Unusual durations

Stepping outside the traditional time frame of music

Callum Hedemann, n5341167

• Kramer, J. (1981). New Temporalities in Music. Critical Inquiry 7:3, 539-556.
• Grove entry on time and temporality in music

Representative composers

• La Monte Young
• Dary John Mizelle
• John Cage
• Leif Inge

Music is a temporal artform. It has the ability to make time effable, making us aware of the duration and succession of events, creating a presence and expectation in our sense of change and continuity. Duration can be measured as the continuation of some features of the environment measured against changes in others. The topic of unusual durations is primarily concerned with the philosophy of the nature of time, and the psychological way in which we perceive it.

Similar to pitch and harmony, the aesthetics of time in a musical context can be extended upon in a composition. Music engages with the phenomena of duration, succession and motion, the experiences of past and present, and senses of being versus becoming. Unusual durations can be a musical attempt to achieve states of timelessness and eternity, or other such fabled quintessential states of time.

"When one is presented with series of notes, they are usually heard as a coherent and continuous entity, rather than as a succession of isolated moments."

Questioning and challenging fundamental musical concepts of temporality can become a basis for composition. 20th century music explores concepts of time through discontinuity, non-linearity, fragmentation and chaos. Traditionally music affirms our sense of continuity and motion, but as a compositional device, many 20th-century pieces "challenge or even deny the possibility of a coherent musical present."

Linearity in music arises from the implications of earlier events to impact or direct future musical development. The manipulation and control of expectation of events to come, as well as an awareness of what has occurred, can create altered forms of time or durational structure in music. Other such temporal elements can be manipulated as musical devises to create 'unusual durations':

 Non-linearity, in contrast to linearity, is non-processive ("the antithesis of development").

 'Multiply Directed linear time' - a strategic reordering of a linear progression or linear process, 'such as beginning a piece with a cadential gesture'.

 Moment Form/Moment Time - Stockhausen formulated the concept describing ‘forms in a state of always having already commenced, which could go on as they are for an eternity’. "Moment forms stretch the horizons of the musical present to encompass the totality of each moment (which in some cases may be the entire piece)."

The elements of moment form are ‘self-contained entities', capable of standing on their own yet, in some nonlinear sense, belonging to the context of the composition.

"In moment form each section or element occurs within a self-contained horizon, a boundary that is impermeable to events that precede or follow. Pieces with a high degree of surface discontinuity and consisting of unfamiliar sounds (like much electronic music) are obvious examples of moment form."

 Vertical Time (- Within Moment Time)

"While there may be some presence of a temporal passage within isolated moments, in the most extreme cases even this sense of passage is lost." The absence of a more traditional and clearly definable sense of progression or development can result is a sense of stasis, or ‘vertical time’ (in Kramer's terminology).

Example piece: Reich's 'Violin Phase'.

In this example, the slow 'morphing' of the violins out of phase creates an odd sense of development. In one form, the elements are repetitive and static - a snapshot of what could and has developed, creating the static sense of vertical time. The real development lies in the violin tracks going out of phase and the resulting rhythms/harmony, but is unique because the form holds no past or future expectations within the music.

"Vertical time is non-teleological (without design or purpose), without any past retentions or future protentions impinging on one's experience of the sound event. The result is a collapse of the horizons of the moment down to a singularity, a single now." (Kramer)

Grove Music Online. "Musical time and temporality"

http://www.grovemusic.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/shared/views/article.html?section=music.45963.3.6&authstatuscode=200

Grove Music Online. "Time"

http://www.grovemusic.com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/shared/views/article.html?from=az§ion=music.43935

Kramer, J. (1981). New Temporalities in Music. Critical Inquiry 7:3, 539-556.

http://www.jstor.org.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/view/00931896/ap040027/04a00070/0?currentResult=00931896%2bap040027%2b04a00070%2b0%2c00