Non-music, above all, does not signify some absurd negation of music, any more than non-euclidean geometry means that we have to do away with Euclid. On the contrary, it is a matter of limiting claims of 'theories of music' that interpret the latter in terms of the world, and of bringing to the fore its human universality. This blog aims to disencumber the theory of music of a whole set of ontological distinctions and aesthetic notions imposed on it by the Humanities, with the help of philosophy, and which celebrate music as a double of the world, forming thus a 'Principle of Musical Sufficiency' – so as to reveal both its modest nature and its abyssal character as 'identity-music'.

Any philosophy of music whatsoever – this is an invariant – will appeal to the World, to the perceived object, to the perceiving subject, all supposedly given, and given initially by that transcendental bang that will have made this world surge forth from the midst of being. But how could such a circular manner of thinking avoid making music as stance, as technique and as art, as an 'empirical' degradation or deficiency of the onto-musicological essence of philosophy? If we wish to simply describe or think the essence of music, it is from this hybrid of philosophy as transcendental music that we must deliver ourselves, so as to think the musical outside every vicious circle, on the basis of a thinking – and perhaps of a 'note' – absolutely and right from the start divested of the spirit of music.

Here is a first meaning of 'non-music': this word does not designate some new technique, but a new description and conception of the essence of music and of the practice that arises within it; of its relation to philosophy; of the necessity no longer to think it through philosophy and its diverse 'positions'. but to seek an absolutely non-onto-musicological thinking of essence, so as to think correctly, without aporias, circles or infinite metaphors, what music is and what it can do.

Only a rigorously non-musical thought – that is to say a thought from the start non-musical in its essence or its intimate constitution – can describe music without begging the question, as an event that is absolute rather than divided, that is to say already philosophically anticipated in an ideal essence and empirically realistic – and, at the other extreme, can open up music itself, as art and as technique, to the experience of non-music.

Non-music is thus neither an extension of music with some variation, difference or decision; nor its negation. It is a use of music in view of a non-musical activity which is the true element of the music, its meaning and truth. By 'music', on the contrary, we must now understand not only the technical act, but the philosophy-style spontaneous, more or less invisible, self-interpretations that accompany it – the 'musicality' that takes the place of thought for us, and whose effects are felt in the form of a forgetting of the essence of music in favor of its philosophical – that is to say onto-musicological – appropriation. For onto-musicology manifests itself in the form of a circular auto-position of musical technique and of the elements it takes from the World (body, perception, motif, instrument), this auto-position signifying a vicious self-reflection, an interpretation on the basis of elements that are perhaps already interpretations and, in any case, on the basis of western onto-musicological prejudices that are redoubled and fetishized in the form of philosophies-of-music, but never really put into question or 'reduced'.

It is therefore not enough to re-ascend to the musical 'metaphor' of the origins of philosophy to think the musical with the necessary rigour – this is what philosophers have always done, it is their way of withdrawing and taking another 'note'. It is more urgent to find the means to suspend or to bracket out, radically and without remainder, all of western onto-musicality; to rethink what a 'note' is according to its essence. Supposing, as we shall suggest, that the essence of the note is nothing musical, that it totally excludes the onto-musicological metaphor, then it is according to the originary and positive non-musical instance that we must 'hear' music anew, rather than on the basis of music itself and therefore circularly, without rigour. The essence of music is not itself 'musical' in the onto-musical sense of the word: of this there is no doubt. But it remains to determine positively, otherwise than through a 'withdrawal', a 'reserve', a 'differance', etc., the non- of non-music. For this purpose we shall employ notions of the musical stance and hearing force.

More generally, a good description of music necessitates that one treat it as an essence unto itself; not as event either of the World or of philosophy, or as a syncretic sub product of modern science and technology; that one recognize the existence, not just of a musical art, but of an authentic musical thought; the existence, beyond the components of technology and sound production, of a certain specific relation to the real, one which knows itself as such. We shall thus eliminate from our method the point of view of style, or the history of styles and techniques: this is not our concern. We shall give a description, nothing more; we shall call 'essence of music' only that which we ourselves as hearing-force can describe as to the objects, techniques and styles of music; that alone which is susceptible only of a pure description outside of all the objects, aims, finalities, styles, techniques, etc. … which are its conditions of existence. The essence of the musical stance must not be conflated with its conditions of existence in perception, in the history of styles and the evolution of techniques.

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