The Time It Takes to Listen

Abstract

This article argues that Beethoven’s Arietta Variations inscribe the activity of listening in their own melodic and harmonic processes. The argument proceeds from two observations: (1) that tonality anticipates the listening subject in the form of a “desire” to progress from dominant to tonic; (2) that the temporal representation produced by analysis is always minimally dislocated from the time of music’s sonic unfolding. A notion of “the time it takes to listen” describes the time it takes for the ear to bring to its completion the analytical representation of time and thereby accounts for this gap. An analysis focusing on the role of the trill demonstrates how the Arietta Variations reflect this supplementary temporality in their own unfolding.

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