Multi‐Temporality: an Analytical Approach to Contemporary Music, Embracing Concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Abstract

The specific nature of contemporary music offers specific challenges to the music analyst. The repertoire's great diversity of musical styles and techniques makes it difficult to develop an adequate methodology, since the absence of a common ground impedes the use of a universally applicable system. Using philosophical concepts of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari as a source of inspiration, I aim here at looking for connections between compositions that at first sight seem unrelated. More specifically, a concept of multi‐temporality is used to investigate how the works of the American composer Elliott Carter (1908–2012) and those of the German Claus‐Steffen Mahnkopf (b. 1962) may interact. This study draws on seven analyses to conceptualise multi‐temporality as an analytical tool for the study of contemporary music.