The Boundaries of Meter and the Subjective Experience of Time in Post-Tonal, Unmetered Music.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Rhythm and meter are vital and perceptually visceral components of twentieth-century music, yet scholarship that addresses the use and perception of these elements within this repertoire is limited. This dissertation explores questions of rhythm, meter, and perception in predominantly unmetered post-tonal music, with an emphasis on the works of George Crumb and Morton Feldman. Using an interdisciplinary lens spanning music theory, music cognition, psychology, and philosophy, this research aims to expand conceptions of meter by highlighting the rhythmic and metric complexities present within unmetered, post-tonal compositions. These concepts are then connected to the psychological literature on time perception to uncover the way time is perceived and enacted within these musical works.
Absent the regularity provided by a consistent meter and expectations generated by tonal syntax, localized fluctuations in musical structures can create shifts in the way listeners attend to the music, as potential for periodicity prompts attempts at entrainment. By combining views of meter as processive and as a habit of listening, it becomes possible to address a variety of musical structures ranging from quasi-metrical gestures to the emergence and subsequent dissolution of fully formed metrical moments within a predominantly unmetered environment. The changes in attending sparked by such structures can, in turn, affect the subjective experience of time.
Four modes of attending to meter are proposed, which describe changes in a listener's processive and "in-time" experience of the music as it unfolds. These four modes of attending are then connected to the psychological literature on time perception to describe how fluctuations in rhythmic and metric structures can create variance in the experience of temporality within a composition. An in-depth examination of the perception and rhythmic role of silences within music, along with an empirical study investigating the effect of silences on the perception of time in unmetered, post-tonal compositions, allows for further nuance in describing and analyzing this repertoire. A concluding set of analyses tests the theoretical framework and demonstrates how exploring the subjective experience of time in conjunction with an examination of rhythm and meter within non-metered twentieth-century compositions allows for a richer understanding of the "in-time" experience of this music.