Paper ID: 2206.01305

The Musical Arrow of Time -- The Role of Temporal Asymmetry in Music and Its Organicist Implications

Qi Xu

Adopting a performer-centric perspective, we frequently encounter two statements: "music flows", and "music is life-like". This dissertation builds on top of the two statements above, resulting in an exploration of the role of temporal asymmetry in music (generalizing "music flows") and its relation to the idea of organicism (generalizing "music is life-like"). We focus on two aspects of temporal asymmetry. The first aspect concerns the vastly different epistemic mechanisms with which we obtain knowledge of the past and the future. A particular musical consequence follows: recurrence. The epistemic difference between the past and the future shapes our experience and interpretation of recurring events in music. The second aspect concerns the arrow of time: the unambiguous ordering imposed on temporal events gives rise to the a priori pointedness of time, rendering time asymmetrical and irreversible. A discussion on thermodynamics informs us musically: the arrow of time effectuates itself in musical forms by delaying the placement of the climax. Organicism serves as a mediating topic, engaging with the concept of life as in organisms. On the one hand, organicism is related to temporal asymmetry in science via a thermodynamical interpretation of life as entropy-reducing entities. On the other hand, organicism is a topic native to music via the universally acknowledged artistic idea that music should be interpreted as a vital force possessing volitional power. With organicism as a mediator, we better understand the role of temporal asymmetry in music. In particular, we view musical form as a process of expansion and elaboration analogous to organic growth. Finally, we present an organicist interpretation of delaying the climax: viewing musical form as the result of organic growth, the arrow of time translates to a preference for prepending structure over appending structure.

Submitted: Jun 2, 2022