SHUM 4511 - Musical Timekeeping and the Security State

(crosslisted) MUSIC 4452

Spring. 4 credits.

S. Potter.

This seminar will draw on continental philosophy, critical theory, musicology and composers’ writings, to investigate historical relationships between strategies of musical timekeeping (conductor, clock, score, rehearsal) and forms of political power, such as those Michel Foucault designated as ‘pastoral’, ‘governmental’, and ‘disciplinary’. We will examine musical innovators’ theater of resistance towards complete synchronization and how they have indicated different ways for a group to move through time together, from Schoenberg and Stravinsky to Miles Davis, John Cage, Japanese noise compositions, and post-minimalist repetition. Each week will pair close readings of theoretical texts with close listenings of relevant music. Readings include: Nietzsche, Adorno, Bataille, Foucault, Agamben, Gilroy, Hegarty, Andriessen, Feldman, Olaniyan, Born, Beckles Willson. In the final weeks we will turn to the complex politics of contemporary musical ventures that reject both the trappings of national or tribal identifications and international avant-garde movements.