FLUX AND STASIS IN THE MUSIC OF FELDMAN, RADIGUE, & YOUNG

Abstract

Abstract

The most fascinating aspect of music, for me, is that it is a time-based art. The fact that music needs a frame of time in which to unfold in order to be experienced by listeners sets it apart from art forms such as painting and sculpture, pairing it with the arts of dance, theater, and film. Creators of music must conceive their works with an awareness of form and structure in time, as well as the durational proportion, and the sequential order of sound events. Through interactions with a multitude of brain functions including auditory and temporal processing systems, and memory functions such as short or long-term storage and recall, and anticipation, music sculpts its listeners’ experience of time. The first chapter of my dissertation begins by presenting basic definitions of such brain functions as related to the perception of music. What follows is a discussion that connects these definitions to musical phenomena, borrowing concepts and terminology from Jonathan Kramer and Robert Morris.

Music operates on several time scales at once: While pulse, rhythm, meter are temporal elements of music that deal with milliseconds and seconds, form and structure are concepts that are involved with a time scale of minutes, hours, and in rare cases, days, or even years. The focus of Chapter 2 is music which prioritizes the manipulation of the experience of this large time scale. My own work has been influenced by musicians such as Morton Feldman, La Monte Young, and Eliane Radigue, whose music extends this time scale beyond the norms of the concert hall. Chapter 2 analyzes the various tools and concepts these composers have employed to create such works.

Chapter 3 is a discussion of two original compositions for string quartet, Sonare and Celare, presented as part of my dissertation requirement. Both works are directly informed and influenced by the concepts discussed in Chapters 1 and 2, however they display opposing approaches in their engagement with time. I explain the methodology and process behind these two works and reflect on the further artistic directions they have led me to.

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