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This chapter examines the philosophical sources and evolution of musical metaphysics in late imperial Russia. Derived from a combination of the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer and Vladimir Solov’ev, this was an eclectic clash of ideas that evinced two fundamental components: music was seen as the ultimate form of unity; and it was believed to possess a theurgic power that could alter contemporary society. These assumptions gave rise to three basic beliefs that defined musical metaphysics: music could create social, cultural or political unity in response to the divisions of modernity; the experience of music offered a means of transcending linear temporality (musical time) through the experience of a “mystery”; and these powers of music were to be embodied in the music of a contemporary Russian “Orpheus”. The chapter concludes with an assessment of musical metaphysics’ shortcomings, embodied in the failure of Nietzsche’s orphans to bridge the social chasm between themselves and the common people (narod).

While conventional dictionary definitions would commonly set the concept of melody in the context of musical time, such definitions fall short because melody cannot be confined to music—the term is also used by linguists to refer to organized patterns of pitch within speech. Melody, if defined as “an organized sequence of pitches that conveys a rich variety of information to a listener” may be able to cover both speech and music for two different reasons. For one, melodies are sequences of tone that contain a wide variety of information. Also, such tone sequences stimulate rich mental patterns for the listener. To address how music and speech compare in terms of cognitive processing and structure, this chapter concentrates on intonation—organized sequences of pitch at the postlexical level. Also, the chapter studies how music is linked with linguistic intonation that suggests structural information.

This chapter is an introduction to and analysis of modern Balinese gamelan music, including: Time and Culture in Music; Balinese Gamelan; Basics of Balinese Gamelan via Oleg; Oleg's Architecture I: Tempo and Dynamics; Oleg's Architecture II: Melody and Figuration; and An Experience of Oleg, and the Uses it May Have.

This chapter presents Reich's response to a question about the next 150 years posed by The Musical Times as part of its 150th anniversary issue in February 1994. He says that while it is obviously impossible to say what will be the case 150 years from now in terms of classical music, clearly present tendencies and problems will lead to a very different situation than the one we find today. He is particularly interested in how digital sampling will be developed by composers, since that allows the use of literally any sound played by keyboard, percussion pad, or other instrument within a musical ensemble.

This chapter introduces the main themes and arguments of the book, claiming that, in the later eighteenth century, European art music began to take seriously the flow of time from past to future. Until then, music was simply “in time”; “earlier” and “later” mattered little to the way it was experienced and understood. From that point on, music added the experience of linear time, of time's arrow, to its essential subject matter. It could no longer be experienced with understanding unless one recognized the temporal ordering of events. The chapter also argues that this change in the shape of musical time was not a development internal to music alone, but rather, with the onset of modernity, part of a larger transformation in the way educated Europeans began to conceive of time.

This chapter outlines the extent of John Cage's influence in Darmstadt and elsewhere and documents how German composers, musicians, critics, and patrons reacted to American experimentalism. It suggests that Cage's ideas had helped introduce greater freedom in the use of musical material, new ways of working with musical time, and works based on process and conceptual compositions. Several articles published in the late 1950s and Cage's own articles also helped enhance West German conceptions of an American experimental tradition.

Many of Queen’s episodic songs from the 1970s present unique structural templates, ranging from compound to through-composed forms, to irregular patterns of repetition. This chapter seeks to identify underlying principles across these diverse formal plans, using the concept of musical time—the nature of successive musical events across a song. It is argued that Queen’s large-scale songs tend to present multiple temporal states across different spans of the song. At a local level, phrases tend to be highly goal-directed; at sectional levels, the sense of goal orientation is weakened, while retaining the impression of musical momentum. At the ends of songs, there is often some form of reprise or musical arrival, which is undercut by gestures that resist the attainment of closure. Queen’s large-scale songs thus feel like an ongoing and continuous musical journey, often into unpredictable territory, and one which comes to a temporary halt, rather than a complete end.