Book Description

This dissertation investigates the spatio-temporal experience of listening to music, particularly the narrative impact of musical return, taking Claude Debussy's late works as case studies. These works mark a decisive break with traditional practices in harmonic composition; and as such, they prove evasive under traditional analytical practices of music theory, which often presume a teleological musical narrative. To form an approach to musical analysis consistent with these works' non-linearities, I turn to the metaphysics of post-structuralist philosopher Gilles Deleuze. His immanentist philosophical perspective offers a relief from the transcendentalism that pervades current music-analytical practices. In particular, a Deleuzean perspective provides the tools with which to question assumed notions of musical spatiality, temporality, and, ultimately, narrativity by suggesting a schizoanalytical model of thought. Four select works of Debussy - Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp (1915), Cello Sonata (1915), Violin Sonata (1916), and "Éventail" from Trois Poémes de Mallarmé (1913) - feature in this project. Chapter 1 explores Deleuze's notion of territorialization to discuss notions of abstract spatiality in musical listening by way of analyzing Pastorale from the Trio Sonata, arguing that musical return poses a productive problem for the listener. Chapter 2 surveys cyclic return in all three of Debussy's late Sonatas and, using the notion of a time-image from Deleuze's cinematic theory, discusses the temporal impact of this return vis-à-vis montage. In Chapter 3, I espouse a Deleuzian theory of thought based on the philosopher's notion of folding and suggest that Debussy's "Éventail" models this notion on the scale of musical return while also rendering it in large-scale allegory. These case studies propose that listening to these works is a dynamic, ever-changing process. Approaching Debussy's late works from a Deleuzian perspective enables us to avoid a priori notions of how these works should be received by a listener and instead explores how they might be