Bloomsbury Being Time: Case Studies in Musical Temporality

Being Time invites a deep consideration of the personal experience of temporality in music, focusing on the perceptual role of the listener. Through individual case studies, this book centers on musical works that deal with time in radical ways. These include pieces by Morton Feldman, James Saunders, Chiyoko Szlavnics, Ryoji Ikeda, Toshiya Tsunoda, Laurie Spiegel, and André O. Möller. Multiple perspectives are explored through a series of encounters, initially between an individual and a work and subsequently with each author's varying experiences of temporality. The authors compare their responses to features such as repetition, speed, duration, and scale from a perceptual standpoint, drawing in reflections on aspects such as musical memory and anticipation. The observations made in this book focus on the listening experience, rather than on established modes of musical analysis. This shift in focus makes the text accessible and relevant to readers who are interested in exploring issues of temporality from a broad range of disciplinary perspectives. Review Being Time is fearless in its approach and makes a powerful case for musical experience as a fundamentally intersubjective encounter. It is deeply experimental-a humane and pedagogical project.Ryan Dohoney, Assistant Professor of Musicology at Northwestern University, USA, author of Saving Abstraction: Morton Feldman, the de Menils, and the Rothko Chapel (forthcoming)Being Time locates the potentialities of a work in a listener's ears, mind, and body; centralising listening as the phenomenal, temporal process of seeking identity, form, context, and meaning by reverberations that energize the sensory experiences of location, dislocation; the material and the immaterial; and the mirroring and unmooring of personal and social narratives. This book seeks to find and expand our ways of talking and writing about music and sound art practices, appreciating perception as a critical part of reception.Michelle Lou, Composer and Sound Artist, USA About the Author Richard Glover is a Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield, and divides his time between composing, and writing and presenting on the perception, construction and notation of experimental musics. He has received many international performances of his music, and has recently published book chapters on Phill Niblock and technology in minimalism. Bryn Harrison is a Senior Lecturer and Head of Composition at the University of Huddersfield. He has an international reputation as a composer and has received commissions, performances and broadcasts by many leading ensembles including the LSO, London Sinfonietta, ensemble recherche, Klangforum Wien and ELISION. Jennie Gottschalk (born 1978 in Stanford, CA) is a composer based in Boston. She holds a bachelor's degree in composition from The Boston Conservatory (2001), and a master's degree and doctorate from Northwestern University (2008). Teachers have included Larry Bell, Yakov Gubanov, Jay Alan Yim, Augusta Read Thomas, and Aaron Cassidy. Recent performances in Los Angeles (Dog Star Orchestra) and Chicago (Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra and Contemporary Music Ensemble). Her dissertation and current work explore connections between American pragmatist thought and experimental music. Current projects include a string quartet, a children's book, an experimental music blog (soundexpanse.com), and a residency at the Conway School of Landscape Design. For additional resources related to this book, please visit the author's website at soundexpanse.com.