Temporal Transformations in Cross-Cultural Perspective

To advance any cross-cultural musicology we could do worse than to refine our perspectives on temporality. Yet labelling qualities of musical time – as if such qualities were static – locks in counterproductive essentializations, since categories like “linear time” and “nonlinear time” (Jonathan Kramer, The Time of Music, 1988) emerged from obsolete distinctions between the West and “the rest” and are based on misleading analogies to the physical world. Such polarized distinctions now seem insufficient. Indeed, any sense of stability in a temporal category is illusory, since even in musics of strict repetition, time and its perceivers are always moving. Thus it may be more productive to typologize temporal transformations as a way to focus on unfolding process. This article begins to address the question of how many ways musical time can transform. I develop a first approximation of a lower-level typology of transformation types. Refining the typology means integrating various cultural and structural features. Choosing the culturally and structurally weighted process of temporal augmentation as a case study, I focus on analysis and comparison of examples from Europe, India and Indonesia.