ABSTRACT
In his discussion of the French serialism of the 1950s in The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross suggests that Foucault was almost the ideal listener or destination of the music’s “objectified mechanical savagery” and “cerebral sexuality”. Consistent with Foucault’s interest in formalism generally, serialism adheres to strict yet simple mathematical principles related to tone and duration in order to make beauty the contingent effect of shifting tonal patterns. Unlike S. Freud, for whom the pleasure of music was foreclosed by its imperviousness to rational enquiry, Michel Foucault’s ignorance of music guaranteed its absolute beauty. Foucault, “the great theorist of power and sexuality”, writes Ross, “seemed almost turned on by Pierre Boulez’s music, and for a time he was the lover of Boulez’s fellow serialist Jean Barraque”. Consistent with Foucault’s interest in formalism generally, serialism adheres to strict yet simple mathematical principles related to tone and duration in order to make beauty the contingent effect of shifting tonal patterns.
