Deep Refrains
Music, Philosophy, and the Ineffable
- Contents
- Review Quotes
- Awards
Table of Contents

Contents
Musical Examples
Figures
Introduction
Prelude: A Paradox of the Ineffable
0.1 Schopenhauer’s Deep Copy
0.2 The Platonic Solutions
0.3 Four Dialectical Responses (after Nietzsche)
1 Bloch’s Tone
1.1 The Tone
1.2 The Natural Klang
1.3 The Expressive Tone
1.4 Bloch’s Magic Rattle
1.5 The Tone’s Ineffable Utopia
1.6 The Event-Forms
1.7 A Dialectical Account of Music History
1.8 Utopian Musical Speech
2 Adorno’s Musical Fracture
2.1 Adorno’s Tone
2.2 Adorno’s Conception of History
2.3 Tendenz des Materials
2.4 Music’s Language-Like Ineffability
2.5 The Immanent Critique
2.6 The Paradox of Mahler’s Vernacular
2.7 The Curve of Inconsistency
Interlude: Wittgenstein’s Silence
3 Jankélévitch’s Inconsistency
3.1 Bergson and the Inconsistency of Time
3.2 The Aporetic Source of Fidelity
3.3 Charme
3.4 Cosmic Silence
3.5 Unwoven Dialectics
4 Deleuze and Guattari’s Rhythm
4.1 Deleuze’s Rhythm
4.2 The Rhythm of Sense
4.3 A Structuralist Quadrivium
4.4 The Rhythm of Life
4.5 Sonorous Coextensions
Conclusion: A Paradox of the Vernacular
Acknowledgments
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Figures
Introduction
Prelude: A Paradox of the Ineffable
0.1 Schopenhauer’s Deep Copy
0.2 The Platonic Solutions
0.3 Four Dialectical Responses (after Nietzsche)
1 Bloch’s Tone
1.1 The Tone
1.2 The Natural Klang
1.3 The Expressive Tone
1.4 Bloch’s Magic Rattle
1.5 The Tone’s Ineffable Utopia
1.6 The Event-Forms
1.7 A Dialectical Account of Music History
1.8 Utopian Musical Speech
2 Adorno’s Musical Fracture
2.1 Adorno’s Tone
2.2 Adorno’s Conception of History
2.3 Tendenz des Materials
2.4 Music’s Language-Like Ineffability
2.5 The Immanent Critique
2.6 The Paradox of Mahler’s Vernacular
2.7 The Curve of Inconsistency
Interlude: Wittgenstein’s Silence
3 Jankélévitch’s Inconsistency
3.1 Bergson and the Inconsistency of Time
3.2 The Aporetic Source of Fidelity
3.3 Charme
3.4 Cosmic Silence
3.5 Unwoven Dialectics
4 Deleuze and Guattari’s Rhythm
4.1 Deleuze’s Rhythm
4.2 The Rhythm of Sense
4.3 A Structuralist Quadrivium
4.4 The Rhythm of Life
4.5 Sonorous Coextensions
Conclusion: A Paradox of the Vernacular
Acknowledgments
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Review Quotes
Stephen Mulhall, Professor of Philosophy, University of Oxford | Critical Inquiry
"The key virtue of Michael Gallope’s book is that it articulates a framework within which the often dense and puzzling writings on music of four apparently very different philosophers can be seen as bearing productively on one another—as sharing thematic preoccupations, even as they disagree (sometimes radically) about the most illuminating ways of investigating them and about their ethical and political implications. Gallope achieves this by treating all four primarily as philosophers rather than as theorists of music and by relating them genealogically."
Carolyn Abbate, Paul and Catherine Buttenwieser University Professor, Harvard University
"Gallope’s aim is to show that there is a common thread running through four fabled music-philosophical projects of the twentieth century: those of Bloch, Adorno, Jankélévitch, and Deleuze/Guattari, which have seemed separated by profound divides between national traditions, and to take radically different stances towards the question of musical signification. He shows that this view – espoused for decades – misleads us, and traces their shared perplexity, a fruitful befuddlement about music that represents their common ground. As marvelous as Gallope’s explications are – and the realigning of twentieth-century music philosophy is extraordinary – his work here is also punctuated throughout with original speculation, and the result is one of the most important books on music philosophy to appear in decades."
Steven Rings, Associate Professor of Music, University of Chicago
"Writers on music often encounter the ineffable only to glance quickly off of it, launching a defensive salvo in retreat. In Deep Refrains, Michael Gallope moves in the opposite direction, meditating ever more intently on music’s aporias, which he maps in exhilarating philosophical detail. Eschewing polemic in favor of nimble argument and generous explanation, Gallope opens our ears to arresting sympathetic resonances between diverse thinkers—Schopenhauer, Bloch, Adorno, Wittgenstein, Jankélévitch, Deleuze and Guattari—all of whom have confronted music's potential to elude talk. Gallope deftly braids their insights to reveal a music at once deeper and more precise than we had known."
John T. Hamilton, William R. Kenan Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Harvard University
"Lucidly presented and penetratingly insightful, Deep Refrains reads the most important twentieth-century reflections on music’s ineffability – on the complex ways that music contributes to verbal conceptualization precisely by exceeding conventions of conceptual reasoning. Gallope’s compelling and highly intelligent interventions draw out the ramifications of musical material for contemporary thought, signaling music’s promise without neglecting its subtle perplexity: A resoundingly masterful accomplishment in every sense."
Society for Music Theory: Emerging Scholar Award (Book)
Finalist
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