listening review

8/12/2019 Listening Review

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material is obviously pixelated, and the coloursare what we might expect when we print ourholiday snaps on cheap copy paper using anink-jet printer. There is a fuzziness to many ofthe images that stands in direct contrast to thesharpness and precision of Xenakiss ideas.Moreover, the size of the reproduced sketches

sometimes makes the written notes on thempartially indecipherable: they still function as il-lustrations, but may prove frustrating forreaders with more than a musical amateursinterest in the architectural and engineeringissues involved.

The poor standard of production is not justlimited to the illustrations. The book is litteredwith typographical errors and mistakes, ofwhich the following are only some of the mostexcruciating. In the list of abbreviations at thebooks beginning, Le Corbusier is written as

Le Cobusier. On page 8, in one and the samecolumn, the piece Xenakis created for thePavilion is listed once as Concert PH (wrong)and once as Concret PH (right). At one point,avant-garde is written as as avant-guard whileat another the otherwise correctly titledGravesaner Blatter become the Gravesano Blatter(p. 165). On page 76, at the bottom of acolumn, the end of a sentence has simply dis-appeared. Footnotes and footnote cues areanother source of frustration: page 152 has twofootnotes numbered 15, one of which isreferenced in the text as 16; on the next page,the footnotes in the footer itself are listed as 7,18, 9 instead of 17, 18, 19 like the correspondingfootnote cues in the main text. Finally, in SvenSterkens appendix, which even by the stand-ards of the rest of the volume has an appallingnumber of typing errors, Xenakiss own nameis at one point chopped down to nakis, whileon page 313, in a single and rather shortcolumn, his daughters name is spelt variouslyas Ma khi and Ma hki.

Presumably, costs were a major considerationin the production of this volume and in oneway we should probably be grateful that thisimportant material has been made available atwhat is a relatively low price. But at what costthe low price? Expense has been the deathknell of many an architectural vision, includingseveral projects by Xenakis discussed in thisbook. And though it is traditionally music thatis portrayed as a fleeting, temporal art, we canstill listen to the music Vare' se and Xenakiscreated for the Philips Pavilion, but the

Pavilion itself is gone. Few of us will ever beable to get a real sense of the space, scale, andimpact in their local settings of Xenakiss archi-

tectural works, not to mention his Polytopes.Thus, this reviewer can only conclude with aplea for a new, deluxe edition, with larger andlegible illustrations on photo-quality paper, aprofessionally proofread text, clearer organiza-tionin short, an edition that really wouldprovide a lasting and inspiring testimony to

Xenakiss dual musical and architecturalgenius.

M. J. GRANT

Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen

doi:10.1093/ml/gcq046

Listening. By Jean-Luc Nancy. Trans. by Char-lotte Mandell. pp. xiv 85. (Fordham Uni-versity Press, New York, 2007, $16. ISBN978-0-8232-2773-0.)

Listening is a short but significant contributionto the Continental philosophy of music by oneof Frances leading thinkers. Dense and poetic,its prose is grounded in the rich post-phenomenological tradition, and this volumesets itself a challenging twofold task: to reunitesensation and understanding in the figure of lis-tening, and to restore timbre (as resonance)back to its pride of place within the musicalevent.

The title essay, Listening, begins with thequestion of philosophys limitations: whether itcan approach listening in an appropriatemanner: Is listening something of which phil-osophy is capable? Or . . . hasnt philosophysuperimposed upon listening, beforehand andof necessity, or else substituted for listening,something else that might be more on the orderof understanding? (p. 1). Given that Betweensight and hearing there is no reciprocity(p. 10), Nancy develops an argument comparingthe simultaneity of the visible and the contempor-aneity of the audible (p. 16 ): the fact that

sonorous presence is an essentially mobile atthe same time (p. 16 ), and that in the case ofthe ear, is there withdrawal and turninginward, a making resonant, but, in the case ofthe eye, there is manifestation and display, amakingevident (p. 3). The following extrapola-tion is key: the visual is tendentially mimetic,and the sonorous tendentially methexic (thatis, having to do with participation, sharing, orcontagion), which does not mean that thesetendencies do not interact (p. 10). Contagionis an important mechanism for resonance, for

it allows Nancy to enter the following phenom-enology of sonority: The sonorous, on theother hand, outweighs form. It does not

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dissolve it, but rather enlarges it; it gives it anamplitude, a density, and a vibration or undula-tion whose outline never does anything butapproach. The visual persists until its disap-pearance; the sonorous appears and fades awayinto its permanence (p. 2).

Considering the opposition of sense and

truth, Nancy asks, shouldnt truth itself. . .

belistened to rather than seen? (p. 4). Pursuingthe notion that truth is emergent as sonority,Nancy frames his trajectory with a note on thetype of philosophical attitude he is trying toopen up: Here we want toprick up the philosophic-al ear (p. 3), and this is because To listen istendre loreilleliterally, to stretch the earanexpression that evokes a singular mobility,among the sensory apparatuses, of the pinna ofthe earit is an intensification and a concern,a curiosity or an anxiety (p. 5). Nancy

expands this point with reference to the etymol-ogy ofecouterback through its roots in aurisandauscultare. The point of lending, stretching, andstraining the ear is less what presents itself toviewform, idea, painting, representation,aspect, phenomenon, composition, and morewhat arises instead in accent, tone, timbre, res-onance, and sound (p. 3 ). A superficial, andlargely correct, reading of this point notes thatthis is a turn from structure to meaning, fromwhat sonorous presence expresses to what itaffords. It is also something more: a significantturn away from transcendental phenomenologytowards a qualitatively different mode ofthought. Indeed, whether it is a mode ofthought that is sought in the turn from repre-sentation and phenomenon is itself part of thequestion.

Having asked if truth should be listened to,Nancy asks a related, ontological question:What does it mean for a being to be immersedentirely in listening, formed by listening, or inlistening, listening with all his being? (p. 4);What does it mean to exist according to listen-ing, for it and through it? (p. 5). At this point,Nancy begins to articulate his own contribution:the sound that is musically listened to, that isgathered and scrutinized for itself, not,however as an acoustic phenomenon (or notmerely as one) but as a resonant meaning, ameaning whose sense is supposed to be found inresonance, and only in resonance (p. 7).Taking up the notion of straining towards thelistening object, he develops a phenomenologyof listening intention (noting caveats about the

very concept of intention) with implications forthe direction of the subject and its constitutionas, and in relation to, listening: To be listening

is always to be on the edge of meaning, or inan edgy meaning of extremity, and as if thesound were precisely nothing else than thisedge, this fringe, this margin (p. 7). Ultimately,according to Nancy, it must be argued thatA self is nothing other than a form or functionof referral: a selfis made of a relationto self, or

of a presence to self (p. 8). In this sense, it isworth noting the grammar of the frequentphrase To be listening is to be x, by whichbeing is phrased in terms of its ontological con-stitution as listening: to be listeningas in to beold or to be a musician alongside the moreobvious to be currently engaged in the activityof listening. The lesson is that listening is aquestion of being: listening . . . can and mustappear to us not as a metaphor for access toself, but as the reality of this access, a realityconsequently indissociably mine and other,

singular and plural, as much as it ismaterial and spiritual and signifying anda-signifying (p. 12).

Nancy describes the kind of self towardswhich listening strains: When one is listening,one is on the lookout for a subject, something(itself) that identifies itself by resonating fromself to self, in itself and for itself, hence outsideof itself, at once the same as and other thanitself (p. 9). He comes close to articulatinga proto-sociology of musical subjectivity,articulating it as a kind of pathologyisntsense f irst of all, every time, a crisis of self?(p. 9)in which the singularity of sonorouspresence (p. 10, et passim) is both what drivesthe subject towards itself (referral) and dividesor separates it from itself (resonance). Indeed,for Nancy, the significance of this is that itshows how listening is paradigmatic of thesubject and an essential constituent of subjectiv-ity: Listening thus forms the perceptible singu-larity that bears in the most ostensive way theperceptible or sensitive (aisthetic) condition assuch: the sharing of an inside/outside, divisionand participation, de-connection and conta-gion (p. 14). The point is also not just that lis-tening is a matter of ethics, but that it is anontological issue concerning the sense of theworld. Indeed, the issue lies above and beyondsecondary debates about the role of Music(which is, after all, only one way of appropriating and channelling listening) insuch secondary matters as self-expression andsocial identity.

The reality of this access is a matter of

sonorous time, and sonorous time takes placeimmediately according to a completely differ-ent dimension, which is not that of simple suc-

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cession (corollary of the negative instant). It is apresent in waves on a swell, not in a point on aline; it is a time that opens up, that is hollowedout, that is enlarged or ramified, that envelopsor separates, that becomes or is turned into aloop, that stretches out or contracts, and so on(p. 13). There is a question here about whether

the surprise of sonorous presence presents aproblem for the subject. As resonance is set inmotion, and the subject summoned into someform of proto-being, how does the subject copewith the rhythmic rise and fall of resonance?Rhythm, Nancy writes, is nothing other thanthe time of time, the vibration of time itself inthe stroke of a present that presents itself byseparating it from itself, freeing it from itssimple stanza to make it into scansion (rise,raising of the foot that beats) and cadence (fall,passage into the pause). Thus, rhythm separates

the succession of the linearity of the sequenceor length of time: it bends time to give it totime itself, and it is in this way that it folds andunfolds a self (p. 17). Temporality, moreover,defines the subject as what separates itself, notonly from the other or from the pure there,but also from self (p. 17). Nancy is ambivalentas to whether or not this separation, thisrhythmic division of the self from itself, is plea-surable, painful, traumatic, or a crisis (p. 9),especially given his comment elsewhere thatthe intimacy of music is an intimacy moreintimate than any evocation or any invocation(p. 59) and his insistence throughout Listeningthat resonance is a matter, not of listening style(over which the subject may exercise choice),but of fundamental ontology (through whichthe subject is chosen). The question is twofold:first, whether an underlying or primal event ofseparation with that kind of tone motivates lis-tening (listening for fear of losing the self,perhaps); and second, whether attending andconcentrating the mind (i.e. one side of listen-ing) is not only a necessary response tosonorous presence and a mode of emergentactivity, but itself a creative act of makingsense both of and in the worldchanging,bending, manipulating, and transforming time,and thus dif ficult and sometimes stressful.

Nancy draws together arguments about thearrival of sonorous presence and about theself-separation of the subject in order to drawa line under standard phenomenologicalaccounts of the subject and temporality (pp.18^22, 28^30), and to draw out both the transi-

tive sense of etreand a non-intentional concep-tion of subjectivity. He proposes that music (oreven sound in general) is not exactly a phenom-

enon; that is to say, it does not stem from alogic of manifestation. It stems from a diff erentlogic, which would have to be called evocation,but in this precise sense: while manifestationbrings presence to light, evocation summons(convokes, invokes) presence to itself (p. 20).This has important implications for the

question of the subject and subjectivity. It is aquestion, then, of going back from the phenom-enological subject, an intentional line of sight,to a resonant subject. . . .The subject of the lis-tening or the subject who is listening . . . is nota phenomenological subject (p. 21), and issubject less to a criterion of cognitive consis-tency than to a certain poetic consistency thataffords the aesthetic the opportunity to deter-mine the specific details of the resonance, itsprecise timbre and affective quality. Alongsideintention, sound is what places its subject,

which has not preceded it with an aim, intension, or under tension (p. 20); indeed, thereis only a subject . . .that resounds, respondingto a momentum, a summons, a convocation ofsense (p. 30).

For Nancy, musical listening is like the per-mission, the elaboration, and the intensificationof the keenest disposition of the auditorysense (pp. 26^7); it is the paradigmatic usageof the ears. Meaning, sense, and directionbegin, not with intention, but with listening,with the resounding return of resonance;indeed, Sense reaches me long before it leavesme, even though it reaches me only by leavingin the same moment (p. 30; cf. p. 20).

At this point, Nancy introduces the concept oftimbre, which he places at the centre of listen-ing: the first consistency of sonorous sense assuch (p. 40). By first Nancy means thatRather than speaking of timbre and listeningin terms of intentional aim, it is necessary tosay that before any relationship to object, listen-ing opens up in timbre (p. 40); he also couldbe taken to mean that the first event of and inlistening (the passing of aspect perception) istimbral in nature. According to Nancy, reso-nance is at once listening to timbre and thetimbre of listening (p. 40); Timbre is the reso-nance of sound: or sound itself (p. 40). By thishe means that timbre becomes a sharing thatbecomes subject (p. 41), and is thus the begin-nings of the echo of the subject (p. 39). While,as he says, there is obviously no sound withouttimbre (pp. 39^40), his interest is in the possibil-ity of timbre without sound, by which he

means before sound. Nancy expands on thefact that Timbre is above all the unity of adiversity that its unity does not absorb (p. 41),

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an emergent property of music, singular inquality and multiple in composition. This iswhy, as Nancy notes, timbre draws music intoother perceptible registers (p. 42), namely themetaphors associated with and coming fromother modalities and senses. It draws musicinto the wider world (p. 84 n. 36).

This might be taken to be the heart ofNancys argument: the irruption of ethics intoaesthetics. Nancy says: I would say that timbreis communication of the incommunicable:provided that it is understood that the incom-municable is nothing other, in a perfectlylogical way, than communication itself (p. 40).Indeed, it should be noted that Nancy writes,in words hinting at the opening of a communityand thence a sociology of music listeners, thatsonorous presence is a place-of-its-own-self, aplace as relation to self, as the taking-place of a

self, a vibrant place as the diapason of a subjector, better, as a diapason-subject. (The subject,a diapason? Each subject, a differently tuneddiapason? Tuned to selfbut without a knownfrequency?) (pp. 16^17 ).

The second and third essays in Listening aremuch shorter than the first. March in Spirit inOur Ranks makes a historical point. After aprologue referring to Nietzsches Bizet, Nancystates: not only did Nazism treat and mistreatin its way the musical art it found before it . . .;but Nazism also benefited from an encounter,

which was not a chance one, with a certainmusical disposition, just as it also benefitedfrom a similar encounter with a certain newcondition, often the most modern, of dance andof architecture (p. 50). Nancy describes musicas an art of expansion, and as dangerouslyimplicated in the propagation of a subjectivity(p. 51). This darker side to the obsession withmusical subjectivity and subject positionprovides him with a clue to the ways in whichsubjectivity is historically determined and con-tingent upon particular ideologies, the narra-tive of which he describes as follows:conquest transforms its schema in a radicalway: mastery of a territory (one that is rela-tively indifferent to the capture of souls), andeven the submission and domination of popula-tions, are followed by the capture and penetra-tion of identities. Capture gives way to control,absorption to administration, penetration tosimple jurisdiction (p. 52). Nancy notesGoebbelss comment that Art is nothing otherthan what shapes feeling. It comes from f eelingand not from intelligence (quoted on p. 56), inorder to argue that if this is the case, then theproblem is that the operation [of forming

communities around and upon music] passesthrough music (or any art) and over it: thedirection that forms it is added to it as afinality that music itself does not have. The inef-fable is charged with speaking (pp. 56^7). Thiscreates impossible demands for justice in whichfeelings cannot be spoken of without being

silenced or betrayed. Nancy concludes the essayby remarking that What truly betrays musicand diverts or perverts the movement of itsmodern history is the extent to which it isindexed to a mode of signification and not to amode of sensibility. Or else the extent to whicha signification overlays and captures a sensibil-ity (p. 57), and ignores its resonance.

The third essay, How Music Listens toItself, reads like a refraction of the argumentin Listening. Nancy starts with a straw manposition: somebody who listens without

knowing anything about itas we say of thosewho have no knowledge of musicology (p. 63).The rhetoric is couched in negative terms, andit would be useful to develop the mirror imageof this description, namely a sense of what thenon-specialist listener does (rather than doesnot) and is (rather than is not). The straw manposition adopted by Nancy generates, almostautomatically, a series of oppositions or differ-ences, which he works over towards a feelingfor the aesthetic work they might produce.Thus, for example, Nancy writes that musical

listening allows one to link sensory apprehen-sion to analysis of composition and execution(p. 63), while a little further on he asks, Howare the musicianly and the musical shared orintermingled? (p. 64), describing the pair as atechnical apprehension and a sensory apprehen-sion (p. 64). Nancys conclusion is reasonable:musical listening worthy of that name canconsist only in a correct combination of thetwo approaches or of the two dispositions, thecompositional and the sensory (pp. 63^4).

In summary, Listening is a careful workingthrough of the ears essential mechanismsthat unfolds alongside the errors of post-Enlightenment Western thought and opens upnew soundscapes for listening. Along the way,it affords a new form of subject phrase in theresonance of feelings and their linkages, andshows how resonance articulates feeling, howfeelings become phrases, and how articulatingphraseslisteningmight actually be ethical,prudent, and sensitive to the event. LikeAndrew Bowies magisterial Music, Philosophy,and Modernity (Cambridge, 2007; reviewed by

James Garratt in this volume, p. 429), though ina quite diff erent register, it demonstrates that

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music has a thing or two to teach us, whetherwe are philosophers, musicians, both, or neither.

ANTHONY GRITTEN

Middlesex University

doi:10.1093/ml/gcq035

The Rock Canon: Canonical Values in the Reception ofRock Albums. By Carys Wyn Jones. pp.xii169. Ashgate Popular and Folk MusicSeries. (Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington,Vt., 2008, 50. ISBN 978-0-7546-6244-0.)

Talking toThe Guardiannewspaper in 2002, thepoet and critic Tom Paulin complained aboutA-level, the British school-leaving examinationthat prepares for university: I think A-levelHistory is still a very good subject, but Englishis very watery now. Alan Bennett is on the cur-

riculum, for fucks sake! Imagine giving an18-year-old Alan Bennetts monologues. Fromsuch tiny seeds do canons grow: taste struttingaround as value, highbrow sneering atbest-selling author much admired, and thepublic, national playground of school, with itsdoor-opening qualifications, student numbersby the busload, bonanza sales for authors wholuck out.The Rock Canon plunges energeticallyinto these watery waters, figuring howso-called popular music finds itself saddledwith an idea lumbered with the baggage of

English literature and so-called classical music.The Rock Canon was Carys Wyn Joness

doctoral thesis at Cardiff, where her daily workcentred on ten records and the critical writingaround them. The choice of albums matters alot, and is mostly the hundred greatest albumsever made as voted by critics for Dadrockmagazine Mojo in August 1995, corroboratedby statistician Henrik Franzon (pp. 26^7 ).Alongside the writing specific to the albums,including single-author monographs, ref erenceis made to other commentaries: essays in TheRolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll,for example, or, with curious frequency, JohnLennons 1970 interview with Jann Wenner forRolling Stone magazine. All this is of greatinterest for those about to rock, as Brian

Johnson would say, but perhaps few besides.However, another cluster of literature presentsthe material alongside debates in musicologyreferring to classical music, writers such as

Joseph Kerman, Marcia Citron, and WilliamWeber, and edited collections Disciplining Music(1992) and The Musical Work (2000). Finally, afirst chapter brings on debates around thecanon in literary studies, writers such as

Harold Bloom, Frank Kermode, BarbaraHerrnstein Smith, and John Guillory, both hisuseful article in Critical Terms for Literary Study(1990) and impenetrable book, Cultural Capital(1993). Thus The Rock Canon should prove usefulboth for courses limited to popular music, andfor courses in musicology that aim to take a

broad or long view; it is also a subject of intrin-sic and general interest.

The first chapter, Defining the canon, is ahandy summary recommended for studentsworking to an essay deadline and teacherslooking for a rapid seminar fix. Over the fol-lowing three chapters, the ten albums and theircritics take centre-stage, as Wyn Jones looks foraspects of canon formation in rock musicsimilar to and different from those of literatureor classical music. Among many others, usefuland interesting topics include genius, art, influ-ence, the test of time, romantic myths of creativ-ity, and list-making. A fifth chapter examinesthe relationship between what Clive Jamestermed the metropolitan critic and writersbased in universities (Tom Paulin straddlesboth). The final chapter betrays its roots inacademic examination, with unnecessarilytepid conclusions, such as: there is a case forand against a canon in rock music (p. 139)andsomething so winsome Princess Di mighthave said ithaving a canon of albums might

ultimately be a matter of individual perception(p. 139). We dont really find out what WynJones thinks; right-on enough to declare canonto be inherently elitist (p. 25), and temporary,contingent, and subjective (p. 15), but good-girl enough to insist that a field withoutcategories is simply a mess (p. 140). Consider-able time and effort may have gone in establish-ing only something non-contentious from thestart: when asked, and as part of the job, criticspostulate, parade, police, and pooh-pooh histor-ically transcendent value judgements. Its inter-

esting and salutary to learn that writers onAnglo-American rock music use ideas similarto those used of classical and romantic music,and The Rock Canon is, if nothing else, asplendid digest of hacks trembling before theirfavourite records: the prize goes to AmyRaphael on the Stone Roses (what we are leftwith is the art, the music, p. 97). This aspect isoften expertly done: see the eagle eye for theslack use of quantum leap (at p. 59), or PattiSmiths use of the word canonizing on thesleeve-note of Horses (at p. 76). Readers mightwant to read Wyn Jones and her critics along-side an underrated book, Robert Pattisons The

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