We often say that music is ineffable, that it does not refer to anything outside of itself. But if music, in all its sensuous flux, does not mean anything in particular, might it still have a special kind of philosophical significance? In Deep Refrains, Michael Gallope draws together the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari in order to revisit the age-old question of music’s ineffability from a modern perspective. For these nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophers, music’s ineffability is a complex phenomenon that engenders an intellectually productive sense of perplexity. Through careful examination of their historical contexts and philosophical orientations, close attention to their use of language, and new interpretations of musical compositions that proved influential for their work, Deep Refrainsforges the first panoptic view of their writings on music. Gallope concludes that music’s ineffability is neither a conservative phenomenon nor a pious call to silence. Instead, these philosophers ask us to think through the ways in which music’s stunning force might address, in an ethical fashion, intricate philosophical questions specific to the modern world.

Musical ExamplesFiguresIntroductionPrelude: A Paradox of the Ineffable0.1 Schopenhauer’s Deep Copy0.2 The Platonic Solutions0.3 Four Dialectical Responses (after Nietzsche)1 Bloch’s Tone1.1 The Tone1.2 The Natural Klang1.3 The Expressive Tone1.4 Bloch’s Magic Rattle1.5 The Tone’s Ineffable Utopia1.6 The Event-Forms1.7 A Dialectical Account of Music History1.8 Utopian Musical Speech 2 Adorno’s Musical Fracture2.1 Adorno’s Tone2.2 Adorno’s Conception of History2.3 Tendenz des Materials2.4 Music’s Language-Like Ineffability2.5 The Immanent Critique2.6 The Paradox of Mahler’s Vernacular2.7 The Curve of Inconsistency Interlude: Wittgenstein’s Silence3 Jankélévitch’s Inconsistency3.1 Bergson and the Inconsistency of Time3.2 The Aporetic Source of Fidelity3.3 Charme3.4 Cosmic Silence3.5 Unwoven Dialectics4 Deleuze and Guattari’s Rhythm4.1 Deleuze’s Rhythm4.2 The Rhythm of Sense4.3 A Structuralist Quadrivium4.4 The Rhythm of Life4.5 Sonorous CoextensionsConclusion: A Paradox of the VernacularAcknowledgmentsNotesSelect BibliographyIndex