Encounters between music and nature : a productive and transversal approach to contemporary music analysis

This thesis examines encounters between music and nature through a
productive and transversal approach to music analysis with examples
from the contemporary Western art music repertoire. In three
analytical chapters, I study how contemporary music potentially
reframes the positions and relations between music, humans and nature
by engaging with transversal concepts from Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari"s thinking and drawing upon Judy Lochhead"s approach to
productive music analysis. In Joan La Barbara"s Les Oiseaux qui
chantent dans ma tête for solo voice (1976) and Kaija Saariaho"s
Laconisme de l"aile for solo flute and optional electronics (1982), I
study affinities between humans and birds through the concept of
becoming-bird. In John Luther Adam"s Inuksuit for percussion
ensemble (2009), I engage with the notion of coexistence between
humans and the environment with the concepts of milieu, rhythm, and
deterritorialization. Lastly, in Helena Tulve"s Extinction des choses
vues for large orchestra (2007), I argue that her music confronts
aspects of musical organicism by producing ruptures from its own
modes of order, activated by the concept of the Body without Organs.
I particularly investigate contemporary music from perspectives that
question human-centered ways of thinking and being, as well as
ostensibly rigid conceptions of nature that appear separate from the
domain of culture. From these perspectives, I understand nature and
culture as entangled material-discursive processes, where the relations
between music, humans and nature are constantly renegotiated. In
extension, I hope this thesis demonstrates how these encounters
between music and nature may foster new and fruitful understandings
of the contemporary world we all inhabit.
This is a doctoral thesis in Musicology at Stockholm University, Sweden 2023