Tiqqun journal, 1-2 (1999-2001) [French/transl.]

Tiqqun was a French journal that published two issues in 1999 and 2001. The authors wrote as an editorial collective of seven people in the first edition and went uncredited in the second edition.

“Tiqqun’s poetic style and radical political engagement are akin to the Situationists and the Lettrists. Tiqqun is relatively accepted in the radical, philosophical milieu, the Situationist and post-Situationist groups, in the ultra-left, the squat and autonomist movements, as well as among some anarchists. Tiqqun is strongly influenced by the work of the italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben.” (Wikipedia)

Reading The Cybernetic Hypothesis (article by Joss Winn, July 2010)
Tiqqun at Bloom0101.org (from IA)
Tiqqun.info

Issue 1 (French, more formats at IA)
Issue 2 (French, more formats at IA)
Trans. of selected texts from issues 1 and 2 (English)
Trans. of selected texts from issues 1 and 2 (English, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese)

Joscelyn Godwin: Music and the Occult: French Musical Philosophies, 1750-1950 (1995)

This book is an adventure into the unexplored territory of French esoteric philosophies and their relation to music. Occultism and esotericism flourished in nineteenth-century France as they did nowhere else. Many philosophers sought the key to the universe, some claimed to have found it, and, in the unitive vision that resulted, music invariably played an important part. These modern Pythagoreans all believed in the Harmony of the Spheres and in the powerful effects of music on the human soul and body. Faced with the challenge of the rationalist Enlightenment, then with that of modern scientism, they adapted their occultism to the prevailing style. A widely published musicologist and authority on esotericism, Godwin is able to give a clear and concise context for these philosophers’ often surprising beliefs, and he demonstrates how this “speculative music” influenced composers such as Satie and Debussy, who were familiar with occultism. His long study of music and the Western esoteric tradition makes him uniquely qualified to unravel the strange story of these forgotten sages.

Publisher University of Rochester Press, 1995
Volume 3 of Eastman studies in music
ISBN 1878822535, 9781878822536
261 pages

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PDF (updated on 2013-4-14)

Jane F. Fulcher: French Cultural Politics and Music: From the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War (1999)

This book draws upon both musicology and cultural history to argue that French musical meanings and values from 1898 to 1914 are best explained not in terms of contemporary artistic movements but of the political culture.

During these years, France was undergoing many subtle yet profound political changes. Nationalist leagues forged new modes of political activity, as Jane F. Fulcher details in this important study, and thus the whole playing field of political action was enlarged. Investigating this transitional period in light of several recent insights in the areas of French history, sociology, political anthropology, and literary theory, Fulcher shows how the new departures in cultural politics affected not only literature and the visual arts but also music. Having lost the battle of the Dreyfus affair (legally, at least), the nationalists set their sights on the art world, for they considered France’s artistic achievements the ideal means for furthering their conception of “French identity.” French Cultural Politics and Music: From the Dreyfus Affair to the First World War illustrates the ways in which the nationalists effectively targeted the music world for this purpose, employing critics, educational institutions, concert series, and lectures to disseminate their values by way of public and private discourses on French music. Fulcher then demonstrates how both the Republic and far Left responded to this challenge, using programs and institutions of their own to launch counterdiscourses on contemporary musical values.

Perhaps most importantly, this book fully explores the widespread influence of this politicized musical culture on such composers as d’Indy, Charpentier, Magnard, Debussy, and Satie. By viewing this fertile cultural milieu of clashing sociopolitical convictions against the broader background of aesthetic rivalry and opposition, this work addresses the changing notions of “tradition” in music–and of modernism itself. As Fulcher points out, it was the traditionalist faction, not the Impressionist one, that eventually triumphed in the French musical realm, as witnessed by their “defeat” of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Publisher Oxford University Press US, 1999
ISBN 0195120213, 9780195120219
291 pages

Publisher
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PDF (20 MB, updated on 2014-9-2)