Organized Time: Rhythm, Tonality, and Form by Jason Yust (review)
- Organized Time: Rhythm, Tonality, and Form by Jason Yust
In "Musicalische Logik: Ein Beitrag zur Theorie der Musik," Hugo Riemann argued for a "logic" of musical structure that brings together harmonic and metrical considerations in attempt to capture the temporal experience of music, which he conceived as a dialectical process (Hugibert Ries [Hugo Riemann], "Musical Logic: A Contribution to the Theory of Music," [End Page 451] trans. Kevin Mooney, Journal of Music Theory 44, no. 1 [Spring 2000]: 100–26). The same inclination to articulate temporality has been reflected more recently in different strands of music theory: Christopher Hasty grounds his theory of meter in its ability to project from a given duration to another (Christopher Hasty, Meter as Rhythm [New York: Oxford University Press, 1997]); Fred Lerdahl develops a model of pitch space to trace the tonal journey manifested over time (Fred Lerdahl, Tonal Pitch Space [New York: Oxford University Press, 2001]); and Janet Schmalfeldt considers romantic form as characterized by the process of "becoming" (Janet Schmalfeldt, In the Process of Becoming: Analytic and Philosophical Perspectives on Form in Early Nineteenth-Century Music [New York: Oxford University Press, 2011]). Situating Organized Time in this context, Yust's work stands out by taking up Riemann's initiative with yet another renewed approach to integrate studies of rhythm, tonality, and form under a concept of structural time.
While similar efforts have been made by Kofi Agawu and James Webster, Yust sheds new light on not only the interrelationship between these musical parameters but also their respective properties (Kofi Agawu, Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music [New York: Oxford University Press, 2009]; James Webster, "Formenlehre in Theory and Practice," in Musical Form, Forms & Formenlehre: Three Methodological Reflections, ed. Pieter Bergé [Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2009], 123–39). He starts off by addressing the apparent phenomenological dilemma of temporality and structure with the idea of temporal structure—the hierarchical relationships between events unfolded over time. He contends that multiple temporal structures or dimensions, which include primarily rhythm, tonality, and form, constitute our experience of musical time. These structural modalities, Yust maintains, are, however, independent of one another, and adopting such a perspective would allow us to discern both conflict and reciprocity between dimensions. Since "the basic formal properties of temporal structure are the same regardless of which dimension defines the structure" (p. 8), they are modelled throughout the book by maximal outerplanar graphs (MOPs), which can represent a hierarchy of timespans and therefore associate musical time with hierarchical depth.
Having laid out his conceptual framework, Yust proceeds to demonstrate how rhythmic, tonal and formal structures are individual "containment hierarchies of timespans" (p. 8) in the first three chapters, during which he also impressively reappraises theoretical concepts across all the three subfields in order to clarify the imperative independence of temporal structures. Chapter 1 unravels the intertwined connections between rhythm, meter, and tonality, positing meter as an inference drawn from rhythmic structure and foregrounding the conflict between tonal and rhythmic patterns to highlight their distinction. In his critique of the Schenkerian understanding of tonal structure, Yust reconstrues in chapter 2 the Ursatz as reflecting tonal structure's preference for "a strong and stable directed progression" (p. 43) that outlines the tonic harmony, an exclusive criterion that separates tonality from dimensions of rhythm and form. Chapter 3 assesses formal structure based on "principles of melodic similarity and difference and grouping" (p. 60). Departing from the recent advances of "the new Formenlehre," it utilizes concepts of repetition, contrast and fragmentation, and caesuras as chief analytical categories to describe formal process independent of rhythmic and tonal considerations.
The theoretical foundations set up in the initial chapters then lead to [End Page 452] broader discussion of the interrelationship between rhythmic, tonal, and formal structures as well as more meticulous investigation of their individual properties. In chapter 4, Yust first introduces mathematical tools and concepts for...
