Generalized Representations of Musical Time and Periodic Structures
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2650451 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Tenzer (0000-0002-4353-3654, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 369-386 |
| Publication date | 2011-09-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ethnomusicology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0014-1836 • E-ISSN: 2156-7417 |
| Publisher | University of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.5406/ethnomusicology.55.3.0369 |
| OpenAlex | W2326581380 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 12 |
M God, what has sound got to do with music?” quoth Charles Ives ([1920] 2004:54). Music—and musical time—are embodied phenomena, but every musical utterance filters through perception, and is subject to diverse and sometimes contradictory audiations depending on production, reception, context, history, affinity, and many other known factors. That is all semiotics. Yet despite the flux, there is the possibility of a systematic typology of time structures built from elemental musical and cognitive facts and their logical hierarchical orderings. A strict logical approach to taxonomy stands in contrast to methods that regard entities’ features as in re (i.e., inherent properties of things in themselves) or nominal (e.g., as construed by their perceiver or as an artifact of language; see Molino 2009:233–40). I propose a sketch of some branches of such a logical typology, positing a set of platonic ideal types of time and surveying messy, subjective reality from some distance. Although even a cursory survey of the literature on the anthropology of time or the study of musical time would distract from the concision I seek here, comments with regard to my motivation may be of use. My interest in an integrated, holistic, quasi-neutral, and logical approach to musical time grew from a life thus far spent among diverse music traditions. Those I studied did not convey the sense of intrinsically different temporality that has often been considered axiomatic for culture-crossers, as evidenced in much of what is written and what we are taught. From Durkheim (1915) and through to Geertz (1973) and many others, the tenacious notion that other cultures have distinctive time senses has been built up. But Gell ([1992] 2001) is one anthropologist who convincingly shows that although different philosophies or metaphysics or ritual practices of time are legion, it is quite another thing to say that individuals (let alone cultures) have fundamentally different experiences of time—except, of course, insofar as all people do as a function of their era, age, experience, capacities, backgrounds
Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive science · Context (archaeology · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Musical · Musical analysis · Musical form · Sketch · Sociology · Temporality · Typology · Utterance · Computer Science · Cross-Cultural and Social Analysis · History · Media, Communication, and Education · Music and Audio Processing · Philosophy · Psychology
| Citations per year | 0.14 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2012 - 2012 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |