“As time goes by” - Perception of tempo and time in music

Date

Jan 17, 2017

Time

4:40 PM - 6:10 PM

Speaker

Wolfgang Auhagen

Affiliation

Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg

Language

en

Main Topic

Psychologie

Other Topics

Psychologie, Gesellschaft, Philos., Erzieh.

Description

Starting point of the lecture is W. R. Talsma’s theory of a „metric“ interpretation of historical metronome marks. This theory postulates that today’s performances of compositions from the late 18th and early 19th centuries are wrong: fast movements are performed twice as fast as they were intended, because of a rapid change of time perception in the 19th century as a consequence of industrialization. This theory raises a lot of questions which will be discussed in the lecture. With respect to time perception in music, the question is whether changes in technical processes, in transport techniques etc. really changed tempo in music. If so, why was this change never discussed in books on music theory or musical practice? It can be shown that Talsma’s theory is wrong and that differences in the choice of tempi between performances of the 19th and 20th century derive from different interpretations of the expressive character of the compositions. The second part of the lecture deals with experiments and theories on (musical) time perception. Not only conductors and performers of music can develop precise ideas of performance tempi and keep them in mind but also listeners, even if the music is unfamiliar to them. This corroborates theories of internal „clocks“ in the human brain, developed e.g. by Ernst Pöppel. However, other empirical data show strong contextual influences on time perception in music, especially on perception of rhythm and long term durations. The theory of embodied cognition links human thinking and emotions to bodily experiences and seems to be good framework for the explanation of phenomena in musical time perception.

Links

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Last modified: Oct 17, 2016, 10:32:54 PM