by David Doty
What does a timeless piece of music sound like? “Trick question,” you say, “You’re using a mixed metaphor!” and indeed I am. “Timeless” could refer to that which is valued and esteemed by critics over time, or it could be used to describe something without or lacking time (although we might not use the word this way often).
A timeless piece of music, one which lacks the element of time or duration, doesn’t sound like anything at all. Music is temporal of course, that is, limited by time. A piece or a song has a beginning and an end. Furthermore, [audible] music is made of sound (sound organized by humans according to John Cage
) which is really air waves vibrating at particular frequencies, things that are timed. With no time there is no repetition or frequency and no sound and consequently no music!
Thus, all music is rooted in time, but not all music, and in fact much of music, does not help the listener to perceive the passage of time. How the listener’s perception of time is manipulated in Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps
(1941) is the subject of a forth-coming series of blog posts.
What does a timeless piece of music sound like? “Trick question,” you say, “You’re using a mixed metaphor!” and indeed I am. “Timeless” could refer to that which is valued and esteemed by critics over time, or it could be used to describe something without or lacking time (although we might not use the word this way often).
A timeless piece of music, one which lacks the element of time or duration, doesn’t sound like anything at all. Music is temporal of course, that is, limited by time. A piece or a song has a beginning and an end. Furthermore, [audible] music is made of sound (sound organized by humans according to John Cage
) which is really air waves vibrating at particular frequencies, things that are timed. With no time there is no repetition or frequency and no sound and consequently no music! Thus, all music is rooted in time, but not all music, and in fact much of music, does not help the listener to perceive the passage of time. How the listener’s perception of time is manipulated in Olivier Messiaen’s Quatuor pour la fin du Temps
(1941) is the subject of a forth-coming series of blog posts.
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