Incite Seminars

Fractured Ontologies in Music

a 3-session seminar with Andrea F. de Donato, Gorica Orsholits & Carlos A. Segovia • with guest contributions by Luigi Attademo & Gaia Ferrantini

📅 3 Sundays, November 8, 15, and 22, 2026
⏰ 10:00–12:00 Eastern Time Zone • 16:00–18:00 Central European Time. See time zone converter if you’re in a different location to make sure you get the time right.
🔗 A Zoom link will be provided on registration.
💰Three options (registration at bottom of this page):
(i) $80 for non-members (become a member).
(ii) $60 for members.
(iii) Solidarity (at bottom of this page).

S e m i n a r   d e s c r i p t i o n

Fractured Ontologies in Music explores musical forms in which fracture becomes a productive way of organizing musical experience. From the spectral dispersions of the French style brisé to the phantomic operations of fantasia and the mutable structures of variation in the Romantic piano repertoire, music emerges as a field where presence is continually refracted through absence, interruption, and excess. Across these perspectives, the seminar asks how musical forms might resist organic wholeness without simply celebrating its dissolution, opening instead onto modes of existence that are multiple, unstable, and generative.

Session I (“Style Brisé’s Ghost: Neither Unity Nor Its Loss,” with Carlos A. Segovia and a guest contribution by Luigi Attademo) explores how French Baroque music—and the lute world within it in particular—is an anomaly running perpendicular to the principles of development of modern European music. Neither is architecture in it prior to expression, as in Renaissance polyphony, nor does drama determine form, as in the Italian Baroque—the development of these tendencies having resulted in Classicism and Romanticism, and post-Romanticism having dissolved organic wholeness wherever it emerged. The French style brisé or luthé—which is not merely a style but an aesthetic field with its own affective ontology—thus amounts to modernity’s musical ghost. Two ideas define it: the refraction and diffraction of the experienceable. Through them, harmony and rhythm, to which melody is subordinated, disperse into echoes, delays, and interruptions, from the repertoire to the individual note. Music thus becomes spectral: neither does unity precede fragmentation, nor is fragmentation the effect of its loss; rather, fracture itself becomes the condition of its manifestation. Hence, the French style brisé inhabited positively what modernism would seek through negation, thereby unsettling the narrative of today’s dominant musical aesthetics.

In turn, Session II (“Fantasia: The Sounding of a Phantom,” with Gorica Orsholits) examines fantasia: an imagined musical composition that represents the free-form, improvisational, and irrational power of imagination through sound, overcoming the limits of ordinary conceptual thinking. The structure of fantasia is a bridge between the sensory and the supersensory, where music does not imitate the external world, but directly expresses the inner essence and movement of consciousness, ignoring common harmonic structures to achieve hyper-sensual experiences. Fantasia operates through phantasm which represents a phantomic sound operation that exposes the visibility of its being through a disguise, a phantom, a non-being. The phantomic event of non-being is a combination of real and completely invented situations where the trace of a presence appears as an absence. The original fantasias were compositions intended for the lute and related string instruments, and later for keyboard instruments. In Baroque music, fantasia acquires a more extensive, technically complex structure while in the classical period, it appears in more freely-formed sonata movements. In the Romantic period, it is encountered as the title of various compositions. Fantasia in contemporary music changes shape and embodies musical expressionist melodrama, speech-songs and forms of dark, phantasmagoric musical fantasias.

Lastly, Session III (“The Mutant Sound Object: Paganini-Liszt & Variation,” with Andrea F. de Donato and a guest contribution by Gaia Ferrantini) focuses on the problem of variation. After providing an introductory overview of how the concept of variation can be defined differently in philosophy and musicology, the session presents a case study of Franz Liszt’s Grandes études de Paganini, S. 141, from 1851. This work serves as an exemplary case to demonstrate how creative thought and the structuring of a musical style can constitute multiple levels of ontological expressibility. Thus the session begins with a comparative analysis of the 1851 études and an earlier version, published by Liszt in 1838 under the title Études d’exécution transcendante d’après Paganini, S. 140. Next, focusing on Étude No. 3, “La Campanella,” four different modes of variation are identified: functional, semantic, sound, and spatial variation. Supported by specific audio and score excerpts, key harmonic characteristics are analyzed, providing the following conclusions: 1. the four modes of variation structure a distinctive sound object—not monadic and isolated, but processual and mutant; 2. from this sound object, an ontology based on variation may be derived. Whether and how this variational ontology, derived from the Paganini-Liszt études, might constitute a fractured ontology is likewise examined.

C o n t e n t s

Session I • November 8, 2026

Style Brisé’s Ghost
Neither Unity Nor Its Loss
with Carlos A. Segovia

1. Style brisé/luthé as compositional syntax & as a concept of music
2. Of cameræ obscuræ & soundboxes
3. Diffraction & iridescence
4. Refraction & perspectivism
5. Background & legacy.

Music

• Pierre Dubut, le père – Prélude in D minor; Allemande in D minor
• René Mézangeau – Prélude in C major
• Ennemond (le Vieux) Gaultier – Prélude in F-flat minor; L’adieu: Courante in D minor
• Germain Pinel – Sarabande in D minor
• François Dufaut – Prélude, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande & Gigue in D minor; Sarabande & Double in G minor

Session II • November 15, 2026

Fantasia
The Sounding of a Phantom
with Gorica Orsholits

1. Form of anti-structure in improvising the senses
2. Temporality re-articulation of traces of sounds
3. Finitude as an inspiration for creation
4. Fantasia versus Fantasmagoria
5. Where is the phantom?

Music

• Matyas Seiber – Fantasia Concertante
• Georg Phillip Telemann – Fantasia No. 11 for solo flute in G major (TWV 40:12)
• J.S. Bach – Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D minor (BWV 903)
• François Borne – Fantasie Brillante sur Carmen
• Gustav Mahler – Phantasie aus Don Juan
• Arnold Schoenberg – Phantasy for Violin and Piano, Op. 47 and Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21

Session III • November 22, 2026

The Mutant Sound Object
Paganini-Liszt & Variation
with Andrea F. de Donato

1. What can variation do? The case of Franz Liszt’s Grandes études de Paganini, S. 141 (1851)
2. Ut varietur, or the fuctional variation
3. A/B, or the semantic variation
4. Armony, or the sound variation
5. Register, or the spatial variation

Music

• F. Liszt – Études d’exécution transcendante d’après Paganini, S. 140: N. 3 “La Campanella” in A-flat minor
• F. Liszt – Grandes études de Paganini, S. 141: N. 3 “La Campanella” in G-sharp minor
• F. Liszt – Grandes études de Paganini, S. 141: N. 6 in A minor
• N. Paganini – Concerto n. 2 op. 7, III Rondò in G-sharp minor
• N. Paganini – Capriccio op. 1 n. 24 in A minor

F o r m a t

Each session will last 120 minutes. It will begin with a 15-minute introductory presentation, followed by the listening, analysis, and discussion of several musical pieces. (It is therefore recommended, although of course not mandatory, to use good-quality headphones or earbuds)

B i o s

Andrea F. de Donato is a PhD student at the FINO PhD Programme (University of Pavia, Turin, Genoa, Eastern Piedmont), graduated in Philosophy at the Catholic University of Milan. He has been a Visiting Research Student at the Centre d’Analyse et de Mathématiques Sociales at EHESS in Paris. He is a member of SIFiT (Italian Society of Theoretical Philosophy). He is the author of several academic articles and of the monographs: Morfogenesi del concetto. Matematica e stile a partire da Gilles Deleuze (Orthotes, 2024) and Eterogenesi del concetto. Variazioni su matematica e stile a partire da Gilles Deleuze (Orthotes, 2026). Furthermore, he has edited some writings by Félix Guattari in L’eterogenesi nella creazione musicale (Orthotes, 2024). His research interests are in historical epistemology, philosophy of mathematics, modal logic and ontology, and contemporary French philosophy. His main works deal with the problem of style in mathematical formalism as an investigation in the creation of concepts.

Gorica Orsholits (PhD) is an independent scholar, theoretician, artist, and musician (flautist). She studied and taught at the University of Toronto and the European Graduate School from which she received her PhD under the supervision of the French poet Philippe Beck. She has lectured extensively and participated in numerous international conferences. Dr. Orsholits is on the Advisory Board of Inscriptions and was board member and convenor of the seminar at the Ereignis Center for Philosophy and the Arts. Her research interests are in continental philosophy, poetry and poetics, literary theory, film, music, and theatre. Her chapter Event and its Compossibility with Truths and Subject in Badiou’s Thought will appear in the forthcoming volume Contributions to Continental Event-philosophy (Mohr Siebeck).

Carlos A. Segovia (PhD) is an independent British-born, Spanish philosopher and writer, working on contemporary philosophy at the crossroads of the philosophy of mythology and the philosophy of art. Among his publications, Dionysus and Apollo after Nihilism: Rethinking the Earth–World Divide (with Sofya Shaikut; Brill, 2023), Guattari Beyond Deleuze: Ontology and Modal Philosophy in Guattari’s Major Writings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), Félix Guattari and the Ancients: Theatrical Dialogues in Early Philosophy (with Gary Genosko; Bloomsbury, 2025), Nietzsche’s Pre-Dionysian Apollo and the Limits of Contemporary Thought (Peter Lang, 2026), Beyond Immanence: Aesthetic Explorations (Ten Essays on Painting & Music) (Apophasis Press, 2026), and Poetry and Philosophy after Blanchot and Zambrano: Between Word and World (forthcoming with Palgrave Macmillan). He collaborates regularly with Incite Seminars, where he has facilitated courses like “Re-Imagining the Pre-Socratics” (with Hannes Schumacher), “The Lame Ontology of Greek Mythology,” “Plato Inside Out – or: as You Never Imagined It,” “Untimely Blanchot” (with Philippe Lynes, Alex Obrigewitsch, and Kim Schoof), “Between Death and Beauty: René Char’s Post-Nihilist Poetics,” Foucault’s Greeks as Savages? (with Camilo Rios), “Chaosmic Landscapes in Guattari’s Latest Works,” and “Aesthetic Encounters with The Uncanny.”

Luigi Attademo is an award-winning Italian guitarist, internationally recognized for his performances, research, and interpretation of historical and contemporary repertoire. Winner of several national and international competitions, including the prestigious CIEM in Geneva (1995), he studied with guitarist-composer Angelo Gilardino. He has performed throughout Europe, the United States, Australia, Argentina, India, and Korea, appearing at festivals and giving numerous world premieres by composers including Gilardino, Dusan Bogdanovic, Sofia Gubaidulina, Alessandro Solbiati, and Michele Tadini. His discography spans Baroque, nineteenth-century, and contemporary music, including recordings of Bach, Scarlatti, Sor, and Paganini, often performed on historical instruments. He has collaborated with musicians and ensembles, including Simone Gramaglia and Quartetto di Cremona. Attademo has researched the Andrés Segovia Archive and historic guitars, and has published extensively on musical interpretation. He teaches at Conservatorio Bruno Maderna in Cesena and Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, gives lectures, and serves as a juror in international competitions.

Gaia Ferrantini, graduated with honors from the “Nicola Sala” Conservatory in Benevento under the guidance of Maestro Gianluca Giganti, currently serves as principal solo cellist at the Varna Opera House. In 2023, she was a finalist both at the Grand Prize International Music Contest MUSICA ITALIA and at the Soroptimist International d’Italia competition. Her orchestral experience includes collaborations with the Nuova Orchestra Scarlatti and serving as principal cellist for conservatory productions. She has performed at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the Teatro Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste, La Scala in Milan, and the Chamber of Deputies in Rome. Internationally, she has played in European musical centers such as Vienna and Budapest. She specializes in Baroque music and historically informed performance. Her study of historical tunings and treatises has led to her involvement in various specialized chamber ensembles. She is also active in standard chamber music, performing frequently in duo, trio, and quartet formations. She is currently furthering her studies with Amedeo Cicchese, principal cellist of the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Additionally, she has participated in masterclasses with Enrico Bronzi, Ulf Schneider, Alexander Lonquich, and Simone Gramaglia.

R e g i s t r a t i o n

Non-Members (become a member)

Members

Solidarity: We are happy to make our offerings available at reduced or no-cost if you can not otherwise join. In exchange, we would like you to get involved at Incite Seminars by promoting this seminar on your blog, website or social media. Depending on your needs and time commitment, we can propose to you one of the following options:

(a) one post after the seminar ($50)
(b) one post before (one week prior) and one after the seminar ($25)
(c) one post before (one week prior), one during, and one after the seminar ($0)

If you would like to request one of these options, please email us at inciteseminarsphila@gmail.com with the following information: (1) seminar of interest; (2) reason for requesting a solidarity ticket; (3) the option you choose. Please note that for options (b) and (c) we ask you to get in touch at least one week prior to the beginning of the seminar.

Thank you.