Being Time: Case Studies in Musical Temporality
- Submitting institution
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The University of Huddersfield
: A - Music
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies : A - Music
- Output identifier
- 70
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
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- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Academic
- ISBN
- 9781623568955
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- -
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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2
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- Being Time explores the perceptual role of the listener through a series of individual case studies focusing 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. There are no other existing texts on the subject of temporality in music discussing the work of such a broad range of practitioners. The book’s format is also unusual, in that each case study chapter is followed by a ‘postlude’ in which one of the other contributing authors offers further reflections. These encounters take into account the fact that each listener is a complex aggregate of different histories and faculties. The authors compare their responses to features such as repetition, speed, duration, and scale from a perceptual standpoint, drawing reflections on aspects such as musical memory and anticipation. The observations focus on the listening experience from an autoethnographic, personal, and anecdotal standpoint, rather than through established modes of musical analysis. This shift in focus offers a broad range of disciplinary perspectives from which to understand issues of radical temporality in recent musical practice, but it also aims to offer a new research paradigm for scholars to engage with experimental practice. The commentaries and responses between the book’s authors are thus of particular note: the approach aims to create an environment of rigorous self-reflection, establishing a network of correspondences throughout the book. Being Time refutes the idea that there is an idealised listener, and thus avoids the assumption that the works discussed will prompt specific responses. The autoethnographic approach aims to foster communicative reflexivity in terms of our listening habits and predilections. Though it is conversational in tone and sometimes idiosyncratic in approach, the book’s research methodology is both original and rigorous.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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