Tempus ex Machina: A composer's reflections on musical time

Abstract

This article is divided into three sections (the skeleton of time, the flesh of time, and the skin of time) and clearly distinguishes conceptual (or Chronometric) time from perceptual (or psychological) time. The author firstly liquidates a few theoretical avatars such as rhythmic symmetry and then proposes a scale of complexity for duration that goes from order to disorder. The most important point is then addressed, namely, the absolute relativity of temporal perception which has become a function of the quality of the sound objects and the difference between successive objects. The degree of pre‐audibility becomes the true musical substance of the composer. In the last section the author sketches out some problems of memorization as well as the complex relations that exist between the several times of the listener, the performer and the composer.

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