Liberating sounds: philosophical perspectives on the music and writings of Helmut Lachenmann

Abstract

This study is engaged with the examination of an apparent ambiguity in the musical aesthetics of German avant-garde composer Helmut Lachenmann. Lachenmann's thinking moves between the staunchly dialectical, Adornian stance with which he is generally associated as a composer of musica negative and a less familiar, affirmative concept of 'liberated perception'. The latter concept seems on the face of it to be closely related to the so-called 'libidinal philosophy' of Jean-Frangois Lyotard and Gilles Deleuze. The above discrepancy is located around the central philosophical notions of subjectivity, history and musical material. The question is examined through an analysis of two key Lachenmann essays, 'Klangtypen der Neuen Musik' (1966) and 'Bedingungen des Materials' (1978); an extended discussion of his concept of 'instrumental musique concrete'; the study of the orchestral works Accanto (1976) and Tanzsuite mit Deutschlandlied (1980); and by drawing on the work of Theodor Adomo, Jean-Frangois Lyotard and Gilles Deleuze.