LA DELEUZIANA – ONLINE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY –ISSN 2421-3098 N. 10 / 2019 – RHYTHM,CHAOS AND NONPULSED MAN 251 Musical Works as Assemblages by PAULO DE ASSIS Abstract This article sketches a new image of musical works, situated beyond the «work concept», crit- ically rethinking existing music ontologies, and grounded on Gilles Deleuze’s central ontological commitments. After situating the problem (1), the paper discusses current issues in music ontol- ogy (2), explores specific Deleuzian and Deleuzo-Guattarian ontological concepts (3), and argues for a new image of musical works (4), which are more aptly described as assemblages (5), as highly complex, historically constructed multiplicities defined by virtual structures, intensive processes, and actual things. 1. Introduction: beyond the work concept Moving beyond the work concept this essay presents a new image of musical work 1 , critically inspired by Gilles Deleuze’s central ontological domains (the virtual, the actual, and the intensive 2 ), grounded on the Deleuzo-Guattarian notions of strata, assemblage, 1 The proposed neologism work is used in this essay with a particular meaning. Work appears when- ever I am referring to the notion of «work» as it is understood in the classical paradigm (David Da- vies), which is grounded upon the notion of the work concept (Lydia Goehr). To designate the kind of entities that I bring forward in this text – which have the potential to replace this classical notion of work – I propose the notion of assemblage. Thus, when thinking about my new image of «work,» it is immediately obvious that it is a new image not of the classical work but of something different. Yet, this difference unavoidably recalls the classical notion, which is still active when conceiving its own dismantling. Thus, by work, I mean the positive and constructive deconstruction of the old term; it is still there, but its foundations are being dismantled. 2 A thorough discussion of the complex relations between the virtual, the actual, and the intensive would lie outside the scope of this essay, especially as there have been several attempts to clarify this topic, each leading to significantly different understandings. In fact, there is no consensus about the precise placement of these three notions within Deleuze’s ontological system. Dale Clisby’s essay “In- tensity in Context: Thermodynamics and Transcendental Philosophy” (2017, especially 250–55) of- fers a compelling overview of the three main positions: (1) those that align the intensive with the virtual, which is the position of Peter Hallward (2006) and Alain Badiou (2000); (2) those that think the intensive as a third ontological domain, as has been proposed by Manuel DeLanda (2002) and John Protevi (2013), who excavated the precise scientific influences in the writings of Deleuze; and (3) those who consider the intensive as being part of the actual, or as «the being of the actual» as Jon Roffe (2012, as quoted in Clisby 2017: 253) has suggested.