To Be in Time: Repetition, Temporality, and the Musical Work

This chapter begins by examining recent scholarship in ‘music as performance’, especially that of Nicholas Cook, and its implications for the work concept. By exploring various formulations of the work concept from a temporal perspective, it becomes clear that contradictions occur whenever the work concept is tied too closely to the notion of a musical work’s identity. Instead, a Deleuzian understanding of the musical work is advanced, based on Deleuze’s idea of repetition: this is seen as allying closely with a deconstructive approach to musical material, which provides an additional opportunity to consider musical temporality, in the arena of history and the musical past. Finally, to recapture the spirit of Cook’s original theories, and drawing on Hannah Arendt, a parallel between musical and human ontology is drawn, based on their identical interaction with time, which reconstitutes but fundamentally changes the idea of (the) musical ‘work’.