That's the beginning of the famous Augustine quote about time:
Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicare velim, nescio.
Which translates as:
What, then, is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.
This is to introduce short reviews of two books on time: the phenomenology of Husserl and Chanas on Dilla Time.
Phenomenology is the philosophical study of objectivity and reality (more generally) as subjectively lived and experienced. It seeks to investigate the universal features of consciousness while avoiding assumptions about the external world, aiming to describe phenomena as they appear to the subject, and to explore the meaning and significance of the lived experiences.
The two main divisions in philosophy are Anglo-American analytic philosophy and Continental (i.e. European) philosophy and phenomenology falls into the latter camp. Husserl is focussed on how we experience time and, in a certain sense, this is also interesting to J Dilla.
Husserl's discussion of time-consciousness is in the book shown above, dating from 1928. Here is how the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes it:
Finally, we should note that on Husserl’s view there is a further important dimension to perceptual experience, in that it displays a phenomenological deep- or micro-structure constituted by time-consciousness (Husserliana, vol. X, XXXIII; also see Miller 1984). This merely seemingly unconscious structure is essentially indexical in character and consists, at a given time, of both retentions, i.e., acts of immediate memory of what has been perceived “just a moment ago”, original impressions, i.e., acts of awareness of what is perceived “right now”, and protentions, i.e., immediate anticipations of what will be perceived “in a moment”. It is by such momentary structures of retentions, original impressions and protentions that moments of time are continuously constituted (and reconstituted) as past, present and future, respectively, so that it looks to the experiencing subject as if time were permanently flowing off.
I'm offering that because, frankly, I found it so difficult to make sense of Husserl's book I doubt I could summarize it. Here are some sample quotes from early in the text:
The evidence that consciousness of a tonal process, a melody, exhibits a succession even as I hear it is such as to make every doubt or denial appear senseless. [p. 23]
One cannot discover the least trace of Objective time through phenomenological analysis. The "primordial temporal field" is by no means a part of Objective time; the lived and experienced now, taken in itself, is not a point of Objective time, and so on. Objective space, Objective time, and with them the Objective world of real things and events--these are all transcendencies. In truth, space and reality are not transcendent in a mystical sense. They are not "things in themselves" but just phenomenal space, phenomenal spatio-temporal reality, the appearing spatial form, the appearing temporal form. [p. 24]
I read all 126 pages of the main text and it doesn't get any clearer. Husserl was very influential, one of the most important founders of phenomenology and a big influence on Heidegger, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. I may have a look at them at some point. But the main problem I have with this approach is that I find it almost impossible to connect the ideas proposed with either music as I perceive it or as it is practiced in the "Objective world of real things and events" and therefore, really, of little interest. Your mileage may vary.
Dilla Time is a far more fun read and it is an excellent introduction to the whole culture of black music, rap and hip-hop. It delves into the technical tools used by contemporary musicians in these fields and gives insights into the culture of sampling, beats and the collective nature of these kinds of creativity. So in that sense it is a terrific book and I was very pleased to have read it. I don't have any quibbles except that the concepts of rhythm dealt with aren't inspiring to me in any way. What I am most interested in, rhythmically, are things like the suspension of beat, unmeasured flow, also meter and the interesting effects of hemiola on several levels. Also, long term rhythmic direction and so on. But these are just personal preferences.
What would be the most contrarian envoi I could post? That's easy, an unmeasured prelude by Louis Couperin:
2 comments:
Regarding the unmeasured prelude if you look at the pictured score you see many slur marks. Sometimes obvious trills are written in whole notes. In addition there is a vertical arrangement of upper and lower stave notes. The performer is given strong cues at what to play fast and what to play slower and how to group them as phrases. So the performer is not playing a series of undifferentiated whole notes which is what they see. IMO It's better to think of them as fantasias with performer controlled rubato. Sometimes Froberger's Toccatas (written out conventionally) have a similar feel. Link: https://youtu.be/TKyraD26KCQ
Oh yes, there are lots of indications in the score as to phrase, shaping. I don't think we want to use the word rubato though as, since there is no fixed beat, there is nothing to rob from. The unmeasured prelude is a kind of fantasia. The keyboard score traditionally uses whole notes, which are not intended to imply any particular measure. In the unmeasured preludes for lute, they simply don't have any rhythmic indicators, which would have been in the form of stems and flags above the staff. On the staff itself are just signs for the fret. So the unmeasured preludes for harpsichord are inspired by the ones for lute.
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