Setting the ScoreSylvano Bussotti and A Thousand Plateaus

Sam Belinfante 01 /07

A suitable introduction to Deleuze and Guattari is the opening pages to A Thousand Plateaus1, a cluster of pages marked ‘Introduction: Rhizome’. A Thousand Plateaus is one of two books in the pairs’ philosophical project Capitalism and Schizophrenia, a companion to Anti-Oedipus. At the start of Rhizome lies a seemingly illustrative extract from Italian composer Sylvano Bussotti. Piano Piece for David Tudor is part of Bussotti’s intricate graphic song cycle piéces de chair II (1958-60). This segment on the first page of A Thousand Plateaus is in fact the final page from the cycle. The overlookable caption ‘Sylvano Bussotti’ at the bottom of the score-fragment is enigmatically the only reference to the composer in the book. It seems that Piano Piece for David Tudor is both a way in to Deleuze and Guattari and A Thousand Plateaus as well as a way in to Bussotti and his work.

Reading further into this collection of tags, leads and edges thickens the plot, as well as some what elucidating the conceptual context that both holds and supports this literary assembly. Deleuze and Guattari offer a philosophical system - a template for an alternative mode of thought. This scheme is offered through the idea of the ‘rhizome’; ‘a continuously growing, usually horizontal, under-ground stem, which puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals.’2 For the authors, the rhizome offers an anti-genealogy, or an a-linear mode or being. The rhizome can spring up anywhere; its nodes are connected in a multitude of ways, linked in every conceivable direction, ‘any part of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be.’ No one-portion of the plant is more important, the organism offers no spatial or functional hierarchy and any apparent ruptures between articles are supported by associative ties elsewhere.

This idea of rhizomatic thought is poised as a complementary alternative to what the authors call ‘state philosophy’, adopted almost exclusively by western thought. For Deleuze and Guattari the dogmas that organise and construct pervasive thinking are linear, one-way in their composition and trajectory. In this genealogical and therefore inherently teleological model ideas are fixed in relation to their aetiology as well as their inevitable progression towards the answer or solution. This system is underpinned by a magnitude of bifurcations, a succession of binary decisions resulting in a characteristically arborescent form. For Deleuze and Guattari the ‘root-book’ (or literary tome) that constitutes our various canons is a physical manifestation of this methodology. It is for this reason that in A Thousand Plateaus the authors offer a network of multiplicities that can be read in any order, a book that offers a collation of disparate but essentially intertwined written events. It is these multiple entrance ways that both characterise and comprise the rhizome.

In this rhizome Sylvano Bussotti is my entrance way - the scores image is a budding stem to the network of meaning within. In fact, Piano Piece for David Tudor does look like a rhizome. The curling marks and gestures that litter the works surface seem to consume the stratified grid of notation within. Bussotti builds his improvisatory lines on top of the musical canon, growing rhizomes from

1 Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, (1987; University of Minnesota).

2 OED

the beginnings and ends of notation rooted in the traditions of music composition and performance. The infinity of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical rhizome is represented in practical consciousness as Bussotti’s musical figures enmesh all and nothing; composer, reader and listener into his graphic score – a system that in turn is plugged into the machine of the authors’ A Thousand Plateaus.

Reciprocally, Deleuze and Guattari apply their mesh-like thinking to the music composition and performance. It is primarily through the use of Pierre Boulez that the authors apply this open system: -

‘Boulez says that in a smooth space-time one occupies without counting, whereas in a striated space-time one counts in order to occupy.’3

By eroding imposed compositional support structures, musicological strata such as tempo and pitch Boulez reaches for a ‘smooth’ rhizomatic space where rhythms and notes can stretch and skew; infinitely undulating through performance. This is a process that Deleuze and Guattari uncover in the introduction: -

‘When Glenn Gould speeds up the performance of a piece, he is not just displaying virtuosity, he is transforming the musical points into lines, he is making the whole piece proliferate.’4

It is this organic, rhizomatic approach to performance that Bussotti actually embeds in his scores. Erik Ulman, one of the few to write critically on Bussotti, explains how in his Requiem the composer implants this potential for the piece to ‘breath’: -

‘…the opening three bars of the Requiem are read through five times: first only by the bells and timpani at crotchet = 69; then by the twelve winds at crotchet = 88; then by the winds and brass at crotchet = 60, omitting all the grace-note figures; then by everyone at crotchet = 72, again omitting the grace-notes; and finally by everyone, playing all the material including grace notes, at crotchet = 66. only then continuing to the next bar.5

By fusing consistency through repetition with variety through nuance Bussotti installs a wave like motion to the work. Through flexing tempi Requiem goads the striated boundaries that locate and enable it.

Further exemplifying the rhizome, finding more direct links between Bussotti and Boulez often result in dislocation. Recalling a meeting with Boulez, Bussotti explains how the dignitary spurned the young composer:-

‘Then I also met Boulez, who with cold and rigorous frankness, and although recognizing in me a vague artisanal talent, completely rejected everything that I had written so far…’

This quote, though of little weight in this essay, proves that in Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic space all is linked through its ties and across its fractures. A rhizomes completeness is not defined by its genealogy, meaning is not found through tracing the trajectory of blood lines and family trees. Instead every ‘bastard’ piece is legitimised through its assembly in and across a plethora of shifting multiplicities. Both permeable and enclosed the rhizome tenuously holds

3 Deleuze and Guattari. Op. Cit ‘1140: The Smooth and Striated’

4 Deleuze and Guattari. Op. Cit. ‘Introduction: Rhizome’.

5 Ulman, Eric. ‘The Music of Sylvano Bussotti’ in Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 34, No. 2. (Summer, 1996), pp. 186-201.

together. This idea is articulated extremely elegantly in Bussotti’s scores. The shapes, lines and marks in Piano Piece for David Tudor, for example, grip every thought, note, rhythm, breath and pause onto the page. Both statement and ellipsis are supported, just holding. Roland Barthes similarly saw Bussotti’s scores as uneasy chimera: -

‘A manuscript by Sylvano Bussotti is already a compete work… [it is] visibly an ordered jumble of drives, desires, obsessions, which express themselves graphically, spatially, in the ink, one might say, independently of what the music would say.’ 6

Barthes cites a spatial and temporal assemblage in the work of Bussotti. Paralleling Deleuze and Guattari, rather than ordering ideas into discrete components, reducing their multiplicity into rank and order Bussotti sets up a collective body of disparate thoughts and events. The opera medium gave Bussotti a tangible space in order to physically stage these trans-temporal, pluralistic ideas. In La Passion for example: -

‘The furniture and the scenic elements must belong to the operatic repertoire - for example, divan form Traviata, bed from Othello, priedieu from Don Carlos torture instruments from Turandot, beds and stools from Manon’...7

Through both his scoring and his staging Bussotti forms constantly shifting clusters of physical as well as intellectual property; placing seemingly disparate elements into tenuous and momentary cohesion. As Brain Massumi explains in his foreword, the rhizomic structure ‘synthesises a multiplicity of elements without effacing their heterogeneity or hindering their potential for future rearranging’8. To the contrary, the rhizomic system by its nature is an ideal ground for such regeneration through reorganisation.

Erik Ulman highlights a continual rearranging and self-quotation in Bussotti’s own oeuvre: -

‘Another central strategy Bussotti employed to build his self-reflexive compositional world was self-quotation… …Such self-quotation comes into its own decisively on page 15 of La Passion selon Sade, in which Bussotti literally writes quotation marks around a horn melody whose original appearance is on page 20 of Mit einem gewissen sprechenden Ausdruck.’9

With both new and old material, Bussoti continues to create new (and old) multiplicities in a web-like oeuvre that engulfs everything in reach. This assembly should be approached in the same way whether you are playing it or listening to it; musical ideas should be grabbed, untangled and held like ephemeral, short-term memories. The reader should navigate the assembly from all directions and tangents.

6 Degrada, Francesco. Ed., Sylvano Bussotti e il suo teatro, (Milan; Ricordi, 1976), p 16.Translated by Eric Ulman in:Ulman, Eric. ‘The Music of Sylvano Bussotti’ in Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 34, No. 2. (Summer, 1996), pp. 186-201.

7 Ibid.

8 Deleuze and Guattari Op.Cit. ‘Translator’s Foreword: Pleasures of Philosophy’.

9 Ulman. Op. Cit.

In discussion with Claire Parnet, Deleuze claims that you should read A Thousand Plateaus as you would listen to a record10. When experiencing a record the listener often traverses its surface; disliked tracks are skips and favourite ones are repeated. Bussotti’s scores offer maps to soundscapes, some already explored, some yet untrodden. As Ulman suggests, ‘traceries of dotted lines suggest innumerable paths through constellations of material’11. But these lines are traces. As A Thousand Plateus explains, a rhizome is a map and not a tracing. A rhizome can be fragmented, turned and flipped (operations that are in fact encouraged by Bussotti), and like a map, is still comprehensible.

For A Thousand Plateaus Deleuze and Guattari use titles as fragmentary itinerants, every part is a discreet pathway or direction through. Headings such as ‘1440: The Smooth and the Striated’ and ‘1837: Of the Refrain’ offer tags, superfluous labels that sit as navigational tools rather than hierarchical taxonomies and exclamations of genealogy. This is paralleled by Bussotti in the structure of Piano Piece for David Tudor (no. 1). As Ulman explains, Bussotti ‘simply assigns ‘durations (30”, 15”, 45”) to three ambiguous systems which primarily prescribe tapping on the piano keys.’12 These tags simply offer ‘plateaus’ for the performer, who can approach them in any order and interpret them within their own subjective parameters. This is further exemplified in the pieces title. According to the Cornelius Cardew: -

‘The words David Tudor in the title are in no sense a dedication, but rather an instrumental indication, part of the notation13.

The piece is not owned or even offered to the pianist David Tudor. Instead, the name offers a guide, a beacon for the pieces interpretation. It is for this reason that Deleuze and Guattari’s foreward to A Thousand Plateaus can be read as a foreward to Piano Piece for David Tudor: -

‘It is composed not of chapters but of “plateaus.”……To a certain extent, these plateaus may be read independently of one another, except the conclusion, which should be read at the end.’14

So how do we end? For, as Deleuze and Guattari explain at the ‘end’ of their ‘introduction’; ‘A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle, between things, interbeing, intermezzo.’15 Perhaps one should consider whether Bussotti’s pieces end. Though many of Bussotti’s compositions are to some extent aleatoric improvised –

10 Deleuze in Giles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues, (Paris: Flammarion, 1977; forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press), p. 10. As cited by Massumi in the foreword to Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, (1987; University of Minnesota).

11 Ulman. Op. Cit.

12 Ibid.

13 Cardew, Cornelius. ‘Notation’ in Tempo, New Ser., No. 58., (Summer, 1961), pp. 21-33.

14 Deleuze and Guattari. Op. Cit. ‘Authors’ Note’.

15 Deleuze and Guattari. Op. Cit. ‘Introduction: Rhizome’.

‘In the case of Bussoti it is important to remember that you are dealing with a drawing, not with writing, that you therefore require neither dictionary nor rules for its interpretation.’16

- they are still arborescent. Each performance lies at the end of a specific genealogy. The ‘life’ of the composition-performance ends canonically with each and every recital, the performer having no bearing on the precursory score.

Bussotti’s score, like everything else included in A Thousand Plateaus, is not necessarily the answer, and nor do the authors claim it: -

‘A Thousand Plateaus is conceived as an open system. It does not pretend to have the final word. The authors’ hope, however, is that elements of it will stay with a certain number of its readers and will weave into the melody of their everyday lives.’17

Like Bussotti’s treatment of conventional notation Deleuze and Guattari interlace their model into existing ones hoping that it might effect a reshuffling, a rethink, not a negation of existing methodology, binary inversion. Bussotti is ensnared within this Anti-genealogical web. A web that has already entwined the authors: -

‘The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came into range, what was closest as well as farthest away.’18

A Thousand Plateaus is not the answer and Piano Piece for David Tudor is not the perfect example. Though Bussotti lies at the ‘beginning’, there are no beginnings, just many ways in. Though a record has a general centripetal direction, one can start It at any point. If one removes Bussotti from A Thousand Plateaus then the complex lattice of the authors system will remain unaffected, if anything this ellipse will further strengthen and augment the structure elsewhere –

‘A rhizome may be broken, shattered at given spot, but it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on a new line.’19

Music when heard has the ability to hook onto the thoughts of its listener, snaking in and out of conscious and momentarily escaping as a hummed or whistled tune. Bussotti’s inclusion in A Thousand Plateaus is a similar reverberation; Piano Piece for David Tudor echoes Deleuze and Guattari’s own encounter with the composer, when his drawings initially resonated as rhizomes.

16 Cardew. Op. Cit.

17 Deleuze and Guattari Op.Cit. ‘Translator’s Foreword: Pleasures of Philosophy’.

18 Deleuze and Guattari. Op. Cit. ‘Introduction: Rhizome’.

19 Ibid.