The Emancipated Performer: Musical Renderings and Power Relations by Paulo de Assis

(summary by @nietzscheswritings) 

The chapter argues that Western musical performance has long been shaped and restricted by power relations, rooted in hierarchical structures that treat performers as obedient reproducers rather than creative agents. Assis begins by outlining the dominant historical “image of the work”: the idea that a musical work is a fixed, stable, perfected object created by the composer, preserved in the score, and to be faithfully reproduced by performers. This concept, tied to the nineteenth century emergence of the work concept, resulted in performers being trained to obey the score, the composer, educators, editors, and institutions, which act as tacit authorities policing what counts as a legitimate performance.

Assis then examines the deeper political dimension of these constraints, using Foucault and Deleuze to show how musical performance has been governed by structures analogous to sovereign, disciplinary, and control societies. Composer to performer resembles a master–slave relation; conservatories, editions, and performance traditions operate like disciplinary institutions; festivals and contemporary cultural markets function as control mechanisms that create an illusion of freedom while enforcing conformity. Turning to Nietzsche, Assis draws on the three modes of historical relation from On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life. Monumental history corresponds to idolizing classical works, composers, and performance traditions; antiquarian history appears in fetishistic devotion to philology and historically informed performance; critical history is rarely enacted in actual performance practice. Assis argues that without a critical mode, performance remains trapped in the past and unable to generate meaningful futures.

He proposes a new image of the work, seeing musical works not as fixed masterpieces but as metastable multiplicities composed of many heterogeneous materials, including scores, sketches, editions, performances, recordings, writings, and even extra disciplinary items. Works are not static entities but ongoing processes that remain open to transformation. This expanded view invites performers to engage with all these materials creatively rather than subordinating themselves to a fixed authoritative version. The chapter culminates in a call for the emancipated performer, inspired by Jacques Rancière’s idea of the emancipated spectator. Just as spectators must construct meaning rather than passively receive it, performers must actively reconfigure the sensible world by experimenting with materials, exposing inconsistencies, and generating new distributions of perception. The performer becomes an operator or machine of experimentation rather than an interpreter bound by fidelity to an idealized work. Emancipation requires rejecting the passive role of reproducing tradition and embracing critical, creative, and intellectually engaged performance practices capable of intervening in aesthetic and political life.

Assis concludes that performers risk marginalization if they remain uncritical servants of the musical market’s expectations. Only through emancipation can performers reclaim intellectual agency, contribute to cultural transformation, and participate as co designers of our aesthetic and epistemic world.