Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T06:15:33.951Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Creative Time-Organization Versus Subsonic Noises

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Albert Mayr*
Affiliation:
Academy of Music, Florence
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Much has been written and said about music's time, much less— at least in recent epochs—about time's music. Today this most subtle, yet most powerful form of music finds fewer and fewer listeners. It has become, in fact, harder and harder to listen to. The “congruent melodies,” i.e. “the rhythms of times which were given to us to alleviate our labors” (as the 13th-century music theorist had put it) have long since been silenced and drowned by subsonic noises.* In its organization of time, Western civilization has, to an appallingly large extent, replaced rhythmic aliveness with abstract measures, reducing it to a “functional mechanism” (Baudrillard 1974). The main tools by which these measures are set, the clock as we know it and the modern calendar, are obviously, taken as such, remarkable achievements, but in their impact on our lives they are not so much companions enabling us to be “in harmony with things at the right moment” (see the Chinese shih, Larre 1976) as they are hostile guardians “watching our steps.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

Baudrillard, J., La société de consommation. Ses mythes et ses structures, Paris, Gallimard, 1974.Google Scholar
Bielawski, L., 1981. “The Zones of Time in Music and Human Activity”, in S.T. IV.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boetius, A.M.T.S., ca. 520. De Institutione Musica Libri, Leipzig, Friedlein, 1867.Google Scholar
Carlstein, T. and Thrift, N.Towards a Time-Space Structured Approach to Society and Environment “ in: Carlstein, T., Parkes, D., Thrift, N. eds. Human Activity and Time Geography, vol. 2 of Timing Space and Spacing Time, London, Edward Arnold, 1978.Google Scholar
Chapin, F.S. Jr.Human Time Allocation in the City” in Human Activity and Time Geography, 1978.Google Scholar
Colquhoun, W.P., ed. Biological Rhythms and Human Performance, London, Academic Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Daniélou, A., Traité de musicologie comparée, Paris, Hermann, 1959.Google Scholar
Fraisse, P., Les structures rythmiques, Brussels, Erasmus, 1956.Google Scholar
Fraser, J.T., Time as Conflict, Basel, Birkhäuser, 1978.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gurevich, A.J., “Time as a Problem of Cultural History” in Cultures and Time, Paris, Unesco, 1976.Google Scholar
Iacono, G., Contributo allo studio delle “Percezioni temporali”, Milano, Università Cattolica, n.d.Google Scholar
IOANNES AEGIDIUS ZAMORENSIS, XIII cent., Ars Musica. (M. Gerbert ed. Scriptores ecclesiastici de Musica), 1784.Google Scholar
ISIDORUS HISPALIENSIS, ca. 630. Sententiae de Musica. (M. Gerbert op. cit.).Google Scholar
Jeannière, A., “The Pathogenic Structures of Time in Modern Societies” in Time and the philosophies, Paris, Unesco, 1977.Google Scholar
Joyce, J.A., Economic and Social Advantages of the World Calendar, Geneva, The World Calendar Association, 1954.Google Scholar
Kepler, J., Harmonice Mundi Libri V, 1619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larre, C., “The Empirical Apperception of Time and the Conception of History in Chinese Thought” in Cultures and Time, Paris, Unesco, 1976.Google Scholar
Leach, E.R., “Primitive Calendars”, Oceania XX/4, 1950.Google Scholar
Le Shan, L.L., “Time Orientation and Social Class”, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 47, 1952.Google Scholar
Lorenz, K., Gestaltwahrnehmung als Quelle wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis, Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1963.Google Scholar
Lynch, K., What Time is This Place?, M.I.T., 1972.Google Scholar
Maric, D., Adapting Working Hours to Modern Needs, Geneva, International Labor Office, 1977.Google Scholar
MAYR, A., “BRDO” Zweitscbrift 4/5, 1979.Google Scholar
Mayr, A., “Time-table in A flat Major: Audio and Subaudio Rhythms, Signals and Noises” Anthro Tech V/2, 1981 a.Google Scholar
Mayr, A., “Progetto per un'indagine sul gradimento di periodicità infrasonore,” Manuscript, 1981 b.Google Scholar
Mitscherlich, A., Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp, 1965.Google Scholar
Mosetti, F.Considerazioni preliminari per una legge sulle periodicità naturali.” Tecnica Italiana XI/8, 1956.Google Scholar
Niangoran-Bouah, G., La division du temps et le calendrier rituel des peuples lagunaires de Côte d'Ivoire, Paris, Institut d'ethnologie, 1964.Google Scholar
Nowotny, H., “Time Structuring and Time Measurement: On the Interrelation Between Timekeepers and Social Time” in S.T. II,* 1975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piaget, J., Le Développement de la notion de temps chez l'enfant, Paris, P.U.F., 1927.Google Scholar
Pöppel, E., “Oscillations as Possible Basis for Time Perception” in S.T. I,* 1972.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinecke, H.P., “Über Zusammenhänge zwischen naturwissenschaftlicher und musikalischer Theorienbildung” in Zaminer, F. ed. Über Musiktheorie, Cologne, Arno Volk Verlag, 1970.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, K.H. & Sclar, E., Access for All, New York, Columbia University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Schafer, R.M., The Music of the Environment, Vienna, Universal Edition, 1973.Google Scholar
Schafer, R.M., The Vancouver Soundscape, Vancouver, The World Soundscape Project, 1975.Google Scholar
Schafer, R.M., The Tuning of the World, New York, Knopf, 1976.Google Scholar
Schafer, R.M., “Radical Radio”, Lecture at Radio Renaissance, New York, 1982.Google Scholar
Schaltenbrand, G., “Cyclic States as Biological Space-Time Fields” in S.T. II,* 1975.Google Scholar
Veronesi, L., Proposta per una ricerca sui rapporti fra suono e colore, Milano, Siemens Data, 1975. See also Veronesi's pictorial work.Google Scholar