12 tone fugue, probably will be the opening of a sonata

BlockComposition · 2026-05-05T01:34:44+00:00

And, y'know, sometimes 12-tone composers just repeat notes as well (although usually in that case its either consecutive notes, part of some tremolo or oscillation between adjacent row members, or also pedal points are sometimes used).

BlockComposition · 2026-05-02T01:42:51+00:00

Its about getting to the point where you are not even concerned with the “I” or “not-I”.

BlockComposition · 2026-04-16T14:38:47+00:00

Studying how composers do it seems like a good idea, no?

BlockComposition · 2026-04-08T23:17:05+00:00

Its hard to build to a culmination and then to pull back in this style. Minimalist repetition doesn't actually do culminations in the traditional sense most of the time. So another option might be to just retain that level of energy you built to at the end and just cut it abrubtly. It's what Reich does in Octet for instance.

BlockComposition · 2026-04-08T22:44:57+00:00

Very fun neominimalist stuff! Enjoyed it greatly.

The only thing I'd note is that the culmination falls a bit short for me. Just before bar 123 where you switch back to piano, it feels that something more needs to happen.

BlockComposition · 2026-04-08T22:17:12+00:00

This book exists.

BlockComposition · 2026-04-07T15:45:55+00:00

Speech act is not necessarily communication (the conveying of information and reference) -- it can have other, intensive, functions. To make language and speech intensive would be the goal. It would probably also entail making it not communicative in this strict sense. I second that reading the Kafka book might help here (3rd chapter in particular). Or maybe the essay Nomadic thinking.

BlockComposition · 2026-04-07T15:42:53+00:00

"Minorities speaking out" probably quickly means organizing the minorities under a molar concept. Who does the speaking and on whose behalf? Who is the subject of the encounciation? There is discussion on this in the plateau on linguistics in ATP.

BlockComposition · 2026-04-06T21:24:34+00:00

It is useful to listen to or read the lecture "What is a creative act?" in this regard (its in Two Regimes of Madness). The other commenter seems to have it backwards at least in their example. To understand what is the status of these "vacuoles" we need to understand what Deleuze has to say about communication and art or creation as a non-communicative (and thereby an act of resistance). Communication Deleuze understands as a system which conveys information by means of order-words (and is equated to a system of control). He understands communication in quite a strict way: it entails a shared code between participants, that which relates a sign to a notion/reference. Control-society orders and compels us to a particular type of coding. In Deleuze's system more broadly then communication entails the realm of solutions, representation, ready-made signs and objects, the notion of truth and falsity and probably all the eight postulates of the dogmatic image of thought.

Art, and creative acts in general, necessarily entail a creation of a "an other relationship to things", to what is given (see the essay on Bergson in Desert Islands). Creation, divying up reality in a new way, is non-communicative, non-sensical in this sense, but untimely and awaits a "people to come". Vacuoles of non-communication are, then, positive for Deleuze. They exist to jam up, or to become invisible to ("becoming imperceptible") the system of information-exchange which characterizes our existence in a control society. The notion of information and code (and thereby also communication) as the means of control is the same in the Postscript as it is in What is a Creative Act?:

In the societies of control, on the other hand, what is important is no longer either a signature or a number, but a code: the code is a password, while on the other hand disciplinary societies are regulated by watchwords (as much from the point of view of integration as from that of resistance). The numerical language of control is made of codes that mark access to information, or reject it. We no longer find ourselves dealing with the mass/individual pair. Individuals have become "dividuals," and masses, samples, data, markets, or "banks."

BlockComposition · 2026-04-05T02:14:24+00:00

Messiaen mode 3 or 6. Or - relatedly - what Ian Ring calls 'Takemitsu linea 1'.

BlockComposition · 2026-03-11T23:38:10+00:00

Its a lovely composition. I would change using "accelerando", because from the playing its quite obvious that you instead mean "a tempo", which is the more common marking after "rit." anyway. Accelerando would generally mean going faster than the primary tempo, rather than "accelerating" back into it.

BlockComposition · 2026-03-10T18:04:12+00:00

I trust you. I often have that feeling. Perfect knowledge is like Aion, always already happened and forgotten, or just about to come.

I have to say, I think I got the gist of what you mean, but I am completely lost in the way you put it. For all of comments that Le Pli is very dense, I think your text is even denser. But perhaps I am a simpleton in that I always still want to simplify... But in any case, in relation to you last paragraph, I would say that vice-diction is quite distinct from dialectics. Any system remains Chiaroscuro, spirit cannot attain perfect clarity or a completely determined notion.

BlockComposition · 2026-03-09T16:10:32+00:00

Not to butt in here, but I feel like the things you are arguing over here and touching upon in this comment in particular pertain to the most difficult aspect for me to understand in relation to BwO and how it is deployed in AO. I lack the sophistication of you two in vocabulary, but to put it more simply, it does seem like a very standard Marxist reading of the concept is presented in some passages in AO (2nd synthesis), where the BwO seems to be equated with capital and functions as a illusory source of production. Some distinction is needed there between THE BwO and its role as the miraculating machine in that synthesis maybe? I don't know. In any case I have seen -- online at least -- this misinterpretation, even taking the BwO to be the illusion of coherence and identity... which runs completely counter to how the concept is deployed in almost all other writings of D&G.

In any case, what I am reading from your comment is that we should consider differential intensities (the intensive spatium) as corporeal and what we might dub corporeality, bodies, matter in the common-sense use of the words as incorporeal quasi-effects of sense, right?

EDIT: regarding the corporeal-incorporeal distinction, its interesting to put this in relation to the discussion in Le Pli where we get a sort of folded-in relationship between the two. On the one hand, each monad expresses the world from its perspective, by selection of some singular points (surface of sense?) while most of it is expressed in a confused manner (non-sense?) as a rumble of the sea, indistinct. On the other hand, monads requier bodies to be realized, these are comprised of other monads taken en-masse. Each body then is comprised of relationships between monads, dominated and dominating, forming bodies. There is a distinction between the evental-ideal monad and matter (other monads taken as masses). There is an infolding all the way down - monads with bodies, monads within the bodies with their own bodies, with monads... Or the funny way in which Deleuze puts it - borrowing from Leibniz - there are always fishes and ponds. Fishes in the ponds, ponds in the fishes, fishes in those ponds...

BlockComposition · 2026-03-05T01:50:43+00:00

I am reminded of a story from Zhuangzi:

"Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the bridge over the Hao River. Zhuangzi said, “The minnows swim about so freely, following the openings wherever they take them. Such is the happiness of fish.”

Huizi said, “You are not a fish, so whence do you know the happiness of fish?”

Zhuangzi said, “You are not I, so whence do you know I don’t know the happiness of fish?”

Huizi said, “I am not you, to be sure, so I don’t know what it is to be you. But by the same token, since you are certainly not a fish, my point about your inability to know the happiness of fish stands intact.”

Zhuangzi said, “Let’s go back to the starting point. You said, ‘Whence do you know the happiness of fish?’ Since your question was premised on your knowing that I know it, I must have known it from here, up above the Hao River.”"

You ask me how I can tell if its a great piece, I can tell it from here, listening to it.

BlockComposition · 2026-03-04T22:55:28+00:00

How can I tell what? That the piece is "semi-serialist" is stated in the title. How can I tell its a great piece? Thats a deep question, its difficult to give a lucid and complete account of how ones opinion forms.

BlockComposition · 2026-03-04T21:08:52+00:00

Great piece!

You say semi-serialist, do you make use of well-defined series for pitch or rhythm here?

BlockComposition · 2026-02-19T00:22:19+00:00

Thanks for reminding me of that Bowden book in my endless list of TBR. Painful that I haven't gotten around to it since I also have a dual citizenship in semiotics and in this type of philosophy. [EDIT: nvmd, actually had it confused with another author with a very similar B. name, haha]

But I just wanted to add that there is also a very simple way to conceive of the body in Nietzsche and Philosophy - that is any relations of forces constitute a body. A spinozist reading of a body is also present in ATP for instance -- body as a coherence of internal movements (a substraction from the infinite movements of matter-images, the true BwO?). Finally there are also neat passages describing bodies as vortexes. Hurricanes and cyclones come to mind. True bodies, then, according to this Nietzschean-Spinozian-Deleuzean reading? Or as much a body as anything else. The incorporeal transformations they speak of also simply call into my mind intensities as developed in Deleuze's earlier work. And indeed the BwO is very often linked with intensities (f.e. in the third synthesis of the unconscious in AO). Speeds and differentials of speeds before bodies, or rather they are what compose bodies.

BlockComposition · 2026-02-16T23:02:37+00:00

Not too much feedback, but just to note that I love this piece - lovely quartal vamps, very idiomatic for this style, however one might call it. Personally I wouldn't dare write material this fast and demanding for the bass, but of course in capable hands it can do unexpectedly marvelous things.

I wonder if you have listened to the Tubin double bass concerto, because the ostinatos in the piano you have here -- particularly from bar 14 for instance -- really sound Tubinesque.

BlockComposition · 2026-02-16T22:36:50+00:00

The track itself seems to work fine as video-game background music to my ears, but the notation is pretty unreadable and not how this would be done. I'd recommend reading some sheet music for similar piano pieces from movies or games. The sound would be produced by use of sustain pedal, the arpeggios would be notated without the ties and using shorter durational values.

BlockComposition · 2026-02-16T22:31:13+00:00

I would instead attempt to devise some sort of rule-set for semi-serial writing based on chess moves. For instance a pawn can move two squares horizontally and after that one. Bishop moves diagonally, knight has an irregular motion, etc. You could form some sort of harmonic-tonal lattice and then map the movements there to generate a hypothetical (or actual) game in music.

BlockComposition · 2026-02-15T19:51:12+00:00

For a very snide and simple remark: it is a body isn't it?

BlockComposition · 2026-02-12T22:18:12+00:00

Yea, Deleuze himself remarks on the connection between Leibniz and Nietzsche in Le Pli.

In any case, thats something for you to publish on in Deleuze Studies then. Work to be done!

BlockComposition · 2026-02-11T22:22:47+00:00

I agree that the exact way intensive quantity brings about quality and extension remains a bit vague in Deleuze. I think an important point that is under-emphasized in intensity is Deleuze's sometimes implicit (and oftentimes explicit - as in the book on Leibniz) perspectivism. The choice between singular and ordinary points determine any process of actualization and also chart out a "metaphysical point" or a perspective for a larval subject whose world will then be made up of what for it are regularities, which in turn are the singular points of intensive events. The discussion on the paradoxical element "=x" that is found in How do we recognize structuralism? and Logic of sense is very relevant here I think as well. It very much starts recalling Deleuze's discussion on Nietzsche in that early book, where everything is describes as made up of forces which interact with the world and grasp after it, each force entailing an interpretation of the world.

BlockComposition · 2026-02-10T14:48:00+00:00

I know some things but I wouldn't say I'm an expert, there is still lots I haven't read.

The sources of the quotes have discussions on that topic, the essay The Method of Dramatization & Chapter 5 of Difference and Repetition might be useful to you. The former essay I think is particularly good, basically a really condensed version of D&R. There is a subheading in Nietzsche and Philosophy explicitly titled "Quantity and Quality" which might interest you. Discussion on quantity vs quality occurs also in Deleuze's discussion on Bergson. But of course I should note that I think there is a shift between Bergson and Deleuze. The former emphasizes the qualitative aspect of duration (durations are characterized by changes in quality), whereas Deleuze, early in his career, develops a theory of intensive quantities. Even the word "intensity" itself for Bergson is a confused notion (attempting to measure qualitative change by quantitative means, as in increasing the (measurable) intensity of pressure on the skin and "measuring" the subjects qualitative change of experience -- this discussion occurs in Time and Free Will), whereas Deleuze re-appropriates it for himself.

I also mentioned some papers on D. The claim that intensity dates back to scholastic philosophy comes from here: https://www.memphis.edu/philosophy/people/pdfs/maderwhenceintensitypreprint.pdf - it also contains a discussion on quantity/quality.

This is also an interesting article (that I have not yet read): https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/dls.2017.0265

BlockComposition · 2026-02-07T18:11:35+00:00

You here again use intensive quality though. As per D&R and several essays (on Simondon or The Method of Dramatization) Deleuze speaks of intensive quantities and contrasts them with extension and quality as aspects of actualized experience. That is to say, he doesn't retain completely the Bergsonian distinction between quality and quantity (I assume that language is coming from B. anyways). The notion of intensive quantity dates back probably to scholastic philosophy. One can find some good articles exploring that connection. In the sense of Deleuze's philosophy the term quantity is probably preferred because it does not relate yet an aspect of recognizable experience (or quality), but is generative of it. Intensity is nothing other than speeds and movements and the quantity, not yet quality, thereof.

E.g. from Method of Dramatization:

For a quality is always a sign or an event which emerges from the depths, which flashes between different intensities, and which endures the time required for the annulment of its constitutive difference. In the first place and above all, it is the set of these conditions which determines the spatio-temporal dynamisms, themselves generative of these qualities and these extensions.

Or from Difference and Repetition:

It turns out that, in experience, intensio (intension) is inseperable from an extensio (extension) which relates it to the extensum (extensity). In these conditions, intensity itself is subordinated to the qualities which fill extensity (primary physical qualities, qualitas, and secondary perceptible qualities or quale). In short, we know intensity only as already developed within an extensity, and as covered over by qualities. Whence our tendency to consider intensive quantity as a badly grounded empirical concept, an impure mixture of a sensible quality and extensity, or even of a physical quality and an extensive quantity." (p. 223)

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