Research - Durham University

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Forthcoming research seminars

IAS Fellow's Public Lecture - Rhythm, time experience and the body: Re-thinking musical time

6th November 2012, 20:00, Senate Room, University College, Professor Udo Will

In Western music one meets the idea that time is a pre-existing framework that organises sound events and gives them unity – an idea that finds its visual expression in the scores of Western music. Many other cultures do not feel the need for an external, abstract time frame, because for them music only exists in and through the creation of sound sequences, and thus musical time is linked to production of and interaction with these sounds.

What do these different cultural concepts tell us about time and time experience? Why is there such diversity? What is it about time that allows for this variety of ideas and experiences about time? Following an inspection of basic features of time perception and revisiting a core typology of time experiences (simultaneity, sequential order, now, duration) on the background of recent cognitive research, the argument is put forward that musical time perception is a complex, non-unitary process, and that experienced time is a construct of an embodied brain - with all possibilities and limitations that this entails.

Further information about Professor Udo Will

This lecture is free and open to all.

Directions to University College (Castle)

Map - University College is denoted as building No: 23

Contact enquiries.ias@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.

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