Postcolonial Bifurcation: On John Sharpley's Emptiness

One of the lesser‐known terms used by Gilles Deleuze to articulate his conception of difference – or, more accurately, of differentiation – as the condition of existence is ‘bifurcation’, the continuous process of splitting into ever‐more new pathways. Bifurcation is reflected in the life and music of the Texas‐born composer John Sharpley (b. 1955), who moved to Singapore in 1986. In his Emptiness (2002) for Chinese and Western string quartets, chorus and percussion, which sets excerpts from Buddhist and Taoist texts, musical bifurcation is observed in the continuous splitting of modality from chromaticism at multiple structural levels. Musical bifurcation is paralleled in bifurcation in Sharpley's life, as reflected in his transcontinental migration and multiple mystical experiences. As a concept, bifurcation represents the diametric opposite of syncretism (combining), which dominates composers’ discourse and theorists’ analyses. By attending to the dynamics of bifurcation as musical and biographical processes, we might come to appreciate in its full ambiguity and complexity music that crosses cultures. In doing so, we gain further insights into musical orientalism.