<<<  <<  -- 3 --  Gordon Rumson    TEMPORAL CONSTRAINTS

Nor is it easy for us to escape the underlying assumptions of our age and culture. We can occasionally notice them though. Theodore Adorno commented on the design of zoos where the cages had been removed and other -- less overt, less criminal -- barriers had been redesigned to be almost invisible. Our assumptions are barriers too.

And one assumption is that modern music has advanced in freedom over the nineteenth century. In many ways this is true, but in terms of the individual's freedom to control time, the freedom of harmony, counterpoint and texture has often been achieved by relentless imposition of temporal constraints (witness a video of Philip Glass counting furiously under his breath). Like a factory based on the 'just in time' concept. Pianists from the nineteenth century played with a freedom of time that can not be imagined today (not least because the released recordings are often of only one take of a recording, and besides, recording itself freezes time) and would hardly be tolerated.

Freedom is just another word for doing it on (in) time. But then John G Bennett referred to the 'War on Time' as a fact of our existence...

Ah, music that makes us think. That is indeed rare. This is an example [listen -- 23:20-24:44]!

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