Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Lidov, David

Titel

Our time with the druids: What (and how) we can recuperate from our obsession with segmental hierarchies and other "tree structures"

Ist Teil von

• Contemporary music review, 1997-01, Vol.16 (4), p.1-28

Ort / Verlag

Taylor & Francis Group

Erscheinungsjahr

1997

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Taylor & Francis

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Linguistic structure has modeled musical structure since the Middle Ages. Recent examples are Nattiez's distributional analysis and Lerdahl and Jackendoff's formal generative theory. Overall, this research has misconstrued music in characterizing music generally as a combination of distinct units. Phenomenologically, we may encounter music as a continuum and/or as a combinational series. This is a salient, non-trivial difference between music and speech, one which ought to be reflected by differences between linguistic and musical theory. The capacity of music to appear continuous is an essential possibility of the medium and of the structures which the medium supports. The musical realization of balance and tension between continuity and segmental articulation is modulated by stylistic options and demands its own structural description. (And for these, tree diagrams are particularly inapt). Some historical concepts, practices and theories in music elaborate pertinent representations for the continuity of music.