Multiple and Non-Linear Time in Beethoven's Opus 135

Multiple and Non-Linear Time in Beethoven's Opus 135
Author(s): Jonathan D. Kramer

Source: Perspectives of New Music , Spring - Summer, 1973, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Spring -
Summer, 1973), pp. 122-145
Published by: Perspectives of New Music
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/832316
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MULTIPLE AND NON-LINEAR
TIME IN
BEETHOVEN'S OPUS 135
JONATHAN D. KRAMER
"Music makes time audible."

-Langer
"Time is the unique subjective."
-Gurdjieff
An obvious measure of the value of a work of art is its ability to sur-

vive changes in the cultural, philosophical, and even social attitudes
of its audiences. It is a tautology that a work created in the past must
be rich enough in meaning to communicate to the present if it is to
retain its appeal. Changing tastes are not merely whims; various ex-
pressions from the past have changing relevance as cultures and their
arts evolve.
The music of Beethoven has suffered virtually no periods of eclipse.

My concern here, however, is not Beethoven's continued popularity
but rather the fact that his music, written a century and a half ago,
retains its power to move us today. This article will explore one aspect
of why this is so. The central premise of this exploration is that the
art of today is intimately linked with the way the contemporary psyche
responds to the art of the past. Beethoven is just an example: to some
extent contemporary music suggests how much of traditional music
is perceived within the context of contemporary society, for the ear
of the contemporary listener and the ear of the contemporary composer
are conditioned by the same cultural determinants.
Then why Beethoven? I believe that Beethoven's music, perhaps
more than any other pre-contemporary music, deals with subtle and
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MULTIPLE AND NON-LINEAR TIME IN BEETHOVEN'S OPUS 135
often profound structuring of the listener's time-experience. Beetho-

ven's time-sense-as rhythm in the large, as proportions, as pacing
of tensions and releases-is unsurpassed. I take therefore as the aspect
of contemporary music most relevant to Beethoven its treatment of
time. Those modern composers who quite deliberately manipulate
time, question continuity, and scramble successions have performed
these experiments in an appropriately revolutionary spirit. Although
it is unlikely that these conscious experiments resulted from listening
to Beethoven in a new manner, the resulting pieces do suggest that
some of Beethoven's music can be experienced (perhaps subcon-
sciously) surprisingly similarly. I have chosen one of several possible
examples: the first movement of the Quartet in F, Opus 135.
First I investigate Opus 135 from the points of view of non-linear
and multiple time. The underlying assumption of this investigation
is that conventional time-the time of everyday life, referred to here
as clock-time-is linked in only a superficial sense to our 'experience
of music. I hope therefore to show that the time-sense in Opus 135
is not primarily measurable by a clock. I offer no complete analysis
of this composition in new terms, however. The role time plays in
contemporary life is too irrational, too contradictory, too subjective to
provide the basis for systematic musical analysis. In a sense what this
paper deals with is beyond analysis: it deals, at least indirectly, with
value-not absolute value, but value at the moment, the appeal of
old music for new ears.
In the latter parts of this essay, I attempt to justify, however dis-

cursively, the assumptions underlying the time-scrambled view of
Opus 135 set forth. I am concerned with the multiplicity of time in
contemporary life and with how contemporary art, particularly music,
reflects our new attitudes toward time.
As Susanne Langer has stressed,' clock-time is but one type of time,

elevated in our lives to a false universality only because it can be
quantified and hence verbalized. But musical time is not clock-time.
For all its logical virtues, this one-dimensional infinite succession
of moments [i.e., clock-time] is an abstraction from direct experi-
ences of time, and it is not the only possible one. Its great intellec-
tual and practical advantages are bought at the price of many in-
teresting phases of our time perception that have to be completely
ignored. Consequently we have a great deal of temporal experience
-that is, intuitive knowledge of time-that is not recognized as
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PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC
"true" because it is not formalized and presented

mode; we have only one way-the way of the cl
cursively about time at all.... If we could exper
successive organic strains, perhaps subjective ti
dimensional, like the time ticked off by clocks. B
dense fabric of concurrent tensions, and as each o
ure of time, the measurements themselves do not coi
My point is that music, like life, is "a dense fabric
sions," and that it is therefore reasonable to conside
of Opus 135 from a polyphony of viewpoints, only
of which are metrical (time measured by pulse-unit
Consider, for example, the cadence in m. 10. In a
sis this event might be explained as a prematurely
a downbeat interrupted by the subsequent change
sumed in m. 28. But there is more to it than that. The m. 10 cadence
has the "gestural impact" of a final cadence; it has the feel of, the
shape of, an ending. Although it occurs at the beginning of the move-
ment, in a very real sense it is the end. Only in the superficial sense
of clock-time do mm. 1-10 constitute an opening. In terms of the func-
tions of the musical gestures within the piece (i.e., in what we might
designate the gestural-time of the piece), the movement ends in m. 10.
We subsequently go on to learn the content of the movement that has
just closed. No matter that this final cadence is repeated in mm. 104-
109 and 188-193: mm. 5-10 do close off the movement. And no
matter that the opening phrase (mm. 1-4) does feel like an opening,
albeit a tentative one: the final cadence occurs in m. 10.
This is a strong statement. It questions the meaning of musical con-
tinuity. As I hope to show, such a redefinition of temporal continuity
is strongly suggested by contemporary arts and contemporary social
environments, and hence such a hearing of Opus 135 is indeed ap-
propriate today. (I do not believe that previous cultures would hear
a reordering of time in such a piece.) I do not go to the extreme of
suggesting that older, linear notions of musical continuity are dead;
however, just as discontinuous life-styles are becoming the norm and
just as the continuity in modem time-arts is of a very different order
than that in classical time-arts, so non-linear modes of experiencing
pre-contemporary music are contrasting with, and even supplanting,
our traditional and in a sense nostalgic well-ordered time-experiences.
1 Feeling and Form, Scribners, 1957, pp. 111-113.
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Before exploring these general considerations, however, I present a few

more examples of how Opus 135 can be experienced in terms of con-
temporary non-linear time.
What of the other two endings, mm. 104-109 and 188-193? It is
not sufficient to say, as a traditional analysis might, that mm. 5-10
and 104-109 anticipate the real close of the movement: mm. 5-10
have too final a gestural shape to be simply an anticipation. In actu-
ality the movement has three endings. More precisely, the movement
ends three times, each time utilizing the same gesture to cadence. In
other words, there are three identical closing gestures heard in the
piece. These three moments do not so much seem to refer to or repeat
one another as they seem to be exactly the same moment in gestural-
time, experienced thrice. Each time this moment occurs, the listener
has acquired more information, so that he knows better what is being
closed off; on the other hand, each time" the ending contains less in-
formation in itself. By the clock-time close of the movement, the
cadential figure is almost totally redundant (which,- of course, is not
to say that it is unessential): we know by the start of m. 188 the
entire content of the movement, including its ending. Only a few de-
tails are new: a fuller and somewhat differently distributed orches-
tration, a touch of subdominant harmony at the end of m. 189, the
fermata in m. 191, and the presence of the third in the final chord
(these changes serve to make the coincidence of the gestural- and
clock-time endings "more final" than the solely gestural closes in
mm. 10 and 109, but they do not alter the essential identity of the
three gestures).
A further example of the non-linearity of this movement can be
found at its central climax (mm. 101-103), which is prepared by
no fewer than three separate upbeats. The climax is too large to be
a consequence only of its preparatory transition (mm. 97-100), but
it is adequately prepared by other upbeats, placed elsewhere in the
clock-time of the movement: mm. 62-79 (see Ex. 3) and mm. 163-
175 (see Ex. 4). Although in clock-time one of these upbeats far pre-
cedes the climax and another comes much later, in gestural-time each
of these upbeats leads directly to the climax.
My claims that a later event may lead to an earlier one (m. 175
leads to m. 101) and that an earlier event may skip across interven-
ing events in reaching its goal (m. 79 leads to m. 101) suggest that
time is not linear in this music. The scrambled successions that con-
temporary ears can discover in this piece are but one aspect of its
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temporal discontinuity, however. Since we are

piece that has three equivalent endings and three
climax, we are provided with a time-experience th
linear but also multiple. Consider as a further exa
of this sonata-allegro form. Here we find two int
continuity; the piece is clearly moving, but in tw
(see Exx. 1 and 2). (It is particularly appropriate t
continuity should be present in the exposition, w
face [i.e., in clock-time] a series of discrete blocks
17-25, 25-30, 31-37, 38-45, 46-49, 50-51, 52-
In more or less traditional terms what this movem
the replacement of the fragmentation in the expo
continuity, which emerges overtly in the recapitu
being the development's integration of previously o
Let us trace these two strands of continuity. As
m. 25 resumes the interrupted downbeat of m. 10
to saying that in gestural-time m. 9 leads directly
That m. 10 is continued by m. 25 does not rea
previous assertion that the movement ends in m. 1
that is reordered is not necessarily mono-meaning
The real interest of the first group is thus a delig
are presented at the outset with the ending of the
what occurs just after the ending,3 which is an in
paradox establishes a context that can admit three
climax and can allow a moment to be experience
nificantly, the paradox tells us that this movemen
circular. Once the end is reached in gestural-tim
ourselves back in the middle. Furthermore, sinc
188-193 are the same moment as mm. 5-10, m.
m. 109 and m. 193 as well as m. 10.
In addition to this scrambled strand of continuity, there is another
directed motion woven into the exposition (see Ex. 2). It is not nec-
essarily earlier or later than Ex. 1; it is simply different. The cantus
firmus (mm. 10-14), to use Joseph Kerman's term,4 is a section-com-
2 Minute changes have been made in Exx. 1-4 in order to make connections
smooth.
3 This situation is unique to this quartet; other pieces that contain their gestural
end within their clock-time interior do not necessarily have events which occur after
(in gestural-time) the end.
4 The Beethoven String Quartets, Knopf, 1967, p. 355.
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Allegretto
& r 4 ' J'
ArL
< >
' 7 gestural ending
Ex. 1. First strand of continuity in t
mencing gesture. Therefore let us trace

ditional terms the dominant cadence in
cadence, mm. 10-17 being antecedent to
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17-25), which realizes overtly the harmonic implicatio

firmus. This exaggeration occurs because mm. 15-
context, like a strong arrival in C, not on C as V i
clock-time this cannot be a real arrival because it
gestural-time, on the other hand, nothing can be pr
can happen too soon; "too-soon-ness" arises from a di
tural-time in clock-time. Gesturally, the cantus firm
group, and therefore the dominant cadence is not ou
would be strange in gestural-time is not the caden
quent undermining by a "return" to F. Thus mm
follow the cadence of m. 17 in gestural-time. What d
the cadence, then? Since the cadence feels like an arr
we expect a stable C-major passage to follow. Which
happens in mm. 38ff. It is easier to understand
from m. 16 than as sequel to m. 37. On the superfici
time, m. 38 begins the second group, but not with t
finitive arrival in a new key. Instead the music sl
Whereas in gestural-time m. 38 is a clear downbe
upbeat mm. 10-16.
The texture in mm. 38-45 gradually evolves toward
nance of triplets, which is achieved finally in mm. 5
46-51 function in clock-time as an insertion; they oc
the riiovement's gestural-time. Of course, the harmon
lead to those of mm. 51-53; I could hardly postulat
tion across a gap in clock-time on the basis of texture alo
There is a double deception5 at mm. 58ff. Loca
strong cadence to I in C major, but we are led instea
jolting surprise of this deception leads us to expect h
as if the deceptive cadence will break us out of C maj
important (and more-subtle) deception occurs in m
we are led back to C major, with strangely halting h
double deception occurs because of a temporal discon
57 are leading not toward VV/II followed by a ret
harmonies in C, but toward I followed by a modu
(since C is by this point in this strand of continuity
tonality). Such a passage begins at m. 17-a strong
lowed by a transition to F major (F is a fresh tonal ar
5 I am indebted for these observations to Fred Lerdahl, a com

of Harvard University.
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I it J 14 is 36
PI
. . et, , *
AA
? IS
j L T-7~-ICMAL ff-
AN
IW-
== a
' .A I
I N I An WI :
ItK I, , o a "
1, AWM h I I I w
Ex. 2. Seco
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of continuity). The F-major arrival occurs at m. 25,

ond strand of continuity joins the first, underlining
felt at m. 25.
I now show how the two displaced upbeats to the c
above, relate to it in gestural-time (Exx. 3 and 4).
A few observations are appropriate here:
(1) Each of the gestural-time excerpts shown (

interesting than what happens in clock-time; they so
of a competent second-rate composer. Beethoven's gr
in the simple fact that he reordered the time-sense
compositions, but in just how he did so. The great m
great beauty of this movement come from just how
ven alters a "normal" sequence.
(2) It is significant that four excerpts are given
entire movement "unscrambled." It is unlikely that an
could be created simply by reordering a more bla
part of what creates the interest in the first movem
for our contemporary ears is that there are three end
max is prepared by three upbeats, and that there
directional continuities.
(3) The concept of a strand of continuity is thus an oversimplifi-

cation. The important claim is that, for example, m. 16 does not lead
to m. 17. My assertion that m. 38 is the proper sequel to m. 16 is
based on a perhaps subjective hearing of the piece and therefore can-
not really be substantiated. (Perhaps m. 16 leads instead to m. 42.)
A strand of continuity is used more to show another, more normal
ordering of the events of this movement than to discover the single
essential unscrambled continuity.
(4) Another oversimplification adopted to expedite the initial pre-
sentation of my arguments is the equation of clock-time with what
might better be termed linear-subjective-time." Clearly we do not ex-
perience music, even initially, solely in clock-time, despite the clock-
like pulse units provided by the meter of the music. The densities of
events and the rates of change of harmonies, tonalities, instrumental
colors, tempos, etc., surely distort our perception of temporal dura-
tion. Musicians generally recognize that time in music, though linear,
6 On this point I am indebted to Robert Morris, a composer on the faculty of

Yale University.
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Ire
14 7 Ooto
1111) k t- Ir A,
IMF
IG IIL I'I I , /I
~111FV WL
! -- : ..4P- M= m
.. ..r , lp j . L ,_ _
~dl
| b" f w AA
i cl I 'w m
MW .f
i.c
.... 3.
'400
.... , ,; / ' .-
Ex. 4. Third upbeat leading to climax

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is rarely objective clock-time; I go further by ass

music experiential time is not only not objective
not even linear.
(5) There is an obvious theoretical weakness to my arguments. I

cannot at present give adequate definitions of opening gestures, clos-
ing gestures, section-commencing gestures, etc. I am convinced that
we hear the functional shapes of musical gestures even out of context.
That the human ear has the capacity to perceive gestural function
was demonstrated to me in two composition seminars, one in which
I was a student and one that I briefly taught.' In both classes students
were instructed to write fragments. The classes then considered how
each fragment might fit into a larger form. The discussions were
meaningful. Occasionally there were gestures that could be used in
more than one way (and this fact supports my assertion of the mul-
tiplicity of musical time), but every gesture was clearly inappropriate
for certain functions. Each gesture had function(s) without the bene-
fit of context. Although I cannot objectively formulate this out-of-
context functionality, I base my arguments on the human ability to
recognize it.
It is now appropriate to ask how music accomplishes its reordering

of the listener's time-experience. There are two complementary an-
swers: (1) our previous experience with music has taught us to recog-
nize such gestural shapes as openings, closings, transitions, contrasting
ideas, climaxes, etc.; (2) the nature of time is multiple, so that we
can perceive a piece simultaneously as an experience in linear-sub-
jective-time and as a subtly restructured experience in gestural-time.
Let us discuss these two answers more fully.
(1) While some non-linear music, such as the recent music of John
Cage, purposefully does not deal in such gestural types as beginnings,
endings, climaxes, and transitions, a large body of non-linear mtisic
today takes advantage of the ear's ability to identify such gestures in
themselves. Therefore, educated by contemporary music or at least by
the same social time conditions that have impressed contemporary
composers, we can hear the gestural-time of a piece like Opus 135 as
different from its linear-subjective-time and from its clock-time. Thus
when we hear, for example, a closing gesture as consequent to the
initial antecedent phrase, we understand in what sense the antecedent-
consequent pair is final and in what sense it is initial. When the ges-
7 Both at the University of California, Berkeley (1968, 1970).
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tural position of an event within a piece disagrees with its clock-time

placement, an intriguing, perhaps profound, temporal complexity is
established.
(2) Since we experience a piece initially as a linear succession, we

must suspend judgment and full comprehension until the clock-time
close, when we will have received sufficient information to understand
the whole in gestural-time. We are able to postpone a full understand-
ing because there are two types of continuity in linear-time. Events,
generally speaking, can be classified as past, present, or future, and
they can be said to be earlier than, simultaneous with, or later than
one another. These two characteristics of time are distinct, since the
division of time into past, present, and future does not represent a
series, as does the division into earlier, simultaneous, and later. Any
randomly selected event will necessarily be either earlier than, simul-
taneous with, or later than a given evehit-hence the succession series
(as philosopher D. S. Mackay calls it)." On the other hand, knowing
that two events are past tells us nothing of their relative order. Future
events, present events, and past events comprise in effect three un-
ordered collections-it is only by reference to the succession series that
the events in these collections can be placed chronologically. Hence
the division of events into past, present, and future does not by itself
yield an ordered series. In the physical world, of course, the past-
present-future non-series (which, unfortunately for our musical pur-
poses, Mackay labels duration) is necessarily linked with the succession
series.
Our experience of time includes both succession and duration, or

rather it is an experience of succession in duration. For the succes-
sion, in terms of which we determine what is earlier than, simul-
taneous with, or later than any given event, has no temporal sig-
nificance apart from the duration of things or processes, either
remembered as past, perceived as present, or expected as future.9
That linear-subjective-time is experienced as succession in duration

should not obscure the fact that succession and duration are essentially
different qualities. The linking of succession and duration seems in-
evitable because, for example, events placed (by the duration non-
series) in the past must be earlier (according to the succession series)
8 See D. S. Mackay, "Succession and Duration," University of California Publica-

tions in Philosophy, Vol. XVIII (1935), 179-181.
9 Ibid., p. 178
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than events placed in the future. We place these ev

three unordered collections of the duration non-ser
memory (of the past), perception (of the present),
(of the future); then we know, apparently by defi
(or so Mackay's ideas would seem to imply) in ac
linear successions of the clock-time of physical
adopted as the clock of social reality, that past pre
cedes future. Although under the rigid linearity o
present-future must be governed by memory-perce
in music clock-time does not reign. Therefore in so
temporary ear has discovered a striking fact: the p
quality of a given moment can be determined by ge
than by memory-perception-anticipation. (It is app
more, that in much contemporary music, and even
Opus 135, the distinction between memory and anti
-I shall return to this point in greater detail.) Th
divorce succession from duration: succession occurs
in linear-subjective-time, while duration occurs in
other words, the earlier-simultaneous-later series d
the physical order of musical events as linearly pe
past-present-future quality of music depends on g
significant, in the light of the multiplicity of gest
such as Opus 135, that the non-series of past-presen
is unordered.) Music frees us from the tyranny of
the physical world and of daily life: it allows a
earlier than a past event, a past event to be later th
etc. Music makes the past-present-future exist on
that of the earlier-simultaneous-later. In music th
events can be composed and perceived quite indepe
I would like to turn our attention now away from

in order to discuss why it is that our culture produ
works of art and why the non-linearity of contempora
that we discover discontinuous time in music of ea
eras.
Time is a very different commodity for us today tha

Beethoven's contemporaries. We are preoccupied with ti
no longer an immutable force: we manipulate (or are m
ulate) time rather than submit to it. Clocks are everyw
structure our daily lives around innumerable schedules. W
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ness appointments; we take fifteen-minute coffee breaks; we always

know just how much time we have to "kill" (a typically contemporary
phrase)."o Not only are we concerned with compartmentalizing and
manipulating the pervasive Now, but also we are far more oriented
toward the future and the past than were previous generations. An in-
ordinate effort goes into arranging upcoming holidays, providing ade-
quate retirement plans, buying insurance, planning what will happen,
preparing for what might happen: the future has invaded the present.
Also, this age is steeped in historical consciousness-from nostalgic
reminiscences to reactionary politics to scholarly interests in the past.
What does it mean to say that Beethoven is past, Leonard Meyer asks,
"when the world history of music can be purchased in any record
shop?" xx
It is a consequence of the mutual interpenetration of past, present,
and future that time in contemporary society is discontinuous. Our
society knows a multitude of life-styles, each with its unique blend of
past, present, and future. Every person knows a variety of environ-
ments, which are experienced more alternately than progressively. The
result is that contemporary life tends to be a series of minimally con-
nected moments. Consider, for example, the possibilities opened by
jet-age travel. A person can carry on several existences in several
places, lives that have little contact with one another. It is as though
the various lives exist simultaneously and the participant merely checks
each one periodically to see what has been happening. I have heard of
a man who spent a year living an extremely discontinuous existence.
He was teaching simultaneously in three different American univer-
sities, one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, and one in the
Midwest. Each week he taught at all three. The time spent on air-
planes was minimal compared to that spent in these three environ-
ments, and the airplane flights could hardly be felt as transitional, be-
cause they were static and uneventful in themselves and because they
were unrelated to life at the origins and destinations. This professor
was an established member of three communities, and his presence in
each probably came to seem more continuous than interrupted.
Consider another example. Modern technology has created some
strange environments: a computer operator will find little continuity
between his work among grey metal and blinking lights and, say', an
10 J. B. Priestley, Man and Time, Doubleday, 1964, p. 179.

11 Music, the Arts, and Ideas, University of Chicago Press, 1967, p. 150.
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hour spent in a wooded park. The strong contrast

settings belittles almost to the point of annihilation an
happen within one of them. The contrast between
one place and that spent in the other is far greate
contrast within a given environment. The logic by
(or one life-style) follows another is at best elusive
the merest chance that one event should follow another.
Thus cause and effect become insignificant concepts when what

happens within a moment is rendered static and unimportant by the
violently dynamic yet somehow arbitrary contrast between moments.
It is not so much that cause and effect have ceased to function as it is
that they have ceased to matter. You puncture a balloon. It breaks

Cause and effect. But is the relationship of the breaking to the act of
puncturing important? The answer is necessarily subjective. Perhaps
the puncturing is, for whatever reasons, a significant event in your life,
but the broken balloon means nothing. Perhaps for you the puncturing
is more significantly related to some totally other event. The cause-
and-effect relationship matters little to you, as does the adjacency in
clock-time of the puncturing and the breaking. Traditionally, social
convention, governed in no small amount by temporal linearity, has
singled out cause-and-effect from the myriad of possible (and un-
named) relationships between events and has raised it to a false
supremacy. In the increasingly subjective worlds of contemporary cul-
ture and art, this supremacy is questioned-by people whose life-styles
acknowledge the multiplicity and non-linearity of time, and by creator
and audiences of discontinuous works of art. In many spheres of
human activity, it is quite simply a waste of time to single out from the
vast network of relationships in our overly complex culture those which
define causes and effects. Something occurs. That is all we need to
know. Or, if we do seek relationships, we can find them to suit what-
ever desires or neuroses we may harbor, without worrying about who
caused what. Our computer operator would hardly say that the time
he spent at his machines caused his hour in the park, yet the contrast
no doubt impresses itself on him more than any cause-effect pair
within either environment. Since the contrast between two such differ-
ent environments, each with its own internal values, rhythms, and
activities, is of a higher order of magnitude than anything that gen-
erally happens within either environment, the order of experiencing
the environments often seems arbitrary-nothing appears, definitely to
cause the change of location, of life-style. The temporal order in which
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we experience does have significance, yet that order is nonetheless

fundamentally irrational-without meaningful cause, without signifi-
cant effect.
And so it is with much contemporary music. Often the order of

events seems arbitrary, in contrast to the unequivocal order in a tonal
composition, in which unity is achieved through cause and effect.
The arbitrariness of time in a culture not burdened by the linearity
of cause and effect allows individuals to control the rhythms, succes-
sions, and even tempos of their experiences. Even physically, the rate of
time can be altered, as Einstein showed.12 I am, of course, not attempt-
ing to induce a unified field theory of time, the arts, cultures, and
physics. I wish only to suggest that what the contemporary arts do with
time is no mere experiment, but a profound consequence of a culture
aware of its ability to manipulate the time of individuals, societies, and
even physical realities.
The multiplicity of time in contemporary culture allows us, perhaps
even forces us, to experience a piece such as Beethoven's Opus 135
quite differently than it was no doubt experienced by its contempo-
raries. Beethoven lived in an age of transition, when ideas of staticism
were giving way to ideas of progress, when Newtonian absolute time
was being replaced by Kantian intuitive time, when a well-ordered
hierarchy of social time was falling into conflict.'" Although I am wary
of finding in the music of a period a too direct expression of its times,"4
it is at least plausible that the birth of contrast as an expressive dimen-
sion in music, reaching highly dramatic extremes in Beethoven, could
be a reflection of the birth of conflict in the social time structure. This
conflict originated in the social upheavals of the day-the political
revolutions in America and France and the Industrial Revolution. A
by-product of these revolutions was that time began to be freed from
its previous absolutism. Since this liberation of time permeated all
12 As a body approaches the speed of light, its time slows down, approaching zero.
13 The ideas in this paragraph are necessarily oversimplified. For fuller discussions
of time and culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see
Georges Gurvitch, The Spectrum of Social Time, trans. Myrtle Korenbaum, D.
Riedel, 1964; G. J. Whitrow, The Natural Philosophy of Time, Harper, 1963;
Sadik J. Al-Azm, Kant's Theory of Time, Philosophical Library, 1967; Stephen
Toulmin and June Goodfield, The Discovery of Time, Harper and Row, 1965.
14 As Leonard Meyer once remarked (in a private discussion following his lectures
at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in October 1970), you can find music that,
because of its lack of referential syntax, seems to support virtually any hypothesis
about the culture in which it was written.
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aspects of society, it is not surprising that we can f

music a new freedom in and a new mastery of the
What Beethoven discovered in his environment and
though surely subconsciously, was that time cou
And manipulate it he did. One need only consider a
the first movement of Opus 95, or the slow movem
or the Grosse Fuge-to realize what Beethoven w
the great musical gift his social and cultural environ
Beethoven's music took advantage of a social para
become aware of the idea of progress, he began to
absolute time. That very progress, however, resulte
Revolution, which wrought changes in social time
prison man. The new technology produced machine
man's life more than he would have liked. Appropr
music seeks to imprison its listeners: it is harder to
Beethoven's music when a lapse of attention has re
data than it is in much previous music (with, of co
and forward-looking exceptions). Once Beethove
captivated) his listeners, he gives them a time-e
tempos and rhythms quite different from those of
life. If the social and cultural changes of the late e
produced a liberated time that paradoxically imp
music provided an antidote: it imprisoned its listene
them.
Therefore, as a result of the social changes in the

century, a new attitude was emerging in the arts: s
addition to a reflection of its environment also a re
native to social tensions. Such a posture sounds dist
century. Thus Beethoven's music, among many of ou
masterworks, continues to be relevant not only fo
bygone but comprehensible age, but also because th
inherent in it which still acts as a counterbalance t
ternalization of life within modem society.'5 Beeth
tions as if it were a revolt against our social time.
continuous, multi-layered, and subjective. So is the
Beethoven's music, but there is a crucial difference
in Beethoven. Today we crave order, having given
rational temporal structure. Beethoven provides such
15 William Barrett, Irrational Man, Doubleday Anchor, 1
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by reverting to previous attitudes of temporal continuity, but rather by

providing an approach to time that neither negates it nor compromises
our modem understanding of it. A well-ordered yet non-linear piece,
such as Opus 135, provides an alternative to the tyranny of clock-time.
Society demands that we either accept clock-time with all its limita-
tions and contradictions if not in our personal lives at least for social
interactions, or else that we remove ourselves from the social conven-
tions we call reality, entering a totally subjective world with its own
time. Time-arts provide a third possibility: the audience submits to an
external time, which is not however measurable by a clock. It is the
artist's own subjective world, disciplined but fundamentally irrational,
that provides an escape from clock-time while simultaneously reflecting
the contradictions inherent in it. Music allows a listener to experience
subjective time without having to remove himself from social reality.
Beethoven's music has contextual goals that are always achieved, its
effects are caused, it is purposive-all qualities that contemporary life
lacks. Hence the nostalgia we feel for this music, and hence its popular
appeal. But there is a more profound consequence of the purposiveness
in Beethoven's music, namely that it allows us to hear non-linear pieces
as distortions of linear norms. Were the music less goal-oriented (in
other words, were the order of events in a piece to appear more arbi-
trary, as it does in most pre-tonal and post-tonal music), the effects of
the multiplicity of musical time would be less powerful. Beethoven's
music, although relevant to modern ears, is not modem. Modem art
starts with the multiplicity and irrationality of time, whereas Beethoven
achieves non-linearity as an artistic goal. But behind this fundamental
dissimilarity lies the obvious fact that both modem art and Beethoven's
art, for however different reasons and in however different ways, deal
with temporal discontinuities. It is therefore useful in our attempt to
elucidate Beethoven's contemporary relevance to examine more care-
fully the issues raised in the time-arts, especially the music, of today.
As William Barrett has written,
the eternal has disappeared from the horizon of... our everyday
life; and time thereby becomes all the more inexorable and absolute
a reality. The temporal is the horizon of modem man, as the eternal
was the horizon of man of the Middle Ages. That modem writers
[and composers, filmmakers, etc.] have been so preoccupied with the
reality of time, handling it with radically new techniques and from
radically new points of view, is evidence that the philosophers of our
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age who have attempted a new understanding of

ing to the same hidden historical concerns, and a
some new conceptual novelty out of their heads.'
Before discussing time in contemporary music

briefly to mention this century's new art form-fil
to deal more explicitly with time than can other, m
I would like to mention some of the ways the cine
quite similar to, although more immediately accessi
ods of contemporary composers. Few films accept re
more superficial films use a' myriad of devices (e.g
niques) to convey the compression, elision, or discon
many of the more sophisticated films of this era, t
element, perhaps to the extent (and here I readily c
prejudice) that their temporal parameters surpass
visual, dramatic, and literary aspects. Consider the
ples: Resnais' Hiroshima mon amour, where past
first confused and eventually made equivalent; Res
niere Marienbad, in which the time sense seems "t
which goes faster, or slower, than reality-dodges, s
lingers, repeats, and creates imaginary scenes, par
ties";'s Laslo Benedek's Death of a Salesman (afte
play), where past, present, and future are freel
Borowczyk's Renaissance, in which the whole film
tion;19 Fellini's 8Y2, in which reality, fantasy, mem
tion are intermixed and eventually equated; Pa
Moment (after a story by Ambrose Bierce), in whic
film takes place within a fraction of a second;20
Exterminating Angel, in which a moment is exper
which the characters are imprisoned by time.
Film, more capable than any other medium of
artist's time-fantasies, manipulates time more th
majority of films are at least in part representatio
definitive syntax, so that they can play extreme ga
16 Ibid., pp. 53-54.

17 John Cohen, "Subjective Time," in J. T. Fraser (ed.),
Braziller, 1966, p. 274.
18 Ralph Stephenson and Jean R. Debrix, The Cinema as
p. 106.
19 Ibid., p. 96.
2o Ibid., p. 121.
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remain sufficiently explicit to have at least a minimal plot. Few films,

however, are really about time. And fewer novels and dramas take
time as their subject matter. Dramatic, literary, and most filmic works
consider people and objects that exist in time; time itself is too vague,
too elusive for the hard syntax of language.21 Even time-oriented sci-
ence fiction, such as H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, is after all about
people who travel in time, not about time.
Music, on the other hand, is unencumbered by such well-defined
syntax. Furthermore, there are no characters in music. Thus, in a real
sense, music is about time. This statement goes farther than saying that
music is about tonal relationships existing and changing in time. If
music is a communicative art, then what it expresses is not so much
love or joy or sorrow, but time, with its attributes of rhythm, building
and releasing of tension, creation and eitheF fulfillment or frustration
of expectation. This view of music would have been unlikely in earlier
eras, but, in the context of today's time-obsessed world,, it is appropri-
ate. While previous generations of composers most likely dealt with
time subconsciously, today's composers are quite well aware of time's
potential.22
Stockhausen talks about multi-meaningful or multi-directional mu-
sic.23 Although he refers to the special case of mobile forms, where
various sections of a piece are actually interchangeable in accordance
with some scheme, the terms apply to a larger body of music as well.
As we have seen, contemporary life-styles are discontinuous to the
point that isolated events seem to be able to occur equally well in any
of several orderings; much recent music, consisting of several disjunct
moments, is similarly multi-meaningful. I do not claim that it does not
at all matter in what order the events of a life or of a composition are
put together, but rather that there are many equally plausible se-
quences.
Other aspects of contemporary music reflect the time-scale of con-
temporary life. Frequently what happens within the moments of a
composition is rendered static by the considerable contrast between one
moment and another, as in our example of a computer operator spend-
ing an hour in a park. So sudden are such transitions, both in music
21 Priestley, p. 122.
22 For a discussion of how contemporary aspects of time relate to musical tempo
and rhythm, see Robert Erickson, "Time-Relations," Journal of Music Theory, Vol.
VII, No. 2 (1963), 174-192.
23 In a seminar at the University of California, Davis, 1966-67.
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and in life, that the most readily apparent and the

connections are often not between those events im
in clock-time. The discourse in a contemporary
broken off as unrelated moments pass by, only to
This sounds strikingly similar to our previous exam
professor with several lives going on seemingly simulta
ent environments.'
Of what pieces am I speaking? Many by Stockhausen, of cours

such as Zyklus, where motion is circular and may begin anywhere;2
Klavierstiick XI, where the many fragments may be played in an
order; Momente, where there is an elaborate system of interchangeab
moments and where there are, in addition, brief references to wha
may be the past in one performance but the future in another. Whil
Stockhausen may be the most articulate composer who conscious
plays with time, he is not the only one. The deuxieme formant
Boulez' Third Piano Sonata contains several parenthetical structures,
which may be played or omitted, altering the realization but not th
basic logic of the form. In the Cage Piano Concert the inclusion
omission of most of the material quite literally does not matter. Or,
take a less extreme example, consider Cant'yodjayd by Messiae
There is no mobility of form, but the effect is of several moments p
together in only one of several equally viable orders. Canteyodjayd h
the feeling of several simultaneous strands of continuity, each one co
stantly interrupted by another so often that the effect becomes one not
so much of interruption but of simultaneity of different sections, o
even of different pieces.
The logic of such music is like the logic of contemporary life. W
are no longer interested in isolating one of a myriad of relationshi
and deifying it as Cause and Effect. Instead, things are let merely ha
pen. As more things happen, we get a clearer view of an emergi
totality. We do not progress from one moment to another, but rath
each moment provides fresh data concerning a static totality that wi
be known completely only at its end. The experience of this music, li
the experience of life, is not static, but its kineticism is of a new order:
it is the dynamic of coming to know a global staticism. Each ne
24 An important aspect of Zyklus, not often mentioned, is that, since the pe

former may go ini either direction around the circle, the piece proclaims the equali
of backwards and forwards. This is something quite different from the fact that th
performer may begin anywhere on the circle.
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moment puts into place a new piece of the jigsaw puzzle. (That the
totality emerges but does not grow suggests statistical processes.) The
whole is defined, but its individual parts are irrational. They have
tendencies, they have probabilities, but they are not individually pre-
dictable or understandable.25
Stockhausen refers to this global staticism in new music as a "direc-
tionless time-field, in which individual [events] have no particular
direction in time (as to which follows which)." 26 But he overstates his
case: localized direction need not add up to large-scale kineticism.
Multi-directional is not directionless. Apart from some recent com-
positions, Stockhausen's music does not lack directed motion. Nor does
that of Boulez, or Xenakis, or Messiaen. But the direction is generally
not goal-oriented, and therefore the totality is static.
In past ages life was directed toward certain philosophic, religious,
or material ends, and tonal music reflected this goal-orientation. Tonal
goals were possible because the parameters of tonal music are naturally
interrelated.27 Today, while we can feel direction within many mo-
ments of our lives, the existence of a large goal is harder than ever to
maintain. The direction felt in daily life is a mere molecule in a static
totality. Thus it is fitting that modem multi-directional music should
lack unequivocal goals.28
In the art of a society where life is without goals, where time is
fragmented, where past, present, and future interpenetrate each other,
where the order of events is arbitrary, what becomes of the traditional
concepts of beginning, middle, and end? Much of the power in tra-
ditional music lies in backwards and forwards hearing-hearing a
later event as clarifying an earlier one and hearing an earlier event as
implying a later one. What happens when the very concepts of earlier
25 This new attitude toward total musical time derives from Ives and Webern, as
demonstrated in James Drew, "Information, Space, and a New Time-Dialectic,"
Journal of Music Theory, Vol. XII, No. 1 (1968), 86-103. See also Donald B.
Anthony, A General Concept of Musical Time with Special Reference to Certain
Developments in the Music of Anton Webern, University Microfilms, 1968.
26 ,. . . . . how time passes .....," trans. Cornelius Cardew, Die Reihe, Vol.
III, p. 36.
27 Anthony, p. 161.
28 Local goals are possible, such as a cluster as the goal of an increasing chro-
matic density or silence as the goal of greater and greater time between events,
but these local goals, which work only in some parameters at a time, do not gen-
erally carry the rhythmic and articulative power of, for example, a return to the
tonic area in a triadic composition.
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and later are called into question? Does a multi

have beginning (s), middle(s), and end(s)? Does
building and releasing of tension, transitions?
As we have seen, a multi-directional piece suc
indeed have these attributes, although they are d
shape rather than by clock-time placement. Such
tional (although not goal-oriented) works as Mome
and Zyklus (to remain within our small set of
beginnings, endings, climaxes, tensions, resolution
difference is that the scrambling of such events in
purposeful, while in the contemporary pieces it s
arbitrary. Zyklus, for example, definitely does ha
an end, despite the composer's statement about an
ture: the main processes do begin at a certain
former decides to begin elsewhere than at the beg
of the piece occurs in the middle of the perform
Klavierstiick X, to take a new example, has sev
one after another at the clock-time close of the p
has several endings is crucial to its structure; the
clock-time close, on the other hand, seems to be on
plausible arrangements.
What, then, of the backwards and forwards h
above? When the music mixes up its past, present
wards and forwards become in some sense the sam
larly true in a mobile piece such as Momente, whe
formance is a flashback becomes on another occasio
Even in non-mobile multi-meaningful music the g
to the temporal, distinction between implication
not obvious. Musical gestures that make reference
backward are inidistinguishable out of context. It
with the temporal successions of clock-time that
tion between these two at all. In some music such a distinction is
more confusing than illuminating. For example, we have seen that
in Opus 135, mm. 1-4 constitute not only an opening but also a penul-
timate event (the consequent of this four-bar antecedent ends with the
final cadence in m. 10). This phrase refers motivically to other events.
If we are to maintain the distinction between backward and forward,
between memory and anticipation, we will be forced to label mm.
1-4 a reminiscence of an upcoming event! Opus 135, even while op-
erating within a goal-oriented tonal system, blurs the distinction be-
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tween backwards and forwards. More specifically, as I claimed above,

this music separates the earlier-simultaneous-later quality from the
past-present-future attribute of our time-experience. This is not to
say that Beethoven's music is arbitrary. While the order of events in
much contemporary music seems random, as does the order of events
in contemporary life, Beethoven's music does not suggest that its vari-
ous parts could be interchanged without a loss of meaning. When the
gestural ending of a piece such as the first movement of Opus 135 falls
near its clock-time beginning, it does so for a specific purpose (the
concept of purpose, let us remember, was new and exciting for Beetho-
ven, not worn out and discredited as it is for many of us). Perhaps
we cannot as yet define that purpose, but the displacement is right:
to place that ending anywhere else in the movement than where it
actually falls would be to alter, surely for the worse, the total sense.
Thus we are confronted with a paradox, and this paradox is one
source of Beethoven's contemporary relevance: in Beethoven's music
the order of events is not arbitrary, yet it is scrambled. His music, al-
though distinctly un-modern in language, treats time in a modern
manner. That contemporary music treats time as non-linear and mul-
tiple is not surprising; that Beethoven's music does so is prophetic, and
for this reason his music remains an important and active part of our
lives.29
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In addition to the references listed in footnotes, the follow

particularly useful in writing this article.
William Hutchinson, "Aspects of Musical Time," Selected Re

the Institute of Ethnomusicology of UCLA, 1966, pp. 66
George Rochberg, "Duration in Music," The Modern Com
His World (ed. John Beckwith and Udo Kasemets), Un
of Toronto Press, 1961, pp. 56-64.
Mary Sturt, The Psychology of Time, Harcourt, Brace, and
29 The time-scrambling powers of tonal music were first suggeste

Edwin Dugger, a composer on the faculty of the University of Californ
I am also indebted to Joseph Kerman, of the faculty of Oxford Uni
many perceptive criticisms of my ideas.
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Multiple and Non-Linear Time in Beethoven&#39;s Opus 135

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Multiple and Non-Linear Time in Beethoven's Opus 135

Author(s): Jonathan D. Kramer

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/832316

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BEETHOVEN'S OPUS 135

"Music makes time audible."

An obvious measure of the value of a work of art is its ability to sur-

The music of Beethoven has suffered virtually no periods of eclipse.

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often profound structuring of the listener's time-experience. Beetho-

In the latter parts of this essay, I attempt to justify, however dis-

As Susanne Langer has stressed,' clock-time is but one type of time,

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"true" because it is not formalized and presented

1 Feeling and Form, Scribners, 1957, pp. 111-113.

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Before exploring these general considerations, however, I present a few

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temporal discontinuity, however. Since we are

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' 7 gestural ending

Ex. 1. First strand of continuity in t

mencing gesture. Therefore let us trace

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17-25), which realizes overtly the harmonic implicatio

5 I am indebted for these observations to Fred Lerdahl, a com

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of continuity). The F-major arrival occurs at m. 25,

A few observations are appropriate here:

(1) Each of the gestural-time excerpts shown (

(3) The concept of a strand of continuity is thus an oversimplifi-

6 On this point I am indebted to Robert Morris, a composer on the faculty of

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Ex. 4. Third upbeat leading to climax

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is rarely objective clock-time; I go further by ass

(5) There is an obvious theoretical weakness to my arguments. I

It is now appropriate to ask how music accomplishes its reordering

7 Both at the University of California, Berkeley (1968, 1970).

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tural position of an event within a piece disagrees with its clock-time

(2) Since we experience a piece initially as a linear succession, we

Our experience of time includes both succession and duration, or

That linear-subjective-time is experienced as succession in duration

8 See D. S. Mackay, "Succession and Duration," University of California Publica-

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than events placed in the future. We place these ev

I would like to turn our attention now away from

Time is a very different commodity for us today tha

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ness appointments; we take fifteen-minute coffee breaks; we always

10 J. B. Priestley, Man and Time, Doubleday, 1964, p. 179.

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hour spent in a wooded park. The strong contrast

Thus cause and effect become insignificant concepts when what

that they have ceased to matter. You puncture a balloon. It breaks

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we experience does have significance, yet that order is nonetheless

And so it is with much contemporary music. Often the order of

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aspects of society, it is not surprising that we can f

Therefore, as a result of the social changes in the

15 William Barrett, Irrational Man, Doubleday Anchor, 1

Multiple and Non-Linear Time in Beethoven's Opus 135

Multiple and Non-Linear Time in Beethoven's Opus 135