The Process That Is The World: Cage/Deleuze/Events/Performances

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Panzner, Joseph E.
Language:English
Published: The Ohio State University / OhioLINK 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1332343323
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spelling ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-osu13323433232021-08-03T06:04:48Z The Process That Is The World: Cage/Deleuze/Events/Performances Panzner, Joseph E. Ethics Music Philosophy <p>Although the music and philosophy of John Cage (1912-92) exert extraordinary influence on both the art world and popular culture, few scholars have examined the composer’s views on musical performance and its potential for the cultivation of a more just and non-hierarchical society. Cage’s experiments with chance operations and open-ended indeterminate scores present significant challenges to conventional methods of performance analysis and evaluation. His compositional process represents a shift from the creation of musical objects (stable texts with which performances achieve greater or lesser degrees of fidelity) to the creation of musical events (open-ended activities that propose no authoritative relationship to the performances generated), and thus requires new interpretive and evaluative approaches. These new approaches offer exemplars of a mode of ethical judgment that forgoes the prescriptions provided by models, rules, moral injunctions, and habit. In their place, Cage calls for an evaluative practice attuned to the specificities of each open-ended process and the material situations in which they are enacted – a practice that has profound practical, philosophical, and political implications not only for the performance of music, but for life in a complex and constantly changing world.</p><p>This project addresses these performance issues and their far-reaching ramifications by staging a rapprochement between Cage and contemporary thinkers pursuing similar lines of inquiry. Chief amongst these is Gilles Deleuze (1925-95), a philosopher with whom Cage shares an insistence on the primacy of difference over stability, the privileging of process over product, and resistance to restrictive applications of power at the individual level (through habit and enculturation) and at the level of the collective (through rule-bound authority). By viewing Cage’s music and writing through the prism of his likeminded contemporaries, this study aims to demonstrate the resonance between his unique perspective on the ontological status of the musical work, on the ethical demands assumed by performers, and on his broader aspirations for a sustainable, leaderless future. As the world grows more Cagean in its complexity, this study should provide theoretical and practical support to Cage scholars, performers, and to all interested in the intersection between art and politics at the dawn of the twenty-first century.</p> 2012-06-20 English text The Ohio State University / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1332343323 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1332343323 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws.
collection NDLTD
language English
sources NDLTD
topic Ethics
Music
Philosophy
spellingShingle Ethics
Music
Philosophy
Panzner, Joseph E.
The Process That Is The World: Cage/Deleuze/Events/Performances
author Panzner, Joseph E.
author_facet Panzner, Joseph E.
author_sort Panzner, Joseph E.
title The Process That Is The World: Cage/Deleuze/Events/Performances
title_short The Process That Is The World: Cage/Deleuze/Events/Performances
title_full The Process That Is The World: Cage/Deleuze/Events/Performances
title_fullStr The Process That Is The World: Cage/Deleuze/Events/Performances
title_full_unstemmed The Process That Is The World: Cage/Deleuze/Events/Performances
title_sort process that is the world: cage/deleuze/events/performances
publisher The Ohio State University / OhioLINK
publishDate 2012
url http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1332343323
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