Books/Collections by Samuel Wilson
This book explores the transformation of ideas of the material in late twentieth- and early twent... more This book explores the transformation of ideas of the material in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century musical composition. New music of this era is argued to reflect a historical moment when the idea of materiality itself is in flux. Engaging with thinkers such as Theodor Adorno, Sara Ahmed, Zygmunt Bauman, Rosi Braidotti, and Timothy Morton, the author considers music's relationship with changing material conditions, from the rise of neo-liberalisms and information technologies to new concepts of the natural world.
Drawing on musicology, cultural theory, and philosophy, the author develops a critical understanding of musical bodies, objects, and the environments of their interaction. Music is grasped as something that both registers material changes in society whilst also enabling us to practice materiality differently.
Musical Materialisms (journal special issue of Contemporary Music Review) , 2020
First paragraph of the editors' introduction, in lieu of an abstract:
A distinct if diverse musi... more First paragraph of the editors' introduction, in lieu of an abstract:
A distinct if diverse musical research area has begun to emerge in recent years. While there is enough common ground to define it as a research field, its objects and themes are not yet delineated, its methodologies are divergent and multi-disciplinary, and its key players dispersed over many areas. These developments and their critical discursive exchanges contribute to the emergence—and contestation—of materialist approaches to music. This area in music research currently takes the shape of an intellectual and creative meeting point, an interest shared by music and sound researchers of differing backgrounds. One can trace in contemporary musical materialisms various genealogies arising from theoretical traditions—prominently including Marxian, Deleuzian, Spinozan, and feminist and queer theoretical perspectives—as well as from contributors working within historical musicology, compositional and performance practice-research, popular music studies, ethnomusicology, and beyond.
There is a growing interest in what psychoanalytic theory brings to studying and researching musi... more There is a growing interest in what psychoanalytic theory brings to studying and researching music. Bringing together established scholars within the field, as well as emerging voices, this collection outlines and advances psychoanalytic approaches to our understanding of a range of musics—from the romantic and the modernist to the contemporary popular. Drawing on the work of Freud, Lacan, Jung, Žižek, Barthes, and others, it demonstrates the efficacy of psychoanalytic theories in fields such as music analysis, music and culture, and musical improvisation. It engages debates about both the methods through which music is understood and the situations in which it is experienced, including those of performance and listening. This collection is an invaluable resource for students, lecturers, researchers, and anyone else interested in the intersections between music, psychoanalysis, and musicology.
Articles by Samuel Wilson
Strategies of Conquest and Defence: Encounters with the Object in Twentieth-Century Music, 2020
Reacting to recent materialist developments in music studies and beyond, I argue for the value of... more Reacting to recent materialist developments in music studies and beyond, I argue for the value of dialectics in accounting for compositional orientations vis-à-vis their objects – be these objects sound-producing, non-human entities, such as musical instruments, or the object that is ‘sound itself ’. Engaging the compositional thought and practice of Busoni, Russolo, Varèse, Cage and Tudor by way of example, I highlight two intersecting tendencies: the first constitutes a presumed mastery over the object in question; the second is suggestive of an exploration of the object on its own terms. Interweaving aspects of post-Marxist and psychoanalytic theory, I argue that, ultimately, our orientation towards the object manifests a negotiation of the self in a changing material world.
In this article I develop a dialogue between Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of ‘musical material’ an... more In this article I develop a dialogue between Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of ‘musical material’ and aspects of ‘new materialist’ thinking. Correspondences and tensions are explored within and between Adorno’s materialism and contemporary materialist perspectives (with particular reference to Jane Bennett’s ‘vital materialism’). Three main issues are discussed. First, musical materials and materialities are considered as not only passive but, potentially, as active forces in compositional processes. Second, dualisms are considered with respect to compositional practices, discussions of musical material, and their ultimate problematization. Third, the question of compositional agency is explored. Through a dialoguing of Adornian and other materialisms, it is suggested that agency may not be solely the “possession” of the composer; it is also observed in a series of diverse material and historical relations.
A collision of two thoughts on prostheses provides a point of theoretical ignition for this artic... more A collision of two thoughts on prostheses provides a point of theoretical ignition for this article: the first is that 'the musical instrument is a prosthetic augmentation of the human body, enabling the body to exceed itself' [Johnson, Julian. 2015. Out of Time: Music and the Making of Modernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press]; the second that 'the posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate' [Hayles, N. Katherine. 1999. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press]. I consider how musical prostheses critically bring into focus the cultural and material conditions of recent modernity. I suggest that by compositionally engineering bodies in posthuman terms, one may dissolve the body into its nonhuman extensions, such that it may be, paradoxically, located therein; through engaging, for example, cyborg identities, bodily extensions enable for the body's possession, in transformed terms, during a historical moment when the embodied nature of the subject is in crisis. Brian Ferneyhough's Time and Motion Study cycle (1971-1977), in which the composer entangles performers with technological networks, provides a principal frame of musical and historical reference.
E-print accessible here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/4crd5cUFMaTXx6pZhUzR/full
International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, 45/2, Dec 2014
Music can articulate ideas of selfhood, as is often illustrated with regard to the ‘Heroic’ works... more Music can articulate ideas of selfhood, as is often illustrated with regard to the ‘Heroic’ works of Beethoven, and the relationship found between Beethoven’s music and Hegel’s philosophy. Alfred Schnittke confronts this tradition in aspects of his String Quartet No. 4 (1989), a work that highlights contemporary music’s subtle and complex relationship with the entangled histories of both music and philosophy. In the second movement of his quartet, figures of musical closure, as metonymic symbols of musical and subjective self-coherence, are taken as a discursive starting point, as images of an objectified self. Contradictions within this symbolic presentation of selfhood are then opened up dialectically. In so doing, a critical exploration of self-understanding – of its process, reifications, and paradoxes – is performed musically.
Contemporary Music Review, 32/5, Nov 2013
In Helmut Lachenmann's Serynade (1998, revised 2000), the solo piano is explored as a pianistic r... more In Helmut Lachenmann's Serynade (1998, revised 2000), the solo piano is explored as a pianistic resource from which to build a new instrument and new experiential relationships to it. Drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of embodiment, I show that implicit to building instruments are encounters with wider aesthetic and historical questions — particularly of the relationships between the body and technology as they mutually mediate one another. As such, Lachenmann's exploration of pianistic technologies inherently engages with the handed-down embodied relationships that exist between player and instrument — pedagogy — both finding themselves modified and reconfigured in the moment of performance. Instrument and instrumentalist are rebuilt in relation to one another.
Book chapters by Samuel Wilson
In this chapter I explore who or what provides the musical ‘subject’ that is interpreted psychoan... more In this chapter I explore who or what provides the musical ‘subject’ that is interpreted psychoanalytically. Through a critical reading of a number of historic and contemporary sources, I highlight perspectival and theoretical connections between psychoanalytic and musicological literatures. Three common trends are identified through the terms tangible, fictional, and fictive. These identities are considered in their interrelation (through acts of identification, for example). I then problematise these terms in reference to the transindividual themes and processes that are foregrounded in some recent psychoanalytic and musicological writing.
Music history provides us with monuments; musical works become sites of value. Extramusical – phi... more Music history provides us with monuments; musical works become sites of value. Extramusical – philosophical and historical – qualities are “inscribed” immanently into them, ‘sedimented’ within them, as Theodor W. Adorno would put it. In this chapter, I consider the late twentieth-century symphonic monument as a ruin of its former self. Particular reference is made to Valentin Silvestrov’s Fifth Symphony (1982). Ruination – so important to Romanticism and for ‘the modern’ (Alois Reigl) – is in Silvestrov’s neo-Romanticism the basis of a musical experience shaped by the conditions of late modernity.
The symphony has historically provided a space in which the dialectics of nature and culture are explored (Beethoven, Mahler). Georg Simmel saw the ruin as destabilising established dialectics of nature and culture. One finds an analogous process of destabilising occurring in Silvestrov’s monumental symphonic ruin, a process that unfolds in light of these musical and philosophical legacies.
In formal terms, the architecture of symphonic form appears as a ruin in Silvestrov’s Symphony; the symphonic space is characterised by collapse. This is evidenced through analytic examples. In historical, heterogeneous terms, this Symphony explores the past as both present (presence) and absent. Silvestrov’s Symphony recalls symphonic spaces no longer habitable for an expressive subject. These symphonic ruins nonetheless bear traces of this now-passed expressive function. This chapter therefore provides a reading of the late twentieth-century symphony through an aesthetics of ruins.
Citation: Samuel Wilson, 'Valentin Silvestrov and the Symphonic Monument in Ruins', in Transformations of Musical Modernism, ed. Erling E. Guldbrandsen and Julian Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 201-220.
Ph.D. Dissertation by Samuel Wilson
Focusing on a selection of musical works from within three genres –- symphony, string quartet, an... more Focusing on a selection of musical works from within three genres –- symphony, string quartet, and the piano repertoire –- I argue that the experience of music from the late 20th and early 21st centuries must be understood in terms of its mediation by the continued presence of the past, not simply through reference to past musical formal materials, but also to the history of experience as musically mediated. Following this logic, I explore a discursive strategy based around philosophical tensions central to the aesthetics of post-Enlightenment musical experience –- in particular, the dialectics of nature and culture, and of mind and body. This allows me to interweave closely strands of musicological and philosophical thought, exploring and developing the latter as they have been taken into, exhibited, and played with in a range of late modernist works. I focus on works that draw attention to their historical situatedness, music by Wolfgang Rihm, Helmut Lachenmann, Giya Kancheli, Valentin Silvestrov, Alfred Schnittke, Thomas Adès, Morton Feldman, and Jukka Tiensuu. I draw on, though outline the need to take forward, Theodor Adorno’s understanding of the historical qualities of musical material, yet also foster an understanding of musical experience situated between past and present without recourse to explicitly postmodern quotation or “intertextuality”, something I implicitly critique. Through illustrating points of affinity and convergence between musical works and experiential issues, I pull together seemingly disparate methodological approaches. These include musical semiotics, Critical Theory, embodied phenomenology, and psychoanalytic theory.
Papers by Samuel Wilson
London Conference in Critical Thought 2015 included a stream on ‘Legacies of the Immaterial in th... more London Conference in Critical Thought 2015 included a stream on ‘Legacies of the Immaterial in the Arts and Practice’. This document contains an overview and description of the stream. Each of the three sections were delivered at the opening of each of the three panels that composed the stream, as 'framing statements'. These statements situated the panels in the stream and foregrounded conversational points of connection and debate between the different presentations.
The conference website can be found at londoncritical.org
Call for Papers by Samuel Wilson
The Call for Papers for London Conference in Critical Thought 2015 (University College London, 26... more The Call for Papers for London Conference in Critical Thought 2015 (University College London, 26-27th June 2015).
Deadline: Monday 16th March 2015
Authored by the LCCT collective and respective stream organisers.
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Books/Collections by Samuel Wilson
Drawing on musicology, cultural theory, and philosophy, the author develops a critical understanding of musical bodies, objects, and the environments of their interaction. Music is grasped as something that both registers material changes in society whilst also enabling us to practice materiality differently.
A distinct if diverse musical research area has begun to emerge in recent years. While there is enough common ground to define it as a research field, its objects and themes are not yet delineated, its methodologies are divergent and multi-disciplinary, and its key players dispersed over many areas. These developments and their critical discursive exchanges contribute to the emergence—and contestation—of materialist approaches to music. This area in music research currently takes the shape of an intellectual and creative meeting point, an interest shared by music and sound researchers of differing backgrounds. One can trace in contemporary musical materialisms various genealogies arising from theoretical traditions—prominently including Marxian, Deleuzian, Spinozan, and feminist and queer theoretical perspectives—as well as from contributors working within historical musicology, compositional and performance practice-research, popular music studies, ethnomusicology, and beyond.
Articles by Samuel Wilson
E-print accessible here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/4crd5cUFMaTXx6pZhUzR/full
Book chapters by Samuel Wilson
The symphony has historically provided a space in which the dialectics of nature and culture are explored (Beethoven, Mahler). Georg Simmel saw the ruin as destabilising established dialectics of nature and culture. One finds an analogous process of destabilising occurring in Silvestrov’s monumental symphonic ruin, a process that unfolds in light of these musical and philosophical legacies.
In formal terms, the architecture of symphonic form appears as a ruin in Silvestrov’s Symphony; the symphonic space is characterised by collapse. This is evidenced through analytic examples. In historical, heterogeneous terms, this Symphony explores the past as both present (presence) and absent. Silvestrov’s Symphony recalls symphonic spaces no longer habitable for an expressive subject. These symphonic ruins nonetheless bear traces of this now-passed expressive function. This chapter therefore provides a reading of the late twentieth-century symphony through an aesthetics of ruins.
Citation: Samuel Wilson, 'Valentin Silvestrov and the Symphonic Monument in Ruins', in Transformations of Musical Modernism, ed. Erling E. Guldbrandsen and Julian Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 201-220.
Ph.D. Dissertation by Samuel Wilson
Papers by Samuel Wilson
The conference website can be found at londoncritical.org
Call for Papers by Samuel Wilson
Deadline: Monday 16th March 2015
Authored by the LCCT collective and respective stream organisers.
Drawing on musicology, cultural theory, and philosophy, the author develops a critical understanding of musical bodies, objects, and the environments of their interaction. Music is grasped as something that both registers material changes in society whilst also enabling us to practice materiality differently.
A distinct if diverse musical research area has begun to emerge in recent years. While there is enough common ground to define it as a research field, its objects and themes are not yet delineated, its methodologies are divergent and multi-disciplinary, and its key players dispersed over many areas. These developments and their critical discursive exchanges contribute to the emergence—and contestation—of materialist approaches to music. This area in music research currently takes the shape of an intellectual and creative meeting point, an interest shared by music and sound researchers of differing backgrounds. One can trace in contemporary musical materialisms various genealogies arising from theoretical traditions—prominently including Marxian, Deleuzian, Spinozan, and feminist and queer theoretical perspectives—as well as from contributors working within historical musicology, compositional and performance practice-research, popular music studies, ethnomusicology, and beyond.
E-print accessible here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/4crd5cUFMaTXx6pZhUzR/full
The symphony has historically provided a space in which the dialectics of nature and culture are explored (Beethoven, Mahler). Georg Simmel saw the ruin as destabilising established dialectics of nature and culture. One finds an analogous process of destabilising occurring in Silvestrov’s monumental symphonic ruin, a process that unfolds in light of these musical and philosophical legacies.
In formal terms, the architecture of symphonic form appears as a ruin in Silvestrov’s Symphony; the symphonic space is characterised by collapse. This is evidenced through analytic examples. In historical, heterogeneous terms, this Symphony explores the past as both present (presence) and absent. Silvestrov’s Symphony recalls symphonic spaces no longer habitable for an expressive subject. These symphonic ruins nonetheless bear traces of this now-passed expressive function. This chapter therefore provides a reading of the late twentieth-century symphony through an aesthetics of ruins.
Citation: Samuel Wilson, 'Valentin Silvestrov and the Symphonic Monument in Ruins', in Transformations of Musical Modernism, ed. Erling E. Guldbrandsen and Julian Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 201-220.
The conference website can be found at londoncritical.org
Deadline: Monday 16th March 2015
Authored by the LCCT collective and respective stream organisers.