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Basic questions
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Does music exist in time or does time exist
in music?
How does music structure time, and how
does time structure music?
What different types of time are experienced
during the listening process?
Is the temporal structure in the music, in the
performance, or in the listening?
Types of time
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Absolute time
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real time of the perfomance
clock time of a soundfile
social time of concerts
biological time of the listener
Musical time
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directed time: goal-oriented
gestural time: upbeats, endings and beginings
Durational time: proportions and perceived length
Vertical time: the extended now
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment of in and out of time.
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
T.S.Elliot
Soundbytes
 Arve Henriksen: White Gravel (2’12)
 Olivier Messiaen: Regard XVI
 How
do we experience time in these excerpts?
 What forces contribute to our sense of time here?
 What is characteristic about the development of each
piece?
Ingredients of Musical Time
 Directivity
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expectation, fulfilment, predictability; achievement, deferral or
denial of goals
 Continuity
 succession
and interruption of the order of events; discontinuity
 Linear time
 created
when earlier events imply later ones, and later ones are
consequences of earlier ones. Linear time is processive.
 Nonlinear time
 represents
the consistent and immutable principles in any piece
or section, which may be revealed gradually, but do not develop
from earlier events or tendencies. Nonlinear time is
nonprocessive.
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Linearity
• progression
• motion and change
• time becomes
• timing of events is
crucial
• left brain hears
sequences
• horizontal listening
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Nonlinearity
• consistency
• stasis and persistence
• time is
• presence is more
important than position
• right brain creates
patterns
• cumulative listening
Research project
“Improvisation – Interaction – Composition:
exploring feedback-systems as a compositional
model”.
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research models that describe the interaction between
improvisers and composers
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develop techniques for the creative exploration of this
interaction
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apply this knowledge to artistic co-operations, resulting in
musical works.
Peter Tornquist