Introduction.
Every investigator concerned with the question of time must be aware of the real significance of this notion. Yet, the concept of time (and, in particular, of musical time), being one of the primary ones, is commonly used as if its sense were self-evident and understandable for everyone. In reality, the notion of time is problematic in itself, and every exploration of it has to proceed from a system of relevant presuppositions.
The body of literature dealing with the fundamental question "What is time?" is immense. The present writer remains attentive to the inter-disciplinary aspect of the existing philosophical and scientific tradition. He is aware of the fact that numerous fundamental problems raised by modern science -- such as the problem of relationship between continuity and discreteness in the structure of universe, the problem of relation between object and subject and its influence on the image of reality, the problem of physical vacuum -- are, in a certain sense, intersected by the problem of time. In the present study, the analysis of structures of musical time is carried out on a large epistemological basis.
Methodologically, the work is attached to the phenomenological line initiated by Edmund Husserl at the beginning of our century. The basic concepts of Husserl and his school, such as intentionality, inter-subjectivity, constituting activity, are used for the description of living structure of a musical object. Essentially, the reasonings and analyses presented here are of phenomenological and at the same time of hermeneutic nature; they are related to the purely phenomenological problem of insight (Anshauung) into and analytical description of the fundamental structures of music unfolding in time, as well as to the problem of understanding and creative interpretation of musical text.
The writer.s attention is concentrated on West-European music of the 17th--19th centuries. The succession of three great epochs of the history of music -- baroque, classicism, romanticism -- is regarded from the point of view of the evolution of governing attitudes to musical time as a particular case of the classical triad thesis--antithesis--synthesis(Hegel).
The musical discourse is analysed in terms of relationship of two groundworks, the sounding one and the non-sounding one. A new object of investigation is specified: the musical time in a special sense as the second ("non-sounding") groundwork of musical discourse in its intentional realization in the course of performance. The problem of musical time is regarded in connection with the problem of articulation (in a broader, as well as in a special sense) of musical tissue.
The following notions are introduced in musicology: chrono-articulatory process, chrono-articulatory structure, non-sounding groundwork of music (synonyms: musical time in a special sense, time-energy, non-sounding expressive continuum, pulsating continuum, gravitational continuum), gravitational accent, slur-energy, ambivalent slurs, paradoxical slurs, etc.
Among the problems put forward in the present study, there is the question of completeness of musical reality and its description. An attempt is made to reveal the limits of the "classical" (i. e. the static) theoretical approach (paradigm) based on a "contemplative" attitude. The relation between the "classical" (static) and "non-classical" (dynamic) paradigms is treated as essentially complementary (N.Bohr).
Chapter 1. Philosophical and methodological foundations.
The nature of Time and the very sense of the concept of time are treated in different ways according to the historical epoch and the writer.s personal attitude. The plurality of ideas and opinions can be classified on the basis of various principles. The classification which has a special importance for us proceeds from the following: during the whole history of mankind time was regarded either in quantitative, or in qualitative terms.
The quantitative approach is related to the measuring of time; this is the static (metric in a narrow sense) mode of conceiving time. The qualitative conception of time is more complex and less familiar to an European who is accustomed rather to the so-called "tick-tack-time" (J. Dewey); hence, I. Prigojine had every reason to call the qualitative approach to time "a forgotten dimension". The development of philosophical and scientific thought has brought to a fundamental conclusion: the real time cannot be identified with the pure universal duration which seems so habitual to us. From the qualitative (dynamic) point of view time is synonym of such terms as process, formation, and becoming. In principle, every process is a defined time, every time is a defined process. Proceeding from this statement, we can start discussing the problem of specificity of musical time as such. It is important to underline that our task is to construct an explicit ontology of musical time and to describe its structure phenomenologically.
The musical time, when conceived qualitatively, not only unfolds in an external "pure" time, but itself is a specific form of time. One could say that the musical time is a process of musical formation taken in its multifarious entirety. Yet, this is an only too generalised definition. The very idea of musical formation needs a more exact specification. We are going to show that the originality of European music of the 18--19th centuries has its roots in the fundamental fact that the idea of entirety of musical matter taken in the process of becoming (or formation) cannot be restricted to the conception of sounding matter alone. Since the break (pause, caesura) in sounding matter is not the same as the breach of the coherence of musical process, we have to conclude that the living continuity of musical becoming (or formation) perceived by us has a specific fundamental cause which, in comparison with the physical sound, belongs to a quite different realm. The sounding matter is discrete; yet this discreteness cannot destroy the musical process in its continuousness.
This reasoning allows us to introduce the phenomenological differentiation of two modes of realization of musical sense in the process of becoming (or formation). The modes in question are termed "sounding" and "non-sounding". In the present paper we deal especially with the latter one which seems to be a relatively new phenomenon for musicology. It is important to pay attention to the following: in the sphere of our inner hearing we can -- at least in principle -- reproduce the whole structure of musical process. And if we have succeeded in doing this, there remains nothing physically sounding in the field of our hearing; in other words, thanks to the effort of our consciousness and memory everything is transformed into the "non-sounding", purely "psychological" form. Yet it is always possible for us to discern what can sound physically from what cannot be realized acoustically in principle, being at the same time an indispensable and real element of musical tissue. To put the same differently: if we imagine the structure of the musical whole as "iceberg", the non-sounding groundwork represents its submarine part, as it were. As a result, we discover the fundamental phenomenon of "non-sounding" pulsating continuousness of musical process; the phenomenon in question accomplishes the carrying function in the formation of musical whole.
This expressive continuousness can be defined as musical time in a special sense or time-energy. It must be differentiated from musical time in broad sense coinciding with the musical process as such, in its entirety.
Phenomenologically, the musical time in special sense is divided into a number of structural levels: (1) expressive continuousness; (2) irreversibility; (3) pulsation; (4) capacity to metrical rubato; (5) gravitation; (6) conflicting interaction with the "sounding" tissue, the three main forms of such an interaction being: (a) syncope; (b) non-metrical accentuation; (c) irregular accentuation in the case when some element of the "sounding" structure (i. e., a motif) is displaced in relation to the pulsating continuum which -- let us underline this once more -- possesses its autonomous gravitational and dynamic structure.
All the structural levels of the "non-sounding" continuum are to be conceived as related to energies and processes, to the principle of creativeness. In other words, they are unimaginable in the absence of an intentional creative effort.
The second major problem discussed in the book is that of articulation. Our task is to relate the notion of metrically and rhythmically structured musical time with the concept of articulation. We propose to conceive articulation as:
(a) the process of formation of musical structures on every level of hierarchy. The composer and the performer articulate the musical material, i. e. participate in the process of its ontological formation;
(b) the whole complex of interactions between the "sounding" and "non-sounding" groundworks. This close interaction gives birth to a continuous articulatory process in music; we designate it as chrono-articulatory process.
Chapter 2. The genesis of the fundamental structure of chronoarticulatory process of new European music.
It seems obvious that such notions as chrono-articulatory process and chrono-articulatory structure are closely related to the notion of rhythm. In a certain sense, all these notions are synonymous. The task of describing the structure of musical time is almost identical to that of describing the rhythmic structure of music. In both cases, the question is of the inner, immanent musical time. Yet, the very theory of musical rhythm still remains problematic.
Our deductions concerning the genesis of the fundamental time structure of new European music proceed from the hypothesis of three principal stages in the development of music in general and of musical rhythm in particular. According to the hypothesis in question, proposed by the outstanding Russian scholar M. G. Kharlap, the whole history of musical rhythm can be divided into three stages:
(1) the stage of oral archaic folk-lore, characterized by indissoluble unity of rhythm and intonation;
(2) the stage of quantitative (time-measuring) rhythm of the professional, yet still essentially syncretistic and oral tradition;
(3) the stage of qualitative rhythm based on hierarchy (differentiation) of accents. The latter stage is characteristic of the music as independent art whose works are distributed in written form. Kharlap.s hypothesis is used here as starting point for making clear the genesis of the new European time structure (determined by the interaction of "sounding" and "non-sounding" groundworks) in connection with the fundamental structural function of written notation.
There exists an essential difference between two kinds of intuition of time, the first one being peculiar to the epoch of modal and mensural (quantitative) rhythm, while the second one -- to the epoch of qualitative rhythm. The process of transformation of musical time from a discrete, static structure (time-quantity) into an immediately experienced expressive continuity (time-quality) lasted for about three centuries (from the 14th to the 17th). As a result, musical time has grown into a synthesis of continuity and discreteness, in which the discreteness appears in the form of living pulsation. In other words, musical time has become a kind of expressive pulsating continuum, i. e. a structural entity in which continuity has a fundamental priority over discreteness.
The phenomenon of "non-sounding", fundamentally continuous musical time had reached its full development by the edge of the 16--17th centuries. This was the epoch of real revolution which changed the whole picture of musical culture. Music became a wholly independent self-conscious expressive art; moreover, by the end of the 18th century it had grown into the central art expressing the very essence of the existential world of the man of Modern Age.
Chapter 3. The fundamental structure of chrono-articulatory process of new European music.
The phenomenon of a specific shift in accentuation (when the distribution of accents in the sung text does not coincide with that imposed by the norms of spoken language) appears already in the archaic folk-lore. In the case of a quantitative (discrete) rhythm of medieval music, such an inner conflict is related to the fact that the precise organization of music in time (which accomplishes the fundamental mnemonic function and is an integral part of the formal canon) remains indifferent to the accentuation of words; this is interpreted by the present author as the origin of "non-sounding" chrono-articulatory structure. The chrono-articulatory systems of both the archaic folk-lore and the medieval music belong to the oral epoch of the unity of music and verse. Therefore, the conflict peculiar to every "artistic" (not plainly "natural") rhythm -- i. e., the conflict conditioned by the presence of at least two mutually opposing sets of structural unities -- is expressed here as a discrepancy between the musical rhythm proper and the succession of accents in speech. This can be illustrated by the original texts of Homer.s poems, where the quantitative hexameter of the verse remains basically indifferent to speech accentuation.
Music as an autonomous art existing independently of verse became possible only in the European culture of the end of the 16th century. At that time, thanks to the development of writing, book printing, and score printing, the quantitative chrono-articulatory structure was liberated from the obligatory function of a specific mnemonic instrument (this can be assessed as "mnemonic revolution"). By the same time, music needed an inherent mechanism responsible for production of conflicting patterns -- in particular, of rhythmic dissonances. The same -- mutatis mutandis -- concerns the art of poetry existing irrespective of music. The process of separation of music and verse gave birth to a cardinally new kind of rhythm -- the rhythm of affective personal experience.
In music, this rhythm has a synthetic, continual, gravitational nature and is structured according to bar accents; the inherent musical mechanism for production of rhythmic dissonances is represented by the interaction of sounding and non-sounding structures, the latter one accomplishing the function of metre in an energetic (not quantitatively-static) sense. Owing to all this, it has become possible to produce syncope -- the kind of rhythmic dissonance which is specific especially for the written stage of the development of musical art.
It is necessary to be conscious of the fundamental difference between the principle of measuring and adding the discrete fragments of time -- the very principle which is the basis of the quantitative (modal and mensural) chrono-articulatory structure -- and the principle of functional (i. e., qualitative) calculation and divisibility of energetic impulses within the continually moving time tissue. It is the latter principle that determines the energetic nature of the chrono-articulatory thinking in new European music. In the case of the first principle, the most important is the size of discrete, strictly proportional segments (the most characteristic proportions being 1:2, 2:3, 3:4) which are added to each other; in the case of the second one, the most important is the conception of the cardinal continuousness and, hence, of the energetic differentiability of the affective flow of time. Here, the substantial is not so much the span between two "beats" but the hierarchy and relative weight of impulses which determine the qualitative, energetic relationships within the network of metrical impulses. This provides the possibility of metrical rubato (i. e., of the variability of time spans within the metrical network) which can be considered one of the most characteristic features of the rhythm of new European music. In contrast to the standard opinion, we must acknowledge that this kind of metre is not of a metronomic nature. Let us repeat once more: the metrical rubato is not an anomaly; it belongs to the very nature of the new European rhythm.
The expressive pulsating continuum has a specific structure of its own which, in contrast to the quantitative rhythm, corresponds to the relationship of heavy and light beats on every level of hierarchy, i. e. to the gravitational structure which is perceived by us independently of sounding forms. Moreover, the gravitational structure is present even in the most small-scale domains of time continuum. The gravitational field is structured according to either binary or ternary principle. The indication of metre, as such, designates the living and independent gravitational structure of the "non-sounding" pulsating field, rather than the distribution of dynamic "sounding" accents, the motivic structure, the structure of phrasing, let alone the harmonic structure. All the "sounding" elements of the musical tissue, with their own "accentual initiative" (which is by no means isomorphic to the metre), are superposed over that rhythmically structured "non-sounding" field.
The kind of gravitation which is peculiar to the "non-sounding" groundwork must be distinguished from the structure of gravitation determined by the distribution of principal and subordinate harmonic functions. The metric gravitation, in relation to the harmonic structure, is autonomous -- though both types of gravitation often appear congruously (when, for instance, the final tonic chord of a piece coincides with a heavy bar and heavy metrical unit). In such cases, the final cadence makes on the listener an especially powerful impression of general stability. Yet, there are numerous cases of incongruity.
One of the most impressive ones can be found in the final bars of the Piano Sonata Opus 106 by Beethoven: here the conclusion, being absolutely stable in the harmonic sense, paradoxically combines with an unsolved rhythmic dissonance -- since the final tonic chord appears on a weak beat. Such syncopes, as well as other paradoxical rhythmic phenomena of the same kind owe their origin to the development of written notation which allows to fix the structural conflicts inherent to the musical tissue; the presence of such phenomena form a sufficient basis to assume that the system of new European music possesses two fundamental groundworks, each one having a dynamic system of gravitation of its own.
In the book, we discuss also the problem of paradoxes of articulation which are as significant as the paradoxes of notation pertaining to the structures of time. The question is of the enigmatic lack of correspondence between the motivic structure (in which the iambic patterns prevail) and the system of slurs (which, in general, shows a tendency to underline the trocheic patterns). A solution to this paradox was suggested by I. Braudo who proposed the idea of ambivalent tones and ambivalent slurs. The notion of the paradoxes and ambivalent structures of articulation proposed here is an attempt to develop the conception of I. Braudo. Ambivalence is an important feature of the continual rhythm based on the hierarchy of accents; it is related to the basic structure of the pulsating continuum. The ambivalence of relationships in the process of unfolding the musical tissue is determined by the very quality of continuousness and of continuous pulsation. The ambivalent slur associates and at the same time detaches -- just like pause (or caesura) which often accomplishes both the detaching and the associating functions.
This ambivalence and paradoxicalness is a natural and inherent form of musical tissue in the continual rhythmic system. The pause (or caesura) represents a "quantum" of the "non-sounding" time-energy; similarly, the slur -- given that it is not merely a sign in the written text but a certain intentional and sensory reality pertaining to the musical performance -- bears a stamp of energetic impulse and therefore can be considered a "quantum" of the energetic "field of articulation". Within an ambivalent slur we perceive an energetic tension which is immediately related to the creative bodily behaviour of the musician. Thus, the ambivalence of "molecular" relationships is inherent to new European music. Paradoxicalness, incongruity, ambivalence -- all these qualities are natural and fruitful manifestations of the ontological viability of musical language; in theory, they must be taken for granted as indispensable elements of the chrono-articulatory process in its entirety.
Chapter 4. Stylistic manifestations of the chrono-articulatory structure of new European music (baroque, classicism, romanticism).
Here we demonstrate on several concrete examples the stylistic differences in the interaction of "sounding" and "non-sounding" groundworks.
The type of musical time peculiar to the epoch of baroque (Bach) is characterized by a high degree of expressiveness and tenseness. The pulsation is given in the form of a "small" pulse (axial pulsation). The polyphonic tissue is in constant intense struggle against the axial pulsation. The more intense the linear energy of the melodic drive, the more powerful the resistance of the pulsating "milieu" of time. The time becomes as if "deformed", curved, like the baroque space. The more refined the melodic ornamentation, the more powerful the expressive "deformation" of the flow of time.
The Viennese classical type of musical time is more balanced and rarefied, as it were. The pulse and the sounding tissue usually show the same distribution of accents. The dialectics of the process of formation has a rather extensive character -- in contrast to the highly intensive dialectics which is peculiar to the baroque. The general architectonic clarity of this musical style is associated with the classicism in other arts.
Finally, the romantic type of musical time represents a peculiar synthesis of both previous types. The prevalently "square" bar structure remaining from the classical style now combines with the increased role of the linear energy of melodic drive. The "non-sounding" groundwork reveals high resistibility and plasticity. This style has reached its heights in the music of Wagner and Brahms where the linearity and the tenseness of melodic drive are comparable to the same qualities in Bach, whereas the system of pulsating continuum is inherited from the Viennese classical style (and, in particular, from Beethoven).
Conclusion. The phenomenon of musical time and modern science
The phenomenon of "non-sounding time-energy" of music, suggested for consideration, finds several analogies with ideas of the 20th century science. Thus, continuity and irreversibility of musical time resembles H. Bergson.s duree. N. Wiener used the notion of duree for the grounding of cybernetics. According to V. Vernadsky, Bergson.s duree is an extremely important notion for modern natural science, since it is particularly appropriate to describe irreversible life-processes.
It seems to us that it is possible to conceive the structure of musical fabric as an intuitive and phenomenological analogy of the representation of reality in modern physics and cosmology (such as the problem of relationship between continuity and discreteness in the structure of universe, the problem of relation between object and subject and its influence on the image of reality, the problem of physical vacuum). It should be noted that we consider the musical substance not in terms of quantity, but as a phenomenological -- i. e., qualitatively expressive and intentional analogy to the relevant physical phenomena. Paradoxically, it is in the music of the 17th--19th centuries that we discern an artistic embodiment of the phenomena which became "visible" to science only in the 20th century.
Thus, on the "scientific pole" of the modern European culture, Time had been "forgotten" until the 20th century, while it was music -- the opposite "pole" -- that served as a vessel keeping Time alive for us. This allows us to assume that the synthesis of humanities, arts, and sciences is a real and essential issue of the culture of today rather than an Utopian project for some distant future.