Definitions of Tempomorphic Performance

Definitions of Tempomorphic Performance

Rob Doyle

Introduction

In this paper I shall argue for the perception of multiple temporalities in musical experience, and that the evaluation and study of these temporalities be termed ‘tempomorphic’, derived from tempo (speed) and morph (form). [1] By establishing epistemological evidence to support an argument for multiple temporalities, I shall then address defining characteristics of tempomorphic practice in music. To illustrate the development of music offering alternative time worlds, reference is made to compositional and recorded examples taken predominantly from Western acoustic and electro-acoustic music dating from the early twentieth century. There follows a debate of issues concerning the impact of tempomorphic awareness on performance. A discussion of implications for tempomorphic research concludes the survey.

Reflecting its concern with temporal issues, this investigation is divided into three sections: past, addressing the need for research; present, including extant examples and observations regarding research methodology; and future, addressing implications of issues discussed.

1 Past: the need for research

The context for a discussion of temporal hierarchies is divided here into two areas: ‘cognitive temporal perception’, or the subjective perception of passing time [2] (of the individual and of society) and issues of developing musical practice informed by ‘aesthetic awareness’. [3] Changes in emerging musical practice, it is suggested, give rise to an area of research investigating causes and implications of performance practice.

1.1 Temporal perception

Music in performance and reception offers alternative linear temporalities, emphasising differences between objective time and subjective time, as Johnathan Kramer’s statement regarding the meaning of music suggests:

The meanings of music are temporal owing to music's unique ability to create different kinds of time, often simultaneously, which resonate with the nonlinearity (and linearity) of our inner thought processes as well as with the linearity (and nonlinearity) of our external lives in society (Kramer, 1988: 15).

Of the two kinds of time referred to here, that of the individual and that of society, social temporality will be addressed first.

A precedent for perceived temporal hierarchies is found in existing literature referring to a communal, objective time which is co-existent with the subjective time of the individual. Objective time has been described as a ‘public neutral object’ by Bertrand Russell (1967: 9), while Martin Heidegger (1995: 464) has shown that ‘Everyman’ directs him or herself ‘according to it’. The subjective temporal perceptions of the individual are governed, according to the laws of thermodynamics, by the psychological arrow of time (Hawking, 1988: 145). It is the psychological arrow of time which supplies us with a sense of duration. The subjective distortion of durations from their objective time norm has been referred to by Igor Stravinsky as ‘psychological time’ (Kramer, 1988: 454). These durations are not necessarily the same in each individual, a reminder of the reliability of subjective awareness questioned perhaps most famously by René Descartes (1994: 76). However, attempts to quantify the psychological present have supplied a measurement of approximately ‘3 seconds’:

This discussion [of the measurement of subjective duration] in turn leads to the phenomenon of the 'psychological present', which is the critical period of time within which we can perceive and organize a succession of events. Though it is not an absolute time period, roughly 3 seconds seems to represent this critical present. Fraisse, citing other studies, points out that the average length of a musical bar in religious hymns is 3.4 sec. The average duration of a line of poetry is 2.7 sec. Further examples (not cited by Fraisse): Most musical motives fit this 3-second period, as do most minimal phrases in language (Epstein, 1995: 510-11).

A development of the idea of more than one temporality is found in the results of investigations into theories of timeworlds, or ‘Umwelts’. [4] Jokob von UexKüll (1921), J.T. Fraser (1982), and Johnathan Kramer (1988) (representing the respective disciplines of biology, philosophy, and musicology) show a line of evolving research concerned with species-specific temporal hierarchies and their interdisciplinary representation (see table below).

Table 1: Temporal hierarchies defined as umwelts

Temporal level / Analysis
Von UexKüll / Fraser / Kramer
Biological / Cognitive / Musical
Umwelt 1 / Atemporal / Now / Concepts of past, present and future do not exist, nor do those of before and after / Vertical
Umwelt 2 / Prototemporal / First time / Events are not necessarily simultaneous, but their temporal position is distinguished only statistically / Moment
Umwelt 3 / Eotemporal / Cause/effect / Cause and effect, symmetrical / Symmetrical
Umwelt 4 / Biotemporal / Starts/Ends / Distinguishes past, present, future Differentiates between beginnings and endings / Non-directed Linear
Umwelt 5 / Nootemporal / Personal / Personal identity and free will Beginnings and endings remembered and anticipated / Linear
Umwelt 6 / Sociotemporal / Cultural / Hyper
linear

Sources: Von UexKüll (1957, pp. 28-9), Fraser (1982, p. 19), and Kramer (1988, pp. 394-7).

Table 1 demonstrates relationships of hierarchical levels between the biological theories of von UexKüll, the temporal theories of Fraser, and the musical interpretations of temporalities suggested by Kramer. Kramer has pointed out that theories of hierarchical temporality described by Fraser help us to understand musical concepts such as ‘vertical’ and non-linear (Kramer, 1988: 394).

The development of umwelt theory also reflects the development of an interdisciplinary aesthetic with possible implications for investigative methodologies. One such implication is that the study of tempomorphics may benefit from the use of models from more than one discipline. Further evidence supporting alternative evaluations of passing time reflects cultural values, establishing categories including sacred, biological, and polychronic time is provided by Edward Hall (1984: 13). (See table 2).

Table 2: Hall’s categories of time

· Biological

· Personal

· Physical

· Metaphysical

· Micro

· Sync

· Sacred

· Profane

· Meta

· Monochronic time

· Polychronic time

Source: ‘How many kinds of time?’ (Hall, 1984, p. 13)

The interest in temporal concepts has been seen as a characteristic of twentieth-century aesthetics. As James Gleick observes in Faster (1999: 7), aesthetic attention to the temporal dimension has dominated the twentieth century, as the eighteenth century concerned itself with the understanding of mass, and the nineteenth century is characterised by the spatial conquest of the globe. Perhaps reflecting advances in the physical sciences occasioned by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, time in the 1900s has ‘swept to the foreground of twentieth-century art’ (Mitchell, 1963: 74).

It may be noted from these observations that twentieth-century performers and their audience share a developed awareness of temporality. However, because temporality is a cognitive phenomenon, any impact performance derives from temporal perception will be in the way the performer uses aesthetic language to inform his or her work, in addition to the prior aesthetic precepts of the audience. In his appraisal of perceptual hierarchies at work in Western art music, David Epstein has identified levels of beat and pulse, measure and motive, hypermeasure and phrase conveyed in through-composed musics, any and all of which require the presence of a conductor to aid ensemble performance (1995: 29-35).

To conclude this brief survey of issues relating to the perception of temporality, we see a variety of contributing factors to the subject’s perception of passing time in the experience of music. Social values and individual interpretation of information received aurally have been challenged and highlighted by works such as John Cage’s ‘4’. 33”’(1976).

1.2 Musical developments

The identification of musical style (both established and innovative) depends on the aesthetic evaluation of the listener, and may be considered in the three areas Leonard Meyer has defined. These areas, according to Meyer, are distinguished as the sensuous, the associative-characterizing, and the syntactical (1967: 34). This three-part model translates as stimulating physical, social, and musical responses in the part of the listener. While, as Meyer goes on to point out, a given piece of music may emphasise one area and minimize the others (1967: 34), each area combines with the others to contribute to the listener’s enjoyment. The work of Cage, in particular his requirements of the listener to reassess the aesthetic interpretation of music in society, foregrounds the importance of aesthetic interpretation.

It is necessary to address the resulting communication of meaning conveyed by a given example of music to the listener, noting that such meaning depends at least in part on an aesthetic interpretation on behalf of the audience. Two observations by composers of the twentieth century serve to remind us of the problems related to identifying meaning in music. Stravinsky’s famous comment that music is ‘powerless to express anything at all’ (Griffiths, 1994: 63) serves as an answer to the question which, in Aaron Copland’s opinion, ‘should never have been asked’ (1952: 13). Elsewhere the problems presented by the study of hearing are attributed to individual abilities of perception and cognition in the listener. The competence of the listener, including the ‘sociology of taste’, is challenged by the organisation of musical structure (Wellek, 1979: 115-21). The point Wellek makes has similarities with that made by Ernst Gombrich regarding the ‘innocent eye’ and, to paraphrase the art historian, the share of the artwork taken by the beholder (Gombrich, 1968: 169).

Concluding this overview addressing issues of meaning in music, the importance of temporal issues in relation to the organisation of music (and the cognition of that organisation) is emphasised. According to Stravinsky, after refuting the musical power of expression, ‘[t]he phenomenon of music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time,’ (quoted in Griffiths, 1994: 63). Furthermore, in The Role of Timing Patterns in Recognition of Emotional Expression, it is argued that timing is often regarded as the most fundamental aspect of musical performance, in addition to the perceived operation of different hierarchical levels denoted by temporal patterns in music (Juslin and Madison, 1999: 197-221).

Changes in aesthetic interpretation of music in society discussed above have contributed to an emergent style of music-making, an example of which is ‘Ambient’ music, named by Brian Eno (1996: 293). Eno is quoted here to supply a description of cultural conditions giving rise to his style of ambient music:

In 1978 I released the first record which described itself as Ambient Music, a name I invented to describe an emerging musical style.

It happened like this. In the early seventies, more and more people were changing the way they were listening to music. Records and radio had been around long enough for the novelty to wear off, and people were wanting to make quite particular and sophisticated choices about what they played in their homes and workplaces, what kind of sonic mood they surrounded themselves with. […] I was noticing that my friends and I were making and exchanging long cassettes of music chosen for its stillness, homogeneity, lack of surprises and, most of all, lack of variety. We wanted to use music in a different way – as part of the ambience of our lives – and we wanted it to be continuous, a surrounding (Eno, 1996: 293).

The ambient style finds musical precedence in the early twentieth-century furniture music of Erik Satie and ‘Les Six’ (Griffiths, 1994: 68). Modern music, Griffiths tells us conveniently, commenced with Debussy’s flute melody in his ‘Prelude a ‘L’apres-midi d’un faun’ (1892-4) (Griffiths, 1994: 4), while the origins of ambient music has been identified among the works of Mahler (Prendergast, 2001: 4). It is possible that the location of a future style of music in the work of a composer of the previous century reflects evidence supporting theories of the ‘hermeneutic circle’ as much as aesthetic and stylistic musical development. [5]

One (perhaps the first) example of ambient music – Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for airports – is a realisation of Debussy’s concern with providing music for the century of the aeroplane (Prendergast, 2000: 3). The ethos of ambient music features elements Heinrich Schenker, in marked contrast to Debussy, suggests should be omitted from music:

The life of a motif is represented in an analogous way. The motif is led through various situations. At one time, its melodic character may be tested; at another time, a harmonic peculiarity must prove its valour in unaccustomed surroundings; a third time, again, the motif is subjected to some rhythmic change: in other words, the motif lives through its fate, like a personage in a drama. […] Thus it is illicit, according to the laws of abbreviation, to present the motif in a situation which cannot contribute anything new to the clarification of its character. No composer could hope to reveal through overloaded, complicated, and unessential matter what could be revealed by few, well-chosen, fatal moments in the life of a motif. It will be of no interest at all to hear how the motif, metaphorically speaking, makes its regular evening toilet, takes its regular lunch, etc (Schenker, 1973: 13).

Schenker's emphasis here is on the syntactical representation of dramatic narrative. However, interdisciplinary aesthetics of the twentieth century developed the abandonment of narrative, producing, according to one observer, a style characterised by 'no texture, no drawing, no light, no space, no movement, no object, no subject, no symbol, no form...no pleasure, no pain' (Reinhardt, quoted by Polin, 1989: 226). This Minimalist style, especially in the promotion of a non-narrative aesthetic, underpins music composed and performed to function as a background to the regular toilet and lunch of the international traveller in the environment of the airport (Eno, 1996: 295).

In order to identify how performance technique has incorporated aesthetic considerations discussed above, it is necessary to define conventional performance.

A recorded example of conventional performance displaying cultural text, instrumental virtuosity of the solo artist, the use of technology, and improvisation in performance is Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Star Spangled Banner’ (1994). Comparison to performance models indicating requirements to achieve expression (resulting from research into artificial systems of emotional expression), provides a series of criteria aiding definition of performance. The performance model suggested by Clarke and Windsor (2000: 277-313) specifies six components (see table 3).