Elin KanhovResearcher

My dissertation investigates in what ways composers of contemporary art music produce creative and ethical approaches to nature. In Gilles Deleuze I find an immanent ethics which regards art, nature and the human as part of the same totality, where the human is positioned alongside the nonhuman, and where all life processes are regarded as heterogeneous, interconnected, and complex. Instead of “othering” nature and regarding nature as something which can be represented in music, music and nature is here perceived as different, yet at times closely related, expressions of a unified whole. Deleuze’s ethical perspective provides an affirmation of the inherently creative potentials of nature, and music’s ability to experiment with these potentials from an ethical point of view. The composers I discuss throughout the dissertation all have a previously articulated interest in nature. The three primary composers I analyse are Kaija Saariaho, John Luther Adams and Helena Tulve. In the analyses, I study these interests in nature further and establish them as contemporary understandings of nature, environmental issues and ecology. Then, through thinking with Deleuze I see how these musical works produce creative and ethical approaches to this thing we call nature.