Music of the Spheres

3: Music / Time

Music is about time. Music can exist without sound, but arguably, not without time. Accepting music as a temporal phenomenon, we will consider certain theories of the perception of the passing of time in music, as explored and articulated in the early years of the twentieth century. The philosophical distinctions between ‘perceived’ time and ‘measured’ time, as expounded by  provide a context for the new ways in which composers began to think about the passing of time at the beginning of the twentieth century. We will then examine ways in which composers have based the temporal articulation of sounds in music on predetermined series and simple mathematical relationships. In this respect, a contrast can be observed between the notion of ‘dividing time’ (apparent in our everyday experience – hours into minutes, minutes into seconds, etc), and the formation of time units from a small, multiply-able base. The latter approach extends the notion of Overtone Rhythms articulated by Henry Cowell.
Examples will be drawn from, among others, the music and writings of Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Igor Stravinsky, Conlon Nancarrow and George Antheil.

Prepartion

Class Documents

Audio & Video

  • Leonard Bernstein’s famous series of Norton lectures, The Unanswered Question, delivered at Harvard University in 1973, contain much to enjoy and offer a compelling example of the illustrated lecture. The entire set of lectures, lasting over 11 hours, is available to watch on YouTube. The section dealing with Stravinsky’s polyrhythms in The Rite of Spring starts at 34:48 in lecture 6, The Poetry of Earth.
  • BBC Radio 4: In Our Time – Time. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time.

Articles & Books

Philosophy of Time
Rhythmic Practices
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was one of the most famous and influential French philosophers of the late 19th century-early 20th century. Although his international fame reached cult-like heights during his lifetime, his influence decreased notably after the second World War. While such French thinkers as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Lévinas explicitly acknowledged his influence on their thought, it is generally agreed that it was Gilles Deleuze’s 1966 Bergsonism that marked the reawakening of interest in Bergson’s work. Deleuze realized that Bergson’s most enduring contribution to philosophical thinking is his concept of multiplicity. Bergson’s concept of multiplicity attempts to unify in a consistent way two contradictory features: heterogeneity and continuity. Many philosophers today think that this concept of multiplicity, despite its difficulty, is revolutionary. It is revolutionary because it opens the way to a reconception of community.