Silence and Slow Time (review)

Abstract

MUSIC THEORY / FILM THEORY Silence and Slow Time. By Martin Boykan. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 2004. [ix, 255 p. ISBN 0-8108-4751-5. $49.95.] Music examples, index. Musical time and the various ways musical phenomena are transformed over time are the fundamental themes considered by Martin Boykan in his insightful and thought-provoking book. The author suggests way of thinking [about music] that is faithful the experience of playing or listening during a performance (p. 3) and, Boykan would argue, an approach musical analysis that more closely resembles the act of composition. Boykan proposes a diachronic mode of musical analysis that considers not only the function of musical details but also the temporal location of such details. He contrasts his diachronic mode of analysis with a synchronic view of music whereby a composition is understood a spatial object, something outside of time that we can perceive all at once (p. 3). In his words, to construe a musical event is learn how place it within a narrative that unfolds by step (p. 29). By focusing our attention on events and their transformations and developments within musical time, a unique musical narrative emerges. The book is divided into two parts. In part 1, Boykan's views relating musical time and musical narrativity are presented and applied the analysis of tonal and pre-tonal music. Musical time, Boykan argues, unfolds at a much slower pace than real time. In this dramatically decelerated experience of musical time, each event assumes a much greater potential for significance or meaning. The various changes undergone by specific musical phenomena within this time frame contribute the work's unique narrative. Boykan is careful point out that narrative should not be understood as something akin a literary plot but as a description of the individual musical processes that emerge over the course of a work. Numerous passages from the tonal repertoire are examined in part 1. Boykan's description of the ambiguous E that opens the first movement of Haydn's String Quartet, op. 50, no. 6, offers a compact and illuminating introduction many of the ideas he pursues throughout the book. Noting that the work appears begin in the middle of a cadence, Boykan examines the ensuing musical narrative by focusing on the many formal implications and developmental processes associated with this opening and the troublesome E. In chapter 4, Inventing Tonality-And a Backward Look, Boykan extends his ideas of narrativity and musical time two madrigals by Monteverdi and a motet attributed Josquin. His analyses of these works are perceptive, suggesting alternative conceptualizations for the analysis of early music. In part 2, Boykan turns his attention the music of the twentieth century, focusing primarily on the music of Arnold Schoenberg, Anton von Webern, and Igor Stravinsky. Here, Boykan argues that, despite the many dramatic transformations and developments encountered in the music of the twentieth century, a strong sense of continuity persists in this music in relation the music of the past-a continuity based upon notions of musical narrativity. The strongest chapter in the book is Boykan's extended analysis of Schoenberg's String Trio (chapter 9). His analysis focuses on the changing meaning of smaller elements associated with specific row forms (usually tetrachords or trichords) and their relation the harmonic regions formed by combinatorial row pairs. Boykan convincingly details Schoenberg's formal decisions relating these regions as well as how Schoenberg is able imply, evade, or merge into or out of one region the other. Recognizing the rather enigmatic conclusion of the work, Boykan relates this provisional ending the trio's program. Boykan compares the sense of continuation experienced at the end of the work with the composer's feelings relating death and mortality following his heart attack. …