Levande musik : Ritornellen och musikens skapande

Sammanfattning: Many years of working with electroacoustic music evoke the question in what sense one can talk about life in music. The question does not concern traces of the composer's life in the work, vivifying performances or musical experiences full of life, but rather the life of music itself.In order to find an answer to the question I examine three solo concertos in the light of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. The concertos, for flute, violin and piano respectively, with chamber ensemble, were composed within the frame of the dissertation and emanate from the ritornello form as found in Vivaldi. The ritornello concept is also present in Deleuze and Guattari, especially in the book A Thousand Plateaus, in which it serves as a collector and transformer of forces and connections that affect its surroundings. With the ritornello as a bridge between this philosophy and the music, I undertake a close reading of the three solo concertos with the philosophy as a companion.With the ritornello and other related concepts in Deleuze and Guattari, such as assemblage, chaos, territorializing and deterritorializing, I force my way past the musical structure in order to uncover the creational forces of music. In the flute and the flute concerto it is about establishing a fragile point in chaos; in the violin and the violin concerto all is centred around the ground, the earth and the territory; and in the piano and the piano concerto it is a matter of a single drawn-out leave-taking. These three moments -- entrance, deepening and dissolution -- simultaneously operate at a large number of levels, and together they form a single large ritornello of musical life.Contemplating music and musical instruments through the ritornello gives several new perspectives on the music and the composing, among them a view of instruments as upholders of different aspects of the ritornello, the composer as a preserver of the creational forces of music, and the musical structure as a network of forces and connections.