Victor Zuckerkandl: Time (Part 3 of 4)
Music has often been regarded as a temporal art par excellence. Yet Victor Zuckerkandl is one of few to have recognized the extent of music’s capacity in revealing to us the phenomenon of time and temporality. As noted in the previous section dealing with musical motion, music is free from “things and places”—from our physical external world. This freedom is identified by Schopenhauer and others as precisely that in music which brings fulfillment. Music takes us out of our bleak external world of trials and temptations. But VZ views this capacity of music as being contingent upon our experience of music as a flow of time. “To one who is hearing music, the physico-spatial existence of the world becomes indifferent precisely to the degree to which music reveals existence as the flow of time.” (152) This contingency marks a sharp distinction with Schopenhauer: music through its connection with time is “peculiarly terrestrial, of this world” rather than being otherworldly.
As might be expected in a discussion on temporality in music, VZ deals at length with rhythm and meter and the relationship between the two, a relationship that he characterizes as a “synthesis of law (meter) and freedom (rhythm)” (160). The antipodes of law and freedom, however, turn out to be reciprocal in nature. For one cannot have freedom without having a law from which to be free. History justifies this idea. The employment of structured meter after the Medieval period of chant led to freer and freer rhythmic activity. Furthermore, the extent to which the rhythm deviates from metric accentuation determines the vivacity of music. “Tones talk music precisely to the extent to which they free themselves from the constraint of strictly metrical accentuation.” (164)
Meter in its own way is a measure of time, for “meter is not born in the beats, but in the empty intervals between the beats… in the empty intervals between the beats, in the places were ‘time merely elapses’.” (181) Meter as a time-measurer should not be thought of as a straight line, but as a wave, a cycle with crests and troughs. This concept of wave shows meter to be of a dynamic order, making it analogous with the dynamic qualities of tone referred to in previous sections. Every part of a metrical cycle is therefore “characterized by a particular metrical quality, which differs from every other solely by the direction of its kinetic impulse: the metrical order appears as a dynamic order.” (169) Meter is ultimately an “ordered working of forces.”
The unknowable mysteries of time have long been a topic of discussion among philosophers, scientists and psychologists. The “hairline of the present… evaporates into immeasurability, separating two oceans of nonbeing”—the not yet of the future and the already of the past. (155) The problem rests in the fact that time itself can never be the direct object of sensation or perception. Our perception of time is necessarily mediated through the changes of our physical world—that is, the measurement of time is an impossibility apart from measuring the motions of bodies. (209) To put it differently, we often confuse forces of things in time with time itself.
Here is where music steps in to save the day. For it is through music that the perception of time becomes possible. It is true that the forces or changes in time must be distinguished from time itself just as light must be distinguished from the thing illuminated. “But it is not true that [in music] only the tones are concrete experiential content, with time an abstract, empty form, only to be apprehended in reflective thought. No—through tones, time becomes concrete experiential content; the experience of musical rhythm is an experience of time made possible through tones.” (203) “Music is a temporal art in the special sense that in it time reveals itself to experience.” (200)
However, if music at once allows us to directly experience time, it also calls into question “the basic validity of the entire conceptual complex [of time]. The hourglass concept of time, it declares, is incompatible with the simple facts with which music confronts us.” (224) In music, the past and future are wrapped up in time’s present. To return to meter in its wave-form, beat one represents a completion of the previous metric wave just as it points ahead to beat two. In this sense, future and past are present. This is not to suggest that either a remembering of the past or an anticipation of the future occurs, for as soon as the listener does this, the experience of the present is arrested. On the contrary, “the present of musical meter contains within it a past that is not remembered and a future that is not foreknown—and not as something to be supplied by thought but as a thing directly given in experience itself.” (227) What this means in the end is that time itself stores the past and time itself anticipates the future. “I cannot anticipate time—time already anticipates itself. But the self-anticipation of time can be the subject of an experience. This is precisely what happens when I hear music. Without leaving the present behind me, I experience futurity as that toward which the present is directed and always remains directed.” (233)
Now to summarize the entire section (at the omission of two interesting “digressions” on repetition in music and Temporal Gestalt and a third discussion on musical form). First, what must be refuted is the idea that the physical time concept exhausts object time. VZ denies that physical time and musical time should be relegated to two separate realms. They share the same terrain. And since music has the unique capability of allowing us to experience and conceptualize time, music “has something very definite and essential to contribute [to the problem of time].” (246) The dichotomy of the physical and the musical can be recast as a dichotomy between the eye/hand and the ear. The knowledge of space that the eye and hand gain is proportional to their ignorance of time. “No eye has ever seen time; no hand has touched time. But ears have heard time.” (254) A sound image created by a piece of music is then a time image—“not an image in time but an image made of time.” (258) Time has broken into our image world via music.
“Thanks to music, we are able to behold time!” (261).
As might be expected in a discussion on temporality in music, VZ deals at length with rhythm and meter and the relationship between the two, a relationship that he characterizes as a “synthesis of law (meter) and freedom (rhythm)” (160). The antipodes of law and freedom, however, turn out to be reciprocal in nature. For one cannot have freedom without having a law from which to be free. History justifies this idea. The employment of structured meter after the Medieval period of chant led to freer and freer rhythmic activity. Furthermore, the extent to which the rhythm deviates from metric accentuation determines the vivacity of music. “Tones talk music precisely to the extent to which they free themselves from the constraint of strictly metrical accentuation.” (164)
Meter in its own way is a measure of time, for “meter is not born in the beats, but in the empty intervals between the beats… in the empty intervals between the beats, in the places were ‘time merely elapses’.” (181) Meter as a time-measurer should not be thought of as a straight line, but as a wave, a cycle with crests and troughs. This concept of wave shows meter to be of a dynamic order, making it analogous with the dynamic qualities of tone referred to in previous sections. Every part of a metrical cycle is therefore “characterized by a particular metrical quality, which differs from every other solely by the direction of its kinetic impulse: the metrical order appears as a dynamic order.” (169) Meter is ultimately an “ordered working of forces.”
The unknowable mysteries of time have long been a topic of discussion among philosophers, scientists and psychologists. The “hairline of the present… evaporates into immeasurability, separating two oceans of nonbeing”—the not yet of the future and the already of the past. (155) The problem rests in the fact that time itself can never be the direct object of sensation or perception. Our perception of time is necessarily mediated through the changes of our physical world—that is, the measurement of time is an impossibility apart from measuring the motions of bodies. (209) To put it differently, we often confuse forces of things in time with time itself.
Here is where music steps in to save the day. For it is through music that the perception of time becomes possible. It is true that the forces or changes in time must be distinguished from time itself just as light must be distinguished from the thing illuminated. “But it is not true that [in music] only the tones are concrete experiential content, with time an abstract, empty form, only to be apprehended in reflective thought. No—through tones, time becomes concrete experiential content; the experience of musical rhythm is an experience of time made possible through tones.” (203) “Music is a temporal art in the special sense that in it time reveals itself to experience.” (200)
However, if music at once allows us to directly experience time, it also calls into question “the basic validity of the entire conceptual complex [of time]. The hourglass concept of time, it declares, is incompatible with the simple facts with which music confronts us.” (224) In music, the past and future are wrapped up in time’s present. To return to meter in its wave-form, beat one represents a completion of the previous metric wave just as it points ahead to beat two. In this sense, future and past are present. This is not to suggest that either a remembering of the past or an anticipation of the future occurs, for as soon as the listener does this, the experience of the present is arrested. On the contrary, “the present of musical meter contains within it a past that is not remembered and a future that is not foreknown—and not as something to be supplied by thought but as a thing directly given in experience itself.” (227) What this means in the end is that time itself stores the past and time itself anticipates the future. “I cannot anticipate time—time already anticipates itself. But the self-anticipation of time can be the subject of an experience. This is precisely what happens when I hear music. Without leaving the present behind me, I experience futurity as that toward which the present is directed and always remains directed.” (233)
Now to summarize the entire section (at the omission of two interesting “digressions” on repetition in music and Temporal Gestalt and a third discussion on musical form). First, what must be refuted is the idea that the physical time concept exhausts object time. VZ denies that physical time and musical time should be relegated to two separate realms. They share the same terrain. And since music has the unique capability of allowing us to experience and conceptualize time, music “has something very definite and essential to contribute [to the problem of time].” (246) The dichotomy of the physical and the musical can be recast as a dichotomy between the eye/hand and the ear. The knowledge of space that the eye and hand gain is proportional to their ignorance of time. “No eye has ever seen time; no hand has touched time. But ears have heard time.” (254) A sound image created by a piece of music is then a time image—“not an image in time but an image made of time.” (258) Time has broken into our image world via music.
“Thanks to music, we are able to behold time!” (261).
posted by Luke Dahn at 9:59 PM
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