Overture and Finale: Levi-Strauss, Music, and Religion

Claude Levi-Strauss's writings are filled with intricate discussions of music, seemingly intended to clarify his thinking about myth and ritual. His peculiar, idiosyncratic musical remarks point in surprising directions, posing a significant and continuing challenge to scholars of religion. In an important recent book, music semiologist Jean-Jacques Nattiez explicates Levi-Strauss's musical ideas and levels a number of strong criticisms. Drawing on the original texts as well as Nattiez's critique, I argue that while Levi-Strauss is certainly wrong about music, this very wrongness reveals dimensions of his project of considerable importance for our own discipline. Specifically, I find that Levi-Strauss's conception of myth, as it arises in the context of his somewhat bizarre ideas about contemporary music, raises difficult methodological and ethical questions about particularism and the necessity of comparison.