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Silence and Slow Time.

Article Excerpt
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 "a way of thinking [about music] that is faithful to the experience of playing or listening during a real performance" (p. 3) and, Boykan would argue, an approach to 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 "as 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 to learn how to place it within a narrative that unfolds step 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 to musical time and musical narrativity are presented and applied to 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 to the work's unique narrative. Boykan is careful to point out that narrative should not be understood as something akin to a literary "plot" but as a description of the...

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