The Philosophy of Rhythm Aesthetics Music Poetics Peter Cheyne Full Chapter

The Philosophy of Rhythm: Aesthetics,
Music, Poetics Peter Cheyne

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The Philosophy of Rhythm
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The Philosophy of Rhythm
Aesthetics, Music, Poetics
Edited by
P E T E R C H EY N E , A N DY HA M I LT O N , A N D
M A X PA D D I S O N
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3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cheyne, Peter. | Hamilton, Andy, 1957– | Paddison, Max.
Title: The philosophy of rhythm : aesthetics, music, poetics / edited by
Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019004326 | ISBN 9780199347773 (cloth) |
ISBN 9780199347780 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780199347896 (oxford scholarship online)
Subjects: LCSH: Musical meter and rhythm. | Music—Philosophy and aesthetics. |
Musical perception. | Music—Psychological aspects.
Classification: LCC ML3850 .P55 2019 | DDC 781.2/24117—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019004326
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
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“This remarkable collection of essays brings together philosophical and empirical
approaches to the significance of rhythm across the arts. The approach is refresh-
ingly interdisciplinary. Anyone concerned with the place of rhythm and metric
structure in the arts, and—more generally—within the wider domain of human
practices will find this an extraordinarily helpful volume.”
—Robert Kraut, Professor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University
“Fascinating and mysterious, rhythm is at the heart of music, dance, poetry, soci-
ology, and neuroscience. This inspired volume engages, enlightens, and is the first
to explore rhythm across a broad range of philosophical, aesthetic, and percep-
tual domains. This book is required reading for anyone concerned with time and
rhythm in contemporary life.”
—Peter Nelson, University of Edinburgh
“This wonderful collection considers questions about rhythm from a wide variety
of angles, perspectives, and disciplines—among them analytic and continental phi-
losophy, musicology, art history, poetics, and neuroscience. Like the dialogue that
opens the book, The Philosophy of Rhythm supports no particular line of thought or
argument but enormously deepens our understanding of a topic so palpable and yet
so mysterious.”
—Christoph Cox, Hampshire College
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Preface
This project began in the mists of time, as a collaboration between Andy Hamilton
and Will Montgomery. Will had to pull out and Max Paddison took his place—but
Will remained as a contributor and his essay on rhythm in poetry is invaluable.
Max has worked on musical time since his contributions to the 2004 special edition
of Musicae Scientiae on spatialization and temporality in music, while Andy’s first
publication on rhythm was for Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society in 2011. Max’s
expertise in Continental philosophical traditions has been a necessary corrective
to Andy’s more analytic background, and they organized a workshop in Durham
in 2013, at which many contributions were presented. Besides his contributed
essay, Peter Cheyne has been involved in an editorial role from an early stage. He
reorganized the material, making it thematic rather than discipline-centered, and
closely edited each chapter.
Acknowledgments are gratefully given to Laura Dearlove for diligently checking
the style of several chapters; Anthony Parton for advice on artwork permissions;
Suzanne Ryan, Jamie Kim, and Dorian Mueller at OUP for their work in helping
to bring the volume to press; the anonymous reader for careful criticisms; Brian
Marley for invaluable assistance in helping compile the index; and Durham
University and the British Society of Aesthetics for their support for the workshop.
Later-stage work was supported by JSPS Kakenhi grant number 19K00143. Finally,
a sincere apology is due to the patient contributors. This volume has taken much
longer in preparation than was originally anticipated.
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Illustrations
8.1. Sulzer’s Schlagfolge 127

8.2. Koch’s Schlagreihe 128
8.3. Koch’s Schlagreihe with resting points (Ruhepuncten) 129
8.4. Model of the drift from rhythm to punctuation 129
8.5. Koch’s schema of a sonata-form exposition 133
8.6. Mozart, String Quartet in C major, K. 465, “Dissonance,” bars 23–6 135
8.7. Mozart, bars 67–97 136
8.8. Introduction, bars 1–4 137
9.1. Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean,” cabasa, drums, bass guitar, and synthesizer,
timing c.00:20–00:24 144
9.2. The double backbeat 146
11.1 Kanizsa triangle, organized array (left panel); disorganized array
(right panel) 172
11.2. Beat interpolation in the opening theme of Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in
E-minor, Op. 98 177
11.3. A “metrically malleable” melody notated in (a) 4/4, and (b) 9/8, showing
alternate listening construals 178
11.4. The “Standard Pattern” (or “Bell Pattern”) timeline found in many styles and
genres of African music. Upper system: construed as a three-(or six-) beat
pattern. Bottom system: construed as a four-beat pattern 178
15.1. Keats, “Hymn to Pan,” first stanza (from Endymion, Book 1, lines 232–46),
annotated. 236
15.2. The two sides of “projection” 242
15.3. One version, among many, of the nursery rhyme “Humpty Dumpty” as an
illustration of the determinacy of tetrameter (and also as an example of the
pattern long-long-short-short-long) 244
15.4. The first line said as strict iambic pentameter (five isochronous beats each
of the form “weak-strong”) in obvious violation of the line’s complexity 245
15.5. The first line said as five more or less isochronous beats, but now allowing for
complexities of “weak” and “strong” 246
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xiv List of Illustrations
15.6. The first line said as five “flexibly isochronous” beats whose flexibility or
variability is determined (or “controlled”) by higher levels of complexity 246
15.7. Beat-to-beat projections in which each new event is focally aware simply
of its immediate predecessor 249
15.8. A representation of projective complexity showing the resistance of a
five-beat line to the determinacies of four, or rather two, beats (Attridge’s
“doubling”). NB: this diagram is not meant to represent the complexity
of most “pentameter” lines where a reduction to two is not an issue. (Indeed,
in some “pentameter” nine-or ten-syllable lines there are four beats,
but these situations are hardly “square.”) 250
18.1. Husserl’s structure of time-consciousness 297
19.1. Sonia Delaunay, Rythme coleur n° 1076 (1939). Centre national des arts
plastiques. © Pracusa S.A./Cnap/Photograph: Yves Chenot 310
19.2. Dactyl illustration (Creative Commons) 313
19.3. Raphael, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1515–16), bodycolour over
charcoal underdrawing, mounted on canvas, 320 x 390cm, Victoria and
Albert Museum. © The Royal Collection, HM The Queen/Victoria and
Albert Museum, London 314
19.4. Nicholas Dorigny, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1719), etching and
engraving on paper, 51 x 65cm, Victoria and Albert Museum. © Victoria
and Albert Museum, London 316
19.5. Joseph-Marie Vien, St. Denis Preaching in Gaul (1767), oil on canvas,
660 x 393cm, Église Saint-Roche, Paris. © The Art Archive 322
19.6. Ten percent of all saccades of forty viewers (twenty art experts and twenty
non-experts) beholding Vien’s painting for two minutes each. Adapted version
© Laboratory for Cognitive Research in Art History, University of Vienna 323
19.7. Visualization of frequent saccadic transitions between fixation clusters for
Vien’s St. Denis Preaching in Gaul (average of forty viewers, twenty art experts
and twenty non-experts, whilst viewing for two minutes each). Adapted version
© Laboratory for Cognitive Research in Art History, University of Vienna 324
19.8. Visualization of frequent saccadic transitions between fixation clusters for
Doyen’s The Miracle of St. Anthony’s Fire (average of forty viewers, twenty art
experts and twenty non-experts, whilst viewing for two minutes each).
Adapted version © Laboratory for Cognitive Research in Art History,
University of Vienna 325
21.1. Opening lines of John Milton’s Paradise Lost displayed as prose in David
Charles Bell and Alexander Melville Bell’s Standard Elocutionist (London,
1878), 426 352
21.2. Graphic record of various rhythmical sounds, from Edward Wheeler Scripture,
Elements of Experimental Phonetics (New York, 1902), 509 356
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Abbreviations
bpm beats-per-minute
EDM electronic dance music
fMRI functional magnetic resonance imaging
HKB Haken–Kelso–Bunz [equation]
OED Oxford English Dictionary
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Notes on Contributors
Aili Bresnahan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dayton (USA). She
specializes in aesthetics, particularly in applied philosophy of dance, improvisation,
interpretation, and the philosophy of mind and motor cognition as it relates to the per-
forming arts. She is also the founder and moderator of Dance Philosophers, an inter-
disciplinary research and networking Google group. More information can be found
on her professional website: https://www.artistsmatter.com. Contact:abresnahan1@
udayton.edu.
Peter Cheyne is Associate Professor at Shimane University, and Visiting Fellow in Philosophy
at Durham University. He is leading two international projects, one on the Aesthetics
of Perfection and Imperfection, the other on the Seventeenth-to Nineteenth-Century
Philosophy of the Life Sciences. Published in journals including Intellectual History
Review and the Journal of Philosophy of Life, and editor and co-author of Coleridge
and Contemplation (OUP, 2017), he recently completed a monograph on Coleridge’s
Contemplative Philosophy (OUP, forthcoming 2020).
Martin Clayton is Professor in Ethnomusicology at Durham University. His publications
include Time in Indian Music (OUP, 2000) and Experience and Meaning in Music
Performance (OUP, 2013, co-edited with Laura Leante and Byron Dueck). He is cur-
rently pursuing research on entrainment in musical performance within Durham’s
Music and Science Lab (https://musicscience.net).
Víctor Durà-Vilà is Lecturer at the University of Leeds. In aesthetics, he works on Humean
aesthetics, aesthetic experience, ethics and aesthetics, aesthetic cognitivism, as well
as on interdisciplinary projects in music and dance. Other research interests include
applied ethics (parental obligations; autonomy and paternalism) and philosophy of
physics. His work has been published in journals such as Analysis, Journal of Value
Inquiry, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and British Journal of Aesthetics.
Jason Gaiger is Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the Ruskin
School of Art and a Fellow of St. Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford. His prin-
cipal research interests are in aesthetics and art theory from the mid-seventeenth cen-
tury through to the present day; he also works on theories of depiction and visual
meaning, and on twentieth-century and contemporary art practice and theory.
Ted Gracyk teaches philosophy at Minnesota State University Moorhead, and is co-editor
of the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. He is the author of several philosoph-
ical books on music, including Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock Music (Duke
University Press, 1996), Listening to Popular Music (University of Michigan Press,
2007), and On Music (Routledge, 2013). With Andrew Kania, he co-edited The
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xviii Notes on Contributors
Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music (Routledge, 2011). Most recently, he

co-authored Jazz and the Philosophy of Art (Routledge, 2018).
Garry L. Hagberg is James H. Ottaway Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at Bard
College. Author of numerous papers at the intersection of aesthetics and the philosophy
of language, his books include Art as Language: Wittgenstein, Meaning, and Aesthetic
Theory (Cornell University Press, 1995), and Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein
and Autobiographical Consciousness (OUP, 2008). He is editor of Art and Ethical
Criticism (Wiley Blackwell, 2008); Fictional Characters, Real Problems (OUP, 2016);
and Wittgenstein on Aesthetic Understanding (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Editor
of the journal Philosophy and Literature, Hagberg is currently writing Living in
Words: Literature, Autobiographical Language, and the Composition of Selfhood.
Jason David Hall is Associate Professor of English at the University of Exeter. He has written
the books Seamus Heaney: Poet, Critic, Translator (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007),
Seamus Heaney’s Rhythmic Contract (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), and Nineteenth-
Century Verse and Technology: Machines of Meter (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and is
contributing author and editor of Meter Matters: Verse Cultures of the Long Nineteenth
Century (Ohio University Press, 2011) and Decadent Poetics: Literature and Form at
the British Fin de Siecle (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, with co-editor Alex Murray).
Andy Hamilton teaches Philosophy at Durham University, UK. He specializes in aesthetics,
philosophy of mind, political philosophy, and history of nineteenth-and twentieth-
century philosophy, especially Wittgenstein. His books are Aesthetics and Music
(Continuum, 2007), The Self in Question: Memory, the Body and Self-Consciousness
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein
and On Certainty (Routledge, 2014). He also teaches aesthetics and history of jazz at
Durham, and published Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser’s Art (University
of Michigan Press, 2007).
Christopher Hasty is Walter W. Naumburg Professor of Music at Harvard University where
he teaches music theory. His research interests center on questions of time and rhythm
understood from perspectives of process and event formation. Recent publications
include essays in Thought and Play in Musical Rhythm: Multidimensional Perspectives
on African, Asian, and EuroAmerican Musics (co-edited with Richard Wolf and Steven
Blum, OUP, 2019) and an essay on “Time” in The Oxford Handbook of Western Music
and Philosophy (ed. McAuley, Nielsen, and Levinson, OUP, 2020).
John Holliday has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Maryland and is currently
Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at Stanford University, where he supports
Stanford’s initiative in Philosophy and Literature. His research centers on issues of
literary value and has appeared in the British Journal of Aesthetics and the Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism.
Salomé Jacob holds a PhD on philosophy from the University of Durham. Her research
lies at the intersection between philosophy of perception, aesthetics, and phenome-
nology. She focuses on the nature of musical movement.
Jenny Judge is PhD candidate in philosophy at NYU. She also holds a PhD in musicology
from the University of Cambridge, as well as degrees from University College Cork
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Notes on Contributors xix
and the Cork School of Music. Her research explores the resonances between mu-
sical experience and the philosophy of mind. Her doctoral dissertation defends and
elaborates the thesis that music represents attitudes. Judge is also an active musician.
Justin London is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music, Cognitive Science, and the
Humanities at Carleton College (USA). He received his PhD from the University of
Pennsylvania where he worked with Leonard Meyer. His research interests include
rhythm and timing in non-Western music, beat perception, sensorimotor synchro-
nization and joint action, and musical aesthetics. He has served as President of the
Society for Music Theory (2007–9) and President of the Society for Music Perception
and Cognition (2016–18).
David Macarthur is Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. He has published
articles on liberal naturalism, pragmatism, metaphysical quietism, skepticism,
common sense, Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language, perception, and philosophy
of art—especially concerning architecture, photography, and film. He has co-edited
three collections of papers with Mario De Caro: Naturalism in Question (Harvard
University Press, 2004); Naturalism and Normativity (Columbia University Press,
2010); and Philosophy in an Age of Science (Harvard University Press, 2012); and re-
cently edited Hilary and Ruth-Anna Putnam, Pragmatism as a Way of Life (Harvard
University Press, 2017).
Will Montgomery teaches contemporary poetry at Royal Holloway, University of London.
He is the author of The Poetry of Susan Howe (Palgrave, 2010); co-edited (with Robert
Hampson) Frank O’Hara Now (Liverpool University Press, 2010); and co-edited (with
Stephen Benson) Writing the Field Recording (Edinburgh University Press, 2018); and
has published numerous articles on contemporary and twentieth-century poetry. His
monograph on short form in American poetry is forthcoming. He has a long-standing
involvement in experimental music and field recording and has released several CDs.
Matthew Nudds is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the
University of Warwick. His work is principally in the philosophy of perception and he
has a particular interest in the non-visual senses and auditory perception.
Max Paddison is Emeritus Professor of Music Aesthetics at the University of Durham. He
works in critical theory, philosophy, contemporary music, and popular music. His
publications include Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music (CUP, 1993), Adorno, Modernism
and Mass Culture (Kahn & Averill, 1996), and Contemporary Music: Theoretical and
Philosophical Perspectives (co-edited with Irène Deliège, Ashgate, 2010). He has re-
cently contributed essays to The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2017), The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School (Routledge, 2018),
and The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy (forthcoming 2019).
Deniz Peters is Professor for Artistic Research in Music at the University of Music and
Performing Arts Graz, Austria, where he also directs the Doctoral School for Artistic
Research. His research concerns philosophical questions, such as the concept of mu-
sical expression, listening modes, ensemble empathy, and the epistemic potential of
artistic research through music. His explorative pianistic practice is part of his re-
search method.
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xx Notes on Contributors
Peter Simons is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin. He is the au-
thor of the monograph Parts (OUP, 2000) and some 300 essays on pure and applied
ontology, philosophy of language, logic and mathematics, the history of early analytic
philosophy and of Central European philosophy (mainly Austrian and Polish) in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is a member of the British, European, Irish,
and Polish Academies.
Michael Spitzer is Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool and Editorial Chair of the
Society for Music Analysis. He inaugurated the International Conferences on Music
and Emotion (Durham, 2009), and co-organized the International Conference on the
Analysis of Popular Music (Liverpool, 2013). His publications explore interactions be-
tween music theory, philosophy, and psychology, and include Metaphor and Musical
Thought (Chicago University Press, 2004); Music as Philosophy (Indiana University
Press, 2006); A History of Emotion in Western Music (OUP, forthcoming 2020); and
The Musical Human (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2021).
Roger Squires works in areas opened up by the mid-twentieth-century revolution in
philosophy of mind brought about by Wittgenstein and Ryle. Publications in-
clude: “Depicting,” Philosophy, 44 (1969); “Memory Unchained,” Philosophical Review,
77.2 (1969); “On One’s Mind,” Philosophical Quarterly, 20 (1970); “Silent Soliloquy,”
Understanding Wittgenstein, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures, 7 (1973); “The
Problem of Dreams,” Philosophy, 48 (1973); “Mental Arithmetic,” Ratio, 1 (1994).
Alison Stone is Professor of European Philosophy at Lancaster University. She is the au-
thor of Petrified Intelligence: Nature in Hegel’s Philosophy (University of Notre Dame
Press, 2004), Luce Irigaray and the Philosophy of Sexual Difference (CUP, 2006), An
Introduction to Feminist Philosophy (Polity, 2007), Feminism, Psychoanalysis and
Maternal Subjectivity (Routledge, 2011), and The Value of Popular Music (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016). She edited the Edinburgh Critical History of Nineteenth-Century
Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press, 2011) and co- edited the Routledge
Companion to Feminist Philosophy (Routledge, 2017).
Michael Tenzer is Professor of Music at the University of British Columbia. His books in-
clude Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth Century Balinese Music (Chicago
University Press, 2000) and the edited volumes Analytical Studies in World Music (OUP,
2006) and Analytical and Cross Cultural Studies in World Music (OUP, 2011, with co-
editor John Roeder). His compositions are available on New World and Cantaloupe
Records. Recent articles include the cross-cultural study of world “Polyphony” in the
Oxford Handbook of Critical Concepts in Music Theory (OUP, 2018).
Matthew Tugby is Associate Professor at Durham University. He has published on a
range of topics in contemporary metaphysics and co- edited Metaphysics and
Science (OUP, 2013).
Rebecca Wallbank is PhD candidate in the Philosophy Department at Uppsala University,
specializing in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. In addition to research on rhythm
and the philosophy of literature she also has strong interest in the philosophy of trust
and its relation to aesthetic testimony. She is Editorial Assistant to the British Journal
of Aesthetics.
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Notes on Contributors xxi
Udo Will is Professor of cognitive ethnomusicology at The Ohio State University. He has
studied music, sociology, and neuroscience, holds a PhD in both musicology and neu-
robiology, and his research focuses on cognitive aspects of music performances in oral
cultures. He leads projects on physiological entrainment to music, on cultural effects
on cognitive processing of prosodic components in music and language in Asian and
African tone language cultures, and on cross-cultural studies of rhythm perception,
movement and the concept of time.
Rachael Wiseman is Lecturer in Philosophy at University of Liverpool. She works on
Wittgenstein, early analytic philosophy, and philosophy of mind, action, and ethics,
and wrote the Routledge Guidebook to Anscombe’s Intention (Routledge, 2016).
Her articles have been published in the Journal of Philosophy, American Catholic
Philosophical Quarterly, and Philosophical Topics.
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OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – REVISES, Tue Sep 03 2019, NEWGEN
Introduction
Philosophy of Rhythm
Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison
This volume brings together philosophical and empirical approaches to offer critical
perspectives on the philosophy of rhythm. The editors have not imposed theoretical
or interpretational prescriptions, except that contributors should examine concrete
manifestations of rhythm in the various arts and in human activity. Our aim is to
locate fruitful questions and stimulate lively discussion of them. Contributors offer
definitions and theories of rhythm in music and prosody that are often opposed,
referring to meter, pulse, stress, and accent as constituent elements of rhythm, or
at least as key concepts in understanding it; lines of dispute are examined from dif-
ferent perspectives throughout the book. As well as examining the case of music,
essays explore possibilities or hypotheses of rhythm in non-musical and non-
prosodic (non-poetic) arts.
As the essays are generally contemporary in scope, Section 1 outlines some key
points in the history of rhythm in philosophy, not in the pretence of providing a
comprehensive survey in such a short space, but to offer some historical precedents
for the problems addressed. Section 2 discusses the extent of recent attention to
rhythm and the puzzling neglect of the field, especially in philosophy. Section 3
gives an outline of the chapters, describing the conceptual space of the book.
1. Historical Considerations
Recent neglect notwithstanding, philosophical traditions have long acknowledged

the importance of rhythm across the arts and in everyday life. However defined,
it is readily agreed that rhythm is fundamental to those arts that directly involve
duration and temporality: dance, music, drama, and recited poetry. These arts
were closely associated in classical Greece. They all include rhythm, the animating,
flowing factor it is the purpose of this book to explore, along with the associated
phenomena of movement, measure, pattern, and repetition.
Before Parmenides and Plato, Heraclitus ascribed to rhythm a universal sig-
nificance in holding that “everything flows [panta rhei].” This stream of thought
Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison, Dialogue on Rhythm In: The Philosophy of Rhythm. Edited by:
Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison. Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199347773.001.0001
/17_revised_proof/revises_i/files_to_typesetting/
01_oso-9780199347773_Part-1.indd 1 16-Oct-19 18:14:38
validation
2 The Philosophy of Rhythm
continues in contemporary process philosophy, influencing thinkers, including

some in this book, who employ the concept of rhythm as flow. Less cosmic, more
socio-cultural, Plato’s consideration of rhythm, in contrast, focuses primarily on
music and its effects on culture and mood. In the Republic, he has Socrates discuss
the various rhythms and regulations of meter as modeling different virtues (coura-
geous, self-controlled, active, graceful) and vices (lamenting, drunken, idle, grace-
less), reprising the theme in his later dialogue, the Laws. It is also in the Laws—in a
discussion of the ability to control and order one’s bodily movements and speech—
that Plato has “the Athenian” give the definition by which: “Order within move-
ment is called ‘rhythm.’ ”1
A core motivation for this collection of essays is to explore rhythm across the
arts. Connections between the different arts are addressed in Aristotle’s Poetics via
three related concepts: mimēsis, metaphora, and poiēsis. Aristotle saw mimesis as
a dynamic, performative impulse to “mimic” actions, processes, emotions, and
gestures through different media and art forms. Mimesis, he said, “is natural to us,”
and in the opening pages of the Poetics he specifically refers to rhythm as a medium
for mimesis:
the medium of imitation [mimēsis] is rhythm, language, and melody, but these
may be employed either separately or in combination. For example, music for
pipe and lyre . . . uses melody and rhythm only, while dance uses rhythm by itself
and without melody (since dancers too imitate character, emotion and action by
means of rhythm expressed in movement).2
Clearly, Aristotle describes our capacity for an embodied mimesis that enables us to
move rhythmically in space and move together in time with others. His discussion
links music, poetry, and dance and anticipates the theory of entrainment discussed
in several contributions to this volume.
Another theme in this book is the contemporary debate between proponents of
the dynamic thesis, who hold that music literally moves, and those on the other
side, who conform to the thesis that movement in music is metaphorical. We return
to this debate in Section 2, but should note here the three categories of rhythm dis-
tinguished by Aristides Quintilianus in his Peri musikês:
The term ‘rhythm’ is used in three ways. It is applied to bodies that do not move, as
when we speak of a statue having ‘good rhythm’; to anything that moves, as when
we speak of someone walking with ‘good rhythm’; and it has a specific application
to sound . . . . [viz.] a systēma of durations [chronoi] put together in some kind of
order.3
1 Plato, Republic, Bk 3, 397a–401a; Laws, Bk 7, 798d–802e; Laws, Bk 2, 665a.

2 Aristotle, Poetics, 3–4.
3 Aristides, On Music, Bk 1, Ch. 13.
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Introduction 3
For Aristides, then, rhythm applies to proportionality in static objects, physical

movement, and music. Distinguishing rhythm in things that move from rhythm in
music, it seems he stands on the movement-as-metaphor rather than the dynamic
side of the debate.
Philosophical theories of rhythm in the modern era include Rousseau in
the eighteenth century, with his entry on rhythm in Diderot and d’Alembert’s
Encyclopedia (1751), and his later Dictionary of Music (1768).4 In the Encylopedia
he states that:
Rhythm can be defined generally as the proportion that the parts of a measure,
parts of a movement, or even parts of a whole have with each other: in music it is
the difference in movement which results from speed or slowness, from respective
length or brevity of the notes.5
In 1802 (though published posthumously, another half-century later), Schelling

proposed that art first “breaks through into the world of representation” via the
expression in music of “the primal rhythm of nature.”6 It is, he claimed, “through
rhythm” that humans “impose variety or diversity onto everything,” thereby finding
pleasure in “an entire unity within a particular multiplicity,” often transforming “an
essentially meaningless succession into a meaningful one.”7 Schelling thus argued
that with rhythm music transforms the atomic or disparate into the organic, its
basic units forming larger groups which in turn cohere in a variegated whole. In
its articulative capacity to transform experience, rhythm is, in Schelling’s view,
the dominant of the three powers in music—rhythm, melody, and modulation.
Because articulating or “informing . . . unity into multiplicity” is for him the essence
of music, and since rhythm effects “this informing within music itself,” he concludes
that “Rhythm is the music within music.”
Nietzsche’s early lecture “Rhythmic Researches” (1870–2) distinguished what
he saw as Greek mathematical rhythms from the fluid, living rhythms of the body,
anticipating his influential Apollonian– Dionysian distinction.8 Influenced by
Schopenhauer, who distinguished music as “entirely apart” from all other arts in
reaching further than mimetic representation and into a “serious and deeper sig-
nificance . . . referring to the innermost essence of the world and of our selves,”9
Nietzsche finds the primality of will in rhythm and dance. Thus this philosopher,
for whom “Without music life would be an error,”10 affirms the Dionysian necessity
of rhythm: one must dance to enter fully, bodily, into the life of the world. Thus too
he declared: “I would only believe in a god who knew how to dance.”11
4 Rousseau, Dictionnaire.
5 Rousseau, “Rhythme.”
6 Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 17.
7 Schelling, Philosophy of Art, 110–11.
8 Elaine P. Miller, “Harnessing Dionysus.”
9 Schopenhauer, Will and Presentation, 306.
10 Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 10 (“Epigrams and Arrows” §33).
11 Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 29.
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Drawing from such nineteenth-century sources, Bergson’s distinctly modernist

writings on time, duration, and continuity had a remarkable influence on music and
philosophy in France from the 1890s up to the 1930s. The phenomenologist Gaston
Bachelard’s The Dialectic Of Duration (1936; revised 1950), for example, arose from
a critique of Bergson’s concepts of duration and continuity. Against Bergson’s no-
tion of continuity, and indeed against the tradition that since the ancient Greek
philosophers has regarded musical rhythm and melody as “flow,” Bachelard argues
that “music’s action is discontinuous; it is our emotional resonance that gives it con-
tinuity.”12 Bachelard regards continuity and duration in music as an elaborate meta-
phor “reconstructed in reverse” by the experiencing subject.
2. Recent Times: Attention and Neglect
Given its importance in ancient and modern philosophy, the neglect of rhythm as
an area of inquiry in contemporary philosophical aesthetics is puzzling. This lack of
interest is not only from aesthetics, however. Poetics is also marked by a neglect of
rhythm; there is a corresponding lack of interest from prosody, the area of linguis-
tics concerned with patterns of stress and intonation. In the case of musicology, the
neglect has been relatively less evident but nevertheless noticeable, given that, in
contrast to popular music, rock music, and jazz, the dominant focus in the theory
and analysis of Western art music has tended to be on the parameter of pitch in rela-
tion to harmony, as opposed to rhythm as such.
Grosvenor Cooper and Leonard B. Meyer’s groundbreaking work on rhythmic
structure commented on the “moribund state” of its topic.13 Subsequently,
Christopher Hasty, in an ambitious work, analyzed the experience of music as an
irreducibly temporal phenomenon, as opposed to the spatialized representation
assumed by many theorists and by ordinary thinking.14 Philosophically influenced
by William James, phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl, and process
thinkers such as Henri Bergson and A. N. Whitehead, Hasty argued that music
should be regarded as a process of becoming rather than a record of what has be-
come, rejecting the image of meter as an artifact of a system of representation—that
is, of notation.
There has also been a neglect of the relationship of rhythm and larger-scale form
and structure. Aspects of this relationship occur in the work of Heinrich Koch in
the eighteenth century, as Michael Spitzer has observed.15 In non-Western music
theory and practice, however, notably that of North Indian classical music, rhythm
and its relation to extended improvisation has an ancient and long-standing,
12 Bachelard, The Dialectic of Duration, 124.

13 Cooper and Meyer, Rhythmic Structure of Music.
14 Hasty, Meter as Rhythm.
15 Spitzer, Metaphor and Musical Thought, 69, further discussed at 243–59.
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Introduction 5
fundamental significance, as has been emphasized by Martin Clayton’s work on the

relation of meter, duration, and structure in this tradition.16
In English-language philosophy, John Dewey, Leonard B. Meyer, Roger Scruton,
Andy Hamilton, and Andrew Kania are among the small number of philosophers
to address rhythm to any great extent. This blind spot is particularly unfortunate
because rhythm is a phenomenon that is immediately evident to everyone, and is a
topic on which philosophical progress can be made without expert technical know-
ledge. The need for greater attention to rhythm provides a major motivation for this
volume, which sets out to rectify the oversight. We have sought to do this not only
through commissioning contributions from philosophical aesthetics, but also—
albeit with a philosophical perspective—from other disciplines like neuroscience,
psychology, musicology, ethnomusicology, poetics, literary studies, dance, and art
history. In taking an interdisciplinary approach, this volume facilitates lines of in-
quiry that investigate whether rhythm (and related concepts including meter and
duration) should be restricted to music, dance, and poetry, or, by contrast, should
be extended to non-poetic literature and theatre, as well as painting and the visual
arts, and also architecture.
The attempt to apply the concept of rhythm across the arts raises problematic
philosophical issues, and the term “metaphor” is often employed rather loosely. It is,
in any case, hard to define. Might there remain in all the arts something—perhaps
even some dimension, such as movement, the immediately spatial, or the immedi-
ately temporal—that can only be discussed in metaphorical terms? This suggestion
raises a number of interesting further questions in relation to rhythm and has led to
much recent debate. Music is a time-based art and has duration, but can we say that
music really moves, and if so, what does talk of “movement in musical space” mean?
The debate arises among those who hold movement in music to be metaphorical—
such writers include Roger Scruton, who draws from Victor Zuckerkandl. Scruton
concludes that the sense of movement is, though vastly important, only metaphor-
ical in terms of the physical space in which bodies move, that is, the sounds of music
“are ordered in space only apparently, and not in fact.”17 Zuckerkandl’s position
involves the further sophistication that while, as he concludes, music transcends
physical and geometrical space, it does not transcend spatiality completely, for it
testifies to a space that remains in the absence of physical objects and geometry.18
What can be said today of rhythm in arts besides music? In the case of poetry—
and indeed literature in general—one can say that duration is involved, in that it
takes time to read it, but, as with music, what might be meant by movement in po-
etic or literary space? The visual arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, which
literally occupy space, also endure through time, and take time to view and walk
around or within—but are they generically different in terms of temporality from
16 Clayton, Time in Indian Music.

17 Scruton, Aesthetics of Music, 14.
18 Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol, 292.
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artworks that take time to unfold in their entirety, such as performed music and
recited poetry? These questions are taken up in a number of essays in this volume.
Simply to say that we can discuss an “absent dimension” only metaphorically is
also to underestimate the importance of metaphor in its relation to mimesis and
poiesis (creative, artistic production), whether in our experience of the arts and of
nature (which has traditionally been the domain of aesthetics), in our attempts to
understand, explain, and interpret the arts (which is the domain of hermeneutics),
or in the making of art (which was traditionally the domain of poetics). As Aristotle
says: “A metaphor is the application of a [word] which properly applies to some-
thing else.”19 He refers to metaphor as a “transference” from one sphere to which it
belongs to another where it is not normally encountered.
Thus this collection aims to provide both an overview of an often neglected but
vital aspect of aesthetic experience, and an examination of formal affinities be-
tween historically interconnected fields of music, dance, poetry and literature,
and also the visual and spatial arts, addressing key concepts such as embodiment,
movement, entrainment, and performance. We have attempted to avoid an over-
emphasis on music, and have sought also to stress structural parallels between dif-
ferent art forms and their aesthetics. An essential aim has been intelligibility across
disciplines. While the volume draws on a wide range of disciplines, contributors
were encouraged to present their ideas non-technically as far as possible, and to
engage in cross-disciplinary dialogue, in part through the insights of philosophical
aesthetics.
3. Outline of Chapters
Enhancing its interdisciplinary ambition, this book is organized not territorially,

into academic disciplines, but thematically, into aspects and questions concerning
rhythm. With this arrangement, the editors not only encourage connections be-
tween the disciplines and a closer exchange of perspectives, but also see a concep-
tual map of the philosophy of rhythm taking shape. The five thematic parts that
make up the volume arose naturally, as the project progressed, revealing a spread
of concerns among current scholars regarding rhythm, suggesting also the shape of
the conceptual space itself.
Part One, “Movement and Stasis,” addresses conceptual questions that in-
clude: Does rhythm necessarily involve movement, or is this a matter of metaphor
only? Is rhythm as a literal phenomenon restricted to human activities and actions,
or does it extend to natural and mechanical phenomena such as ocean waves and
the sound of a train on a track? How is rhythm experienced through the senses—is
it recognized or projected?
19 Aristotle, Poetics, 34.
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Introduction 7
The opening chapter, collated and edited by Andy Hamilton, is a dramatized dia-
logue in the long philosophical tradition of that form. The debate poses the dynamic
conception—that rhythm involves movement—against the view that nothing rele-
vant in the music moves literally, that is, spatially. Hamilton’s dynamic conception
characterizes rhythm as “[a primitive] order within human bodily movement or
movement-in-sound,” and opposes static accounts in terms of order-in-time and
Scruton’s metaphorical conception. Most dialogue participants support a dynamic
conception of some kind, but Macarthur denies that rhythm “moves in a literal but
non-spatial sense.” Squires and Wiseman develop Hamilton’s account, arguing that
the movement criterion should be expressed as a capacity and not a disposition.
Matthew Nudds’ “Rhythm and Movement” continues this theme, arguing that
we can experience literal movement in rhythm. The argument depends on the claim
that our experience of musical grouping involves experiencing sounds as produced
by extra-musical events that include movement, and that musical grouping is cen-
tral to our experience of rhythm in music, hence our experience of rhythm involves
the experience of movement. The view defended rejects the suggestion that move-
ment can only be heard in music in a metaphorical sense.
In “The Ontology of Rhythm,” Peter Simons defends, in contrast, a static concep-
tion of rhythm. Investigating its complex ontology, he sets out the types of entity on
which rhythm is founded and their relationships with rhythm itself. No single char-
acterization will work, Simons argues; rather, a series of types branches off from
simple paradigms. Rhythm in music is characterized in its simplest form by a re-
petitive temporal pattern, which forms the basis for variations generating the whole
range of musical rhythms. In music, but not rhythm in general, this range is limited
(though not constituted) by anthropological constraints concerning pitch, tempo,
volume, and complexity.
Jenny Judge’s chapter on “ ‘Feeling the Beat’ ” argues that the experience of mu-
sical meter is multimodal: it involves the binding to a common sensory individual
of auditory and proprioceptive content. One hears the beat, and feels it, too. She
further claims that a consideration of this multimodal content undermines the
seeming necessity of the appeal to “metaphorical perception” as a way of accounting
for the experience of movement in the case of musical meter.
Next, in “Dance Rhythm,” Aili Bresnahan proposes a theory of dance rhythm as
distinct from rhythm in dance. Distinguishing natural from intentional rhythm,
she defends this account by exploring musical and non-musical connections be-
tween rhythm and dance. She argues that dance rhythm can arise in conjunction
with music; follow music; set the musical rhythm; or be completely independent of
music, though natural or internal bodily rhythms can underpin both. Finally, she
asserts the existence of dance that might be naturally rhythmic, but not in a way es-
sential to dance qua dance.
Part Two, “Emotion and Expression,” considers the relation of rhythm to human
feeling and covers topics including: the deep significance of rhythm deriving
from its being “a universal scheme of existence”; the use of rhythm in empathetic
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communication and composition; rhythm at the base of cognitive and linguistic

meaning; the creativity involved in bodily responding to musical rhythms such as
those found in popular music; and entrainment and the recognition of expression
in music.
In “Theories of Rhythm,” Garry Hagberg poses the question: Why does rhythm
speak to us so deeply? Patterns of percussive sound that move us are meaningful,
yet we find it hard to say what associations or connotations create that meaning.
What is required is something more elemental and universal than personal or id-
iosyncratic associations. Hagberg argues that John Dewey’s Art as Experience has
important insights on this question. Focusing on examples from jazz improvisa-
tion, Hagberg suggests that both player and listener are very like Dewey’s broader
conception of the live organism interacting within its environment.
Deniz Peters’ “Rhythm, Preceding its Abstraction” takes a non-reductive ap-
proach to the understanding of musical rhythm based on reflections on his musical
practice, arguing that, preceding its abstraction, rhythm centrally resides in “doings”
and “happenings” in our bodies and interactions between each other. Further, it
resides in our somatic and cognitive awareness of these “doings” and “happenings”
by way of experience and attention. The line of thought Peters develops stems
from a number of related observations concerning how “lived rhythm,” unlike
“represented rhythm,” comes into being via interpersonal-and self-attention.
In “Mozart’s ‘Dissonance’ and the Dialectic of Language and Thought in Classical
Theories of Rhythm,” Michael Spitzer discusses Mozart and eighteenth-century
theories of rhythm. Challenging the abstract conception of musical rhythm, Spitzer
argues for its intrinsic expressiveness, supporting his claim with reference to a rich
eighteenth-century tradition. He argues that eighteenth-century rhythmic theory
was cognitive, in tune with the cognitive qualities of classical music. Another ex-
pressive aspect of classical rhythm was its linguistic character. It imitated the nature
of primitive grammar as imagined by contemporary linguists. Spitzer concludes by
showing how these ideas can enhance our understanding—and hearing—of a piece
by Mozart.
Next, in “Rhythm and Popular Music,” Alison Stone explores how rhythm
functions and affects us in popular music. She considers explicit rhythm as a con-
stant layer of percussion that has no precise pitch. Relative to this layer, the rhythmic
qualities the other layers of sound are heightened, emphasizing beats that fit in or
pull against those emphasized by the percussion. Referring to Michael Jackson’s
“Billie Jean,” Stone discusses how this pronounced rhythmic character of popular
music appeals to our bodies to move in time with the emphases sounded in dif-
ferent layers.
In “Rhythms, Resemblance, and Musical Expressiveness,” Ted Gracyk argues
for the plausibility of entrainment accounts of musical expression in holding that
the ability to hear expressiveness in rhythmic sounds is logically prior to hearing
some musical patterns as expressive gestures. Although Gracyk does not endorse
arousalism as a general account of musical expression, understanding the role of
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Introduction 9
rhythm in expressiveness supports a combination of the “resemblance” and “conta-

gion” accounts of musical expressiveness, blending what are often treated as mutu-
ally opposed accounts.
Part Three, “Entrainment and the Social Dimension,” expands on the concept of
entrainment raised in Gracyk’s chapter and discusses rhythm in psychology, neuro-
science, and biology. They aim less to make a particular scientific contribution, than
to assess the nature and viability of scientific approaches to rhythm. Justin London
begins Part Three with “Metric Entrainment and the Problem(s) of Perception,”
discussing the limits and mechanisms of our perceptual faculties for auditory
rhythm. His consideration reveals that the perceptual process is not a linear chain
of information from the external world, but an active interplay between mind and
world. Yet while considering our senses as cross-modal perceptual systems solves
some problems of perception, it creates other, perhaps deeper ones, he argues. In
music, our rhythmic percepts are often non-veridical, as we add accents, beats, and
grouping structure to otherwise undifferentiated stimuli.
Martin Clayton’s “Entrainment and the Social Origin of Musical Rhythm”
discusses the social nature and origin of musical rhythm. The argument draws
on Halbwachs’ idea of rhythm as a social rather than a natural phenomenon, and
Schütz’s critique of Halbwachs in his famous essay “Making Music Together.”
Clayton argues that rhythm in fact emerges spontaneously both in individuals and
(crucially) in interactions between them, and that it is therefore both natural, in the
sense of physiological, and social in origin.
Michael Tenzer’s “How Many Kinds of Rhythm Are There?” offers an ethnomusi-
cological perspective on the indefinite varieties of rhythm, examining the contrasts
between musical and linguistic rhythm, anthropological categories, perception,
and technology. Partitioning the universe of rhythm typologically, Tenzer views the
potential of rhythm along various continua: via comparison with language; in the
development of human culture; in the life of an individual’s experience, perception,
and cognitive prowess; and in the non-human natural world.
Udo will considers the physiological, psychological, and social origins of rhythm
in “Temporal Processing and the Experience of Rhythm: A Neuro-Psychological
Approach.” Reviewing data from Australian Aboriginal music, he argues for dy-
namic neural models that challenge abstract conceptions of rhythm. Will holds that
instrumental rhythms and vocal rhythms in speech and music derive from different
ways of interacting with our environment and are controlled by different temporal
mechanisms. Thus, he argues, instrumental music should be considered in parallel
to vocal music, not as derived from it.
Part Four, “Time and Experience: Subjective and Objective Rhythm,” considers
subjective and objective conceptions of time; phenomenological, process philos-
ophy, and empiricist perspectives; rhythmic duration; and—reprising the main
theme of Part One for this experiential point of view—whether movement is a
necessary criterion for rhythm. In “Complexity and Passage: Experimenting with
Poetic Rhythm,” Christopher Hasty begins by treating rhythm as the shaping of
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events and their succession, rather than as a pre-existent order of isochronous divi-
sion. He argues for rhythm as flow, as the fluid, active, and characterful creation of
things or events, rather than of a homogeneous substance (“time”). He relates this
concept to poetry by reading the opening of Keats’s “Hymn to Pan,” analyzing the
continuing “life” of the vocal impulse along the lines and through the word-sounds
taken as “mouth events”—a reading after the manner of M. H. Abrams (2012).
Peter Cheyne defends an unprioritized ontology regarding the subjectivity and
objectivity of rhythm in “Encoded and Embodied Rhythm: An Unprioritized
Ontology,” and thus argues against writers such as Christopher Hasty and Nicholas
Cook, who prioritize the subjectivity of rhythm as flow. Cheyne argues that because
rhythm is perceived through the senses as patterned temporality evoking emo-
tional response, it has both objective and subjective qualities according to Lockean
criteria. He further argues that the intricacy of actual rhythm neither excludes its
description in objective form, nor its subsequent performance by other skilled
performers who are present and listening attentively.
In “Time, Rhythm, Subjectivity: The Aesthetics of Duration,” Max Paddison
argues that rhythm must be considered in relation to time and subjectivity, un-
derstood within a larger concept of “rhythmicized duration” as form. Drawing on
Bachelard’s phenomenology of duration, he argues that aesthetic concepts of tem-
porality, movement, and rhythm in music and the performing arts are subject to
change, development, and displacement, and have functioned normatively and
metaphorically in different historical periods. He concludes that our experience of
rhythm as structured duration is both subjectively experimental and historically
contingent.
Salomé Jacob examines the implications of Husserl’s model of temporal con-
sciousness on the experience of musical rhythm in “Husserl’s Model of Time-
Consciousness, and the Phenomenology of Rhythm.” Husserl’s framework, when
applied to rhythm, suggests that listeners retain the just-past sounds and anticipate
the sounds-to-come in the light of what has been heard. Besides, Husserl’s model
helps to frame a rich embodied phenomenology of rhythm. One’s experience
encompasses the perception of musical rhythm but also a bodily awareness of one’s
own movements, where both aspects share the same temporal structure.
In “Pictorial Experience and the Perception of Rhythm,” Jason Gaiger considers
whether a painting can have a rhythm. Rhythmic structure unfolds in time, but if
rhythm is essentially durational, he asks, how can a static configuration of marks
and lines be rhythmic? Gaiger argues that although viewing a picture takes place in
time, and thus is successive, it cannot be temporally structured in a sufficiently de-
terminate manner to sustain the attentional focus required for the communication
of even simple rhythmic patterns. Graphic art is non-sequential and this has impor-
tant consequences for picture perception.
Víctor Durà-Vilà then engages Gaiger’s essay in “Soundless Rhythm,” to de-
velop a notion of rhythm that is independent of sound and can include all
senses. Durà-Vilà argues against the theoretical proposal that music is required
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Introduction 11
to conceptualize rhythm. Moreover, he contends that rhythm in painting can

be experienced in a non-metaphorical way. Finally, he examines some potential
implications of his thesis for incipient art practices involving senses other than
sight and hearing.
Part Five, “Reading Rhythm,” addresses the role of rhythm in reading and thus
focuses on poetry and prose. The stressed–unstressed model of metrical analysis,
and its variants, now seems obsolete as a means of describing the patterns of em-
phasis in poetry. However, although in the twentieth century verse loosened its re-
lationship to meter, these essays show how rhythm remains an essential, though less
easily described, feature of literary language.
Jason Hall presents a genealogy of metrical abstraction in nineteenth-and
twentieth-century literature in “Rhythm, Meter, and the Poetics of Abstraction,”
surveying approaches to metrical abstraction that have shaped the modern met-
rical imagination, taking abstract meter as their starting point. Hall examines the
early twentieth-century return to theories that tried to avoid the complications
introduced by emphasizing voiced particularities of rhythm; these theories resisted
earlier syntheses of meter with music. For the New Critics, at least, the reader is
in “a better position” to offer a rhythmically “meaningful” reading if he or she
“recognizes the meter.”
In “The Not-So-Silent Reading . . . ,” Rebecca Wallbank asks: What does it mean
to say that we appreciate rhythm in literature? By raising this question, she aims,
first, to illuminate the modes of attention to rhythm in literature, and second, to
call for a re-evaluation of certain common assumptions concerning literary aes-
thetic experience and appreciation. She analyzes the impact of different forms of
attention within aesthetic experiences, and through this aims to expose and illumi-
nate the overlooked roles of rhythmic auditory-imagining within our experiences
of literary works.
Will Montgomery shows in “Leaving it Out: Rhythm and Short Form in the
Modernist Poetic Tradition,” how in the modernist era rhythm was no longer a
stable background pattern, but became part of the overall acoustic texture of the
poem—with short-form poetry the most powerful vehicle for rhythmic innova-
tion. Montgomery focuses on the Poundian line of influence, with particular em-
phasis on the writing of the American poet Robert Creeley. Montgomery argues
that brevity and ellipsis are integral to a modernism best approached through the
modernist dictum Dichten = condensare (to poetize is to condense).
Finally, in “Hearing it Right: Rhythm and Reading,” John Holliday addresses
the neglect of sound and rhythm within prose literature, arguing that poetry is not
more rhythmic than prose. He argues that works of prose have rhythm, to which
the pauses, inflections, stresses, and pronunciation of its language all contribute.
As such, prose literature, like poetry, should be considered musical. While poetry is
lineated and prose is not, Holliday argues that this distinction does not result in po-
etry being more rhythmic. He concludes that rhythm in prose literature generally
deserves attention for the different roles it plays.
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Works Cited
Abrams, M. H., The Fourth Dimension of a Poem, and Other Essays (New York, 2012).
Aristides Quintilianus, On Music (c.350?), tr. R. P. Winnington-Ingram, in Greek Musical Writings
II: Harmonic and Acoustic Theory, ed. Andrew Barker (Cambridge, 1989).
Aristotle, Poetics (c.335 bc), tr. Malcolm Heath (London, 1996).
Bachelard, Gaston, The Dialectic of Duration, tr. Mary McAllester Jones (Manchester, 2000).
Clayton, Martin, Time in Indian Music: Rhythm, Metre and Form in North Indian Rag Performance
(Oxford, 2000).
Cooper, Grosvenor and Leonard B. Meyer, The Rhythmic Structure of Music (Chicago, 1960).
Hasty, Christopher, Meter as Rhythm (Oxford, 1997).
Nietzsche, Friedrich, Twilight of the Idols (1889), tr. Richard Polt (Indianapolis, 1997).
Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (1883–92), tr. and ed.
Adrian del Caro, co-ed. Robert B. Pippin (Cambridge, 2006).
Miller, Elaine P., “Harnessing Dionysus: Nietzsche on Rhythm, Time, and Restraint,” Journal of
Nietzsche Studies, 17 (1999), 1–32.
Plato, The Republic (c.380 bc), tr. G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve, in Complete Works, ed. John
M. Cooper (Indianapolis, 1997).
Plato, The Laws (c.360 bc), tr. Trevor J. Saunders, in Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper
(Indianapolis, 1997).
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, “Rhythm” (1765), The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert Collaborative
Translation Project, tr. Valerie Porcello (Ann Arbor, 2005): http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.
did2222.0000.491.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Dictionnaire de la musique (Paris, 1768).
Schelling, F. J. W., Philosophy of Art (1802–3; published 1859), tr. and ed. Douglas W. Stott
(Minneapolis, 1989).
Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Presentation, tr. and ed. Richard E. Aquila (London, 2008).
Scruton, Roger, The Aesthetics of Music (Oxford, 1997).
Spitzer, Michael, Metaphor and Musical Thought (Chicago, 2004).
Zuckerkandl, Victor, Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World, tr. Willard R. Trask
(Princeton, 1956).
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1
Dialogue on Rhythm
Entrainment and the Dynamic Thesis
Andy Hamilton, David Macarthur, Roger Squires, Matthew Tugby,

and Rachael Wiseman (compiled and edited by Andy Hamilton)
The advantages of the dialogue form—in particular, the advantage of openness—

have been neglected in post-eighteenth-century philosophy. Unlike the currently
dominant journal article form, the present dialogue neither arrives at, nor seeks
to impose, a definite conclusion. Debate is left open. Knowledge in philosophy is
dialogical. As love of wisdom, philosophy pursues truth via challenging dialogue,
knowing that it needs opposing views to approach its aim. That aim is to arrive at
truth, and the most fruitful debate can help one get there.
In Plato’s Socratic dialogues, Socrates is regarded as the bearer (or at least a
“midwife”) of truth. We can infer that Plato endorses—though perhaps does not
defend—the viewpoint voiced by Socrates. In these earlier dialogues his main pos-
itive contribution is the Socratic elenchus, a method of eliminating incoherent
beliefs from the set that his interlocutor holds. It is this method, rather than partic-
ular philosophical claims, that Plato endorses through Socrates. By the time of the
Republic, however, Socrates is more like Plato’s mouthpiece, and his view seems to
prevail.
With Hume, the dialogue form is more open. He used it to evade religious cen-
sorship, leaving it unclear whose view the author was advocating—though in the
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion it is clear that one character, Demea the deist,
does not represent Hume. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the dialogue
form is more rare—Brecht’s Messingkauf Dialogues and Beckett’s more imaginative
Dialogues with Georges Duthuit are two very different philosophical dialogues on
artistic questions.
This “Dialogue on Rhythm” is based on contributions from Andy Hamilton,
David Macarthur, Roger Squires, Matthew Tugby, and Rachael Wiseman. The
“Dialogue” is neither a creation by a single author—as the classic dialogues by Plato,
Berkeley, and Hume were—nor verbatim transcription of actual conversation. Text
was passed back and forth, and the final result agreed. Here, no one view prevails,
though characters modify their views in the light of criticism. Debate is left open,
Andy Hamilton, David Macarthur, Roger Squires, Matthew Tugby, and Rachael Wiseman (compiled and
edited by Andy Hamilton), Dialogue on Rhythm In: The Philosophy of Rhythm. Edited by: Peter Cheyne,
Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison. Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199347773.003.0002
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even to the extent that the alternative positions are not entirely clear—but progress
in clarifying them has been made.
Andy Hamilton
Dramatis Personae
skepticus = David Macarthur

dynamicus = Andy Hamilton
metaphysicus = Matthew Tugby
analyticus = Roger Squires
vitalia = Rachael Wiseman
Summary
This dialogue debates the common philosophical assumption that nothing relevant
in the music moves literally, that is, spatially—physical movements of performers,
or air molecules, are not relevant. It addresses Andy Hamilton’s critique of this
assumption, and his dynamic conception of rhythm as order-in-movement or
order-in-movement-in-sound, defended in his article “Rhythm and Stasis.” On
that account, rhythm is characterized as “[a primitive] order within human bodily
movement or movement-in-sound,” and it is suggested that this order “involves a
non-spatial yet literal sense of movement.”1 This dynamic account opposes both
Budd’s and Simons’ static accounts in terms of order-in-time, and also Scruton’s
metaphorical conception of sonic rhythm as movement in space.2
While Macarthur (Skepticus) and perhaps Tugby (Metaphysicus) oppose or re-
sist it, the other participants support some kind of dynamic conception. Macarthur
rejects the dynamic–static distinction as Hamilton (Dynamicus) presents it, while
Tugby offers a metaphysical account of non-spatial movement in terms of quality-
space—a view of which both Macarthur and Hamilton are skeptical. Macarthur
criticizes Hamilton’s original claim that music moves in a literal but non-spatial
sense; Hamilton concedes the point, but responds that something relevant does
move literally: musicians and audience share a rhythmic, dance-like response.
Drawing on aspects of Macarthur’s account, and discussion by Squires (Analyticus),
he argues that this dance-like response is a participatory manifestation of musical
understanding; there is an internal relation between music and movement, such
that rhythm constitutes an order of movement. As Ezra Pound said, “music begins
1 Hamilton “Rhythm and Stasis,” 29, 40.

2 Budd “Musical Movement,” 209–23; Simons, “Ontology of Rhythm”; Scruton, Aesthetics of Music.
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Dialogue on Rhythm 17
to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance . . . poetry begins to atrophy when
it gets too far from music.”3 Music, dance, and poetry originated as an integrated
practice. Macarthur insists that the dynamic account rests on an implausible view
of literal movement in music; Hamilton responds that the non-movement assump-
tion rests on sonicism—the view that music is a strictly sonic art, that does not
essentially involve bodily and visual experience.4 On his view, rhythm as order-in-
movement does not require an implausible notion of non-spatial literal movement.
Squires and Wiseman (Vitalia) develop the movement criterion, arguing that it
should be expressed as a capacity, not a disposition.
1. Projection, rhythm, and proto-rhythm
(palace green, durham)
skepticus: Good morning, Dynamicus! I hope you are enjoying the fine weather
today. What brings you to Palace Green so early this spring morning? Though
surely there is no pleasanter time of day, or more delightful season of the year.
dynamicus: In fact, my thoughts were taken up with the philosophical problem
we discussed recently, and I found it hard to sleep. I decided to take some early
morning exercise—perhaps its rhythmic nature prompted further ideas.
skep: Yes, these issues are absorbing. I find myself in sympathy with your philo-
sophical humanist approach, that treats music both as a sounding, vibrating
phenomenon, of changing patterns of intentionally produced sound in time,
and a performing art or entertainment. Like you, I want to reject both an ab-
stract, Platonic conception, and also the sub-personal standpoint of neuro-
philosophy. I want to insist, with you, that rhythm is essentially a felt person-level
phenomenon.
dy: Yes, a humanistic approach has important implications for the understanding of
rhythm. So you agree with my view that rhythm is intentional, while creatures or
artifacts that do not have or express intentions can produce only proto-rhythms?
skep: Not entirely, Dynamicus. My view is that while a rhythm might be experi-
enced as if it were intentional and meaningful, it may, in fact, be either non-
intentional or intentional, meaningful or meaningless. Musical rhythm is
intentional and apparently meaningful. But it seems obvious to me that there
are non-intentional meaningless rhythms, such as a train running on a track,
a heartbeat, or the drip of a leaky tap. We might call these natural rhythms and
distinguish them from human rhythms like music and dance, without denying
that making rhythms is natural to us.
3 Pound, ABC of Reading, 14.

4 This issue arises with other contributions in this volume, such as Gaiger and Durà-Vilà.
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But let me turn to your argument that in the case of music or poetry, rhythm is
imparted by performers, and “imaginatively projected” by listeners.5 Music, po-
etry, dance and human bodily movement are paradigms of rhythm, you say, un-
derstood as the “imposition of accents on sequences of sounds or movements,
creating non-periodic phenomena usually within a periodic repetitive (met-
rical) framework.”6 And you stress that rhythm is humanly-produced—a ge-
netic claim about a sound’s causal origins that, I take it, may not be evident to a
listener.
dy: I would qualify what you are saying, Skepticus. I am not claiming that all
rhythms are humanly-produced. A drum machine produces rhythms, and these
are only indirectly humanly-produced—if they’re sampled, or given that the
machine itself is humanly-produced. I meant rather that human producers of
rhythm, and the human practices of music, poetry, and dance in which rhythm
is embedded, draw on and incorporate natural sounds, and later mechanical
and electronic sounds—often regarding these sounds as in themselves proto-
rhythmic, or rhythmic.
skep: I see. However, I take your more fundamental point to be that rhythm, in
its primary manifestations, is an intentional phenomenon. And as you say, the
rhythms associated with music, dance, and poetry constitute “an intentional
order.”7 An immediate emendation is to limit the realm of rhythm to intentional
bodily movement rather than bodily movement in general.
dy: That might be acceptable, Skepticus.
skep: Let us say that, on your view, rhythm is primarily an intentional phenom-
enon, whose expression we can and often do perceive in various human activi-
ties. It is thus an aspect of the human world—a claim that seems to fit well with
your humanist inclinations. Rhythms produced by inanimate things, such as a
dripping tap, you call “proto-rhythms” and treat them as secondary phenomena.
dy: Yes, that is my view.
skep: Now, turning to the question of projection, you seem to want to distinguish
perceiving intentional or “true” rhythm, from projecting “proto-rhythm,” the
latter being a phenomenon of natural or non-intentional orders of stressed and
unstressed accents in time, such as a heartbeat, waves on the shore, or a horse’s
gallop. Indeed sometimes you speak of rhythms themselves as both being
perceived and projected.
dy: “Pulse” would be an alternative term, to capture what you are calling “stressed
and unstressed accents.”
skep: But what we must remember is that the data for philosophizing here involve
a range of experiences of rhythm in both human and natural phenomena. So
5 Hamilton, “Rhythm and Stasis,” 29: “A humanistic account treats rhythm as an order distinctive of human
movement or movement-in-sound, an order imaginatively projected onto processes that do not literally
possess it.”
6 Hamilton, “Rhythm and Stasis,” 38, 26.
7 Hamilton, “Rhythm and Stasis,” 30.
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I do not find the distinction between rhythm and proto-rhythm helpful. Perhaps
it has this to be said for it: the intentional case structures both non-intentional
and intentional rhythm at the level of phenomenology. Rhythm, however it is
produced, can often seem intentional and meaningful, even where it is not. But
for present purposes, let us follow your restricting the term “rhythm” to human-
produced phenomena. We can therefore ask, is “projection” needed to explain
our experience of rhythm?
dy: You believe it is not?
skep: Indeed. Your account appeals to projection principally to explain how we
hear rhythm in “proto-rhythmic” phenomena—heartbeats, waves, trains. You
argued that in these non-intentional, naturally recurring patterns of stressed
and unstressed sound, we cannot avoid projecting rhythm—as I recall, citing La
Monte Young’s composition “ ‘X’ for Henry Flint” (1960), where the performer
has the impossible task of producing an absolutely uninflected pulse without
meter. You said that this piece shows both how the performer cannot help
creating rhythm, and how the listener cannot avoid projecting it.
dy: Yes, that is a good summary.
skep: Well, there is a problem I believe, with the idea that rhythm is “projected.”
Projection presupposes a something that one projects onto. This can happen liter-
ally: images are projected onto a screen from a film-reel, or sounds are projected
into a space from a source; or figuratively: as when one’s joy is projected onto
the world at large. In the case of perceived rhythm—something experienced as
a feature of bodily movement or sound—projection implies one has access to
some subjective state of mind whose “projection” can plausibly account for our
experience of it as “in” the movement or sound. But what is this inner something
that we experience as outer?
dy: I am not sure there has to be an “inner” something—but pray continue.
skep: There does if the notion of projection is to make any sense. Perhaps the idea is
that rhythm is like color in this respect. Color is often thought by philosophers
to be a mental projection onto an essentially colorless world. But I reject the
coherence of this way of thinking. We have no genuine explanation of color in
projective terms insofar as we have no coherent idea of how color could be a
feature of the inner realm from whence it is supposedly projected. The failure
of projectivism here—one rarely noticed in projectivist discussions of color in
modern philosophy—is attributable to our having no coherent definition of
what we might call, pleonastically, a “color sensation.”
dy: This is very interesting, my dear Skepticus. However, you seem to assume that
my view is like Schütz’s well-known position. He argues that communication
rests on a “mutual tuning-in relationship” in which individuals come to share
their experience of “inner time.”8 In his view, rhythmic coordination is prior
to any collective agreement. This is not my view. The “inner” in “inner time” is
8 Schütz, On Phenomenology, 212.
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redundant. I favor instead Clayton’s view of rhythm emerging spontaneously in

individuals and in interactions between them, and so being both natural (phys-
iological) and social in origin.9 This is the currently popular concept of entrain-
ment, discussed by music psychologists in this volume, which I think captures
the idea that rhythm is essentially a felt phenomenon.10 I differ from Clayton
and colleagues, however, in insisting that entrainment is an elucidation, not a
scientific explanation.
skep: Pray enlighten us, Dynamicus.
dy: I agree with the psychologists that entrainment is essential to music, and that
one responds to rhythm by getting in sync. So rhythm is essentially social. What
I object to is their view that natural processes themselves entrain. I also object to
their apparent denial that a human being can initiate rhythm, on the grounds—
they say—that one always entrains to something inner. Entrainment is no more
fundamental than rhythm itself.11
skep: Be that as it may, I still maintain that projection is an otiose explanation of
genuine rhythm and an unnecessary explanation of proto-rhythm. Suppose,
Dynamicus, we follow you and say that the primary experience of rhythm is
as intentional temporal movement—leaving aside for now the question of
what distinguishes mere temporal ordering from rhythmic movement. On
the view under discussion, rhythm is constituted, not merely caused, by inten-
tional stresses imposed on sequences of sound. It is a genuine feature, a percep-
tible order or pattern that characterizes a range of human bodily movements
and sounds—one that allows for ignorance, error, and discernment. But as you
argued concerning “ ‘X’ for Henry Flint,” the explanation of our experience of
rhythm is over-determined: the performer “cannot help imposing rhythm
and . . . the listener cannot avoid projecting it.”12 Is it not redundant to say that
one apprehends the rhythm created and imposed by the performer, and that one
also projects it?
dy: You have correctly characterized my view, Skepticus, though I’m not sure there
is over-determination.
skep: Surely all we need to say is that the performer cannot help imposing a rhythm,
an (apparently) intentional ordering, on the basic pulse for which they are re-
sponsible. We can translate your infelicitous claim that we cannot avoid projec-
tion of rhythm onto pulse, as the inevitability of experiencing rhythm in a pulse
even when there was no intention of producing a rhythm.
dy: I am not entirely persuaded, Skepticus. I would say that in the case of proto-
rhythm, there is projection. By “projection,” I mean just that rhythm is not
entirely an intrinsic feature of the sounds, but also of how they are heard.
However, rather than using the metaphor of projection, I would be happy to
9 Clayton, “Entrainment.”
10 Clayton, “Entrainment”; London “Metric Entrainment.”
11 Further discussed at Section 4.
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talk of the listener interpreting or hearing-as—a metaphor that does seem

more appropriate in the case of rhythmic or metrical ambiguity, where there
is genuine rather than proto-rhythm. An excellent example is Debussy’s “Des
pas sur la neige” from his Preludes.13 I understand hearing-as on the model of
Wittgenstein’s seeing-as, and Wollheim’s seeing-in.14 But can I propose an ad-
journment of our discussion to a nearby café?
2. The movement in music
(bean social café, durham)
skep: To return to our topic, Dynamicus. I have been pondering your characteri-
zation of rhythm as “order within human bodily movement or movement-in-
sound.” You went on to claim that “there is a primitive order underlying” these,
“an order that involves a non-spatial yet literal sense of movement.”15
dy: Yes, that is correct.
skep: Well, I must say that this view seems highly problematic. Your aspiration to
provide an overarching account of rhythm applicable both to a certain kind of
bodily movement—such as dance—and a certain kind of sound, for instance
African drum music, is ambitious. But the problem arises with your account
of movement itself. As we know from the OED, one definition of “movement”
is that it is “an act of changing physical location or position or of having this
changed.” So your proposal seems to equivocate by combining a literal and a
figurative use of the term “movement”—literal regarding bodily movement, and
figurative regarding sound. Whilst sound does move through space at a certain
rate, that is not the relevant phenomenon here. Rather, you seem to advocate the
more radical and paradoxical idea that bodily rhythm and sound rhythm both
manifest “a non-spatial yet literal sense of movement.” But how could this be?
dy: Slow down Skepticus, you are losing me! You find my account incoherent?
skep: Yes. Movement is a spatial notion, so to speak of a “non-spatial movement” is
to use movement as a metaphor for a non-spatial phenomenon. In appealing to
movement literally in this context, you hallucinate a new sense. The only avail-
able options are a literal (hence spatial) use of the term, or a figurative use of the
term which may (but need not) be applied to non-spatial phenomena. Of course
you can give “movement” a new sense, but this must be a reasonable extension
from one of its existing senses.
13Discussed in Cooper and Meyer, Rhythmic Structure of Music, 171–4.

14See Hamilton, Aesthetics and Music, Ch. 4, sec. 5.
15 Hamilton, “Rhythm and Stasis,” 29, 40. Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol, 292 refers to movement in a
more or less Kantian space more fundamental than, and comprehensive of, the space of geometry and that of
physical objects.
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To speak of the rhythm of a line drawing, for example, is to use the figure of
movement to describe something spatial and static, according to which one’s ex-
perience of the (fixed) line imaginatively engages with an idea of the movement
required to create (or retrace) it. And to experience the rhythm of a philosopher’s
thought, is to use the metaphor of movement to describe the changes and de-
velopment of a connected series of thoughts, where the comparison is with the
way one travels to a destination passing through various places on the way. Here
we have a metaphorical appeal to movement to describe a non-spatial phenom-
enon, viz. thought.
dy: Your objection is certainly a strong one, Skepticus.
skep: I will develop it further, Dynamicus. Your two suggested models of “non-
spatial movement” are based on confusions. Firstly, you say that the term “rapid”
means both “happening in a short time” and “happening at a fast pace” (OED),
and you then appeal to the first of these as an example of non-spatial movement.
But “rapid” in this sense is a purely temporal notion and not a form of move-
ment at all. We might conjecture that it was, perhaps, once a spatial metaphor—
based on the comparison with moving between or past various places in a short
time—that has ossified into a literal purely temporal (non-spatial) use with no
connection to movement.
dy: I see.
skep: Second, you suppose that “non-travelling movement around a point” is not
spatial because it doesn’t involve movement to a new location.16 But movement
need only be relative, not absolute, change in location. Consequently, it does not
require “travel” in your sense. Rotations around a point, as well as oscillations
to and from a point, both count as spatial changes in location, and hence as
movements.
As Scruton and others have noted, experiencing rhythm in sound is not an
experience of change of location. It is a non-spatial experience of an order of
changes in time that we can describe metaphorically, as in the case of the line
drawing, in terms of the movement required to create (or recreate) it; or perhaps
in terms of a comparison with the rhythm of various forms of ordered move-
ment. Scruton’s account of musical rhythm in terms of a metaphorical appeal to
movement survives your assault upon it.
dy: These are indeed serious objections, Skepticus. Perhaps our friend
Metaphysicus, who I see just arriving, will help me respond. Good morning,
Metaphysicus, how are you? What brings you here on this fine day?
metaphysicus: Good morning to you both. I felt the need to escape the oppressive
atmosphere of my study for some air to refresh my thoughts.
skep: Very understandable, Metaphysicus. We are engaged in a discussion on
rhythm, with which I believe you are familiar. Dynamicus has put forward some
puzzling claims that I am questioning. In particular, I believe that movement is
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essentially a spatial notion, and so his idea of non-spatial movement, in music

and other rhythmic phenomena, must be metaphorical. Yet he denies this,
suggesting that rhythm is a literal non-spatial movement.
meta: Evidently you are unhappy with Dynamicus’ strongly dynamic model of
rhythm, Skepticus. Let’s backtrack a little, to recall the views of Boghossian
and Budd. According to their static conception, talk of movement in rela-
tion to rhythm is both metaphorical and dispensable, while Dynamicus’
view is closer to Scruton’s dynamic view.17 But controversially, while Scruton
regards talk of movement in music as purely metaphorical though essential,
Dynamicus suggests that music literally moves. Given that music clearly does
not move in the ordinary spatial sense, the upshot is a notion of real but non-
spatial movement—a much more radical form of dynamism than Scruton’s. For
Scruton, rhythm in music is dynamic merely insofar as it necessarily involves
the metaphorical projection of movement by the listener, the source of which
is the listener’s bodily movement. But for Dynamicus, music moves in a literal
(metaphysical) rather than figurative (metaphorical) sense.18
dy: That seems a fair summary of one of my proposals.
meta: In defense of Dynamicus, there is a way of responding to the worry about
incoherence, which involves holding that movement is spatial, but insisting that
the notion of space is broader than it may at first seem. This view concedes that
it is a conceptual truth that movement must take place in a space. But according
to the strategy I will explore, there are two different metaphysical notions of
space. The first is what I call geographical space, the ordinary three-dimensional
physical space we are all familiar with. The second and less familiar notion is
what we may call quality space—the kind of space represented by, say, the color
gamut chart. Of course, it is natural to assume that there is only a “color space”
in a metaphorical sense. However, there is a position in metaphysics that takes
a realist stance toward various quality spaces, as a means of understanding and
analyzing properties.
skep: These are unfamiliar notions to me, Metaphysicus—can you please explain?
Doesn’t the color spectrum occur in physical space?
meta: As I say, when Dynamicus suggests that ordered movement-in-sound is
literal but non-spatial, I take him to mean that it does not involve movement
in the ordinary geographical sense. But this leaves open the possibility that
movement-in-sound is movement in quality space, or some other real, meta-
physically defined space.
A realist about qualitative properties, such as sound, can endorse this
“quality space” view. So, Skepticus, you are wrong to dismiss a literalist view of
17Boghossian, “Music in the Sound”; Budd, “Musical Movement”; Scruton, “Thoughts on Rhythm.”
18Similarly, Zuckerkandl argues that music moves in a metaphysical, Kantian sense of space, even though
nothing relevant in the music physically or geometrically moves.
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rhythmical movement simply on the grounds that it involves a metaphysically

incoherent notion of movement.
dy: These are interesting suggestions, Metaphysicus.
meta: My proposal agrees that it is an analytic truth that movement takes place
in space, but holds that as well as geographical space, there is also quality
space, which contains the dimensions of determination along which quali-
tative properties lie. According to this proposal quality space is just as real as
geographical space—that is, talk of quality space is not merely metaphorical.
Geographical space is familiar to anyone with ordinary perceptual faculties;
quality space is revealed only through metaphysical and scientific reflection. But
if there are good reasons for positing quality space, and if sounds are qualitative,
as seems plausible, then rhythm could involve distinctive kinds of literal move-
ment in quality space.
dy: This is an intriguing view, Metaphysicus, although Peter Cheyne comments that
rather than only people trained in metaphysical or scientific reflection, aural
quality space is surely revealed to anyone who can hear movement in music.
Such hearers might not be able to explain aural quality space articulately, but it is
nonetheless revealed to them.
skep: Dynamicus, I fear that you are being seduced by metaphysical speculation!
dy: My dear Skepticus, it seems that you belong with those anti-metaphysicians
who urge us to “just say no”—as President Reagan did in the case of drugs—
when asked to engage in metaphysical debate.
skep: That is a parody of my position, Dynamicus, as you well know! I say that
it is wise to adopt a skeptical attitude to the metaphysician’s claims to explain
appearances in terms of some supposedly fixed, “fundamental” or “absolute” no-
tion of “reality”—where the appearance–reality distinction invoked has nothing
to do with the everyday grammar of these terms. In the present case I am skep-
tical that Metaphysicus has provided a new sense of “movement” with regard to
quality space.
dy: Pray continue, my good Metaphysicus.
meta: Let me illustrate quality space by means of color properties. Color can be
represented as a 3D space with dimensions of hue, saturation, and brightness.
Colors can then be considered regions in this quality space, with determinate
colors being proper sub-regions of the determinable colors they fall under—so
that, for instance, scarlet would be a proper sub-region of the redness region.
And the most determinate specification of a color will correspond to a single
point on 3D color space. Note that color and sound cases are plausibly isomor-
phic, since sounds are also specified across three dimensions—pitch, timbre,
and loudness.
dy: Yes, I can see structural similarities between sound and color. But where does
movement enter the picture?
meta: Well, if movement must take place within a space, and if quality space is as
real as any other space, there may be literal yet non-geographical movement—as
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Dynamicus posits in the case of rhythm. For quality-space theorists, such a

notion allows us to analyze qualitative change. Not only do things exemplify
qualitative properties, they also change them. Indeed, music itself can be un-
derstood as an artistically created sequence of changes of sound over time, what
Dynamicus calls “an art of temporal process.”19 Thus some realists about quality
space appeal to the notion qualitative movement.20
dy: This is a proposal I must ponder, Metaphysicus. But what do you make of the
temporal model of rhythmic movement, which I thought quite promising?
meta: This is meant to be a non-spatial model that falls naturally out of the view of
music as an “art of temporal process.” Recall your example of a rapid sequence
of gunshots. Since the succession in this case is purely temporal, and given that
the notion of rapidity has connotations with motion, you suggested this may be
a case of literal but non-spatial movement.
dy: That is correct.
meta: Now, I would say that in one sense, movement uncontroversially must have
a temporal dimension. For even in cases of ordinary spatial movement, as when
a physical body changes from occupying one physical location to another, such
movement necessarily takes time. However, whether there can be a purely tem-
poral notion of movement is much more controversial.
To resolve these disputes, we need principled metaphysical reasons for thinking
there can be non-spatial, or what I call non-geographical, movement—and
the quality- space proposal provides them. These reasons involve general
considerations about the nature of qualitative properties. Rhythm can then be
seen as one among several cases of qualitative movement, rather than a unique
case of it—though still a distinctive form, through the humanistic and inten-
tional aspects of Dynamicus’ theory. The quality-space strategy places this
theory on firmer metaphysical ground.
skep: I doubt that, my dear Metaphysicus.
dy: Enough of your sarcasm, Skepticus! My feeling about Metaphysicus’s proposal
is that movement in quality space needs to be close enough to ordinary spatial
movement to express how close music is to that. But it challenges me to think
more carefully about the point of insisting that music literally moves—that, for
instance, it makes people want to move (in dance, say). I need to ponder further
in what sense it moves—and what the “it” is that does not literally move. It seems
to me that proponents of this view assume that music is exclusively a sonic art,
neglecting bodily and visual dimensions.
meta: Indeed. But whatever view one takes on these questions, there are many in-
dependent theoretical reasons for favoring my view, which is increasingly pop-
ular among realists about properties. For Funkhouser, quality space theory

20 Thus Cowling, “Instantiation as Location,” 673, n. 16, advocates “locationism,” treating change as motion
through quality-space; he assumes realism about quality space, so the “motion” he speaks of is understood
literally. See also Mumford and Anjum, Causes from Powers, 23.
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can be applied to all properties, including geometrical, causal, and functional

properties; it allows us to analyze how things fall under kinds, and also the dis-
tinction between determinable properties such as redness, and determinate
properties such as being scarlet.21 Quality space is used to analyze property in-
stantiation as a species of occupation, or the operation of causal powers.22
dy: Skepticus looks unconvinced.
meta: It is not just realist metaphysicians who should appreciate my arguments.
In natural science, abstract notions of space are used to represent the states of
systems such as configuration or phase spaces in physics. Like quality space,
such spaces are not spatial in the ordinary sense, since they typically have many
more than three dimensions. But some scientists and philosophers of science
regard such spaces as more than representational mathematical tools that corre-
spond to nothing in reality. The notion of non-geographical space should not be
dismissed too quickly.
dy: Thank you, Metaphysicus, for raising these important issues, worthy of further
investigation.
meta: My good wishes for your project, Dynamicus. I have to leave now for a work-
shop. So I wish you good-day, colleagues, and hope to see you soon.
3. Meaningful order
(later that day, palace green, durham)
skep: Dynamicus—when we consider the proposal of Metaphysicus, I hold that

“space” in “quality space” is being used in a metaphorical sense.23 A quality
space of colors, smells, tastes and so on is an abstract mathematical represen-
tation of qualities, modeled by a spatial array of qualities ordered along var-
ious dimensions by their similarities and differences, with degree of proximity
representing degree of similarity.
dy: I am inclined to agree, Skepticus. I appreciate the current popularity of realist
metaphysics, but that is not our path, I think.
skep: Metaphysicus’ proposal does not capture what you call “literal non-spatial
movement,” I feel. There is no movement in an abstract quality space unless
movement is being used figuratively to refer to changes in qualities in time.
However, you stressed the familiar sense of movement when you linked the hu-
manistic account of rhythm to “an order distinctive of human movement.” And
you argued that one should reject, as a “static” conception, the idea of rhythm
21 Funkhouser, Logical Structure, 25.

22 Cowling, “Instantiation as Location”; Mumford and Anjum, Causes from Powers.
23 See Nussbaum, “Musical Perception.”
01_oso-9780199347773_Part-1.indd 26 16-Oct-19 18:14:41
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as a mere pattern of different sound qualities that change in time: what you call
“simply order [of qualities]-in-time.”24
dy: Indeed, Skepticus.
skep: It is worth pausing to observe that the notion of changes of qualities in time
surely deserves the label “dynamic” no less than a phenomenon that (literally)
moves. The term “dynamic” need not ordinarily imply movement even if move-
ment can be properly be described as dynamic. For this reason I reject the static–
dynamic distinction as you are using it, Dynamicus. If musical rhythm is, as
I think, a pattern of changes of qualities in time, then it is dynamic in a perfectly
ordinary sense, without being a form of movement. Furthermore, your descrip-
tion of my conception of rhythm as “static” seems to me to imply that you take a
block-universe conception of time and deny that time involves genuine change.
The question is, ultimately, about one’s view of time.
dy: I would not want to commit myself here, Skepticus. But I do want to maintain
an ordinary sense of “dynamic” according to which it refers to movement and
not just change. That is the sense in which I have always used it.
skep: I see. But you agree that Metaphysicus’ proposal assumes a metaphysical
conception of movement at odds with your humanist conception of rhythm
embedded in human behavior and practices?
dy: Indeed. The proposal is ingenious, but I would regard its non-humanistic con-
ception as static, involving merely order-in-time.
skep: In my view, this speculative metaphysics is not sufficiently sensitive to the
human situation—to reiterate, realist metaphysics should be supplanted by the
enterprise of describing the conceptual landscape that we actually inhabit.
Leaving aside the static–dynamic issue, I want to argue that rhythm is experi-
enced as meaningful—intentional or purposive, whether it is or not—and that
it is part of the phenomenology of rhythm that it seems meaningful or humanly
significant.
One might call this an “as-if intentional” or “phenomenologically inten-
tional” account which we can deepen by exploring the notion of meaningful-
ness in this context. Some intentional phenomena are communicative, such as
speech or art, and some not—compare somebody walking down the street, in an
ordinary unreflective way, with the walk of a flaneur, trying to attract people’s at-
tention. Central cases of humanly-produced rhythm are not merely intentional
movements; they are intentionally communicative movements— where the
claim of communication is distinguished from that of empirical support, that
is, whether the phenomena in question can be considered a reliable symptom or
good evidence for various further claims. Just as human gestures intentionally
but wordlessly communicate gestural meanings so, too, most human rhythms—
excepting language and song— intentionally but wordlessly communicate
rhythmic meanings in bodily movements and sounds.
24 Hamilton, “Rhythm and Stasis,” 26, 29.
01_oso-9780199347773_Part-1.indd 27 16-Oct-19 18:14:41
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dy: This picture seems persuasive, Skepticus.

skep: The non-intentional rhythm of a moving train or windscreen wipers cannot
be said to communicate any meaning, but can be heard as if they did. This is
the main motivation for my saying that such phenomena are cases of rhythm,
since what is being apparently experienced is a meaningful (hence intentional)
order in time. We have a natural tendency to find meaning in a rhythmic order,
just as we tend to find fear in a fly struggling in a spider’s web, or awareness of
sunlight in a plant that turns towards it. Animistic beliefs and rituals in human
societies treat natural phenomena such as storms, volcanic eruptions, and the
cycles of the stars and moon as bearers of meaning. Of course in all these cases
I am talking about apparent meaningfulness, something consistent with mean-
inglessness non-intentional phenomena.
dy: I find much of this argument convincing, Skepticus.
skep: Understanding rhythm as communicative is a fruitful way of challenging
Malcolm Budd’s account, which denies that rhythm involves contact with
intentions or meanings. Since your account of rhythm as temporal order-in-
movement faces difficulties in sustaining the claim that the movement in ques-
tion is both literal and non-spatial, perhaps the appeal to movement is not the
right ground for criticism of Budd.25 I agree with him that rhythm is an order
of changes in time and not a form of movement—though movement through
space can provide an analogy for this order-in-time, which is related to the fact
that we can measure time by movements in space, such as the moving hands of
a clock.
dy: I do regard rhythm as order-in-movement, as we shall see. But pray continue
with your account of meaningfulness in rhythm, Skepticus.
skep: We must contrast two kinds of temporal ordering, one where the elements
merely follow one another in time—as on Budd’s account—and one where they
follow from one another, and so can be read as meaning-giving structures, as
developments or variations or resolutions. The first conception is of a bare order
of sounds in time; the second is of a meaningful (or apparently meaningful)
order of sounds in time. The vital distinction is not between static and dynamic,
but between meaningless and meaningful.
dy: Well, I think we disagree here.
skep: Consider Wittgenstein’s remark: “Understanding a sentence is much more
akin to understanding a theme in music than one may think.”26 For him, a mu-
sical theme has an apparent meaning or significance, and so there is such a
thing as an understanding of what music is in terms of it. We speak of a piece of
music as having an opening, making various statements, restatements, paren-
thetical comments, and perhaps a recapitulation before coming to a conclusion.
25 Hamilton, “Rhythm and Stasis,” 37: “movement is the most fundamental conceptualization of music.”
26 Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, §527.
01_oso-9780199347773_Part-1.indd 28 16-Oct-19 18:14:41
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Understanding here is like understanding a sentence—it involves a meaningful

development of notes, akin to a meaningful development of thoughts.
dy: I am very sympathetic to this idea, Skepticus—as shown by my characterization
of music as “thinking in sound.”27
skep: I am glad to hear it, Dynamicus. Logicians regard thought as non-temporal,
abstracting from time and psychology to focus on relations of implication—the
structural and conditional question of whether truth is transmitted from prem-
ises to conclusion. But if “thinking” means “reasoned change in view,” it must be
time-bound and embedded in psychology.28 Understanding a sentence and un-
derstanding a musical theme, then, both depend on understanding the rhythms
of thought that they express; both are governed by a sense of necessity, a “logic.”
Scruton talks of a “virtual causality that governs musical movement . . . one note
in a melody is heard to bring its successor into being.”29 But rather than invoking
the concept of causation, I suggest, the relation between notes or tones is better
understood as a virtual necessity, the normativity of meaning, of what logically
must follow from what.
dy: These are very insightful and persuasive arguments, Skepticus—though I think
that by “virtual causality,” Scruton offers a helpful synonym for “necessity.”
I agree with you that humanly-produced rhythm is an intentional, communi-
cative, meaningful activity, and that there is a logic to its expression in music,
dance, and poetry. However, I think that these considerations lend support to
my view concerning music and movement.
I am indebted for this line of thought to my old teacher Analyticus, whom I see
striding towards us. Good day, Analyticus!
analyticus: Good day, Dynamicus and Skepticus! What is your topic today?
dy: Rhythm of course! We are discussing how people respond to music, as Scruton
stresses, and are not just caused to move by it. “Response” in such cases has a
logical relation to “call,” as in “call and response”—not the purely causal sense
of scientific psychology. I was agreeing with Skepticus’ view that a rhythm is
meaningful.
ana: Yes, that seems plausible, Dynamicus. Grasping a rhythm involves repeating
and developing it in different melodies or harmonies, and recognizing it in dif-
ferent contexts—a matter of comprehension, not just perception. Rhythm is
something one grasps—it involves cognitive achievement. And one criterion
of having grasped it, is moving rhythmically. Such movements are controlled
responses, not (mere) effects, though they involve a pre-cognitive capacity of the
body-subject.
dy: This is a promising suggestion, Analyticus—though some melodies of the
most banal commodified pop music seem too simple to require “grasping.” At a
27 Hamilton, Aesthetics and Music, Introduction and Ch. 4.

28 Harman, Change in View.
29 Scruton, “Thoughts on Rhythm,” 229.
01_oso-9780199347773_Part-1.indd 29 16-Oct-19 18:14:41
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certain time of year in Britain, one cannot escape Slade’s pitiful anthem “Merry
Xmas Everybody,” with its shockingly bad note-choice—if indeed one can call
that a melody.
skep: Perhaps we should avoid your elitist views on popular culture, Dynamicus.
dy: Indeed. The humanist claim is that we would not call various sequences rhythms
if people did not react to them in certain typical ways.
ana: Yes—typical ways include continuing or repeating certain sequences or re-
lated elements of the sequence, by drumming, singing, or whistling; moving
bodily, in time with the sequence, by dancing, or tapping fingers or feet; and
noting and demonstrating changes or gaps in the repeated segments of the se-
quence. So I sympathize with your humanist insight, Dynamicus. Identified nat-
uralistically, the sound sequence would be the same whether we responded to it
or not. But if we did not in general respond to it in the ways suggested, it would
not be a rhythm.30
skep: I would say not that our response constitutes it as the rhythm it is, but that
our response can demonstrate whether we understand the rhythm or not,
Analyticus—at least for intentional or meaningful rhythm.
dy: You and I agree that “rhythm” is not a natural kind term, Skepticus—but from
this fact, I conclude that being a rhythm and being called a rhythm amount to the
same thing. However, we cannot pursue that deep issue here.31 Setting it aside,
it seems to me that Analyticus’ general position is correct. Matching the rhythm
of a drum beat is creative in at least a minimal sense, and, more minimally, so is
hearing it as a rhythm, as Skepticus stresses. On my account, the paradigm cases
of rhythm are human productions, conditioned by natural rhythms. My point is
that anyone familiar with music, dance, and poetry is able to initiate rhythms.
Music-making is a social phenomenon.
skep: I think here you are confusing what rhythms consist in, with what it is to un-
derstand them when they are intentional. Not all rhythms are intentional. The
rhythm of a train on its tracks is non-intentional, even if we naturally respond
to it as an intentional order. There is an apparent meaningfulness, akin to seeing
a crab’s tracks in the sand that look like a word. Being mere marks there is no
word; but we naturally respond as if there is.
But let us return to the original question of the relation of rhythm and move-
ment. Again I want to press you—how do you address my objection that talk of
movement in music must be metaphorical and not literal, as Scruton says?
dy: Recall Scruton’s argument that “The musical phenomena that we group to-
gether under the rubric of rhythm have their counterparts in other areas of
human activity”—speech, dance, physical labour.32 Dance, poetry, and music
are conceptually interdependent in that rhythm is essential to each; none can
30 Anscombe, “Linguistic Idealism”; Hamilton, “Rhythm and Movement.”

31 Anscombe, “Linguistic Idealism”; Hamilton, “Rhythm and Movement.”
32 Scruton, Understanding Music, 61.
01_oso-9780199347773_Part-1.indd 30 16-Oct-19 18:14:41
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be understood independently of rhythm. Hearing musical rhythm does not

only involve experiencing music as behaving like a human body; it also involves
experiencing the human body, the person, as behaving, moving, musically.
skep: What does that mean? How is a temporal phenomenon (music) like a spatial
phenomenon (bodily movement) except in an analogical or metaphorical sense?
dy: Skepticus, isn’t it begging the question to assume that music is a temporal and
not spatial phenomenon? As a performing art, it has many spatial dimensions.
I would characterize the assumption that nothing relevant in the music lit-
erally moves as resting on sonicism, the view that music is exclusively a sonic
art, or perhaps acousmaticism, the view that music is exclusively an unseen,
auditory—acoustic—art, focused on sounds without reference to the means of
their creation.33 I contrast such views with the conceptual holism of music and
dance, according to which music is a cross-sensory practice and phenomenon.
Scruton does not fully appreciate this conceptual holism. The link is stronger
than he suggests—one cannot understand music without understanding dance.
skep: I agree with some qualification. I would say something weaker: one cannot un-
derstand music without entrainment, i.e., without being able to engage in entrained
movement to the music. If such entrained movement counts as dance then your
thesis is established—but perhaps not all entrained movement does so count.
dy: That view is close enough to mine, I think. The basic sense of rhythmical move-
ment is dance-like, I believe—to hear music as movement is a fundamental way
of experiencing and conceiving it.
skep: I agree with your invocation of movement as a criterion of understanding mu-
sical rhythm, then. But that leaves untouched your original claim that rhythm is
literal non-spatial movement. To say music “moves” is a metaphor or analogue!
You still have given no sense to “literal non-spatial movement.”
dy: If one acknowledges that music has essentially spatial dimensions, and affinities
with dance, then there is no need for such a notion, which I’ve abandoned thanks
to your persuasive objections. But rhythm as order-in-movement does not rest
on non-spatial literal movement, and is not refuted along with it—so I still insist
on this idea of an order of movement. The static conception that rhythm is a pat-
tern of sounds and silences is surely refuted by the rhythmic nature of dance—
how does dance involve a pattern of sounds and silences? A static conception
has to make music and poetry the core cases of rhythm, and assert a merely
causal connection with dance—which is not my view.
skep: You are simply repeating your earlier, problematic position, Dynamicus.
Rhythm is a pattern of sounds and silences, or movements and stillnesses, but
one that is apparently meaningful. The static–dynamic distinction is unhelpful
as I have already explained. Why call an order in time “static” anyway? A rhythm
changes in time, so it is “dynamic” in a perfectly ordinary sense without being
33 e.g. Malina and Schaeffer, “Concrete Music and Kinetic Art”; Scruton, Understanding Music, 5–13, 22–3,
30–2, 58; Brian Kane, Sound Unseen, passim.
01_oso-9780199347773_Part-1.indd 31 16-Oct-19 18:14:41
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a form of movement. The New Oxford American Dictionary definition for “dy-
namic” regarding a process is this: “characterized by constant change, activity, or
progress.” So change in time counts and there is no requirement of any movement.
dy: There may be an ordinary sense in which “dynamic” does not refer to a form of
movement, but there is equally an ordinary sense in which it refers to movement
rather than change, and that is the sense I am appealing to. Rhythm constitutes
what I have termed an order of movement in so far as it implies a conceptual or
normative connection between music and dance.
I agree that much work needs to be done in characterizing an “order of move-
ment.” But the idea has a history. Plato in the Laws describes rhythm as “order
in movement.”34 Hanslick characterized music as “tonally moving forms,”
arguing that music presents the dynamic properties of emotional experience,
abstracting from emotional content.35 Messiaen defines rhythm as “the ordering
of movement,” which, he says, is “applicable to dance, to words, and to music.”36
Finally, Schütz writes that “Breathing is only one example of rhythmical bodily
movement. Others are walking, dancing, knocking and many operations of
working . . . rhythm always refers to actual or virtual bodily movements in space.”37
It is significant that so many of the terms used to describe music involve
movement, especially dance-movement: waltz, march, lullaby, rock ‘n’ roll,
sarabande, stomp, swing, thrash, hip-hop. Your rejection of the dynamic view
thus faces a dilemma: Either “rhythm” has a different meaning in “musical
rhythm” compared to “dance rhythm,” or rhythm is not a pattern of sounds and
silences—since that is not an adequate characterization of dance rhythm. And
to say that rhythm has different meanings in these cases seems implausible.
skep: I reject this dilemma. But as it is getting late, let us resume our discussions
tomorrow.
dy: Yes indeed, Skepticus.
4. Entrainment, the movement criterion, and rhythm

as “order of movement”
(tealicious tearoom, durham)
skep: Good morning, Dynamicus and Analyticus. I trust you are both eager for
further debate.
dy: Indeed we are, Skepticus. Can we begin by considering the phenomenon that
we touched on earlier, which psychologists call entrainment—the tendency of a
34Plato, Laws, Bk 2, 665a.

35Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful, 29.
36 Messiaen adds that the definition is “incomplete,” though he doesn’t explain why: Messiaen, Music and
Colour, 67.
37 Schütz, “Fragment on the Phenomenology of Rhythm,” in On Phenomenology, 21.
01_oso-9780199347773_Part-1.indd 32 16-Oct-19 18:14:42
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subject to align their movement to an external auditory pulse? Psychologists de-

fine it as two rhythmic processes adjusting towards and eventually “locking in”
to a common phase or periodicity.38 Psychological research generally assumes a
dynamic but non-humanistic conception of rhythm, I would argue—focusing
on bodily rhythms such as heart-beat, blood circulation, respiration, secretion
of hormones, and menstrual cycles.
A humanistic conception denies that entrainment in these internal cases is
continuous with entrainment on the personal level—rather, they are distinct
phenomena with interesting affinities. On the humanistic view, individuals
adjusting their speech rhythms to match each other in conversation, or
entraining in musical performance, are categorially different from convergence
in circadian or menstrual cycles. Moreover, naturalistic accounts of entrain-
ment offered by psychologists involve a misconception—they mistakenly regard
entrainment as more fundamental than, and explanatory of, rhythm.
ana: I agree, Dynamicus. The misconception here is comparable to how
psychologists and scientistic philosophers of mind explain human memory
through memory traces; we are able to remember, it is claimed, because we store
knowledge and information. However, “store” in the relevant sense is itself a
memory-concept, co-defined with “remember”; it cannot explain the operation
of memory.
dy: Indeed. To argue that human rhythmic abilities arise from an ability to entrain,
is to make the same kind of mistake. Entrainment stands to rhythm as storage
stands to memory. The capacity to entrain does not explain our rhythmic
behavior, but is part and parcel of it; just as “storage” is part and parcel of
“remembering.” Indeed, as remembering involves more than storage—it also
involves retrieval—so rhythmic behavior involves more than entrainment: it
also involves a capacity to initiate rhythm. Only a subject unacquainted with
rhythmic behavior—such as a paralyzed, sense-deprived individual—could
not create a rhythm spontaneously. But one who is familiar with such behavior
can create new rhythms, just as a competent language-user can create novel
sentences.
ana: That seems right, Dynamicus.
dy: A humanistic conception treats rhythm as essentially a human phenomenon,
conditioned by the natural organic phenomena addressed by researchers on
entrainment. For humanists, people begin to experience waves on the shore
as rhythmic as they begin to create music and dance. The humanistic claim is
not that all rhythms are humanly-produced, but rather—to reiterate—that
rhythm came into being with, or at least is part and parcel of, human practices
of music, poetry, and dance. The producers of music, poetry, and dance drew on
and incorporated natural sounds—and in later eras, mechanical and electronic
sounds.
38 Clayton et al., “In Time with the Music,” 2.
01_oso-9780199347773_Part-1.indd 33 16-Oct-19 18:14:42
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Another random document with
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30

The Philosophy of Rhythm Aesthetics Music Poetics Peter Cheyne Full Chapter

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The Philosophy of Rhythm: Aesthetics,

Music, Poetics Peter Cheyne

00_oso-9780199347773_FM.indd 1 16-Oct-19 18:14:53

00_oso-9780199347773_FM.indd 3 16-Oct-19 18:14:53

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

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00_oso-9780199347773_FM.indd 4 16-Oct-19 18:14:53

00_oso-9780199347773_FM.indd 5 16-Oct-19 18:14:53

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8.1. Sulzer’s Schlagfolge 127

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Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music (Routledge, 2011). Most recently, he

00_oso-9780199347773_FM.indd 18 16-Oct-19 18:14:54

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Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison

Recent neglect notwithstanding, philosophical traditions have long acknowledged

2 The Philosophy of Rhythm

continues in contemporary process philosophy, influencing thinkers, including

1 Plato, Republic, Bk 3, 397a–​401a; Laws, Bk 7, 798d–​802e; Laws, Bk 2, 665a.

For Aristides, then, rhythm applies to proportionality in static objects, physical

In 1802 (though published posthumously, another half-​century later), Schelling

4 The Philosophy of Rhythm

Drawing from such nineteenth-​century sources, Bergson’s distinctly modernist

2. Recent Times: Attention and Neglect

12 Bachelard, The Dialectic of Duration, 124.

fundamental significance, as has been emphasized by Martin Clayton’s work on the

16 Clayton, Time in Indian Music.

6 The Philosophy of Rhythm

Enhancing its interdisciplinary ambition, this book is organized not territorially,

19 Aristotle, Poetics, 34.

8 The Philosophy of Rhythm

communication and composition; rhythm at the base of cognitive and linguistic

rhythm in expressiveness supports a combination of the “resemblance” and “conta-

10 The Philosophy of Rhythm

to conceptualize rhythm. Moreover, he contends that rhythm in painting can

12 The Philosophy of Rhythm

Andy Hamilton, David Macarthur, Roger Squires, Matthew Tugby,

The advantages of the dialogue form—​in particular, the advantage of openness—​

16 The Philosophy of Rhythm

skepticus = David Macarthur

1 Hamilton “Rhythm and Stasis,” 29, 40.

1. Projection, rhythm, and proto-​rhythm

(palace green, durham)

3 Pound, ABC of Reading, 14.

18 The Philosophy of Rhythm

8 Schütz, On Phenomenology, 212.

20 The Philosophy of Rhythm

redundant. I favor instead Clayton’s view of rhythm emerging spontaneously in

talk of the listener interpreting or hearing-​as—​a metaphor that does seem

2. The movement in music

(bean social café, durham)

13Discussed in Cooper and Meyer, Rhythmic Structure of Music, 171–​4.

22 The Philosophy of Rhythm

16 Hamilton, “Rhythm and Stasis,” 40.

essentially a spatial notion, and so his idea of non-​spatial movement, in music

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

1 Plato, Republic, Bk 3, 397a–401a; Laws, Bk 7, 798d–802e; Laws, Bk 2, 665a.

In 1802 (though published posthumously, another half-century later), Schelling

Drawing from such nineteenth-century sources, Bergson’s distinctly modernist

The advantages of the dialogue form—in particular, the advantage of openness—

1. Projection, rhythm, and proto-rhythm

talk of the listener interpreting or hearing-as—a metaphor that does seem

13Discussed in Cooper and Meyer, Rhythmic Structure of Music, 171–4.

essentially a spatial notion, and so his idea of non-spatial movement, in music

Dynamicus posits in the case of rhythm. For quality-space theorists, such a

skep: Dynamicus—when we consider the proposal of Metaphysicus, I hold that

Understanding here is like understanding a sentence—it involves a meaningful

30–2, 58; Brian Kane, Sound Unseen, passim.