This introduction to a challenging contemporary composer delves into the theory and philosophy of repetition.
The work of Austrian composer Bernhard Lang elides easy categorization. While rooted simultaneously in DJ culture, free jazz, pop culture and the Austro-European new music scene, his oeuvre explicitly foregrounds repetition. He is, in his own words, a “repeat offender.”
Bernhard Lang
serves as a critical guide to the composer’s music and traces the phenomenon of repetition throughout his oeuvre. To examine Lang’s repetitive aesthetics, Christine Dysers employs various philosophical methods, such as Gilles Deleuze’s differential ontology. Fusing critical musicology, aesthetic theory, poststructuralist thought, and music analysis,
brings fresh insight to the work of an award-winning contemporary composer.