The structure of time in music
traditional and contemporary ramifications and consequences
pp. 136-149
in: Fraser, Nathaniel Lawrence (eds), The study of time II, Berlin, Springer, 1975Abstract
If we say that "time is an essential feature of the universe,"1 presumably we mean not only that time is built into the very fabric of the physical reality of the universe but that it also exists apart from man. But, since man is himself part of the fabric of that same physical reality, there is ultimately no way to separate his consciousness from it. He is inextricably bound up in it; his perception and consciousness of the universe are mental reflections and refractions of it. Because temporal order in music is an ordering or rhythmatization of something other than itself — sound vibrations which have their own interacting laws of autonomous physical structure and artistic musical combination, music provides us with a cosmic metaphor in which we may examine more closely and directly the properties of duration, continuity, and the direction of events, as well as their relation to repetition and recurrence of event patterns and their connections with the functions of perception and memory.