The Take and the Stutter: Glenn Gould's Time Synthesis

Deleuze and Guatarri Studies 9 (4):558-577 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari refer to Glenn Gould as an illustration of the third principle of the rhizome, that of multiplicity: ‘When Glenn Gould speeds up the performance of a piece, he is not just displaying virtuosity, he is transforming the musical points into lines, he is making the whole piece proliferate’ (1987: 8). In an attempt to make sensible their ostensibly modest statement, I proliferate the relationships between Glenn Gould's philosophy of sound recording, Deleuze's theory of passive synthesis, and Deleuze and Guattari's concept of the stutter. I argue, ultimately, that Glenn Gould's radical recording practice stutters and deterritorialises the temporality of the recorded performance. More generally, the Deleuzian perspective broadens the scope of Gould's aesthetic practices that highlights the importance of aesthetic acts in the redistribution of sensory experience. But the study serves a broader purpose than celebrating a pianist/recordist that Deleuze admired. Rather, while his contemporaries began to use the studio as a compositional element in sound recording, Gould bypassed such a step towards the informational logics of recording studios. Thus, it is inappropriate to think of Gould as having immersed himself in ‘technology’ than the broader concept of a complex, one that redistributed the striated listening space of the concert hall.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 97,119

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-02-04

Downloads
26 (#696,679)

6 months
9 (#717,989)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Mickey Vallee
Athabasca University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia.Gilles Deleuze - 1987 - London: Athlone Press. Edited by Félix Guattari.
The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media.Walter Benjamin - 2008 - Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Edited by Michael William Jennings, Brigid Doherty, Thomas Y. Levin & E. F. N. Jephcott.
The soundscape: our sonic environment and the tuning of the world.R. Murray Schafer - 1977 - [United States]: Distributed to the book trade in the United States by American International Distribution.

View all 10 references / Add more references