is a constant
exploration of a musical space that stresses the process of creation more than the finished
art object. The piece is successful if the musicians playing it are delighted in the features
of the new terrains that they discovered for themselves, i.e., when they open themselves
to insecurity instead of mastery, adventure instead of worn paths. (In Freedom and
Sacrifice, Jan Patocka writes: 'Man is meant to let grow in him what provokes anxiety,
what is unreconciled, what is enigmatic, what ordinary life turns away from' (cf. Of
Hospitality, p.38).)

[2] What does it mean to teach Intermezzo? What does it mean to use a piece like
Intermezzo as teaching material in a music school for students who want to learn to play
jazz music? More specifically, what does this mean for the role of the teacher (cf. On
Jazz Education)? On one hand, (s)he is probably still the initiator, the inspiration. The
teacher might be the one suggesting something that deviates from more traditional jazz
material such as most of the standards in The Real Book. (Most students - at least in my
classes - are still looking for security and safety, even in improvisations. This is revealed,
for example, in trying to repeat conventional 'licks' and phrases and in laying down
arrangements as soon as possible.) That means, (s)he still has some control, mastery, and
authority. On the other hand, however, by using teaching material such as Intermezzo, the
teacher can no longer rely on certainties. When teaching Intermezzo, the teacher does not
know what will happen or how it will happen; (s)he cannot know the outcome. Thus, the
selfsame teacher and her or his knowledge are at stake. The teacher can only react to
what the students present, achieve, accomplish; (s)he can hardly anticipate. (S)he should
not anticipate; that could destroy the process of exploration, of discovery, of play.
The teacher meets here with the particular, the singular. (S)he can no longer be a simple
intermediary, a simple transmitter of ready-made knowledge, reproducing and
representing subject matters that are predetermined. As Shoshana Felman writes in
Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight, the kind of knowledge necessary to teach
material such as Intermezzo 'cannot be acquired (or possessed) once and for all: each
case, each text, has its own specific, singular symbolic functioning and requires a
different interpretation ... [This] knowledge cannot be exchanged, it has to be used - and
used in each case differently according to the singularity of the case, according to the
specificity of the text ... Analysis thus has no use for ready-made interpretations, for
knowledge given in advance (Felman, p.81). Without authorative mastery, the teacher
still leads, but now humbly. (S)he directs the students' attention to no original source or
teleological endpoint, but through the inconclusive open text of the lesson. The students
go beyond fixed goals, beyond mainstream jazz material, and beyond any stable authority
of the teacher. This teacher is impassioned, but 'knows nothing'. In the margins of
Derrida's Of Hospitality, Anne Dufourmantelle quotes Derrida from one of his lectures:
'One could dream about what would be the lesson of someone who didn't have the keys to
his own knowledge, who didn't arrogate it to himself. He would give place to the place,
leaving the keys with the other to unlock the words form their enclosure' (Of Hospitality,
p.14).

[3] The above decentralizes (deconstructs) the traditional relationship between teacher
and student and asks for a reorientation of the role of the teacher. In conventional
approaches, the teacher is considered an expert, a professional with a trained ear, the one
who (even in music) has access to scientific, objective knowledge, knowledge consisting
of fixed notions. 'This involves an attempt to arrest play and bring thought (and one's
'self') under control. Looking for a center, if not an origin, a trunk from which branches
can spread, it promotes structure and planning in education, with all their reinforcements
of performativity. It totalizes its conception of the learner in sets of needs or outcomes, or
composite pictures of the educated man' (Blake et al., p.43).
Various authors from various disciplines have tried to sketch the outlines of a new
pedagogy in which the role of the teacher has changed (cf. Small, 1980; Felman, 1987;
Neel, 1988; Usher and Edwards, 1994, Blake et al., 1998). Basically, their ideas -
although from different sources and illustrated and articulated in very different ways -
originate from a similar thought: the role of the teacher should become much more of a
co-ordinator of learning resources than that of a source of knowledge and preferences;
(s)he should become the facilitator of knowledge, helping to engender the knowledge and
preferences that her or his students gain (cf. Usher and Edwards, p.198). Thus, teaching is
not the transmission of ready-made knowledge. Rather, it is the creation of a new
condition of knowledge, the creation of an original learning disposition. One of the most
important skills the teacher will have to develop is that of knowing when to intervene and
when to stay out of the way (cf. Small, p.225). This different view on teaching opposes
planning and control with a lack of spontaneity, intellectual expertise as skills, pedagogy
as encyclopaedic knowledge. Illusions of mastery and perfectability are dispelled.
Centers of authority withdraw or disappear (cf. Blake et al., p.172).

[4] I return to Intermezzo. Using material such as this forces the teaching of jazz in a way
other than how it is commonly taught in many music schools, conservatories or
universities - that is, the playing of jazz standards and the building of one's solo on pre-
established, pre-existent licks. (I am in no way suggesting here that with Intermezzo, I
have invented something very new. First, there is already a great deal of music based on
more or less the same principles: some freely usable composed outlines combined with
improvisational parts. Second, some people, such as George Lewis who teaches at the
University of California, San Diego, seem to work with similar material and probably at a
much higher and more professional level (cf. Lewis' contribution in John Zorn's book
Arcana, p.78-109). I keep coming back to Intermezzo because I have experience with
teaching this 'composition' and because it is teaching material that can be played with
ease by amateurs.) Teaching Intermezzo is still about teaching jazz music; it does not, nor
is it about rejecting (traditional) jazz. It creates a new context for (traditional) jazz and
thus creates a new music. Intermezzo juxtaposes the canon of conventional works used in
jazz education with contrasting or supplementary alternatives. In that way, it broaches
tradition even as it puts it into crisis, activating the critical potential of discipline. The
canon is not rejected, but given pedagogical and cultural vibrancy. But the growth of the
musician will be different from the one achieved by predictable controlled teleologies (cf.
Blake et al., p.43). My goal is what philosopher Jasper Neel calls 'strong discourse':
whereas strong discourse requires heterogeneity that admits other voices and tolerates
several discourses, weak discourse tries to silence other voices. And he further states that
'strong discourse will also require a kind of pluralism that makes the teacher-centered
classroom difficult, if not impossible' (Neel, p.210). Perhaps a teacher should present her
or his speech together with the silences in/of that speech, allowing students a space in
which they can speak, in which they can make their music.
Just as teachers who work with teaching material such as Intermezzo do not reject jazz
tradition (though they will question the existence of only one tradition), they are not, by
definition, against the teaching of scales and historical achievements that concern
improvisation. But they avoid allowing students to reduce themselves to one (final) story.
Instead of encouraging students to play in a certain way through teaching, the teacher
opens a space for them to entertain new ways of playing, to dis-cover other (yet marginal)
stories, and to assume responsibility for them. (S)he considers it her or his task to alert
students, to make them reflect on goals and purposes, about the processes by which they
arrive at ends and values instead of teaching them the unquestioned outcomes of
previously structured profiles.
I am not talking about originality here, at least not originality in the conventional sense.
The practice of deconstruction interrogates presupposed origins and shows that all
starting points are always already marked by the traces of previous others. Each text, each
improvisation, always refers back to other texts, other improvisations. Without a
beginning, without an end. In this sense there is no original, no original improvisation.
On the other hand, however, deconstruction makes us aware of the difference present in
each repetition. Every time a mark, a tone, a lick is used or repeated, it is used and
repeated in a different context and thus transformed, changed. In this sense every text,
every improvisation, is original, unique, singular. The teacher and the student operate
between these two horizons. The role of the teacher could be to provide for or open a
space where students can make new connections and correlations among already existing
texts (improvisations). Be possessed by them and taking possession of them in the same
stroke; expressing something new in (from) the silent space opened up by the movement
of differentiation and articulation of many different voices. Grafted onto the
improvisations of others, with, through, and alongside other musics, but in discovering
new combinations, new possibilities, going beyond the others, giving place to something
new. The play of différance.

[5] Intermezzo calls for, impels a teacher to assume a different role. Her or his role as
queen/king-of-knowledge decreases as her or his role of musical discourse facilitator
increases. Instead of operating from an expert posture, (s)he comes from a curious,
collaborative posture, which tolerates ambiguity and confusion; (s)he assists people in
operating more effectively within the confusion. In this sense, guidance and counselling
can be seen as helping students to establish the 'controlled de-control' that pieces like
Intermezzo require. 'Someone who philosophizes [teaches] out loud in this way does not
unwind a smooth, univocal thread; he shows the tears in it. He leaves room for
astonishment, for what breaks reflection in the seizure of fear' (Of Hospitality, p.23-4).
Anne Dufourmantelle refers to the university classes of Derrida here; I would like to offer
this view as a proposal to every (music) teacher. Astonishment. To teach astonishment.
To teach astonishment about music. The lesson does not 'teach' music: it teaches the
condition that makes it possible to learn (about/from) music.
One more thing to say. One step further. Working with Intermezzo, the teacher cannot
control or master the outcomes. (S)he cannot foresee the results. Thus, (s)he cannot rely
on what (s)he already knows. The mastery that other forms of teaching and learning
might incorporate is jeopardized as the position of the teacher is destabilized in the
process. The result of this is that the position of the teacher is itself the position of the one
who learns. The teacher becomes a student. Perhaps (s)he teaches nothing other than the
way in which (s)he her/himself learns (cf. Felman, p.88). Both (s)he and the student are
learning something about the music, but also learning something from it. Music is not a
simple object of teaching; it is its subject. Music is the purveyor of the act of teaching.
Perhaps thinking about the role of the teacher should have to start with the question:
'How can what music teaches us be taught?'
Teaching a Supplement
[1] Teaching and learning jazz music at a music school. Participating (as a teacher or a
student) in the Jazz School of the Rotterdam School of Music (SKVR). Teaching adults.
Teaching adults who have no intention of becoming professional musicians. Teaching
adults jazz music in their leisure-time. I would call this supplementary teaching, or
teaching a supplement. A supplement, an addition or addendum, an appendage or
appendix. Something added to supply the deficiencies of something else, but also an
addition to something that is already complete in itself. For example, teaching music at a
music school, which is already an addition to compulsory education. For example, when
we call jazz, pop, and rock music together 'light music'. Light music. As opposed to
classical or 'serious' music. The hierarchical position is clear. Light music comes as an
extra, (afterwards) added to an already complete whole, i.e., 'serious' music. (I must leave
a deconstruction of the hierarchy, of the binary opposites, of the full meaning of calling
light music the supplement of serious music, of classical music, as both complete and
incomplete, for another time, another place.)
A third example. Jazz education in music schools is supplementary as well. 'In all
European countries, jazz education on the pre-academy/conservatory/university level is at
a very low level', and 'The number of music schools that have regular jazz workshops and
big bands is by far outnumbered by music schools that do not have jazz education in the
curriculum', the International Association of Schools of Jazz (IASJ) concludes at
conventions in 1999 and 2000. The teaching of jazz music is an appendage; it is a
luxurious (not really necessary) extra in the supply of most music schools, which in
themselves are already supplementary.

[2] I turn to adult education now. In Postmodernism and Education, Robin Usher and
Richard Edwards argue that education is conceived in the modernist narrative as
'essential to the goal of producing the rational man fit for a rational society' (cf.
Education: From Modernism to Postmodernism). 'The end of man is therefore to
complete the work of nature by substituting reason for passion. It follows therefore that
once it has done its job, education is at an end' (Usher and Edwards, p.131). If schooling
is based on this notion of completion, this has led to the marginalization of other forms
and levels of education, for example, education that takes place outside of the
pedagogical system, music education at music schools, and adult education. Very often,
the latter has been confined 'to 'the ghettos of training' and 'leisure-time activity'. Adult
education has been constructed as a supplement, as an adding on to something that is
already complete and completed' (Usher and Edwards, p.131, my italics).
Yet, here Usher and Edwards bring in the other meaning of supplement. Something that
needs a supplement is not sufficient in its own right. It lacks something that it requires. A
supplement reveals the incompleteness of something that needs the supplement. If the
supplement needs to perfect something that is incomplete in of itself, the supplement, the
marginalized term, becomes important, perhaps more important, than the central term.
The central term has a lack and the supplement is necessary to fill it. But supplementing
does not only mean adding onto; it also means substituting. A supplement both completes
and transforms. Bringing forward the double meaning of the term supplement shakes up
the stability of the binary opposites. What begins as a supplement to help something
becomes a replacement that threatens the integrity of what it purports to replace (cf.
Plato's Supplements).
Usher and Edwards see adult education as the supplement that both substitutes for and
replaces schooling. 'In effect, the self-defined goal of education cannot be realized in
schooling. There is no end to incompleteness, and no end to completeness. Schooling can
neither have an 'end' (goal or purpose), nor can itself be an 'end' (terminus)' (Usher and
Edwards, p.131). (School is being replaced by continuing education. In disciplinary
societies, one is always starting all over again (as one goes from school to barracks, from
barracks to factory), while in control societies one never finishes anything, Deleuze
writes in Negotiations, p.179.) What adult education replaces in the first place (rather
than simply adding on to) is, according to Usher and Edwards, 'a cognitive mastery of
knowledge-based skills'. I am not sure if Usher and Edwards are ignoring here the
increasing attention for non-cognitive knowledge in primary and secondary schools (at
least in The Netherlands), but what they say certainly goes for (amateur) (adult) music
education. Although cognitive knowledge and the learning of skills are part of (amateur)
(adult) music education to be sure, this is not the main goal. Perhaps one could even say
that there is no goal, at least not in the modernist sense described above. I will dwell upon
this a little longer.

[3] The boundaries within which learning is thought to take place are broken down.
Value is given to the learning that 'takes place outside of formally structured education
and training opportunities and in the cultivation of difference in the diverse
interpretations of the lifeworlds that people articulate. There is an acceptance within
experiential learning of the investment of meaning, of desire, in the particular stances
people adopt' (Usher and Edwards, p.197). Nevertheless, Usher and Edwards establish
that many governments' attitudes toward education are guided by 'a desire to (re)establish
(self-)discipline among learners, in order that they become and remain law-abiding
citizens ... Having socialized children into (self-)disciplined behaviour, youth and adults
are educated and trained into and by the (self-)discipline of labor. In other words,
experiential learning is largely circumscribed by employers' needs for particular kinds of
labor and consumers' (Usher and Edwards, p.204). Either education is controlled by a
government or it is strongly influenced by the power of the market and economics.
However, using their words as well as those of Jacques Attali, I would like to show how
(adult) (light) music education is marginal, yet impossible-to-imagine-without. As a
supplement, it completes compulsory education. But as a supplement, it also supplants
compulsory education and has the power to infect it with other (new) ideas.

[4] Contrary to what they write about the disciplining and the goal-oriented functions of
education, Usher and Edwards stress that 'there has been a re-formation and re-creation of
'leisure-time activity', such that it is no longer seen as a largely inconsequential and
frivolous addition to an already completed educational formation, but an essential aspect
of a lifestyle and of the formation of self in certain desired directions ... These activities
have no end (goal) since they are their own end, and no end (terminus) since the desire
which animates them is endless' (Usher and Edwards, p.132). The logic of
supplementarity enables a subversion of the notion of education as complete in of itself.
But more important for me here is the insight that leisure time education often has no
externally oriented goal. Therefore, it can escape from the circle of calculation of the
pedagogic system. It can escape from rational planning and the suppressing of passion by
reason. Therefore, it disrupts the explicit attention for reason and cognition in 'modernist'
education.
What can these thoughts teach us about adult music education? What can they teach us
about the Jazz School at the Rotterdam School of Music? What can they teach us about
this supplementary education? It is here that I would like to examine Roland Barthes' and
Jacques Attali's thoughts on the transition they observe from listening to music
(passively) to making music on a non-professional and non-commercial level. 'There are
two musics ... : the music one listens to, and the music one plays. These two musics are
two totally different arts, each with its own history, its own sociology, its own aesthetics,
its own erotics', Roland Barthes writes in his essay 'Musica Practica'. But whereas
Barthes establishes in 1970 that 'concurrently, passive, receptive music, sound music, has
become the music (that of concert, festival, record, radio): playing has ceased to exist'
and that 'the amateur, a role defined much more by a style than by a technical
imperfection, is no longer anywhere to be found' (Barthes, p.149-50), Attali, in 1977, sees
emerging a 'new way of making music', a transition from the exchange and usage in
music (what Attali calls the era of repeating, the omnipresence of recorded music) to a
participation in making music ('the number of small orchestras of amateurs who play for
free has mushroomed'), the era of composing, 'a burgeoning of each individual's capacity
to create order from noise, outside of the channelization of pleasure into the norm ... the
permanent affirmation of the right to be different ... in other words, to create one's own
code and work, without advertising its goal in advance' (Attali, p.132).
Composing is making music solely for the sake of making music, playing for one's own
pleasure, 'music produced by each individual for himself, for pleasure outside of
meaning, usage and exchange' (Attali, p.137). Attali sees, in this new practice of music, a
reconciliation between work and play. In composing, labor is 'enjoyed in its own right, its
time experienced, rather than performed for the sake of using or exchanging its outcome.
The goal of labor is no longer necessarily communication with an audience, usage by a
consumer, even if they remain a possibility in the musical act of composition' (Attali,
p.142). This form of production lacks defined goals; labor no longer advances
accumulation. 'Composition is inscribed ... in the permanent fragility of meaning after the
disappearance of usage and exchange' (Attali, p.147). Exteriority (usage, exchange, goals
that exceed the mere making of music) can only disappear in a space in which musicians
play primarily for themselves, when music emerges as an activity in of itself. It can
disappear in amateur music. It can disappear in the learning of adults who have no
intention of becoming professional musicians. These leisure activities have no end since
they are their own end. Outside of compulsory education (exterior to the essential term to
which it is added), but within the broader sense of education, adult jazz music education
(the additional extra, but also an essential extra to that which it supplements because
compulsory education is incomplete) can replace or transform the emphasis on cognitive,
goal-oriented knowledge and reason.
[5] Yet, composing for Attali goes further than just making music together. The era of
composing is 'the advent of a radically new form of the insertion of music into
communication' (Attali, p.134). According to Attali, there is 'no communication possible
between men any longer, now that the codes have been destroyed, including even the
code of exchange in repetition. We are all condemned to silence - unless we create our
own relation with the world and try to tie other people into the meaning we thus create.
That is what composing is. Doing solely for the sake of doing, without trying artificially
to recreate the old codes in order to reinsert communication into them. Inventing new
codes, inventing the message at the same time as the language' (Attali, p.134).
The composing Attali strives for, changes the rules. Rather than an exchange of coded
messages, composing means participating in collective play in which, in an ongoing
quest, new forms of communication without a predetermined program are developed. At
the same time as the work, it creates, in common, the codes within which communication
will take place. Attali thus stresses the idea that composing is a collective labor: 'What is
played is not the work of a single creator; even if an individual's composition is taken as
the point of departure, each musician develops his own instrumental part. Production
takes the form of one of collective composition' (Attali, p.141).
The principal example Attali uses is that of free jazz. In the afterword to Attali's book,
Susan McClary adds New Wave and Punk music as examples. Although neither foremost
nor consciously inspired by Attali's writing, 'my composition', Intermezzo, could be
regarded as an example as well. Eight composed motifs are taken as a point of departure,
but each musician playing Intermezzo has to invent her or his own part time and again. In
this process of deciding, (s)he has to listen carefully to the others. What are they playing?
Do I 'answer' with the same motif? In unison? One after the other? In a different key?
Using different intervals? Or could I answer with another motif? An improvisation? With
silence? Perhaps I should brutally interrupt with noisy sound scapes. Intermezzo has no
predetermined score, the motifs have no predetermined order; it is created during the
performances; each time a temporary result of a collective collaboration, each time a new
code, a new set of rules, is invented according to which Intermezzo can be performed. I
invite you - here, now - to listen to some results.
What are the effects on my students (adults learning jazz in their leisure-time) when I
rehearse Intermezzo with them? In general, these students are accustomed to more
conventional forms of jazz music, i.e. theme (A-A-B-A or blues form) - sequential
improvisations - theme. In playing Intermezzo, they do not know what, if any, the main
theme will be, who will play it, what the overall structure will be, etc. In short, they are
confronted with insecurity and instability. There is no pre-established order; they must
create the order within every performance, and it will change with every performance.
Insecurity. Instability. Attali describes composing: 'The dangers are immense, for once
the repetitive world is left behind, we enter a realm of fantastic insecurity' (Attali, p.146).
Composition thus leads to a staggering conception of communication, a communication
that is open and unstable. In 'composition', stability is perpetually called into question (cf.
Attali, p.147).

[6] Teaching at a music school can be called supplementary teaching. Teaching adults is
supplementary. Teaching jazz music is teaching a supplement; better yet, the supplement
of a supplement. Teaching free jazz or 'compositions' such as Intermezzo is teaching a
supplement to the third power. Each of these teachings supplement and fill the gaps of
compulsory teaching, the teaching of classical music, or the teaching of mainstream jazz.
It will, however, be clear that this teaching is not a simple addition to an education
already complete in of itself. It is added on a deficient education so as to complete it. But
as Usher and Edwards indicate, education will never be completed. There will be no end
to education. That is one consideration. The other point is that teaching jazz in general,
and freer forms of jazz in particular, is a 'dangerous' supplement from the moment it
presents itself as the replacement for what should need no replacement. This (kind of)
teaching affects and infects compulsory schooling. In one way or another, it questions
education's role as fulfilling a clear goal and as such, maintaining a purpose or a mission.
It questions education viewed in terms of a compensation for incompleteness so that it
can produce people who are fit for society. It questions mastery and control; it questions
truth, compulsory education's desired results. It opens a space for another truth; it reveals
what is concealed in compulsory schooling. Thus, it can transform that which it
substitutes.
Introduction to
Deconstruction
[1] Any attempt to discuss deconstruction in music immediately gives rise to two
fundamental questions: (1) what is deconstruction? (2) What is music? This page
addresses the former. The aim is to shed some light on the working and strategy of
deconstruction.
This overview is the result of a literature search on deconstruction in philosophical
discourse. My main interest has been the practices of deconstruction as elaborated by
Jacques Derrida. The texts in this section will not directly be related to music.
Two issues need to be addressed beforehand. First, this section is offered to introduce the
reader to deconstructive strategies in musical practices and discourses; in particular, what
knowledge is required in order to see deconstruction at work within music. The
information presented has, therefore, no pretense of being definitive; this is not an
exhaustive analysis of all that deconstruction might comprise (if that were possible at all).
Second, certain aspects of deconstruction will be addressed (more extensively) on the
pages that deal specifically with music.

[2] Derrida repeatedly and emphatically writes that he does not regard deconstruction as a
method or a theory for the analyses of texts. It is not possible to implicitly define, to fix,
deconstruction. However, when deconstruction is adopted into the musical praxis - which
is the goal of this site - it is at least presupposed that deconstruction can be described
(circum-scribed) in one way or another. In Deconstruction - Between Method and
Singularity, this issue is addressed in greater detail.
In a most general sense, deconstruction may be regarded as a reading strategy. This
strategy presents us with the impossibility of assigning an unequivocal meaning to a sign
or a text. Here, the ethics of deconstruction reveals itself in an openness to the
heteronomous or 'the other'. This idea is explained more extensively in Deconstruction -
An Affirmative Strategy of Transformation.
Several aspects of deconstruction may be distinguished. In a number of separate pages,
more attention will be given to some of these aspects: (a) the location of complementary
twin concepts where one term is subordinate to the other (Hierarchical oppositions); (b)
the location of concepts or words that harbor multiple, often constrasting meanings
(Undecidables); (c) the notion that the meaning of a text can never be completely
determined (Dissemination); (d) the notion that what seems additional, secondary or
marginal in a text often turns out to be of essential significance (Supplement); (e) the idea
that a context indeed determines the meaning of a text, but that a context can never be
clearly demarcated and that a text can be placed within different contexts (Context).
As a means of realization, each separate paragraph will include references to the text,
'Plato's Pharmacy', from Dissemination (p.61-171).
[3] This seems to be somewhat of a systematic run-down, but in fact it involves a
repeated new beginning at a constantly changing place in the Derridian labyrinth in order
to wind up at the same place again (which also turns out to be different each time). The
play of deconstruction.
Context
[1] 'A written sign, in the usual sense of the word, is a mark which remains, which is not
exhausted in the present of its inscription, and which can give rise to an iteration both in
the absence of, and beyond the presence of the empirically determined subject who, in a
given context, has emitted or produced it' (Margins, p.317).
What does Derrida mean here? A written sign has the structural ability to signify in the
absence of the addressee and independent of the (intention of the) sender. (According to
Derrida, whatever applies to writing, applies to every sign and to the whole field of
experience because it always takes place in chains of references.) In order to function as
writing, that is, in order to be legible, any written communication must remain legible in
spite of the absence of the addressee. A writing that would not be structurally legible -
iterable - beyond the absence (death) of the addressee would not be writing. The same
holds for the sender or the producer, and for the same reasons. 'For the written to be the
written, it must continue to 'act' and to be legible, even if what is called 'the author of the
writing' no longer answers for what he has written, for what he seems to have signed,
whether he is provisionally absent, or if he is dead, or if in general he does not support,
with his absolutely current and present intention or attention, the plenitude of his
meaning, or that very thing which seems to be written 'in his name'' (Margins, p.316).

[2] A sign thus carries with it a force of breaking with its 'original' context. This force of
breaking is not an accidental consequence but the very structure of the sign. (What would
a sign be that could not be cited?) This applies to both the so-called real context - the
presence of the writer and his intention - and the internal semiotic context: one can
always lift a sign from the chain of signs in which it is embodied by inscribing it into
other chains. This force of rupture is due to the spacing that constitutes the written sign,
the spacing that separates it from other elements of the internal contextual chain.
In order for a sign to be able to signify, it needs to be repeatable in a different context. It
is an essential property of all forms of appearance to be able to appear at a different place
and a different time. Without repetition, without the return of the same in a different way,
there can be no matter of meaning or significance (cf. IJsseling, p.18). Even reading and
understanding can be regarded as a repetition, a resumption of what has been previously
written or said. It is a resumption at a different moment than the moment at which it was
written or said.
In order for a text to be read, the reader must extract it from the author's protection
(decontextualization). The same holds true for speech: once uttered, it becomes available
for interpretation, repetition, and reformulation even by those who were not actually
present at the time the words were uttered. Contexts thus constantly change. At the same
time, it requires that each signifier remains forever severed from any specific meaning
(cf. Neel, p.115). This is what Derrida calls dissemination.

[3] It is a property of every sign that it can be cited. 'Everything begins in the folds of
citation ... , the inside of the text will always have been outside of it, in what seems to be
serving as the 'means' toward the 'work'. This 'reciprocal contamination of the work and
the means' poisons the inside, the body proper of what was once called the 'work', just as
it poisons the texts which are cited to appear and which one would have liked to keep
safe from this violent expatriation, this uprooting abstraction that wrenches them out of
the security of their original context ... To try to resist the removal of a textual member
from its context is to want to remain protected against this writing poison. It is to want at
all costs, to maintain the boundary line between the inside and the outside of a context'
(Dissemination, p.316). Derrida calls the impossibility to prevent the removal of a
signifier from one context to another, a general iterability (the word 'iterability' alludes to
both the possibility of repetition and to the possibility of change and transformation or
distortion). Every sign can break with every given context and engender infinitely new
contexts. This does not suppose that a sign has meaning outside of a context, but on the
contrary that there are only contexts (cf. Margins, p.320-1). By grafting familiar terms
onto new contexts, those terms are indeed not separated from their 'original' meaning
(since they would then have no meaning), but room is made for other meanings. By
undermining the univocality of a term, concept or word in this way, room can be made
for that, which cannot be conceptually captured.

[4] Derrida seems to deploy a shift from the primacy of the text to the primacy of the
context as the complex of circumstances that affect the production and determination of a
certain meaning: there is nothing outside context! Nevertheless, some comments should
be made with regard to context. Or, as Derrida wonders: 'Are the prerequisites of a
context ever absolutely determinable? ... Is there a rigorous and scientific concept of the
context?' (Margins, p. 310). First, context itself is a text in the general sense (arche-
writing in Derrida's terms). Context is not simply a pre-linguistic given; it is just as
thoroughly textualized as the text itself. One cannot interpret a privileged text against
some 'harder' reality, for that 'reality' is itself constituted by other texts.
Second, any given context is open to further description. There is no fundamental limit to
what might be included in a given context. Science and philosophy aim to have complete
control over the context of their field of study. But total context cannot be mastered, both
in principle and in practice. Meaning is context-bound, but context is boundless. Derrida:
'No meaning can be determined out of context, but no context permits saturation. What I
am referring to here is not richness of substance, semantic fertility, but rather structure,
the structure of the remnant or of iteration' (Bloom et al, p.81). Each sign, each text has a
context that determines the meaning. However, this context can never be completely
isolated. Post-structuralism in general argues that context is in fact unable to arrest the
fundamental mobility of signs for the reason that it harbors exactly the same principle of
interminability within itself, the impossibility of its closure. Context can always be
extended or augmented. Certainly there will be a cut-off point, which, for example, can
be determined by the conventions followed by the community of interpreters, but this is
always arbitrary.
Third, context is boundless in another sense. 'Any attempt to codify context can always
be grafted onto the context it sought to describe yielding a new context that escapes the
previous formulation' (Culler, p.124). Each sign and each text can be taken out of one
context and put into another context. In discussing the quote, 'I have forgotten my
umbrella', that appears in Nietzsche's Nachlass (unpublished writings), Derrida writes
that thousand possibilities will always remain open to interpret this sentence (cf. Limited
Inc., p.63). They remain open not because the reader can make the sentence mean
anything at all, but because other specifications of context are always possible. Surely
some contextual factors are less relevant than others; certain readings of Nietzsche's
sentence are less probable, but the point Derrida makes is that any demarcation of
contexts will always be arbitrary and debatable, and far from neutral when viewed from a
political or social perspective.
Fourth, it cannot be taken for granted that the evidence that makes up 'context' is going to
be any simpler or more legible than the text upon which such evidence is to operate. The
notion of context frequently oversimplifies rather than enriches the discussion, since the
opposition between a text and its context seems to presume that the context is given, that
it determines the meaning of the text and that it is ready to act upon the text to order its
uncertainties. But things are not that simple since it cannot be assumed that context is a
presumption or a simple natural ground upon which to base interpretation. Like a text,
context is not given, but produced; what belongs to a context is determined by
interpretive strategies. Contexts are just as much in need of elucidation as texts; and the
meaning of a context is determined by texts. The idea of context, posited as platform or
foundation, invites us to step back from the uncertainties of a text. But once this step is
taken, it is by no means clear why it may not be taken again; that is, context implies from
its first moment a potential regression without brakes.
Deconstruction - an
Affirmative Strategy of
Transformation
[1] What 'is' deconstruction? (The use of the quotation marks should make clear that the
question cannot in fact be posed like this. cf. Deconstruction: Between Method and
Singularity.) A first option for a description of deconstruction is offered by the
dictionary. In the French dictionary, Littré, the meaning of deconstruction progresses
along two lines. (1) Grammatical. Deconstruction means change, the disruption of the
construction or the composition of the words in a sentence with the purpose of producing
other, new meanings with the same words (i.e., not to deny them!). (2) Mechanical.
Deconstruction indicates disassembling, taking apart, dismantling, disintegrating (Derrida
often uses the word 'demontage').
The first description in particular shows that destructive and constructive aspects are at
work simultaneously. Deconstruction not only encloses and unlocks, it also gives access
to new spaces. Deconstruction means a dismantling in order to create something new.
The grammatical meaning puts more emphasis on the affirmative nature of
deconstruction than the mechanical meaning of the word.

[2] In the most simple and general terms, deconstruction in the Derridean sense means to
read a text according to a certain way or strategy, a precise and careful strategy, but also
one that shakes the ground under one's feet. It is a praxis in which Derrida specifically
aims to transform philosophical, linguistic, theological, or aesthetic texts. Deconstruction
shows us the possibility of continually ascribing different or additional meanings to texts;
it acknowledges the fundamental ambiguity of signs and texts and the impossibility of
controlling them. Deconstruction implies transplantation, the ability to remove a sign or
text from its present context to another context. In this way, deconstruction highlights the
heterogeneity of a sign or a text. It wants to show the impossibility of a (sign-)system to
close, to arrive at a definite meaning. Of course, attempts to demarcate meanings take
place all the time, but the demarcations are based on conventions and are always tentative
('for the time being').
Transplantation. But transplantation also always means transformation. Deconstruction
establishes a transgression, a shifting of meaning that in turn is never definitive. There is
no expectation of a final moment of truth. Rather, there is an ongoing process of the
shifting of rules that govern the relationships among (the elements of) systems. A short
example. We write, and in this writing there is a potential for rewriting. Transformation
implies that 'change' is a change in way of meaning - a becoming (cf. Game, p.189).

[3] Deconstruction disrupts a text from the inside out. This means that deconstruction
operates from within a text, from within the vocabulary of the text that it deconstructs. It
necessarily operates from the inside, borrowing all the strategic and economic resources
of the subversions from the old structure, borrowing them structurally (cf. Of
Grammatology, p.24). Derrida shows that every text is always permeated by multiple
meanings. But this heteronomy is relegated to the background by the author, by a reader
or by the context in such a way as to favor one meaning over another. Such manifestation
of power is revealed and questioned in deconstruction. For that reason, deconstruction is
not a discursive or theoretical 'play', but a practical-political affair; it is the taking of
responsibility (cf. Music, Deconstruction, and Ethics).
Derrida's major criticism on logocentrism (on Western thought, in general) is its
continuous attempt to control the other, (thereby) reducing it and merging it into the
same. The other inspires us with fear because it cannot be reduced to the same; and so it
needs to be counteracted. Derrida does not want to do away with traditional philosophy
and logical-discursive language altogether; he acknowledges the value of rational
discussion and the importance of reason. However, he wants us to be more susceptible for
realms outside of that rationality, for moments where the discursive order is broken and
invaded.
Derrida acknowledges that the desire to deconstruct may itself become a desire to
actively re-appropriate the text through mastery, to show the text what it 'does not know'.
He who deconstructs assumes that he at least means what he writes. But there is also an
opposite side to the desire for deconstruction. By inaugurating the open-ended
indefiniteness of textuality, we are given the pleasure of the bottomless, the joy of
freedom (cf. Of Grammatology, p.lxxvii).

[4] Derrida emphasizes the affirmative character of deconstruction, the ethics of

deconstruction. 'Deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness (a sort of gratuitous
chess game), but an openness towards the other ... an otherness that has been
dissimulated or appropriated by the logocentric tradition ... The very activity of thinking,
which lies at the basis of epistemological, ontological, and veridical comprehension, is
the reduction of plurality to unity and alterity to sameness ... To think philosophically is
to comprehend, to include, to seize, to grasp and master the other, thereby reducing its
alterity. Deconstruction may therefore be understood as the desire to keep open a
dimension of alterity which can neither be reduced, comprehended, nor, strictly speaking,
even thought by philosophy' (Kearney, p.123-4, my italics). The crucial 'methodological'
point is that it is possible to discern the operations of different ways of meaning
simultaneously. To think in multiplicity. Derrida's argument is that the unconditional
arises as the interruption, or non-closure, of any determinate context.

[5] According to Simon Critchley, the principle of alterity within a deconstructive praxis
can be found in the strategy of 'double reading'. 'If the first moment of reading is the
rigorous, scholarly reconstruction of the dominant interpretation of a text, its intended
meaning (vouloir-dire) in the guise of a commentary, then the second moment of reading,
in virtue of which deconstruction obeys a double necessity, is the destabilization of the
stability of the dominant interpretation' (Critchley, p.26). The second moment contradicts
the text with itself, opening its intended meaning to an alterity that goes against what a
text was purported to say or mean. (An example of a double reading in music can be
found in Gerd Zacher's Kunst einer Fuge [Art of a Fugue].) Derrida often articulates this
double reading around what is called undecidables.
Critchley claims that 'it is precisely in the suspension of choice or decision between two
alternatives, a suspension provoked in and through an act of reading, that the ethical
dimension of deconstruction is opened and maintained' (Critchley, p.88).
Deconstruction is characterized by the impetus to clear the way for an experience of the
other. An affirmative strategy. An affirmative strategy of transformation. Of transforming
and transgressing Western thought. To get ready for the coming of the other.
Deconstruction: Between
Method and Singularity
[1] In many of his texts and interviews, Derrida rejects those who try to define
deconstruction. Unrelenting, he calls into question the question 'What is deconstruction?'
This question seeks the invariable being or essence of deconstruction; it seeks a clear and
unequivocal meaning, an exact definition. However, does something like the
deconstruction exists? Rather, says Derrida, there are many forms of deconstruction.
Deconstructions. It is not possible to generate a fixed meaning that would remain
constant when applied to various contexts (cf. Oger, p.38). This implies that
deconstruction is not a method, system or theory in the traditional sense. Such concepts
generally refer to a set of rules and methods that can continually be repeated and
consistently applied. Derrida emphasizes that deconstruction is not a method because the
strategy of deconstruction cannot simply be repeated, that is to say, independent of the
(con)text that it addresses. 'To present deconstruction as if it were a method, a system or a
settled body of ideas would be to falsify its nature and lay oneself open to charges of
reductive misunderstanding' (Norris, 1982, p.1).

[2] Deconstruction does not develop a new philosophical or scientific framework after it
rejects metaphysical traditions as inadequate. This is why one cannot and should not
speak of deconstructivism, since this could indicate a movement that has a common
method as founding element. Many authors who are deterred by the destabilizing,
disorganizing, and mind-broadening nature of deconstruction try to normalize, regulate or
appropriate this kind of writing. They attempt to turn deconstruction into a manageable
method having a closed set of rules that are invariably applied to a variety of texts (cf.
Oger, p.54). Deconstruction is resistant to a mere set of general rules that can be applied.
In addition, the strategy of deconstruction does not lead to a new theory that would set
'everything straight'. Deconstruction does not elucidate texts in the traditional sense of
attempting to grasp a unified content or theme. It is not a theory that defines meaning in
order to determine how to find it.
Deconstruction is not a model for analysis either. Analysis means reduction. To analyze
means to dissect compound, confusing, or obscure concepts and ideas to their simple and
clear elements. The object of analysis is to completely unravel and resolve. However, the
elements that are exposed by deconstruction are not singular; they can, in turn, be
disassembled. Endlessly. Deconstruction has no end because the elements remain
obscure, multiple, and complex; a complete unraveling is impossible by definition. In
deconstruction heterogeneity, ambiguity, plurality, complexity, and multivocality are
respected.

[3] A systematic and complete exposition of the strategy of deconstruction is impossible.

It goes against deconstruction. It disobeys deconstruction. Nevertheless, there is a certain
coherence to Derrida's texts and (non)concepts. Notions such as 'trace', 'dissemination',
and 'différance' stand in a certain relation to each other and dynamically harbor a
communality that enable a different perspective on texts. Derrida admits that
deconstruction produces some methodological consequences because there are some
general rules that may be discerned from deconstruction and utilized in concrete
situations. Deconstruction is a strategy which has been reiterated and recognized in
various fields in the course of time; therefore, it may be called a method in this most
general sense.

[4] It would be senseless to object to methods or theories on the basis of a principle. After
all, thought processes can never fully escape methods and theories. But why then is
Derrida so reluctant to label deconstruction as a method or theory? His criticism
concentrates on the lack of attention in traditional methodologies for what is idiomatic or
unrepeatable. In their quest for general rules and patterns, they fail to render account of
the singular and the unique (the other). Derrida insists on an open mind for what is
specific and irreplaceable in texts. He wants to respect diversity and plurality, rather than
to submit to a fixed norm. In his endeavor to establish a relationship with a singular work,
Derrida employs means whose nature is just as singular as the work that is under
investigation.
At the same time, this (implicitly) calls such concepts as repeatability and regularity into
question. Still, Derrida indeed acknowledges the importance of repeatability since an
absolutely new word or concept could not be understood if it could not be repeated.
Without what Derrida calls iterability, a meaningful world could never be expressed. This
opens a 'double bind': the mere singularity (which precedes language) still needs to be
invoked by language. By capturing something in language, one fails to appreciate its
singular nature. However, it is the only means by which one can relate to the singular.
Derrida calls this an original violence in language: the singularity is always already
adopted into a generalized network. Incidentally, Derrida does not interpret this
negatively precisely because a generalizing set of meanings may give access to the
singular. The logical-discursive bases of meanings and our linguistic order are not devoid
of ambiguities and indeterminations in which the singular presents itself.

[5] How is the singular expressed in Derrida's texts? Can it be expressed? Does not the
singular always escape any expression, any (re)presentation? Perhaps it is better to speak
of 'traces' of the singular. Derrida can at best draw our attention to certain traces of the
singular, of what escapes generalities, conceptualizations, theories, frameworks, etc.
How? One example. Provisionally. Exploring. Derrida does not hold on to conceptual
master-words for very long. His vocabulary is always on the move. 'Différance',
'supplement', 'dissemination', 'parergon', 'pharmakon', 'hymen'; they do not remain
consistently important in subsequent texts. Most of these terms are not conceived by
Derrida himself; they are inextricably connected to the texts that he re-reads. He grafts
his texts onto the text that he is studying and departs from words in that text. In this
sense, Derrida's readings are exemplary, radically empirical and individual to the extent
that they are beyond any possible development of theory. While the case is at once
absolutely specific, it is also absolutely general in its significance because only one case
such as this creates all that Derrida needs. In a certain sense, each of the terms can be
substituted by the other, but never exactly; each substitution is also a displacement and
carries a different metaphoric charge.
Displacement
[1] The first moment of what may be observed as a deconstructive strategy consists of
tracing a hierarchical opposition. In 'Plato's Pharmacy' Derrida describes how Plato
assumes such a hierarchical opposition by stating that eidos (the father) precedes logos
(the son). The father symbolizes the origin of logos. In the second moment, Derrida
reverses the hierarchy by stating that eidos is not able to appear without logos. If the son
is what causes the father to become a father, then the son, not the father, should be treated
as the origin. By showing that the argument that elevates the father can be used to favor
the son, one uncovers and undoes the rhetorical operation responsible for the ordering of
the hierarchy and one produces a significant displacement. If either the father or the son
can occupy the position of origin, then origin is no longer originary (cf. Culler, p. 88).
This can be perceived as the third moment. Displacement. (Examples of displacements in
music can be found in the sections on John Cage (Cage and Noise), J.S. Bach
(Contrapunctus I), and John Zorn (Saprophyte).)

[2] Plato's Phaedrus presents itself as having no origin. It is merely the inspired
conversation overheard by Plato between two men in the countryside. And recorded.
Problem arise when we read the dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus as a textual, not
as a spoken construction, directed entirely by Plato. This is where the displacement of
origin begins. For example, Socrates then becomes a (fictitious) character (cf. Neel,
p.45).
To mask the origin of his thought as writing, Plato always uses the (prior) voice of
another, in most cases the voice of Socrates. This allows Plato to remain absent, always
and everywhere. Plato invariably makes his own monologue appear as a dialogue, usually
between Socrates and another person. Plato can thus be considered both absent and
present at all times. But this really applies also to Socrates. The voice of Socrates (he who
does not write) lives in the absence of the voice of Plato (he who says he does not write),
which in turn lives in the absence of Socrates' voice. The voice one hears is always the
voice of the other. To make things even more complicated: In Phaedrus Plato uses a
written speech by Lysias as the starting point for his own text. He assumes Socrates'
voice in order to destroy the sophistical writing of Lysias. But it is almost certain that
Lysias never wrote that speech. Plato did. Plato then gives up his own voice to two
'speeches' by Socrates (a displacement of Plato because he wrote them down) in order to
destroy his own writing (the forged speech by Lysias) (cf. Neel, p.20). We are caught
here in an endless chain of displacements in which the origin is lost or endlessly deferred.

[3] In Phaedrus, Socrates presents writing as the lost son of the father. This means that
writing can be regarded as the brother, the bad brother of the good logos or speech. This
brings Derrida to the conclusion that Socrates is led to the insight that logos is only
another sort of writing, just because they are brothers. Socrates indeed perceives this in
his statement that logos can be regarded as the inscription of truth on the soul. (Socrates:
'But now tell me, is there another sort of discourse, that is the brother to the written
speech? ... The sort that goes together with knowledge and is written in the soul of the
learner'.) Socrates thus calls the living, animate discourse an inscription of truth on the
soul.
Logos as a sort of writing. Of course, we can disregard this as a metaphor. But it is
nevertheless remarkable that Plato suddenly describes the so-called living discourse with
a metaphor from an order that he is trying to exclude (cf. Dissemination, p.149). Truth, as
Socrates says, is a kind of good writing in the soul. So writing, which has been pushed to
the outside, marginalized, is now suddenly seen as being in the very heart of the interior.
Plato saves writing by making it the medium for an internal journey toward truth. He
resorts to the notion of 'writing in the soul' in order to name the other of writing, the self-
present truth that speech is designed to convey. This throws the explicit opposition
between speech and writing askew. Phaedrus, which starts as a condemnation of writing
in the name of present speech, finally comes to light as a transformation into the
opposition between two kinds of writing: good writing (natural, living, internal), and bad
writing (moribund, ignorant, external). And the good one can be designated only by the
metaphor of the bad one. For Derrida, this seems to be the conclusion of Phaedrus.
Writing and speech have become two different species of one trace, which Derrida calls
arche-writing (cf. Music Is a Text). A displacement of the initial hierarchy.

[4] In Sophist, Plato teaches that any full, absolute presence of what is, or any full
intuition of truth, is impossible. This brings Derrida to the conclusion that truth or
presence must always come to terms with non-truth and non-presence. The lack of
attainment of presence or truth gives rise to a structure of replacements such that all
presences will be supplements that are substituted for the absent origin, and all
differences, within the system of presence, will be the irreducible effect of what remains
beyond 'beingness' or presence (cf. Dissemination, p.167). Non-truth is the truth. Non-
presence is the presence. This is what Derrida calls 'the movement of différance'.
'Différance, the disappearance of any originary presence, is at once the condition of
possibility and the condition of impossibility of truth … What is, is not what it is,
identical and identical to itself, unique, unless it adds to itself the possibility of being
repeated as such. And its identity is hollowed out by that addition, withdraws itself in the
supplement that presents it ... And there is no repetition possible without the graphics of
supplementarity' (Dissemination, p.168). All this is inscribed within a generalized
writing, an arche-writing. So on one hand, there would be no intelligible form of truth or
absolute presence without repetition. But on the other hand, repetition is the movement of
non-truth because in becoming apparent, in becoming perceptible for the senses, it
withdraws from ideality. 'These two types of repetition relate to each other according to
the graphics of supplementarity. Which means that one can no more 'separate' them from
each other, think of either one apart from the other, 'label' them; that in the pharmacy, one
can distinguish the medicine from the poison, the good from the evil, the true from the
false, the inside from the outside, the vital from the mortal, the first from the second, etc.
Conceived within this original reversibility, the pharmakon is precisely the same because
it has no identity. And the same (is) as supplement. Or in differance. In writing'
(Dissemination, p.169).
Truth and non-truth, presence and non-presence, inside and outside. Binary opposites in
which the first term is the dominant one. Derrida subverts the hierarchical relation
between the two terms; not by a simple reversal, but by showing that the opposition is
unstable, by a displacement of the conceptual order.
Dissemination
[1] Every reading of a text enables new meanings. Every reading places a text into a new
context. That context is open; it never absolutely determines one interpretation, nor a
clearly demarcated complex of interpretations. For that reason, a text can never be
completely exhausted; there will always be something more or something else that can be
said about it. Derrida introduces the term dissemination referring to this principle in
which he places polysemy opposite. 'Dissemination brings out the play between surplus
and lack within signification with no prospect of stabilizing or closing it' (Kramer, p.12).
From the very moment that a text is published, it is delivered up to a dissemination
without return. No archeology of a text is possible. One finds oneself indefinitely referred
to bottomless, endless connections and to an indefinitely articulated regress from the
beginning. A text never actually begins; it has always already begun. Dissemination
destroys the uniqueness of a text, its hegemonic center. It takes a text to its textuality, to
its 'plurality of filiations' which it has always carried within itself. Derrida: 'As for the
'plurality of filiations' and the necessity of a 'more differentiated perception', this will
always have been my 'theme' in some way, in particular, as signaled by the name
'dissemination'. If one takes the expression 'plurality of filiations' in its familial literality,
then this is virtually the very 'subject' of 'Dissemination'' (Points, p.224).

[2] What does dissemination mean? According to Derrida, '... this word ... has the power
economically to condense, while unwinding their web, the question of semantic
differance (the new concept of writing) and seminal drift, the impossible (monocentric,
paternal, familial) re-appropriation of the concept and of the sperm' ('Avoir l'oreille de la
philosophie', p.309, J.Culler's translation). The word dissemination implies a link
between the wasteful dispersal of semantic meaning and semen. Dissemination 'is' a
scattering of semen, seeds and semes, semantic features. 'We are playing on the fortuitous
resemblance ... of seme and semen. There is no communication of meaning between
them. And yet, by this floating, purely exterior collusion, accident produces a kind of
semantic mirage: the deviance of meaning, its reflection-effect in writing, sets something
off ... it is a question of remarking a nerve, a fold, an angle that interrupts totality: in a
certain place, a place of well-determined form, no series of semantic valences can any
longer be closed or reassembled ... the lack and the surplus can never be stabilized in the
plenitude of a form' (Positions, p.45-6).
Dissemination 'is' (about) the play of meanings; an unequivocal meaning cannot be
assigned to it. (Derrida insistently warns that if we say that dissemination is 'this' or 'that',
we are trying to reserve its meaning. And this means that we are immobilizing it and
stopping its own dissemination.) Rather, there is a dispersal of meaning because every
word, every concept, every text can be connected through all sorts of connotations with
other words, concepts, and texts. Dissemination refers both to a fertile dispersal of
meanings and to the dissipation or the loss of meaning. Every new context brings about a
new meaning, but at the same time, some of the old meaning is lost. The process of
acquiring meaning is not cumulative. (This becomes apparent in translations.)
No appeal to context or convention can possibly arrest the disseminating free play of
language. Dissemination is an attack on the notion that texts can be owned, controlled,
limited or appropriated in the name of some legitimate authoratitive source (cf. Norris,
1982, p.112-3). But rather than enabling a negative prohibition of all access to a kind of
truth, a unity of meaning, dissemination affirms the always already divided generation of
meaning (cf. Dissemination, p.268).

[3] How is dissemination at work in writing? In every text and in every word, other
meanings, words, and texts resonate, whether consciously or subconsciously, voluntarily
or involuntarily, wanted or unwanted. Ultimately, there is no way for the author to
prevent or contain the dissemination of a text. Derrida exemplifies this in 'Plato's
Pharmacy' using the word pharmakon: 'The word pharmakon is caught in a chain of
significations. The play of that chain seems systematic. But the system here is not simply
that of the intention of an author who goes by the name of Plato. The system is not
primarily that of what someone meant-to-say [un vouloir-dire]. Finely regulated
communications are established, through the play of language, among diverse functions
of the word and, within it, among diverse strata or regions of culture. These
communications or corridors of meaning can sometimes be declared or clarified by Plato
when he plays upon them 'voluntarily' ... Then again, in other cases, Plato can not see
these links, can leave them in the shadow or break them up. And yet these links go on
working by themselves. In spite of him? thanks to him? in his text? outside his text? but
then where? between his text and the language? for what reader? at what moment? To
answer such questions in principle and in general will seem impossible' (Dissemination,
p.95-6). One could say that every text differs from itself and thus counters every
authoritative interpretation. 'The text constantly goes beyond this representation by the
entire system of its resources and its own rules' (Of Grammatology, p.101). However,
Derrida is not only interested in derailing a chain of meaning. He intends to show that
laying down a meaning is at all times an arbitrary and provisional act based in a desire for
power and control. 'We are less interested in breaking through certain limits, with or
without cause, than in putting in doubt the right to posit such limits in the first place. In a
word, we do not believe that there exists, in all rigor, a ... text, closed upon itself,
complete with its inside and outside' (Dissemination, p.130).

[4] Dissemination is an attempt to disclose the contingency of meaning, not to decimate

it; it states the constructive nature of meaning, and, hence, the possibility for
deconstruction. This can be done in several ways: (a) through associative powers (b)
through multiple cohesions that do not always seem logical, such as grammatical
connections, anagrammatical games, and related themes (c) through allusions, by which
is meant a pluralization of references and voices (d) through an etymological texture:
words which resonate actually or implicitly through a text (an example of which is found
in 'Plato's Pharmacy' where the mythical figure Pharmacia and the absence of the word
pharmakos both resonate in the word pharmakon) and (e) through lateral associations: by
following all the senses of the word pharmakon in 'Plato's Pharmacy', Derrida brings
many other contexts into play in which the word is used by Plato (medicine, painting,
politics, farming, law, sexuality, festivity, family relations), thus folding onto the
problematics of marking off.
The aim is not to excessively dissolve everything, but to insist upon a more chastened
sense of the contingency of sense, of everything that calls itself universal or necessary,
transcendental or ontological, philosophical or scientific. The play of meaning is the
result of what Derrida calls 'the play of the world' in Writing and Difference, in which the
general text always provides further connections, correlations, and contexts (cf. Culler,
p.134).

[5] 'It is not enough to install plurivocity within thematics in order to recover the
interminable motion of writing. Writing does not simply weave several threads into a
single term in such a way that one might end up unraveling all the 'contents' just by
pulling a few strings' (Dissemination, p.350).
This is where Derrida situates the difference between dissemination and polysemy.
Moments of polysemy are moments of meaning. Polysemy always sends forth its
multiplicities within the horizon of a meaning that has been at last deciphered and made
present in the rich collection of its determinations. Ultimately, polysemy rests on some
integral reading that contains no absolute rift, no senseless deviation. It always testifies to
a past truth or a truth to come. 'The concept of polysemy thus belongs within the confines
of explanation, within the explication or enumeration, in the present, of meaning. It
belongs to the attending discourse. Its style is that of the representative surface. It forgets
that its horizon is framed' (Dissemination, p.351). Derrida has the opinion that the
meaningfulness of language by no means consists of a mere accumulation of meanings
that crop up haphazardly. Dissemination means that transformations of meaning no
longer hinge on any enrichment of 'history' and 'language', but only on a certain squaring
of the text. 'The difference between discursive polysemy and textual dissemination is
precisely difference itself, an implacable difference' (Dissemination, p.351).
Dissemination cannot be reduced to polysemy. 'Writing is read, and 'in the last analysis',
does not give rise to a hermeneutic deciphering, to the decoding of a meaning or truth'
(Margins, p.329). 'If there is thus no thematic unity or overall meaning to reappropriate
beyond the textual instances, no total message located in some imaginary order,
intentionality, or lived experience, then the text is no longer the expression or
representation (felicitous or otherwise) of any truth that would come to diffract or
assemble itself in the polysemy of literature. It is this hermeneutic concept of polysemy
that must be replaced by dissemination' (Dissemination, p.262). The heterogeneity of
different writings is writing itself.

[6] The page entitled Pharmakos gives a deeper understanding of dissemination and an
example of this from the work of Derrida. Examples of dissemination in music can be
found in (D)(R)econtextualization, Of Interpretation, and Gerd Zacher's Kunst einer
Fuge [Art of a Fugue]. Dissemination in relation to (music) education is discussed in To
Give a Music Lesson.
Hierarchical Oppositions
[1] Probably the most important strategy at work in deconstruction is the tracking down
of hierarchical structured oppositions. According to Derrida, it has been a characteristic
of the western philosophical and scientific tradition since the classical times to think in
binary oppositions. Presence opposes absence, speech opposes writing, philosophy
opposes literature, the literal opposes the metaphorical, the central opposes the marginal,
life opposes death, the real opposes the imaginary, the normal opposes the pathological,
etc. Derrida shows how one of the oppositional terms is always privileged, controlling
and dominating the other (dominating 'the other'). 'In a classical philosophical opposition
we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-à-vis, but rather with a violent
hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has
the upper hand' (Positions, p.41).

An example of a familiar philosophical opposition in which one of the terms controls the
other can be found at Logos Above Writing. All examples used on this page are taken
from 'Plato's Pharmacy' (Dissemination, p. 63-171).

[2] Derrida traces these hierarchically ordered binary oppositions and he radically
questions the dominance of the privileged term by reversing the hierarchy. The
opposition remains intact, but the attention shifts from the dominant term to the
dominated term, from the center to the margin. Margins. The margins of philosophy. The
margins of a text. To advance the margins involves many different operations, including
making comments in between the lines, revealing what is concealed by the text, tracing
any blind spots of the author, explicating subconscious presumptions in the text, bringing
up hidden contents and intentions, paying special attention to footnotes, tracking words
that harbor an unresolvable contradiction where one meaning is chosen above the other at
one time, while reversing that choice the next time, shifting the attention from an author's
main work to a small, unfamiliar and seemingly insignificant text, etc.
The violent reversing of an existing hierarchy comprises the second moment in a
deconstructive strategy. 'To deconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the
hierarchy at a given moment' (Positions, p.41).

For an example, see Writing Above Logos.

[3] One should not, however, leave it at this reversal, because the oppositions are not
undone by simply reversing them. To deconstruct the binary oppositions does not only
mean to reverse them, for to simply replace the central term with the marginal is to
remain locked in the 'either/or' logic of binary opposites. One should simultaneously take
note of the breach that occurs in the reversing. During the third moment, the oppositions
are unsettled. However, this is not done by stepping outside the oppositions, for example,
by introducing a third term as a means of attempting a kind of dialectic approach. Rather,
the task is to dismantle the metaphysical and rhetorical structures that are at work within
the text, not in order to reject or discard them, but to reinscribe them in another way. (The
entire structure of binary oppositions becomes particularly unstable and unravels in an
infinite play in the so-called undecidables.)
'Deconstruction cannot limit itself or proceed immediately to a neutralization [of the
hierarchy of oppositional terms, MC]: it must, by means of a double gesture, a double
science, a double writing, practice an overturning of the classical opposition and a
general displacement of the system. It is only on this condition that deconstruction will
provide itself the means with which to intervene in the field of oppositions that it
criticizes ... Deconstruction does not consist in passing from one concept to another, but
in overturning and displacing a conceptual order, as well as the nonconceptual order with
which the conceptual order is articulated' (Margins, p.329). To deconstruct an opposition
is to undo it and replace it, to reinstate it with a reversal that gives it a different status and
impact. When speech and writing are distinguished as two versions of a generalized
arche-writing, as two forms of a play of difference, the opposition has implications other
than writing that is seen as a technical and imperfect representation of speech. The same
holds for the distinction between the literal and the figurative. It works differently when
the deconstructive reversal identifies literal language as figures in which the figurative
nature has been forgotten instead of treating figures as deviations from proper, normal
literality (cf. Culler, p.150).

For an example, see Displacement. A reversal and displacement of an hierarchical order

in music can be found on these pages: Cage and Silence, Alt-Rhapsodie - J. Brahms, and
Saprophyte.

[4] Deconstruction works with this double movement; it situates itself both inside and
outside of previous categories and distinctions. Instead of claiming to offer firm ground
for the construction of a new order or synthesis, it remains involved in or attached to the
system it criticizes and attempts to displace (cf. Culler, p.150-1). Deconstruction operates
within the terms of a certain system with the intention of having this system derail. It
uncovers the contingent origin of the binary hierarchies, and it does so not with the
purpose of providing a better foundation for knowledge, but in order to dislodge their
dominance and to create a space that leaves room for difference, ambiguity, and
playfulness. This does not mean that deconstruction would revert to indifference. It
implies that the distinction between two terms can no longer be supported by or founded
in the priority of one of the two. Deconstruction is not so much a nihilistic criticism than
an articulation of other values (cf. Music, Deconstruction, and Ethics ).
Logos Above Writing
[1] Plato's Phaedrus ends with the myth of Theuth. In this myth writing is offered as a
kind of present to King Thamus. The king, who in fact represents Ammon, king of the
gods, receives this gift from the demigod Theuth. But it is the king who will give this gift
its value in the act of receiving or rejecting it. According to Derrida, '... the value of
writing will not be itself, writing will have no value, unless and to the extent that god-the-
king approves of it' (Dissemination, p.76).
King Thamus does not know how to write and he has no need to write. He speaks, he
dictates, and his word suffices. If a scribe writes down the words spoken by the king - a
supplementary transcription - this is always in essence secondary. Writing is secondary. It
comes after speaking.
God-the-king rejects the offering of writing; he does not need it and prefers speech, or
logos, above writing. Writing does not produce truth. It does not produce anything;
rather, it reproduces. 'Written logos is only a way for him who already knows to remind
himself of the things writing is about. Writing thus only intervenes at a time when a
subject of knowledge already possesses the signifieds, which are then only given to
writing on consignment' (Dissemination, p.135). This is the difference between
knowledge as memory and non-knowledge as rememoration, a repetition of truth versus a
(dead) repetition of the repetition. Writing stands for an oblivion that veils. Presented in a
simple dichotomy, logos thus means presence, the good or the true, whereas writing can
be associated with absence, the bad or the untrue.

[2] Plato understood writing as a sign of a sign, that is, a sign of the spoken word that, in
turn, is the sign of a meaning that is expressed. Writing is therefore a two-step
representation. It is in the service of logos as the living speech act. Writing is an
exteriority that is subsequently added to the inner purity of the concept, the essence, the
signified, the soul, the spirit. Since writing can only repeat, it does not add anything
essential and could therefore be considered unnecessary. Nevertheless, Plato presents
writing as dangerous and threatening. Writing is dangerous because it kills the living
meaning and presence of the consciousness to itself; it forms a threat to the inner purity.

[3] Derrida draws our attention to the fact that Platonism assigns the origin of logos to the
paternal position. The speaking subject can be conceived of as the father of his speech.
Speech or logos is his son. The specificity of logos would thus be intimately bound to the
presence of the father. Logos is alive because it is inspirited by its father (the one who
speaks), who can constantly explicate, supplement, explain, etc. The spoken word is not
only positioned opposite writing, it is also considered superior because it is associated
with presence, whereas writing may indicate a double absence (of both author and
reader). The hierarchical relation that privileges the spoken word to the written word is
based in the human desire for presence and origin. Writing is connected with the absence
of the father. It is an orphan, a lost son. Writing no longer knows who his father is. On
one hand, it escapes and undermines parental authority. On the other hand, it can be
attacked, bombarded with unjust approaches. It is open to a multitude of
misunderstandings and, in principle, an infinite number of interpretations that only the
father could dissipate, thus assisting his son, if he was not absent.
The hierarchical relation might be clear: logos, living speech, is superior to writing, 'that
dangerous supplement'.
The Pharmakon
[1] No single word in English captures the play of signification of the ancient Greek
word, pharmakon. Derrida traces the meanings assigned to pharmakon in Plato's
dialogues: remedy, poison (either the cure or the illness or its cause), philter, drug, recipe,
charm, medicine, substance, spell, artificial color, and paint. The word pharmakon is
overdetermined, signifying in so many ways that the very notion of signification gets
overloaded. A translation problem? Yes and no. In choosing one meaning translators
often decide what in Plato's texts remains undecidable. But as indicated above, the
problem is inherent in its very principle, situated less in the translation from one language
to another, than already within the Greek language itself. And adopted within
philosophical discourse, pharmakon does not suddenly become unambiguous, ready and
suited for dialectic operations. (In Phaedrus, Socrates tries to distinguish between two
kinds of words, the unambiguous - words about which we all agree - and the ambiguous -
words about which we are at variance. In Plato, Derrida and Writing, Jasper Neel argues
that in fact there are no unambiguous words.) Instead, words like pharmakon threatens
the philosophical process, threatens dialectics from within. Plato's text itself is thus
already the battlefield of an impossible process of translation.
Plato's systematic and pure reasoning (followed by Platonism and the entire Western
tradition of philosophy) experiences great difficulty with this undecidability. It wants to
put a stop to this constant shift from one meaning to another and back again. Still, Plato
cannot escape the ambiguity of pharmakon either. In Phaedrus, writing is first presented
as a useful tool, a beneficial drug (pharmakon). It later proves to be a harmful substance,
benumbing to the soul, memory and truth, a poison (pharmakon). In Phaedo, the reverse
happens: first, the hemlock is presented to Socrates as a poison (pharmakon). Yet it is
transformed, through the effects of the Socratic logos, into a cathartic power
(pharmakon), helpful to the soul that it awakens to the truth of eidos.

[2] In Phaedrus, the god Teuth presents writing as a recipe (pharmakon) beneficial for
memory to King Thamus. But the King refuses the gift saying that it will produce
forgetfulness; it is not a remedy for memory, but for reminding. Writing is a poison
(pharmakon) and Teuth has passed a poison off as a remedy. The pharmakon thus
produces a play of oppositions: remedy-poison, good-bad, true-false, positive-negative.
According to Derrida, this means that far from being governed by these oppositions, the
pharmakon (writing) enables the coming into play of oppositions without allowing itself
to be fully encompassed by them, without being subsumed under concepts whose
contours it draws (cf. Dissemination, p.103).
Writing is an external supplement to internal memory. But even if it is external, it affects
memory and touches its very inside. That is the effect of this pharmakon. The pharmakon
is 'that dangerous supplement' .

[3] Socrates puts his most effective medicine (pharmakon teleotaton), living knowledge,
opposite the other pharmakon, writing. 'Philosophy thus opposes to its other this
transmutation of the drug into a remedy, of the poison into counterpoison', says Derrida.
This is only possible due to the ambiguity of the pharmakon; it already bears its own
opposite within itself. Presenting itself as a poison, it may turn out to be a cure. 'The
'essence' of the pharmakon lies in the way in which, having no stable essence, no 'proper'
characteristics, it is not, in any sense (metaphysical, physical, chemical, alchemical) of
the word, a substance ... It is rather the prior medium in which differentiation in general
is produced' (Dissemination, p.125-6).
This undecidability or doubleness of the pharmakon does not mix two separate elements
together. 'If the pharmakon is ambivalent, it is because it constitutes the medium in which
opposites are opposed, the movement and the play that links them among themselves,
reverses them or makes one side cross over into the other (soul/body, good/evil,
inside/outside, memory/forgetfulness, speech/writing, etc.) ... The pharmakon is the
movement, the locus, and the play: (the production of) difference. It is the differance of
difference' (Dissemination, p.127). In this undecidability, in this non-substance and non-
locality, the pharmakon places itself outside the dialectical system and opens a labyrinth
or an abyss. This does not turn pharmakon into a transcendental. It is not above the play
of delay and difference, rather it is permeated by these. Pharmakon is not the name for
the other, but the place where the other is evoked.
When, during translation or exegese, one chooses the word 'pharmakon' to have a single
meaning (for example, 'remedy') while the same word also signifies its exact opposite
(poison), the choice of only one of the meanings will have the effect of neutralizing the
textuality of the text. 'Textuality being constituted by differences and by differences from
differences, is by nature absolutely heterogeneous and is constantly composing with the
forces that tend to annihilate it' (Dissemination, p.98). The translation of 'remedy' is not,
of course, incorrect; but it is incomplete. 'Such an interpretative translation is thus as
violent as it is impotent: it destroys the pharmakon but at the same time forbids itself
access to it, leaving it untouched in its reserve. The translation by remedy can thus be
neither accepted nor simply rejected' (Dissemination, p.99).

[4] (The working of) the word 'pharmakon' as related to the music of John Zorn is
detailed on the pages entitled Saprophyte and Zorn's Pharmacy.
Pharmakos
[1] The chain, pharmakeia-pharmakon-pharmakeus, appears several times in Plato's
texts. A word not directly or literally used by Plato is pharmakos, which means
'scapegoat'. According to Derrida, that it is not used by Plato does not indicate that the
word is necessarily absent. Certain forces of association unite the words that are 'actually
present' in a text with all the other words in the lexical system, whether or not they appear
as words in such discourse. The textual chain is not simply 'internal' to Plato's lexicon.
One can say that all the 'pharmaceutical' words do actually make themselves present in
the text. 'It is in the back room, in the shadows of the pharmacy, prior to the oppositions
between conscious and unconscious, freedom and constraint, voluntary and involuntary,
speech and language, that these textual 'operations' occur' (Dissemination, p.129). Derrida
places the opposites, presence-absence and inside-outside, under great pressure. If the
word pharmakos that Plato does not use still resonates within the text, then there can be
no matter of a text being closed upon itself. What do 'absent' and 'present' mean when the
outside is always already part of the inside, at work on the inside?

[2] In ancient Athens, the character and the ritual of the pharmakos had the task of
expelling and shutting out the evil (out of the body and out of the city). The Athenians
maintained several outcasts at the public expense. When plague, famine, drought or other
calamities befell the city, they sacrificed some of the outcasts as a purification and a
remedy. The pharmakos, the scapegoat, was led to the outside of the city and killed in
order to purify the city's interior. The evil that had affected the inside of the city from the
outside, was thus returned to the outside in order to protect the inside. But the
representative of the outside (the pharmakos) was nonetheless kept in the very heart of
the inside, the city. In order to be led out of the city, the scapegoat must have already
been within the city. 'The ceremony of the pharmakos is thus played out on the boundary
line between the inside and the outside, which it has as its function ceaselessly to trace
and retrace' (Dissemination, p.133). At the same time, the pharmakos is on the borderl
between sacred and cursed, '... beneficial insofar as he cures - and for that, venerated and
cared for - harmful insofar as he incarnates the powers of evil - and for that, feared and
treated with caution' (Dissemination, p.133). He is the benefactor who heals and he is the
criminal who incarnates the powers of evil. The pharmakos is like a medicine in that he
'cures' the impurity of the city, but he is, at the same time, a poison, an evil. Pharmakos.
Pharmakon. Undecidables. Both words carry within themselves more than one meaning.
Conflicting meanings.

[3] Pharmakos does not only mean scapegoat. It is also synonymous for pharmakeus, or
wizard, magician, poisoner. In Plato's dialogues, Socrates is often portrayed as a
pharmakeus. Socrates is considered as one who knows how to perform magic with words.
His words act as a pharmakon (as a remedy, or as a poison?) and permeate the soul of the
listener. In Phaedrus, he fiercely objects to the ill effects of writing. He compares writing
to a pharmakon, a drug, a poison: writing repeats without knowing. Socrates suggests a
different pharmakon, a medicine: dialectics, the philosophical dialogue. This, he claims,
can lead one to true knowledge, the truth of the eidos, that which is identical to itself,
always the same as itself, invariable. This is the message of Socrates to the city of
Athens. He acts as a magician (pharmakos) - Socrates himself speaks about a divine or
supernatural voice that comes to him - and his most famous medicine (pharmakon) is
speech, dialectics and dialogue that will lead to knowledge and truth.
But Socrates also becomes Athen's most famous 'other' pharmakos, the scapegoat. He
becomes a stranger, even an enemy who does not speak the proper language of the other
citizens. He is an other; not the absolute other, the barbarian, but the other (the outside)
who is very near, who is already on the inside. According to several prominent
Athenians, he was of bad moral and political influence. His constant criticism
undermined the faith in democracy of many Athenians. In 399 BC, Socrates was charged
with introducing new gods and corrupting the young and sentenced to death. Having
accused him as a force of evil, Athens killed him to keep itself intact. Athens kills the
pharmakos (both the magician and the scapegoat).
Plato's Supplements
[1] After the dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus has essentially come to a
conclusion in Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates relate the myth about Theuth. This myth thus
appears as a kind of encore, an epilogue, an hors-d'oeuvre (literally: outside the work), a
supplement. But what starts as a supplement, is found to be the most essential part of
Phaedrus. It is an accusation against writing since writing would replace living memory
for a mnemonic device. Plato presents writing as the sign of a sign. Speech remains in
animate proximity, in the living presence of mneme. Writing, which imitates and
reproduces living speech, goes one degree further. 'The boundary (between inside and
outside, living and non-living) separates not only speech from writing but also memory as
an unveiling (re-)producing a presence from re-memoration as the mere repetition of a
monument' (Dissemination, p.108-9). The difference between mneme and hypomnesis.
The problem starts where the mneme, instead of being present to itself, is supplanted by
archives, lists, notes, tales, accounts, chronicles: memorials instead of memory. But, as
Derrida indicates, the 'evil' slips in within the relation of memory to itself, in the general
organization of the mnesic activity. Memory always needs signs in order to recall the
non-present, with which it is necessarily in relation. The line between mneme and
hypomnesis becomes barely perceptible because in both cases it is a matter of repetition.
Memory is always already contaminated by its first substitute: hypomnesis. The outside
(the replacing sign) is already within the work of memory. What Plato dreams of is the
possibility of a memory with no sign; that is, with no supplement (cf. Dissemination,
p.109).
Plato considers writing to be external to internal memory - hypomnesis is not in itself
memory. Derrida, however, points out that Plato has to admit that writing or hypomnesis
penetrates the very core of speech and mneme; it affects and infects memory. Writing is
'... that dangerous supplement that breaks into the very thing that would have liked to do
without it yet lets itself at once be breached, roughed up, fulfilled, and replaced,
completed by the very trace through which the present increases itself in the act of
disappearing' (Dissemination, p.110).

[2] In the myth, the god Theuth offers writing as a pharmakon to King Thamus of Egypt.
It is a recipe for both memory and wisdom. Who is this Theuth, Plato's god of writing?
Derrida shows that Plato's Theuth has much in common with two other gods of writing,
the Egyptian god, Thoth and the Greek god, Hermes. In Egyptian mythology, Thoth often
calls himself the son of the sun-god, Ammon-Ra. Ammon: 'the hidden'. The hidden sun,
the father of all. He allows himself to be represented by Thoth. Thoth speaks in the name
of Ammon-Ra. Thoth is the language through which Ammon-Ra enters the human world.
In Derridian terms, this means that the father needs language in order to appear. Like his
Greek counterpart, Hermes, Thoth is the messenger-god, an intermediary. But he can
only convey what has already been thought by Ammon. Language is thus considered to
be a representation of a more original thought. 'The message itself is not, but only
represents, the absolutely creative moment. It is a second and secondary word'
(Dissemination, p.88). Thoth, Hermes, and Theuth: the gods of writing are subordinate
characters. They are but servants and executors. Never the authors or initiators of
language.
But Thoth is also the substitute for Ammon-Ra, supplementing him and supplanting him
in his absence. Thus, the written word of Thoth replaces the spoken word of the father.
'As a substitute capable of doubling for the father, the sun, and the spoken word,
distinguished from these only by dint of representing, repeating, and masquerading,
Thoth was naturally also capable of totally supplanting them and appropriating all their
attributes' (Dissemination, p.90).
This brings into play a strange kind of logic. Thoth is opposed to its other - the father, the
sun, speech, origin - but at the same time he is the only one capable of supplementing and
supplanting it. Thoth extends or opposes by repeating and replacing. He distinguishes
himself from his opposites, but also imitates them, replaces them by becoming their sign
and representative. He is different than the sun and the same as the sun, different than the
good (because he writes) and the same as the good (because he is the word of the father).
The figure of Thoth takes shape and takes its shape from the very thing it resists and
substitutes. But it thereby opposes itself, passes into its other. He is at once the father, the
father's other and the subversive movement of replacement. This messenger-god, this god
of non-identity, this supplement, is a god of the absolute and continous passage between
opposites: an undecidable! (cf. Dissemination, p.92-3).
Supplement
[1] We make use of signs to refer to something that is not directly present. A sign
replaces something else. It is a substitute, a representative of something other than itself.
A sign is a supplement, a supplemental aid that can be deployed when the presence itself
falls short. (A score can be regarded as a supplement. A consideration of this idea can be
found on the page entitled No (-) Music - D. Schnebel.)
The sign evokes the ideal of a presence without signs, a direct contact with what is
represented by the sign. It is considered an imperfect and incomplete surrogate that is
expected to substitute for something that is only temporarily absent. It is an exteriority, an
outside, a material signifier that is added afterwards to the inner integrity of a signified.
The signifier only represents the signified. Unfortunately, however, something of the
original richness of the signified always is lost in its representation. That is why the
supplement is preferably considered as inessential, a non-required surplus that really
should not need to be added to the pure fulness of the interior. 'What is added is nothing
because it is added to a full presence to which it is exterior. Speech comes to be added to
intuitive presence (of the entity, of essence, of the eidos, of ousia, and so forth); writing
comes to be added to living self-present speech' (Of Grammatology, p.167). The sign as a
supplement is thus in a hierarchically subordinate position to the essential or the present.

[2] However, a sign is not merely an subordinate substitute. This is shown in the double
meaning that may be assigned to the term supplement. Supplement means both
replacement and addition, that which at once supplements and supplants. It can mean the
adding of something to something that is already complete in itself; or it can mean the
adding of something to complete something (cf. Of Grammatology, p.144-5). And the
shadow presence of the other meaning is always there to undermine the distinction. This
'dangerous supplement' (Rousseau) is therefore an undecidable, an unsettled concept.
A supplement is a substitute for something else that is unable to be present. Supplements
are called in precisely because there is a lack in what is supplemented. However, a
supplement also adds something; it is a surplus. (If a supplement is both added to
something and replaces that same thing, it means that they are neither strictly opposed to
one another, nor equivalent to each other.)
If a presence needs a sign in order to appear, then it follows that it is always already
permeated from the inside by a shortage, a lack. If it cannot do without the supplement,
then the supplement becomes the precondition for the presence of the present (cf. Of
Grammatology, p.184). The originality of the signified is only afterwards produced with
and within the supplement; it appears only afterwards in and through the sign. The sign
therefore becomes a prerequisite for the signified to appear. At the same time, however,
the sign postpones a direct contact with the origin, with that what is represented, both
temporarily and spatially. On one hand, the supplement is an exteriority, outside of the
signified and outside of itself because in its quality of being a sign it represents
something different than itself. On the other hand, however, a supplement enables an
interiority and produces the inside. Every supplement postpones that which it installs.
And every signified is, in fact, an effect, a trace of a signifier.
(Derrida's point of interest is the difference between the represented and that which
represents. Something remains hidden in every representation, something is forgotten,
suppressed, or excluded. This could be called 'the other'. Every perspective that makes
use of language fails to cover all aspects and to address all matters concerned; this is what
Derrida calls to our attention.)

[3] Writing is the supplement of thought. Writing should serve as the vehicle to carry
thought.
The first problem is that thought cannot appear outside writing. This, in fact, means that
everything starts with supplementation. Without this supplementation there would only
be silence. Something at the core of thinking seems to be missing. Thought needs the
supplement of writing in order to be whole, and thus thought without writing is not (fully)
itself.
The second problem is that writing, instead of serving as a transparant medium to carry
thought adds itself to thought and then substitutes itself for thought. What should be
merely a means of expression affects or infects the meaning it is supposed to represent.
What began as a supplement to help thought to present itself becomes a replacement that
threatens the integrity of what it intends to replace. Thought cannot exist without writing.
A signified cannot appear without a signifier. This means that a supplement cannot
simply represent the absent signified. Because the signified can only be(come) present
through a signifier, each signifier can only be substituted for another signifier that
maintains another relation with the deficient presence. 'The supplement is always the
supplement of a supplement. One wishes to go back from the supplement to the source:
one must recognize that there is a supplement at the source' (Of Grammatology, p.304).
A process of substitution of supplements is thus started to which there is no beginning
and no end.

[4] Plato's Supplements offers an example of the working of a supplement in a text by

Derrida. In Teaching a Supplement, the double meaning of supplement is related to the
teaching of jazz music.
Undecidables
[1] One of the objects of deconstruction is to undermine hierarchical structured binary
oppositions within a text. This implies that a deconstructive strategy pays special
attention to words or concepts that cannot be adopted into such a binary logic. They may
be termed as undecidables, unsettled concepts. These words or concepts need to be
elicited from the text that is being deconstructed (that deconstructs itself). If they would
remain exterior to the text, the text would remain untouched. This means that such
undecidables are not universal concepts: in each text, new and other undecidables will
present themselves.
Undecidables are characterized by their virtue of being able to function within certain
oppositions that are essential for a certain argumentation, but undermine these
oppositions at the same time because of their double meaning. Derrida describes
undecidables as verbal properties that can no longer be included within philosophical
(binary) oppositions; they resist and disorganize such oppositions without ever
constituting a third term and without ever leaving room for a solution in the form of
speculative dialectics, a Hegelian Aufhebung (cf. Positions, p.43). Undecidables mark the
points of what can never be mediated, mastered, or dialecticized. A few examples:
pharmakon (this means both poison and remedy), supplement (addition and replacement),
difference (distinction and deferral), communication (oral presentation and transmission
of messages). Undecidables graft one meaning onto another; they take up a key role as
they bring together and separate possible meanings at the same time. Their meaning
cannot be presented as 'this and that' or 'this or that'. It is 'and' and 'or' at the same time.
The pharmakon has no proper or determinate character; rather, it is the possibility of both
poison and remedy. It is ambivalent because it constitutes the element in which opposites
are opposed, the movement and play by which each meaning relates back to the other.
Undecidables are the movement, the locus, the play of difference. An operation that at
once brings about a fusion or confusion between opposites, and stands between opposites.
A double and impossible operation (cf. Culler, p.145). According to Derrida, words of
this type '... situate perhaps better than others the places where discourses can no longer
dominate, judge, decide: between the positive and the negative, the good and the bad, the
true and the false' (Points, p.86).

[2] Translations in particular often fail to accurately reproduce the ambiguousness of an

undecidable in its flowing and floating meaning. By attempting to assign an
unambiguousness meaning to an undecidable, its surprising dynamics becomes lost. By
interrupting the transition of the opposite meaning, the moving and playful web of a text
becomes neutralized.
Derrida inscribes his own texts on the places of these undecidables in order to
demonstrate or provoke their differentiating function. But he goes on to say that the
undecidability is not really due to the various meanings of pharmakon, supplement,
difference, etc; they can only produce their undecided effects through syntax, the
placement and grammatical status of a word in a sentence. The shift of the meaning of a
word, this back and forth shift in the syntax causes the non-binary logic: neither/nor, that
is simultaneously either/or. It is the formal and syntactic praxis that composes and
decomposes the lexical richness and semantic openness of a word or concept. There is an
irreducible excess of the syntactic over the semantic (cf. Dissemination, p.220).

[3] Undecidability cannot be confused with simple indecision, a pure paralyzation by the
play of signifiers. On the contrary, undecidability is the condition of a possibility of
acting and deciding; it is a determinate oscillation between possibilities that are
themselves highly (pragmatically) determined in strictly defined situations. There would
be no undecidability if it were not between determined poles. But whenever a decision is
really a decision, whenever it is more than programmability or calculability, it is because
it has passed through the ordeal of undecidability; it depends upon undecidability, which
gives us something to decide. Deciding is thus a possibility sustained by its impossibility.
The undecidability is never set aside, never over and done with (cf. Limited Inc., p.116
and p.148).

[4] Thinking in oppositions means that each of the opposed terms must simply be
external to the other. The opposition between the inside and the outside can thus be seen
as the matrix of all possible oppositions. However, undecidables have no proper place
within such a frame of thought. They indicate the impossibility of a definitive separation
between inside and outside. (Consider, for example, the quotations with which some of
these pages open. They cease to be quotations, pinned to the outside of the text by
position and material form, from the moment they work inside the very body of the text.)
On one hand, it is the undecidables that enable or activate the opposition; on the other
hand, they are themselves capable of escaping it. Thinking in opposites is taken to a limit
at which point a certain displacement of the series of oppositions takes place. 'We cannot
qualify it, name it, comprehend it under a simple concept without immediately being off
the mark' (Dissemination, p.104).

[5] On the page entitled Pharmakon, an example of an undecidable that occurs in

Derrida's text 'Plato's Pharmacy' (Dissemination, p. 63-171) is elaborated upon. Examples
of musical undecidables can be found on the pages Of New Musicology, Music and/as
Disorder and Hymen.
Writing Above Logos
[1] The speaking subject can be considered the father of his speech. The father is the
origin and cause of logos. Derrida's criticism is centered on this idea. It would imply that
the father resides outside of language. 'The father is not the generator or procreator in any
'real' sense prior to or outside of all relation to language ... it is precisely logos that
enables us to perceive and investigate something like paternity. If there were a simple
metaphor in the expression 'father of logos', the first word that seemed the more familiar
would nevertheless receive more meaning from the second than it would transmit to it ...
Living beings, father and son, are announced to us and related to each other within the
household of logos' (Dissemination, p.80-1). The idea of a father preceding his son
cannot be maintained with respect to a text that is preceded by a speaker because he is not
outside of language. We should not conceive of language in the light of a comprehensive
'fatherly' instance that produces, governs, and directs it. It is precisely language that first
enables this kind of thinking and such concepts as father and son; we are always already
in logos.
Derrida shows that the father needs logos to be able to appear at all. Without the presence
of a supplement, the origin cannot appear, which means that the supplement, logos, needs
to precede the origin, the father. Thus, the hierarchical relationship between the father
and his son is reversed. Everything begins with the supplement. Everything begins with
the play of differences that makes the sounds and meanings (that makes the difference
between 'father' and 'son', or 'logos'). But this play of differences in speaking is the same
as the play of differences in writing. So why not say that speaking is like a form of
writing?

[2] In Plato, Derrida and Writing, Jasper Neel argues about how Plato (who says not to
write at all) defines himself in writing and that he knows he has to do so in order to be
'heard'. Although he condemns writing, he cannot escape it.
Plato condemns writing as a derivative and dead repetition of the living spoken word.
This is what Plato leaves us with after Phaedrus. He is free to devalue writing because he
has exempted Phaedrus from writing by making it dialectic, writing's privileged opposite.
Plato can be considered the pharmakos who guides us out of the morass created by
writing, and into the realm of truth.
But he leaves us with what he himself leaves: a divided, diseased inscription. What
happens if we choose not to read Phaedrus as dialectic, but to call it what it is, writing?
Plato wants to give us truth, but he cannot. He has to replace it with what it is not,
namely, writing: 'What seems like a dialectical movement toward truth in his dialogues is
really a written text whose end is known at the beginning and whose every aspect is
managed through the revisionary, recursive process of writing' (Neel, p.70). Plato's desire
is to escape writing through writing; and the harder he tries to master writing in writing,
the more he is caught inside writing. Such platonic ideas as truth and soul find themselves
in writing. Plato's Socrates describes them as the opposite of writing, but he has to
describe them in writing.
What makes Plato important in history is precisely his writing so that his ideas remain
open for all time. Plato's writing is revolutionary because he represents the invention of a
literate culture in the middle of an oral culture. Plato knew Platonism was only available
through writing. He knew that all Socrates speeches were preceded and enabled by
writing. Dialectics was enabled by writing.

[3] Socrates dismisses writing as nothing more than amusing play. Plato succeeds in
escaping from writing if we accept Socrates' devaluation of writing. But was writing
really a trivial pastime for Plato? We know that Plato himself constantly revised his
dialogues. Writing for him was a very serious, if not the most serious, affair. In fact, one
could say that he was addicted to it. Writing was his pharmakon; it was a poison to him
because writing turned out to be using him, and it was a cure because he loved what it
allowed him to do. The source of his sickness was the source of his life (cf. Neel, p.56-
78).
About the Author
[1] Two warnings, two comments in advance. 'Since each of us is several, there is already
quite a crowd', Deleuze and Guatari write as one of their opening statements of A
Thousand Plateaus (Deleuze & Guattari, p.3). And, according to Lyotard, we do not form
linguistic constructions that are necessarily stable (Lyotard, p.26). So, even if there is -
because of falling prostrate before convention - just one person who signed all of these
pages, remember that he is already divided within himself. One name accommodates in
itself many persons.

[2] Marcel Cobussen wanted to become a professional soccer player. He did not succeed.
Too bad. Now he is both a musician and a philosopher. He studied jazz piano at the
Conservatory of Rotterdam, and Art and Cultural Studies at Erasmus University
Rotterdam. When he is not busy writing about music and (post-structuralist) philosophy,
he teaches philosophy and music at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, jazz piano at
the Rotterdam School of Music (SKVR), and aesthetics in the Department of Philosophy
at Erasmus University. Otherwise, he enjoys fitness, traveling, and sleeping as well. At
home, he plays mostly Bach. Note: he only writes about music he appreciates (not
reversible). He is the co-author of the book, Dionysos danst weer. Essays over
hedendaagse muziekbeleving (1996) [Dionysos Dances Again. Essays on Contemporary
Music]. He hopes to become a professor in music philosophy in the near future. A good
alternative might be to become a shepherd. He especially loves rabbits and camels but
lives with a cat. So far, he is quite satisfied with his life.

Marcel Cobussen can be contacted at cobussen@fhk.eur.nl

Acknowledgements
Deconstruction in Music. Deconstruction in Music. By Marcel Cobussen. Signed by me,
Marcel Cobussen. Signed to be my property. Such an inscription is supposed to guarantee
what is very vaguely called the originality of the text; it is supposed to guarantee a clear
origin, a unified authority, a well-defined producer who takes and who gets
responsibility. This is not the place to delve into the problems that such an appropriation
entails. (The problem of citation and the use of quotation marks for example. Both refer
to the responsibility of an other, someone who is absent in another way than 'I' am absent
in this text. These quotations are not 'my' property; they are an outside within the inside.
Parerga perhaps. Or the problem of translation. A translation - and this website has been
translated - is a (re)reading of the 'original' text. And as we know, every (re)reading,
every translation means a simultaneous transformation. What about my responsibility for
something I did not in fact write? What about my property? Why my signature? Finally,
the problem of authority and originality: Roland Barthes' insight that a text does not
release a theological meaning - the message of an Author-God - but a multidimensional
space in which a variety of texts, none of them original, blend and clash.)
This is not the right place for these problems. I elaborate upon them elsewhere on this site
(cf. for example The Signature of John Zorn).
Nevertheless, each person writing his acknowledgments is aware of the idea that (s)he is
not the only one responsible for the realization of the work. She or he in fact describes the
work as a shared property. Conventions ask for clarity: one or more clearly identifiable
authors. And (other) conventions provide for one opportunity to escape this all too rigid
clarity: acknowledgements. Let me keep to these conventions here.

First, I thank my supervisors, Professor Ton Bevers, Dr. Antoon van den Braembussche
(both are from Erasmus University Rotterdam), and Professor Rokus de Groot
(University of Amsterdam). Professor Bevers and Dr. van den Braembussche created an
institutional environment that often looked like a nice playground to me: they gave me
the opportunity and the support to explore the world of music and deconstruction.
Professor de Groot kept me from making too many musicological mistakes and
encouraged me in the choice of my subjects.
I thank all my friends and colleagues at the university and elsewhere who contributed in
very different ways to the realization of this work. Some of these friends were more
important to me than I was often able to express. I thank the many who took the effort to
respond to my questions and e-mails, especially Professor Samuel Gilmore (UC Irvine)
and Professor Gregory Ulmer (University of Florida).
I thank John Zorn and Professor Gerd Zacher for reading and commenting on my texts
and for giving me permission to use their music on this website. I thank the musicians
who worked with me on the realization of the Intermezzo project that resulted in two
CD's and that became so important for the section on deconstruction and music
education: trumpet player Eric Vloeimans, cellist Ernst Reijseger and the band
Intermezzo of the Rotterdam School of Music. I thank composer Edwin van de Heide for
his soundscapes that traverse some pages of this website.
Thanks to the support, including financial, creativity, enthusiasm and professionalism of
so many people of the multi-media company Human-I this website surpasses all my
expectations. The 'tool' created by them, in particular, gives an extra dimension to the
subject of this dissertation.
I thank the foundation, J.E. Jurriaanse, in Rotterdam and the foundation, M.A.O.C.
Gravin van Bijlandt, in The Hague for their financial contribution to this website.

Writing a dissertation seems to be a very solitary activity. And so it was perhaps in the
first two years of my Ph.D. appointment. However, writing and talking about a subject
that fascinates me, that retained possession of me, opened a space for me to meet people
who I probably would not have otherwise met. So this initially solitary activity revealed a
new social life. In 1998, I met Professor Mirjana Veselinovic-Hofman (University of
Belgrade, Yugoslavia) at a conference in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She became an important
kindred spirit; her approach to deconstruction and music often inspired me while writing
this dissertation. I thank her for her attention and responsiveness, especially at a time
when the political situation in Yugoslavia asked for other priorities. I regard my journey
to conferences held in New York and Toronto in the Autumn of 2000 as a modest
breakthrough. For the first time, I had the opportunity to talk with the 'founding fathers
and mothers' of American post-structuralist or post-modern musicology about my work. I
thank Professor Susan McClary (UCLA), Professor Richard Leppert (University of
Minnesota), Professor Lawrence Kramer (Fordham University), Professor Rose Subotnik
(Brown University), and Professor Lydia Goehr (Columbia University) for their
professional and inspiring comments on my texts and also for their warm social reception
and sensitivity.

Up until now, I passed over three people. Rutger and Thérèse Cornets de Groot
(www.xs4all.nl/~cornets) took care of the translation and/or correction of this work in
order to make it idiomatic English. However, does this flag cover the cargo? 'The quality
of a good translation can never be captured by the original' is the slogan they use. A
positive version of the idea that every translation is a transformation. What about my
'property', my 'authority', my signature? Often we had long e-mail discussions both on
linguistic items and subjects concerning content. (How clear is the border between these
two? As you know, the alteration of a word or sentence immediately also transforms the
meaning and the content.) The texts often changed on the basis of their (re)marks. I thank
Rutger and Thérèse for their accurate and creative work.
I am coming to the last stop. Professor Geraldine Finn (Carleton University, Ottawa,
Canada). Our first e-mail contacts date back to September of 2000. Since that time, she
has read and reread every page, every sentence, every word on this website with the
utmost precision and attention. She gave me the opportunity to discuss the difficult parts
of this dissertation in countless e-mails, long phone calls, and several 'in-person'
encounters. When I'd had enough she inspired me to continue; when I was quite satisfied
with some of the texts, she provided effective but constructive criticism. I wish every
Ph.D. candidate such a knowledgeable and kind supervisor. I hope this work does
sufficient credit to her tremendous investment.
This work is dedicated to the one who experienced firsthand its realization (though often
was very sleepy).

Readers are invited to write to me with regard to any amendments and/or additions that
will be taken into consideration in future revisions.
Marcel Cobussen can be contacted at cobussen@fhk.eur.nl
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