Annotation for Kramer, Jonathan D.

The Time of Music

Annotation (by Bill Tilghman):

This sometimes informal, "nonlinear" book examines a wide variety of issues concerned with time and how it shapes the musical experience. That is, Kramer is concerned with musical time in general, not just rhythm and meter. In Chapter 2, he distinguishes between two basic categories of musical time, linear and nonlinear, as well as several subtypes, suggesting various modes of listening and understanding time in both tonal and post-tonal music. These distinctions underly several extensive analyses (mostly, but not exclusively, of twentieth-century music), including the three "analytic interludes" that make up Chapters 3, 5, and 9.
One of the most substantive theoretical discussions of the book occurs in Chapter 4, entitled "Meter and Rhythm." Using the paradigm of the typical four-bar phrase as a point of departure, Kramer briefly surveys previous accounts of the relationship between accent and meter, eventually settling on a conception that accords roughly with that of Lerdahl and Jackendoff in its distinction of three kinds of accent: rhythmic, metric, and stress. Unlike Lerdahl and Jackendoff, however, Kramer argues that the distinction between rhythmic and metric accent holds even to the deepest structural levels. This, coupled with a novel and highly flexible view of the necessary conditions for metric regularity, allows him to posit the extension of the metric hierarchy to the deepest possible levels, where the entire composition has a single metrical downbeat, which may be distinct from its primary rhythmic accents (the opening tonic and the final cadence).
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