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A Becoming-Infinite-Cycle in
Anne Boyd's Music: A Feminist-Deleuzian Exploration[1]
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Sally Macarthur University of Western Sydney |
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The last two decades of the twentieth century
witnessed the remarkable transformation of musicology by feminist scholarship
in its illumination of the music of previously forgotten women composers. By
the turn of the twenty-first century, however, this scholarship had become
merely a phenomenon of the 1990s.
[2]
Women's music, once again, has virtually disappeared from musicology in the
Northern hemisphere,
[3]
a finding which is echoed in Australia.
[4]
A recent study paints a bleak picture, suggesting that women's music is
significantly under-represented in the theoretical studies of Australian
tertiary music institutions.
[5]
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Music analysis, the staple
diet of curricula in the vast majority of tertiary music institutions, has
contributed to this lop-sided view of music.[6]
While the discipline may appear to employ a broad range of theoretical models
for studying Western art music,[7]
it does not correspondingly study a broad range of music. And yet, it may be
that the theoretical apparatus is also limited, for most analytical methods
are designed to examine musical structure, and are employed to contemplate
meaning in music. A typical approach will speculate that musical meaning will
be uncovered by studying the pitch structures of a work and then proceed to
prove the theory. The fundamental structure in a Schenkerian graph, for
example, will demonstrate that tonal music by 'great' composers (on whom it
tests its theory) conforms to the image produced by the graph. What this
approach and others like it do not make apparent, however, is that the image
presented by the graph fixes a norm against which all music is judged and, in
turn, negates difference. |
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I argue that such approaches
lead to a homogenisation of thinking which impedes the critical reception and
academic study of women's music. As Gavin Carfoot writes, such thinking
denies 'the affirmation of joyful difference'[8]
and stifles the power to proliferate 'divergent images of thought.'[9]
The vast majority of approaches utilised in music analysis are typical of
many areas where musical knowledge is produced. Their purpose is to get closer
to the music in order to explain how it works and what it means but usually
within a very narrow frame of reference, including a preoccupation with music
by male composers. Carfoot argues that getting closer to 'the way things are'
is to set in train endlessly recurring patterns of the same kinds of thought
images which deny any possibility for difference.[10]
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The emphasis given to
structure and meaning in music analysis has had a negative impact on women's
music. Research adopting structural approaches while arguing for 'feminine
difference' has inadvertently shown that it is 'located in the negation of
ideals normalised by male models.'[11]
The very absence of women's music from the discourses of music analysis
indicates that it fails to conform to pre-existing standards. This perception
positions women's music as minor(ity) music. A tautology is launched by this
idea: the concept of 'minority' is associated with
being outside the norm, and being outside the norm produces minority music.
Arguments which are locked into static, circular patterns, have no
possibility of progressing beyond the boundaries in which they operate, and
such formulations, in any case, will often do no more than to register a
complaint that women's music is 'invisible' in the eyes of musicologists. |
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In this paper, I disengage
from these types of circular arguments, adopting instead a different strategy
for studying women's music. My aim is to show that it is possible to analyse
the music of a female composer, in which it is judged on its own terms, by
adopting a philosophical framework that locates 'difference' as a constantly
changing concept that is interactive in a constantly changing environment. I
will focus on the Australian woman composer, Anne Boyd (b. 1946), whose work
is located in the classical, concert tradition. A former student of
Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe (b. 1929), who is well known to
international audiences, Boyd is one among a handful of women composers who
has come to the attention of the Australian concert-going public. Her
reputation overseas is less well-known, confined to pockets of the |
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I treat Boyd's music to an
interpretation which extends beyond the formalist approaches of music
analysis by incorporating theories of difference drawn from
feminist-Deleuzian philosophy.[12]
My central argument is that Boyd's music offers itself to a reading which
associates it with the idea of the 'feminine' as a 'virtual' force. The
concept 'virtual', as I will elaborate below, is crucial to the theoretical
underpinning of my analysis. It makes possible the philosophical shift from
hierarchical, representational thought, in which 'feminine difference' is
ultimately returned to the negative 'other' of the (masculine) norm, to a way
of thinking that is characterised by an ever-changing and interactive,
limitless universe of ideas and thought patterns. |
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To spell out the problem
with previous work in feminist theory, philosopher Elizabeth Grosz suggests
that the attempts to conceive of a text as 'feminine' or 'feminist' or
'female' have been largely unsuccessful because, by and large, they have
argued for its location in the sex of the author, or in the sex of the
reader, or in the content or style of the text.[13]
In Grosz's account, the connection of the text with the sex of the author is
no guarantee of its feminist or feminine or female character for, as she
notes, the author 'is not a self-contained given [...] it always requires a
counter-signature, a reception.'[14]
In this view, the author always exceeds the text (when the text is read by
others in multiple contexts) and, in any case, a woman may write like a man.
Secondly, privileging the reader merely inverts the author/reader paradigm,
instating the reader as the all-knowing 'master' of the text but leaving the
dichotomy intact. Thirdly, focusing on the content presumes that women are a
homogenous group who share the same experiences. This approach assumes that
all women's representations will be concerned with 'women's issues'. Such an
idea, however, does not account for the fact that men may have access (as
experts, for example) to women's shared concerns and that not all women are
interested, in any case, in 'women's issues'. Following the lead of the
French feminists, in particular, Irigaray and Cixous,[15]
Grosz then proposes that a more fruitful approach may be yielded by analysing
the 'style' of the text, but warns that such analysis should proceed with
caution. In music, for example, women's role models are likely to be male,
making it difficult to identify the distinctive 'nature' of a 'feminine
style' or 'feminist aesthetic'. As I have argued previously, however, it may
be possible to locate 'feminine difference' in music in the signifying space
between male and female, or masculine and feminine,[16]
but the stumbling block for this work is its dependence on a theoretical
paradigm that polarises male and female. |
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Research on Boyd's music has
demonstrated its strong connection with the distinctive sound-world of Asian
music.[17]
Much traditional East-Asian music is structurally based on cyclical patterns.[18]
This same research suggests that in its affiliation with Asian music Boyd's
music is stylistically characterised by cyclical procedures and structures.
To appropriate the cycle exclusively as a woman's symbol, however, does not take
account of its application to both men and women; for example the life-cycle
is concerned with the various phases of life from birth to death irrespective
of gender. In music, women and men have utilised cyclical procedures; these
are exhibited in the well-established forms of the fugue, canon, ground bass,
and so on, and in recent compositional techniques applied to music, such as
in minimalist compositions. Given the criticisms (cited above) of work which
has attempted to locate 'feminine difference' in the text it would be futile
to compare Boyd's application of cyclical procedures with those of her
contemporary male counterparts. |
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Rather, I shall resist
positing 'feminine difference' as a static and universal concept and aim to
show, instead, how a different philosophical orientation enables a different
way of conceiving this term, theoretically freeing it from the dichotomous
relations of hierarchical thinking. Rather than focusing on the 'meaning' of
the musical work, including its structure and identification of its feminist
tendencies, I will consider what the music does. I will ask: what connections
does it make? I view Boyd's music as a series of multiplicities in which
multiple components interact with each other and with the external world. I
am interested in the transformative affects of these multiple interactions
and connections in Boyd's music. |
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The concept of the
'feminine' in feminist-Deleuzian philosophy is viewed as a 'virtual' force of
multiple possibilities, a provisional concept in a state of flux. According
to Deleuze, because the concept of 'male' or 'masculine' is already
understood as the norm, any movement away from the (male) norm is a movement
towards (feminine) difference. It should be noted that it is possible for both
men and women to create difference in terms of a Deleuzian conception, that
is, to move towards 'feminine difference'. Difference for Deleuze is a
concept that is outside of thought in the realm of the virtual. In Deleuzian
thinking, 'difference' is poised at any moment to become actualised as a new
thought image. Deleuzian theory is deliberately elusive, a dynamic way of
viewing the world. |
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In my analysis of Boyd's
music, I juxtapose a structural approach with the fluid image of the cycle. I
argue that some reductive analysis is necessary, for the materiality of
music, even when viewed as a dynamic process or concept, interacts within
itself. On this level, music appears to behave like a structure; boundaries,
such as a beginning and ending, enclose it as musical territory. Like
Carfoot, however, I am less interested in the way music creates meaning in
this way than in the 'particular intensity of sensation that it brings
about.'[19] What new affects does
Boyd's music create? How does the concept of a 'becoming-infinite-cycle'
contribute to producing these affects? What multiple connections become
possible in the concept of a 'becoming-infinite-cycle' and how does the
pattern of the cycle mutate in the music? Further, how does Boyd's music
bridge the gap between the concept of the cycle and the compositional
practice that produces it? |
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Territorialisation, Deterritorialisation and Activist Nomad |
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The
'becoming-infinite-cycle' is both a marker of 'virtual feminine difference'
and an analytical strategy employed to consider Boyd's music. I have taken up
the cycle as one of the principles which I have identified as a territorial
marker of difference in Boyd's music. The 'becoming-infinite-cycle' is
understood as a new sign or concept for Boyd's music, suggestive of infinite
possibilities for the cycle while allowing the analyst to think about the
emergence of difference in the music. The analyst takes up the role of
'activist nomad' to produce a deterritorialisation (which is like a
destabilisation) of music analysis. |
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In Deleuzian philosophy,
life is made up of connections or territories. Music (and different musics
within music) marks out territories, or produces territories through
connective forces that allow music (or the particular kind of music) to
become what it is - music. Adapting Colebrook, a deterritorialisation of
music produces a destabilisation or allows music to become what it is not, or
it changes or mutates it in such a way that it destabilises the concept of
music.[20]
The idea that Boyd's music exists outside the mainstream positions it as a
potential destabilising force on music in the mainstream. The analytical
framework for this paper is a deterritorialisation of music analysis by
insisting that structure and meaning are less important than difference
created through multiple connections and transformations. The mechanism by
which this is achieved is through the 'activist nomad'. |
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The 'nomad' is a
philosophical concept, drawn from Deleuze and developed by Rosi Braidotti.[21]
It is an analytical device that is applicable to subjectivity and for
thinking about the ways that subjects transgress boundaries and subvert
conventions. The concept of 'nomad' evokes the image of an isolate-being.
According to Elizabeth Gould, nomadism 'includes a figuration that is at once
metaphorical and embodied in an intellectual style and consciousness that
suggests alternative subjectivities, making possible political agency in the
context of fluid identities.'[22]
Applied to the institutional setting of music, the nomad is conceived, in
this instance, as a feminist who simultaneously works within and outside the
conventions of institutional analytical practice. The feminist nomad
musicologist is actively resistant to the authority of the institution and
its practice. The 'activist nomad' produces work that is both political and
theoretical and becomes, in Deleuzian terms, the site of
'becoming-minoritarian', a concept that suggests the movement away from the
(male) norm. In this instance, the identities of 'composing woman' and
'feminist musicologist' challenge the hegemonic world of 'man and his music.'
This 'nomadic-activist' gesture has the potential to radicalise music
analysis by producing new images for music. |
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Virtual Feminine Difference |
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I argue that Boyd's music is
an exemplar of 'virtual feminine difference'. Borrowed from
feminist-Deleuzian scholarship, 'virtual feminine difference' is inherently
anti-representational, incorporating the idea that (feminine) difference
produces 'singularities of affect'.[23]
The 'virtual' is not imagined as a representation of an 'actual', such as
might be imagined in the depiction of a reality (actual) by a photograph
image (virtual). Rather than being constituted as separate and distinct, the
'virtual' and the 'actual' are infused with elements of each other. The
concept of 'virtual' incorporates the idea of a multiplicity where
differences are imagined to proliferate. In Claire Colebrook's view, 'life is
a virtual multiplicity, not of things and agents but contemplations and
contractions, events and responses.'[24]
As she continues: |
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This means
there is not a world (actual) that is then
represented in images (virtual) by the privileged mind of man (the
subject). Life is just this actual-virtual interaction of imaging: each flow
of life becomes other in response to what it is not. The anticipation goes
beyond what is actual, but also produces a new actual. The image is neither
actual nor virtual but the interval that brings actuality out of the virtual.[25] |
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The 'virtual' implies an
'outside of thought', yet for Deleuze this concept does not suggest some kind
of detachment from the real world and real experiences. Unlike Cartesian
philosophy where God, Truth and transcendence are cast in a separate realm
from reality, and as pre-existent to and presiding over life, Deleuze
suggests that 'images are constantly acting and reacting on each other,
producing and consuming. There is no difference at all between images, things and motion.'[26]
Deleuze's theory refuses all divisions in representation, dissolving any
implied hierarchy. In representational thought, oppositional terms such as
masculinity and femininity ultimately return the subject to the norm. In
Deleuzian thought these terms are theoretically reconfigured: the feminine
and the masculine are continually infused by constituents of the other. |
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With this in mind, some
feminists have argued that Deleuze's work potentially neutralises the
particularities of women and femininity, suggesting that the specifics of
identity, including 'otherness', gender, oppression, and the binary divisions
of male and female, are all central preoccupations to feminist thought.[27]
Alice Jardine's misgivings are posed as a question: 'Is it not possible that
the process of 'becoming-woman' is but a new variation of an old allegory for
the process of women becoming obsolete?'[28]
Grosz (who then proposes a reconstruction of Deleuze and Guattari's
understandings of corporeality[29])
says that Jardine articulates clearly for feminists the anxieties that are
posed by these theorists' radical refiguring of ontology in terms of planes,
intensities, flows, becomings (discussed below) and linkages. Yet Grosz also
suggests that Deleuze and Guattari's work has much to offer feminists if they
are to seek ways to move beyond the confines of Cartesian thought with its
dualist heritage.[30] |
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In her more recent work,
Grosz argues that Deleuze's view of the 'virtual-actual' dichotomy is useful
because it is not constrained by a way of thinking that conceives of the
future from the standpoint of the present as some kind of mirror of the
present, an idea which has been privileged in representational philosophy.
Rather, Deleuzian philosophy imagines how truly new futures may transpire
from transformations or actualisations of virtual or unfulfilled
potentialities.[31] Notions of a
pre-existent patriarchy are dissipated and the 'virtual', as Bonshek has
suggested, can be used, instead, to think of feminine difference beyond any
conception we have of it.[32]
If the future is not bound to the past, then by extension, as Bonshek states,
'a feminist aesthetic need not be defined on [pre-existent] patriarchal
terms.'[33] While women's music may
have no absolute connections with recognisable feminine content, as Bonshek,
drawing on Grosz, argues, it is possible to conceive of sexual difference as
a 'virtual force' - 'a leap of innovation or creativity' - which is
registered as the experience of 'surprise' that the virtual leaves within the
actual.[34] In her own analysis of
women's multi-media art works, Bonshek proffers the view that sexual
difference is imagined as a multiplicity of possibilities. |
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'Virtual feminine
difference' permits an infinite array of possibilities for thinking about
women and their relationships with the world and refuses the stereotype of
womanhood that has come to plague representational thought. Images of
femininity or womanhood are conceived as provisional points of difference;
they can appear as distinctive while in the process of producing multiple
affects. In this view, 'virtual feminine difference' operates within a
network of qualities which at any moment could be undercut by a set of other
qualities. This permits an interpretation of Boyd's music as a virtual force
of sexual difference, a flow of affects which are produced on a pragmatic
level while theoretically undergoing multiple transformations. |
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Becoming |
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In Deleuzian philosophy, the
concept of 'becoming' is the idea that life and systems are in flux, in a
constant state of opening out to instability, and undergoing transformations
and mutations of themselves. The becoming of music, to draw on Colebrook's
parallel with language, can be transformed by 'other modes of becoming such
as the becoming of organisms and social systems.'[35]
In my analysis of Boyd's music elaborated below, for example, silence is
imagined to transform music into a 'becoming-landscape'. The concept of
'becoming' defies a singular definition; rather, it encapsulates the dynamism
and instability of thought. 'Becoming' is not conceived as an opposition to
the stable world of 'being' in which the latter implies a static subject and
an autonomous reality. As Colebrook states, 'becoming [...] means doing away
with the opposition altogether.'[36]
Becoming is a continuous flow. Life is a 'becoming-life' which, in the
process of becoming, is conceived, to draw from Carfoot, 'as more-or-less
stable moments' within a flux of perceptions.[37]
Becoming entails always being open to what it is not yet. |
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The usefulness of the terms
'becoming' and 'virtual feminine difference' to the interpretation of Boyd's
music is that, rather than negating 'feminine difference', they keep notions
of the 'feminine' and 'masculine' in play. 'Becoming-other' entails moving
away from distinctiveness towards something else, yet it allows for an
analysis of the process of how femininity becomes unstable. The concept of
'becoming-imperceptible' encapsulates this idea which, according to
Braidotti, 'is about reversing the subject towards the outside: a sensory and
spiritual stretching of our boundaries [...] It is the absolute form of
deterritorialisation and its horizon is beyond the immediacy of life.'[38]
For Braidotti, 'becoming-imperceptible' is the process of becoming
other-than-itself, suspended between the no longer and the not yet.[39]
At strategic moments, virtual images of feminine difference and woman
composer become provisionally distinctive, making it theoretically possible
to regard the works of a female composer as affects of indeterminate moments
of sensory force, connected with female bodies through the 'becoming-other'
of the composer and analyst. |
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A Becoming-Infinite-Cycle of Music |
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I use the concept of a
'becoming-infinite-cycle' to capture the idea of the cycle as a distinctive
element in Boyd's music and as a provisional exemplar of 'virtual feminine
difference'. A 'becoming-infinite-cycle' is also conceived as the
'becoming-imperceptible' of the music in which the analysis opens out to
possibilities that extend beyond the terms of the fixed world of musical
conventions.[40] Rather than discussing
one of Boyd's works, I have chosen to investigate how five works are linked
in the terms suggested by a feminist-Deleuzian analysis. They are chosen
because they are revealing of the composer's evolving style, beginning with
the early period (1970s), moving through an imagined middle period (1980s and
1990s), and concluding with a recent work (2006). |
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I discuss the following
works: As I Crossed a Bridge of
Dreams for unaccompanied chorus
(1975); Cycle of Love for countertenor, alto flute, cello and piano
(1981); Black Sun for
orchestra (1989); A Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother for 6
Voices (SSATBB) (1999), and Angry Earth for Shakuhachi, two harps and
orchestra (2006).[41] From
their points of origins to receptions beyond in multiple contexts, each is
imagined to produce proliferations of 'feminine difference', a term which
suggests that the music is a 'plane of becoming', in Colebrook's words, a
'becoming-other' or a 'becoming-woman', concepts which are understood to free
the music 'from the fixed foundations of man as the subject.'[42]
The addition of each work becomes a variation of the cycle which is in a
state of perpetual transformation. |
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Structural models have been
applied to Boyd's music, among them analyses of the South-East Asian
character of her music, and of its feminist qualities.[43]
In contradistinction to its use in 'a becoming-infinite-cycle', this research
has shown the cycle to be a compositional process used to generate musical
material and to create musical structure. But to dwell on the cycle as a
fixed concept denies the possibility for the music to proliferate divergent
musical-images in which the cycle is mobile and free from the fixed
foundations of conventional analytical approaches. |
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The concept of the 'virtual
feminine' makes it theoretically possible to avoid conceiving Boyd's music as
a stable and static image of femininity and cyclicity. While the flow of
material (musical and otherwise) is observed to have the tendency to
actualise itself as static images, such as its references to the Buddhist and
Christian religions, its connections with Asian music, and with notions of
Australian identity and landscape, all of which have personal significance to
Boyd, these tendencies are conceived as potentialities for the music in the
present analysis. |
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The cycle emerges as
provisionally distinctive in Boyd's music but it is always conceived as a
tendency or a potentiality or intensity, yet to be actualised. In a
structural analysis, it is possible to observe the operations of cyclical
processes; in a Deleuzian analysis other processes and concepts become
apparent as I will discuss below. In Fig. 1, a representation of an arc
depicts the cyclical relationships between the works and within each work.
This same image also shows how the tonal centres are conceived in cyclical
relationships. The cyclical patterns emerge in Boyd's music as: |
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Fig. 1: The Operations of Cycles in Five Works by Anne Boyd.
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While retaining elements of
their distinctiveness as circular (rather than linear) patterns, I argue that
Boyd's constant re-imaging of these musical patterns gives rise to the
boundless cycle which is marked by the 'virtual feminine'. |
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The information contained in
Fig. 1 is a useful starting point, for it immediately highlights how the
cycle is a structural element both within each work and across the five under
discussion. The accompanying tonal map draws attention to the way that As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams begins
on A-flat and returns to A-flat through D-flat and E-flat; in this analysis,
however, I view it is an A-flat of 'difference' because during the passage of
the music this tonality has been acted upon and transformed by other
tonalities. Cycle of Love similarly
maps out tonal territory that returns it to a variation of itself on E (via
A). The third song in Cycle of Love
forms a centre-piece on A, around which the two songs flanking it rotate in
semitone relationship (B-flat and B-natural). Black Sun's cycles are mapped out in fifths while highlighting
minor second intervals (such as E/E-flat) and the tritone (such as A-flat-D),
intervals which, for the analysis proposed, could be suggestive of an array
of affects associated with pain and suffering. A Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother oscillates between F, D and
A throughout. For the analysis proposed, each tonal centre could be
understood to construct multiple variations of sensory affects before the
music concludes on A. Finally, Angry
Earth moves from D back to D, but from minor, which for the composer,
projects despair and death at the end of the second movement, to major, as an
image of hope at the end of the third movement. A feature highlighted in the
macro-structural analysis in Fig. 2 is that silence is an important element.
While not explicit in Fig. 2, previous analyses have argued that silence
marks important moments, such as the climactic moment in the third song of Cycle of Love, and pulls the music to
a central focal point.[44] |
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Mapping Lines of Variation |
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While a structural analysis
is able to account for the ways in which the thematic material in a given
work is developed, it does not necessarily map this material to show how
other kinds of connections emerge. According to Lorraine, Deleuze suggests
models of subjectivity that view the self (such as composer and analyst) as a
terrain which extends out onto the surrounding terrain, always moving in
uncanny directions, while retaining the specificity of the subject's local
terrain.[45] The movements across
the terrain are understood as 'lines of variation'. The 'lines of variation'
which run transverse across Boyd's infinite-cycle produce a multiplicity of
multiplicities and actualise the movement of the 'becoming-other' as the
'virtual feminine'. |
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(a) Mapping Silence |
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In this section, I map
silence as 'lines of variation' across three of Boyd's works, from the
chronologically earliest, As I Crossed
a Bridge of Dreams, through a middle work, Cycle of Love, to the
most recent of the works under discussion, Angry Earth. I argue that silence gives expression to pain but
that it also maps a movement from a 'becoming-landscape' to a 'becoming-pain',[46]
a concept that is abundant in Boyd's output. |
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In As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams, landscape is given expression
through the silence which infuses the music. It is the ceaseless backdrop
into and out of which the three (SATB) choir groups make strategic entrances
and exits as they sing musical material built on heterophonic textures and
interlocking chords formed from three (Asian) pentatonic modes. Beginning and
ending on A-flat, the music behaves like a ever-expanding and contracting breathing
apparatus, projecting long, slow-moving, static tonal clusters, marked
periodically by crushing major and minor seconds. From beginning to end,
silence territorialises the piece to produce a sense of meditative stillness
which connects with the 'becoming-infinite-cycle' of Boyd's music. Example 1
is an illustration in the score of how the silence is territorialised: the
entries and exits of the voices highlight its presence and absence, an idea
which would also be revealed by a conventional analysis. A conventional
analysis would also point out the operations of heterophony as a cyclical,
textural pattern in this example. |
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In feminist-Deleuzian terms,
it is possible to consider how silence, in tandem with the static tonal
clusters of the piece, transforms the music into landscape. The music is
deterritorialised (made unstable) by its connection with the monotonous, arid
landscape of Boyd's childhood; the becoming-landscape of the music occurs
through Boyd's childhood embodiment of the land. Her music is distinctive in
the connections it makes between body and landscape, in turn, an idea linked
to the concept of 'virtual feminine difference'. The becoming-landscape is
further emphasised by the cyclical, slow-moving ground bass patterns which
are shown in Examples 2a and 2b. Patterns like this are also found in
abundance in Boyd's dynamic cycle of musical works. |
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Example 2a: Ground bass
pattern used between Bars 91-116 in Choir 1 of As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams.
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Example 2b: Ground bass
pattern used between Bars 104 -116 in Choir 3 in As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams.
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Whereas silence permeates
the entire score of As I Crossed a
Bridge of Dreams, ever present and yet never wholly present, in Cycle of Love it acts as a crucial
structural element in the music. The structure of this work is set out in
Fig. 2 as an amplification of its earlier presentation (in Fig. 1). The
symmetry indicated by the arcs is only partially based on the tonal centres.
Elsewhere I have discussed the crucial role played by the thematic and
harmonic material in establishing a central structural focus for Cycle of Love, including a
proportional analysis to emphasise this idea.[47] |
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Silence marks the climactic
moment as a central point in the music of Cycle
of Love, located towards the conclusion of the third song. See the minim rest following the
word 'body' in Example 3. |
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Example 3:
Silence as the climactic moment, concluding bars, third song, of Anne Boyd's Cycle of Love.
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The text of the third song
in this cycle is concerned with the kind of emotional pain that is felt when
love is rejected. The textual analysis of Cycle
of Love is shown in Fig. 3. Strategically placed after the word 'body',
created here by the prolongation of a rest, silence acts on the music to
produce a sensory attenuation to the image of pain. Compared to the
meditative qualities in As I Crossed a
Bridge of Dreams, silence in Cycle
of Love performs the dual role of organising the music and affecting
pain: it marks an important moment,
providing a lengthy pause before the song concludes, 'Alas, Alas, I know not
how to go on', on the despairing minor second, avoiding closure, as an
expression of human suffering. Silence is the gap which is opened up by the
music for the outpouring of pain. |
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In Angry Earth, silence functions to give expression to anguish and
suffering at the conclusion of the second movement (see Example 4). Here, the
closing bars of the movement slip dramatically into D minor (for Boyd,
symbolising the key of death). A chorale is ushered in by the brass section
which concludes on a sombre D minor chord engulfed by silence. |
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The composer remarks that
the conclusion of this movement - the deeply sorrowful chorale in the low
horns stated three times, emerging out of the Japanese hirajoshi scale
'via the appearance of a searing intense C sharp, effecting a perfect cadence
into D minor' - shocked her, for she says: 'These three phrases seemed to me
to affect a kind of Abscheid - a farewell. I almost couldn't continue.'[49] |
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The 'lines of variation'
across Boyd's treatment of silence are identified as transformations of
silence into landscape, and landscape into pain. Landscape and pain intersect
as multiple lines of variation through silence. The music of As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams
utilises silence as the backdrop for the 'becoming-landscape' and is the
territory out of which landscape emerges. The image of landscape is a transformation
of that silence. In the third song of Cycle
of Love the idea of landscape is taken up in a new way through music
which is bound up with an affect of pain. In this work, the landscape of As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is
transformed into an affect of pain, which is also imagined as a
'becoming-pain' of the silence. The second movement of Angry Earth is also mapped as a 'becoming-pain' of silence which,
as a deterritorialisation of its function in Cycle of Love, shifts the affect of pain into a different sphere
from the earlier work. |
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(b) Mapping the Becoming-Christian/Becoming-Buddhist |
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'Lines of variation' can be
traced across Boyd's works to show how the programmatic material forms part
of the assemblage of a 'becoming-infinite-cycle' of the music. The movement
here is from a 'becoming-Buddhist' to a 'becoming-Christian'. One of the ways
in which Boyd's music attains its feminine distinctiveness is through the
composer's interaction with concepts emerging from the two belief systems, non-theistic
Buddhism and theistic Christianity. For the composer 'Buddhist silence'
interacts with 'Christian love'[50]
which, in turn, interacts with the text and music of As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams, Cycle of Love and A Vision:
Jesus Reassures His Mother. Transformations, traced as 'lines of
variation', run through these works, from the Buddhist, ego-less text and
meditative music of As I Crossed a
Bridge of Dreams, passing through Cycle
of Love, which is chronologically and ambiguously (as a hybrid of Christian
and Buddhist themes) between the two, to the more (earthly) goal-directed
Christian narrative and music of A
Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother. The connection between the earlier
and later work for Boyd is the idea that each gives rise to 'personal
salvation.'[51] |
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The narrative of As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is
drawn from the diary of an eleventh-century Japanese noblewoman, Lady
Sarashina (b. 1008 CE) who recounts a sequence of spiritual journeys to
Buddhist temples. Boyd maps these as three dreams which ultimately lead to
'the idea of personal salvation linked with Light.'[52]
The music acts on the text - which consists of vague, non-syllabic utterances
which eventually articulate the name of two Buddhas (Amaterasu and Amida) - with its orientation to dream-like, non-goal-directed qualities (alluded to
in the previous section), suggesting an impersonal timelessness. |
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A Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother, composed more than twenty years later,
focuses on the intimate spiritual connection between the mother (Mary) and
child (Jesus). It is mapped as a vision in which the future is foreseen in
the crucifixion and death of Christ. (See Appendix 1,
which contains the text of this work, and Fig. 4, which presents a
macro-structural analysis of the work.) |
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Fig. 4: A Macro-Structural
Analysis of Anne Boyd's A Vision: Jesus
Reassures His Mother.
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The refrain shown in Example
5 is adopted as the recurring idea for the music; it is modal in character
and set on a rocking lullaby rhythm. For the composer, this rhythm symbolises
'hope', the message of the song as a whole. It makes seven appearances
throughout the song. |
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Example 5: Seven-note
refrain, opening four bars, A Vision:
Jesus Reassures His Mother. 2000
by
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The music interacts with the
text, functioning as a conduit through which the story passes. Bars 115-125
in Example 6 illustrates the way the music conveys the story in
recitative-like style (alto voice) accompanied by the rocking rhythm of the
refrain. In bars 125-6 the music erupts, utilising the force of a descending
augmented triad on F sung forte in
block harmony by the three upper voices (SSA), to enunciate the opening lines
from the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 'Hail, Mary Full of Grace'. This
example typifies the entire work which is a setting of an anonymous lyric
poem from the fourteenth century for unaccompanied choir (SSATBB). |
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Example 6:
Interaction of Text and Music in A
Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother, bars 115-27.
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Between these two works, Cycle of Love is pivotal, for I argue
that its philosophical underpinning is a hybrid of Buddhist and Christian
themes. Its subject matter deals with love (and pain) as concepts which are
both ego-less (associated with Buddhism) and humanly grounded (associated
with Christianity). The protagonists of the songs are transformed as the
cycle unfolds. The text of the work explores related concepts to do with
'time', the 'real' and the 'imaginary' (see Fig. 3
above). The music slowly moves inwards and outwards from the central
point of the third song but with greater movement and dynamic range compared
with the quiet, timeless quality of As
I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams. While obscuring identity and navigating
binary relationships within the pattern of the cycle - day/night (first
song), bitter/sweet, love/dream (last song) and only in songs II-IV is there
a vague sense of narrativity (winter night - sudden gust - fallen) - Cycle of Love shifts the music and
text of its predecessor into a new realm. It transforms the
'becoming-landscape', discussed earlier, into 'becoming-pain'. |
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The cycle plays a
significant role, musically and textually. Time and identity are vague. The
beginning and ending are marked by questions (Is it real? Is it a dream?).
The textual cycle (see Fig. 3),
which sets up and dissolves numerous binary relationships, is reinforced by
music which operates on cyclical principles (see Example
3). While the cycle has a structural function in Boyd's music, in its
dissolution of binary relationships it transforms the music into a potential
image of the 'virtual feminine'. |
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I have mapped the connection
of the programmatic material with the music as 'lines of variation'. The
concept of a 'Buddhist silence' flowing through As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams is transformed by the humanly
grounded love and pain of Cycle of Love
which is, in turn, morphed into an idea of 'Christian love' associated
with 'redemptive salvation' in A
Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother. This is accomplished, in part,
through the mediation process of the composer who imagines that she
personally embodies her works. Boyd says of the later work that she projected
the sorrow of her own childhood (which had seen her orphaned by the age of
eleven) onto Mary's sorrow, which then gave rise to a deeply personal work in
which the composer's love for her own mother (who had committed suicide) is
echoed by Jesus's love for his mother.[53] |
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Similarly, the composer's
reflecting on As I Crossed a Bridge of
Dreams some twenty years later could be argued to be reterritorialisation
of it.[54]
This reterritorialisation, in Deleuzian terms, involves a transformation of
the ethos of Boyd's current belief system in Christianity to an earlier work
which she had originally associated with Buddhism. By relating it to her
current belief system, she distances it from its original association.
Furthermore, an account of her personal embodiment of the narrative
underpinning A Vision: Jesus Reassures
His Mother is transformed into a narrative which she maps back onto As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams in the
following statement: |
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[T]he landscape of my early
childhood came to stand in place of mother and so this country became etched
with sorrow and beauty conjoined that I heard in music for the first time in gagaku. Thus, in an instant, my own
musical aesthetic became inseparably linked to the Japanese aesthetic of yuegen (found in Zeami's concepts of Noh) in which great sorrow and great
beauty are conjoined.[55] |
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From the perspective of many
years later (2006), Boyd views the earlier work originally connected with a
Buddhist conception of silence and light as now having a Christian message to
do with 'the redemptive risen Christ who is also the Son/Sun of God.'[56] |
42 |
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(c) Mapping the Hirajoshi Mode |
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The Japanese hirajoshi mode functions across Boyd's
'becoming-cycle' to present variations on themes of human sorrow. This mode
is taken up as a 'becoming-other', giving rise to the 'virtual feminine'. A
relatively stable idea in the flow of Boyd's music, the 'becoming-hirajoshi-mode'
is embodied as the 'becoming-other' (Japanese) in the music. In these
moments, intervallic relations (in upward and downward inflections) of the
third, the major and minor second, and the tritone come into the foreground.
Example 7 presents the pentatonic mode as it appears in Boyd's analysis of
Sculthorpe's music.[57] |
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Example 7: A standard hirajoshi mode.
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Example 8 captures the
operations of the hirajoshi mode in
A Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother.
Here the mode is a transformation of the standard version. Mary's (earthly)
sorrow in this work is clothed in the notes of the dark hirajoshi mode, appearing three times throughout the work (see
the macro-structure of the work in Fig. 4 above). The intense subject matter
of the text, which is drawn into relation with the mother's melody, is based
on this doleful mode, emphasising
the intense minor second interval. |
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Example 8a: Operations of
the hirajoshi mode in A Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother. Hirajoshi mode used for Mary's melody.
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Example 8b: Operations of
the hirajoshi mode in A Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother. Hirajoshi mode as it appears in Mary's
melody, bars 111-120.
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In Cycle of Love, the hirajoshi
mode makes only one appearance in the work, operating on a number of levels
structurally to give focus to the third song in the cycle. The mode and
excerpt from the third song are presented in Example 9. The mode itself
consists of a typical hirajoshi
pattern but the transformation comes about through the context in which the
mode is presented, including the addition of the note 'D' (on the words
'tears' and 'know'). Spanning a minor tenth in the counter-tenor vocal part,
the melody is full of disjointed gaps and on two occasions it leaps a minor
seventh to draw the text ('tears' and 'sorrow') into relationship with the
mode. This is a significant departure from the use of this mode in all the
other contexts of Boyd's music. The hirajoshi
mode functions to capture the deep affects of human pain and suffering. |
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Example 9a: The hirajoshi mode as the basis for the
painful third song in Cycle of Love.
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Example 9b: The hirajoshi mode in the concluding bars
of the third song of Cycle of Love.
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This passage from Cycle of Love also throws into stark
relief the painful silence marked by a minim rest that follows the word
'body'. |
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In more than half of the
work, Black Sun is marked by what
Boyd has described as the 'grief' motif.[58] This descending five-note motif and its
various permutations (including inversions and renditions in augmentation)
also contain elements of the hirajoshi mode
as shown in Example 10. But here the mode is almost unrecognisable,
introducing additional notes, an appoggiatura on A-flat and A-sharp (or its
enharmonic equivalent B-flat), and distorting the intervallic configuration
of the standard mode. The music here is a deterritorialisation of the hirajoshi mode, embodied as grief by
the composer, and set in motion by a downwardly spiralling, five-note motif,
emphasising a tritone leap, which casts gloom over the music. |
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Example 10: Operations of
the hirajoshi mode in Black Sun.
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In Angry Earth the hirajoshi
mode is absent from the first movement, becoming apparent in the second.
Described by the composer as a lament, the second movement transforms the
subjectivity of anger (from the first movement) into sorrow (see Example 11). |
47 |
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Example 11: Operations of the hirajoshi mode in the bassoons, second movement (bars 49-52) of Angry Earth.
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The 'lines of variation' of the sorrowful hirajoshi mode which flow through all
of Boyd's music is viewed as a multplicity which branch out to proliferate
difference. The ways in which the hirajoshi
mode crosses Boyd's music engendering different expressions of sorrow and
grief as effects of its connections or its 'becoming-multiple' give rise to
'virtual feminine difference'. |
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(d) Mapping the Ritornello as a 'Line of Flight' |
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Deleuze uses the idea of the
'refrain' or 'ritornello' (meaning 'little return') to show how a codified
pattern within a 'chaotic world' is established. He conceives of it as a
territorial assemblage.[59]
In music, the refrain is similarly conceived, 'a little tune, a melodic
formula that seeks recognition',[60]
that marks out the musical territory to which the music keeps returning. It
appears in two of Boyd's works as a 'refrain' or a 'ritornello': Example 5
shows the seven-note refrain that territorialises A Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother. Example 12 shows my short
score reduction of the ritornello pattern that enunciates Angry Earth. |
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Example 12: Short
score reduction by the author of the ritornello theme, opening 4 bars, Angry Earth.
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Modelled on the Baroque concerto
grosso form with its three movements loosely conceived as fast-slow-fast,
the principal theme of the first movement of Angry Earth is cast as a ritornello. Here it behaves like
the authority figure, staking out the musical territory for the work, and for
Boyd it is imagined as the protesting 'voice of the earth'.[61] Following a rising seven-note motif
spanning just over two octaves, Angry Earth erupts into a furious,
discordant outburst played at triple forte
by the full orchestra. For the composer, the orchestra's mode of subjectivity
is that of anger.[62]
This material is subjected to various transformations throughout the opening
movement, and it is also imagined by the composer to summon up the sound of
'brutal, distant cries of a dying and ravaged earth'.[63]
The forces of the full orchestra give voice to anger as well as despair and
the composer suggests that these forces are 'the voice of the earth'.[64]
The forces of the orchestra, acting as 'the voice of the earth', are set in
opposition to an obbligato line
consisting of three instruments, the shakuhachi and two harps, representing
the 'voice of the spirit';[65]
the shakuhachi is flanked by two harps resembling, in the composer's
conception, angel's wings.[66] |
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I argue that the ritornello theme in this work performs
a dual role: it is the governing principle while simultaneously being drawn
into direct relation with and thus enacting a deterritorialisation of the
Baroque concerto grosso form. The
instrumental forces in Angry Earth mimic
the behaviour of a typical Baroque concerto
grosso while at the same time producing a transformation of that
behaviour. The obbligato line is set against the forces of the symphony
orchestra (ripieno). The continuo
line normally present in the Baroque orchestra is absent from Boyd's work;
there is no evidence of its incorporation whereby a keyboard player
improvises chords continuously over a bass line reinforced by a bass
instrument. [67] In Boyd's music the bass line does not
carry the harmony or perform continuously throughout the music. Its absence suggests
that the ritornello of the first movement deterritorialises a typical
Baroque ritornello by including numerous passages of repeated,
circular bass-line motifs which appear to function as a continuo line through
a transformation of its original function. Example 13 shows a typical
circular (frequently used like a ground) bass motif found in Angry Earth, which also imitates a
non-retrogradable rhythm pattern. |
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Example 13: Bass Line used
in Movement 2 between Bars 15-48 of Angry
Earth.
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Conclusion |
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What I have proposed in this
paper opens up new possibilities for music, an infinite array of
possibilities. I have demonstrated just some of these possibilities,
including thinking about how music is constituted from intersections and connections,
territorialisations and deterritorialisations, becomings, planes of
intensities, and lines of variation. This is a 'nomadic' gesture which has
performed a deterritorialisation of music analysis. It has offered a new
approach to thinking about Boyd's (unfamiliar) music with the aim of judging
it on its own terms. The 'becoming-imperceptible' of the music is suggested
as a 'becoming other-than-itself', suspended between the 'no longer' and the
'not yet'. I have introduced virtual images of feminine difference which,
through their connection with the 'becoming-other' of the female bodies of
composer and analyst, have transformed Boyd's music into affects of
indeterminate moments of sensory force. |
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Given that difference is
always differing, the possibilities are endless for this type of analysis. By
necessity, I have juxtaposed discussion of structuralist models to illustrate
the fundamental differences revealed by the present analysis. But in
Deleuzian philosophy, difference is primary.
Differing can sometimes mean repeating but repetition is always
different - 'differing difference'. According to Deleuze, 'Difference must be
shown differing.'[68]
This is the difference of the virtual. |
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The concept of 'virtual
feminine difference' is fundamental to my central argument, for it is
suggestive of a virtual tendency produced by intensities. The cycle, an image
for both sexes, is taken up as a feminine tendency with infinite
possibilities. It emerges as a provisional marker of difference in Boyd's music.
Boyd's music refuses comparison with music by her male counterparts, for such
an approach ultimately returns the feminine (or female) to the negative other
of the (male) norm. The fundamental stumbling block has been the dependence
of the earlier research (discussed in my introduction), including the more
radical performative metaphors developed in feminist theory in the 1990s,[69]on
the hierarchical representational (binary) system of Western thought. |
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Deleuzian philosophy allows
for possibilities which may not have been previously imagined. This work, I
believe, opens up possibilities for future work in music analysis and
situates the discipline at the threshold of something new, making it relevant
in the wider arena of the academy. It has enormous possibility for thinking
about all types of music, for considering the transformative potentialities
of music in a multiplicity of environments.
In conclusion, my analysis of Boyd's music has been offered as a creative
solution to addressing the current lack of women's music in musicological
discourses. It is an expression of respect and love for the composer's music. |
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[1] I am indebted to Dr Linda Kouvaras,
[2] I am not alone in making this observation. See Suzanne G. Cusick, '"Eve...blowing in our ears"? Toward a history of music scholarship on women in the twentieth century', Women & Music (2001), 125-140. [3] In Western musicology feminist work has begun to diminish since the
mid- to late-1990s and in the current time women's music and concerns are
barely registering. This is evidenced particularly in anthologies which claim a
connection with the North American 'new musicology' and its [4] Feminist and women's issues have been aired at conferences attached
to four composing women's music festivals held in Australia (Adelaide in 1991,
Melbourne in 1994, Sydney in 1999, and Canberra in 2001).Three of these had
refereed publication outcomes: Thrse Radic (ed.), Repercussions: Australian Composing Women's Festival and Conference,
1994 (Melbourne: National Centre for Australian Studies, Monash University,
1995); Sally Macarthur and Cate Poynton (eds.), Musics and Feminisms (Sydney: Australian Music Centre, 1999); and
Linda Kouvaras, Ruth Lee Martin and Graham Hair (eds.), Loose Canons: Papers from the National Festival of Women's Music
Canberra, 2001 (Ameroo, ACT: Southern Voices, 2004). Apart from these
publications, there has been some feminist and poststructuralist work on music
included in the Musicological Society of Australia conferences since the 1990s.
Feminist and poststructuralist work is included in some music curricula in
Australia: Linda Kouvaras (University of Melbourne) teaches a number of
musicology subjects which are informed by feminist, postmodernist, and critical
theories, as well as drawing on a range of music from the classical and popular
repertories, while Suzanne Robinson (University of Melbourne) teaches a women
and music elective; Cecilia Sun (Sydney University) teaches subjects informed
by postmodern theories and includes a unit on gender and music; Brydie-Leigh
Bartleet (Queensland Conservatorium) and Sally Macarthur (University of Western
Sydney) include similar content in musicology subjects. However, a recent
survey of the tertiary music sector in [5] See Sally Macarthur, 'Gender and the Tertiary Music Curriculum'. While the institutions in the survey are not identified (for ethical reasons), they represent a diverse group, including traditional universities ('sandstones'), conservatoriums and new universities. The survey reports that theoretical studies are dominated by men's music, even in those institutions where some effort has been made to incorporate women's music, yet there is an increase in the number of women composers represented by the Australian Music Centre which is up from 16% in 1995 to 24% in 2007. More women are composing music but their numbers have dwindled on the concert platform (from 2% in 1995 to 1% in 2004-05). Drawing on Green's studies of gender in primary and secondary education in the United Kingdom, the findings of the Australian survey suggest a strong link between institutional learning in the tertiary music sector and the concert hall, arguing that students who are shaped by their music education will go on endlessly to reproduce the practices of their training in later life. See Lucy Green, Music, Gender, Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). [6] Analyses of music and the historical overviews of analysis in the following early publications support this view. Significant among these are Nicholas Cook's A Guide to Musical Analysis (London and Melbourne: J M Dent & Sons Ltd, 1987) and Allen Forte's The Structure of Atonal Music (New Haven and London: Yale University, 1977), which continue to be widely used as analytical textbooks, the former canvassing some of the major analytical methods that have been applied to music, the latter presenting a method which can be applied to atonal music in the early twentieth century. Both are focused on music of the Western tradition and its male composers. Fred Maus's more recent critique of analysis likens it to a science-oriented theory which excludes women's music and he argues for a more inclusive methodological view of music. See Fred Everett Maus, 'Masculine Discourse in Music Theory,' Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Summer 1993), 264-293. Anthony Pople (ed.), Theory, Analysis & Meaning in Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) lacks discussion of women's music and while a more inclusive approach to music analysis is adopted in Elizabeth West Marvin and Richard Herman (eds.), Concert Music, Rock and Jazz Since 1945: Essays and Analytical Studies (New York: University of Rochester Press, 1995), there is only one article in this book about a female composer by Ellie M Hisama, 'The Question of Climax in Ruth Crawford's String Quartet, Mvt. 3', 285-312. The 2004 edition of Music Analysis, Vol. 23, recent issues of Perspectives of New Music (Vol. 43, No. 2 (Summer 2005) and Vol. 44, No. 1 (Winter 2006)) and those dating back to 2003 do not include discussion of women's music, a finding which is echoed in Music Theory Spectrum, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Oct 2006). In the latter, however, here there is an attempt to recognise the work being undertaken in 'new' and 'critical' musicology. See Judy Lochhead's 'How does it Work?: Challenges to Analytic Explanation,' 233-254. Nonetheless, women's music itself is virtually invisible in this and other analytical journals and books. [7] Ian Bent's somewhat outdated survey of analysis, The New Grove Handbooks in Music: Analysis (UK: Macmillan Press, 1987) suggests that analysis has been preoccupied with form and structure. According to Bent, the methods used by analysts are classified as follows: reduction and comparative methods; different types of segmentation, category measurement and feature counting; syntax formulation, probability measurement and set-theory analysis. Jim Samson, 'Analysis in Context' in Cook and Everist, Rethinking Music, 35-54, provides a recent account of the discipline and its relationship with science models, and includes a critique of the ways in which postmodernism has unsettled the discipline. But in the conclusion of his overview, he points out that the main contribution of postmodernism has been its reorientation of critical focus which challenges the motivations of theorists - which he sees as a good thing - rather than challenging the methods themselves. [8] Gavin Carfoot, Deleuze and
Music: A Creative Approach to the Study of Music, Master of Music
(Research) Thesis, [9] Ibid. 12. [10] Ibid. [11] See Corrina Bonshek, Australian
'Deterritorialised' Music Theatre: A Theoretical and Creative Exploration,
Doctoral Dissertation, [12] See, in particular, Dorothea Olkowski, Gilles Deleuze and the Ruin of Representation ( [13] See Elizabeth Grosz, 'Sexual Signatures: Feminism after the Death of the Author' in Space, Time and Perversion (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1995), 9-24. [14] Grosz, 'Sexual Signatures', 13-14. [15] See, for example, Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, tr. Catherine Porter and Carolyn Burke (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), and Hlne Cixous and Catherine Clment, The Newly Born Woman, tr. Betsy Wing (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986). [16] See Sally Macarthur, conclusion, 'This Music Which is Between Two' in Feminist Aesthetics, 173-183. [17] See, for example, Deborah Crisp, Elements of Gagaku in the
Music of Anne Boyd, Honours
Thesis, University of Sydney, 1978; Kathryn Tibbs, East and West in the Music of Anne Boyd, Honours Thesis, University
of Sydney, 1989; Joy Sotheran, Concepts
as Organising Elements in Selected Works of Anne Boyd, Master of Music
Thesis, University of New South Wales, 1992; and Rita Williams, Asian Influences are Integral to the Music
of Anne Boyd, Honours Thesis, University of Sydney, 1996. See also Sally
Macarthur, 'Women, Spirituality, Landscape: The Music of Anne Boyd, Sarah
Hopkins and Moya Henderson' in Fiona Richards (ed.), The Soundscapes of [18] For example, Balinese and Javanese gamelan musics are defined by heterophonic textures, cycle lengths and colotomic patterns (subdivisions of the cycle). As I have demonstrated elsewhere, Boyd's Cycle of Love adopts these patterns as a structuring principle. See Macarthur, Feminist Aesthetics, 107-128. [19] Carfoot, Deleuze and Music, 21. [20] Claire Colebrook, Understanding
Deleuze ( [21] See Rosi Braidotti, Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). [22] Elizabeth Gould, 'Feminist Theory in Music Education Research: Grrl-illa Games as Nomadic Practice (or How Music Education Fell from Grace)', Music Education Research, Vol. 6, No. 1 (March 2004), 68. [23] According to Claire Colebrook, the concept of 'singularities'
accounts for all those differences which we fail to notice, recognise, or
conceptualise. See Claire Colebrook, Gilles
Deleuze ( [24] Colebrook, Gilles Deleuze, 87. [25] Ibid. 87-88. [26] Giles Deleuze, Negotiations 1972-1990, tr. Martin Joughin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 42. [27] See Elizabeth Grosz's discussion of this in Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1994), in particular 160-62. [28] Alice Jardine, Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 217. [29] Grosz, Volatile Bodies, 160-83. [30] Ibid. 160-2. [31] See Elizabeth Grosz, Time
Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power ( [32] Bonshek, 'Deterritorialised'. See also Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze, 171. [33] Grosz, Time Travels, 108-110, cited in Bonshek, 'Deterritorialised', 117. [34] Ibid. [35] Colebrook, Gilles Deleuze, 4. [36] Ibid. 125. [37] Carfoot, Deleuze and Music, 66. [38] Rosi Braidotti, 'The Ethics of Becoming-Imperceptible', in
Constantin V. Boundas (ed.), Deleuze and
Philosophy ( [39] Ibid. [40] I am using Braidotti's idea to suggest that the 'becoming-infinite-cycle' is in constant flux. The music is in a state of constant transformation by its multiple and limitless performance and analytical contexts; what a work was, including its connection with the composer's intention, can be no longer; what each composition will be in the future has limitless possibilities. Further, new works which will be added to the cycle are yet to be composed. [41] Scores for these works are available as follows: Anne Boyd, As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams for unaccompanied chorus (London: Faber,1977); Cycle of Love for countertenor, alto flute, cello and piano (London: Faber, 1981); Black Sun for orchestra (York: University of York Music Press, 1989); A Vision: Jesus Reassures His Mother for six voices (SSATBB) (Sydney: Australian Music Centre, 1999), and Angry Earth for Shakuhachi, two harps and orchestra (Unpublished score, available from the composer, 2006). Commercial CD recordings are only available for two of the works as follows: Anne Boyd, 'As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams' in Crossing a Bridge of Dreams (Glebe, NSW: Tall Poppies Records, 2000); Anne Boyd, 'As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams' in Jo-wha = Oneness (Wollongong, NSW: Wirripang, 2006); Anne Boyd, 'As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams' in Sydney Dreaming (Australia: Australia Broadcasting Corporation, 1996); Anne Boyd, 'Cycle of Love' in Hermit of the Green Light (St. Leonards, NSW: MBS Records, 1990). Some of Boyd's music (scores and CDs) is commercially available to purchase and other material (including unpublished scores and recordings) can be borrowed from the Australian Music Centre at the following web address: http://www.amcoz.com.au/musicsaleslib/. The details of Boyd's biography and compositions are posted at the following web address: http://www.amcoz.com.au/composers/composer.asp?id=3393. [42] Colebrook, Understanding Deleuze, xx-xxi. [43] Some analyses using a structural approach are as follows: Crisp, Elements of Gagaku; Tibbs, East and West; Sotheran, Concepts as Organising Elements; Williams, Asian Influences; Macarthur, Feminist Aesthetics; Sally Macarthur and Rosemary Schaffler, 'Visions of a New Spirituality in Australia' in Linda Kouvaras, Ruth Lee Martin and Graham Hair (eds.), Loose Canons: Papers from the National Festival of Women's Music Canberra, 2001 (Ameroo, ACT: Southern Voices, 2004),121-140; Ruth Lee Martin, 'Anne Boyd's Black Sun' in Loose Canons, 147-158; and Macarthur, 'Women, Spirituality, Landscape'. [44] See Macarthur, Feminist Aesthetics, 107-128. [45] [46] The concept 'becoming-pain', which is a draws an emotion into a becoming or tendency, is not generally acceptable in Deleuzian philosophy. According to Colebrook, plants, animals, humans and atoms all possess different powers of becoming. See Colebrook, Gilles Deleuze, 59. I am, however, adapting the normal usage of the terminology of 'becoming' as a 'becoming-pain' because Boyd's music requires this: my argument is that the 'becoming-landscape' is taken up in a new way as the concept of a 'becoming-pain'. [47] See Macarthur, Feminist Aesthetics, 107-128. [48] This analysis by the author is published in Macarthur, Feminist Aesthetics, 120. I have inserted 'silence' in to the time-line in this version. [49] See Anne Boyd, program note, Angry Earth, Sydney Youth
Orchestra, [50] Anne Boyd, '"Cycle of Love", A quest for Wholeness' in Sally
Macarthur (ed.), The Composer Speaks III,
Proceedings of the New Music [51] Boyd
discusses this idea in Anne Boyd, 'Dreaming Voices: [52] Ibid. [53] See Macarthur and Schaffler, 'Visions', 128. [54] See Boyd, 'Dreaming Voices', 12. [55] Ibid. 10. [56] Ibid. [57] See Anne Boyd, 'Landscape, Spirit, Music: An Australian Story' in Richards, Soundscapes, 24. [58] The programmatic themes for many of Boyd's works are concerned with
relevant and significant social issues circulating in the wider sphere. Black
Sun is a musical reflection on the horrific [59] Gilles Deleuze, 'Music and Ritornello' in Constantin V. Boundas (ed. with intro.), The Deleuze Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 203. [60] Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, tr. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 312. [61] See Anne Boyd, programme note, Angry Earth. [62] Anne Boyd, Interview on Radio [63] Ibid. [64] Boyd, programme note, Angry Earth. [65] Ibid. [66] Ibid. [67] I use the term 'continuo line' as defined by the Grove Dictionary (Grove Music online) as fundamental to music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as follows: 'A basso continuo (through bass or thoroughbass; Fr. basse continue; Ger. Generalbass) is an instrumental bass line which runs throughout a piece, over which the player improvises ('realizes') a chordal accompaniment. The bass may be figured, with accidentals and numerals ('figures') placed over or under it to indicate the harmonies required. Continuo realization is essentially an improvised art.' The instruments include keyboard and bass instrument, usually string. [68] Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, tr. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 56. [69] See, for example, the work of Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), whose performative metaphors serve to construct multiple versions of gender. Despite the slipperiness of the subject in this work, however, its foundation on the paradigm of representational philosophy ultimately returns the subjects male and female to variations of the (male) norm.
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