The Time of Music: New Meanings, New Temporalities, New Listening Strategies

by Jonathan D. Kramer

This innovative, provocative book offers a new, comprehensive theory of musical time. Exploring the qualitative, philosophical aspects of this elusive yet fundamental basis of music, Jonathan D. Kramer unlocks the dimensions of musical time not considered by theories that limit study to the concrete elements of rhythm and meter. By taking a larger view, Kramer grapples with the evasive, subjective elements of time --and supports his aesthetic speculation with hard evidence from musical structure. It is this engaging mix of abstract theory and practical application that securely ranks The Time of Music among the best contemporary music scholarship. Kramer draws on the diverse studies of philosophy, psychology, cultural history, and music theory to examine the qualitative elements of musical direction, tension, resolution, cumulation, proportion, pacing, and duration. Close musical analysis brings theoretical speculation back to real music and real perception. Focusing on the here and now, The Time of Music considers how contemporary Western listeners hear and understand the music of all eras and places. Through vivid examples of musical analysis, Kramer engages the reader with innovative answers to questions that reveal the depth of musical how this century s music differs from music of the past, how compositions are organized in time, how durations are perceived and remembered, how pieces begin and end, and the importance of technology to how music is heard, used, and created.

Genres: Music

493 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1988

Reviews

[Andrei Pogorilowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was about time… back in 1988 for a book like Jonathan D. Kramer's "The Time of Music" to appear because it was with this comprehensive piece of work that music started to cease being considered, in an almost exhaustive manner, "the art of sounds", as musicians themselves were indirectly encouraged to realise that time and not sound is the only ontological dimension of music. Kramer has a peculiar gift of revealing the "beyonds" of musical time perception and in so doing he actually teaches the reader how to look after the relevant aspects of music listening: Beethoven, Scönberg and Stravinski (to whom the author dedicates three separate "analytic interludes") thus become "new" composers to whoever reads Kramer's writings. In so doing, he is not only commenting on the temporal aspects of a few compositions, as J. D. Kramer, while depicting temporality, by no means foregoes pitch. In his analysis, sound is always a bearer of temporal significance. It illuminates the qualities of musical time and offers consistency to the Kramerian "jargon" which includes terms such as "linearity" and "nonlinearity", "vertical", "moment" or "multidirectional" time etc. Perhaps the best thing about this book is the way Kramer avoids proposing a "musical language". What he actually does is to create a general, yet solid theoretic and aesthetic framework into which musicians are supposed to fell free to explore the qualities of musical time both in listening, instrumental performance and musical composition. I have come across "The Time of Music" in 1995, a year after I had published a book of my own dedicated to music temporal phenomena. I was thus amazed to see that there was no apparent clash between my discoveries and Kramer's theoretic work: he only gave me a larger perspective and a better motivation to continue the search for meaning in this elusive dimension that we call (musical) time.