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An Exploratory Inquiry into the Relationship between Temporality and Composition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2020

Eric Maestri*
Affiliation:
Conservatorio ‘Niccolò Paganini’, Genova, Italy

Abstract

In this article, I explore the relationship between the temporality of the composer and that of the music composed. This investigation starts with a fundamental presumption: composers, generally speaking, think in the future – their compositions will be performed and perceived at a different and later time than that of the compositional act, and will be listened by other persons. The hypothesis I develop in this article is that the musical work determines a deferred relationship between the listener and the composer, and that the compositional act is basically a dialogical act. Paul Ricœur’s theory of mimesis is helpful in analysing this dialogical mechanism through the notion of ‘temporal configuration’. By drawing on this theoretical framework, I interviewed five composers in order to make explicit the imbrication of the composer’s and listener’s temporalities in the musical work. This exploratory inquiry allowed for a concrete analysis, articulated in the words of the composers, of how they conceive the relationship between their compositional temporality and that expressed by their work.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2020

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References

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