There has been much writing on time in philosophy, physics, anthropology, and to some extent, in the arts. The literature is diverse, often complex and abstruse, sometimes very insightful, yet somehow unsatisfying when one tries to apply it to time in music. Perhaps this is because studies on the concept of time, the phenomenology of time, and the role of time in cultural and social practice do not fit together well at all. And it might also be that musical time might be a very special type of time, not altogether found in the arts or other forms of experience. Some composers have written on the subject with respect to their compositions, notably Karlheinz Stockhausen, John Cage, and Jonathan Kramer, yet much of musical time is left out.

In this essay I try to integrate the qualitative and quantitative aspects of time, as well as examine the variety of time experiences that can be shared intersubjectively among musicians and music listeners. While I think I have provided a somewhat integrated view including time concepts from non-Western cultures, most of the arguments and details will certainly remain controversial and subject to problematization from many points of view. My not being a philosopher or a scholar in time studies will certainly make my views less convincing to those who practice such disciplines. Nevertheless, like the composers I’ve just mentioned, I write from my own experience as a composer and musician. In any case, I hope my thoughts on musical time will spark discussion and even stimulate research in musical composition and related fields.

We can learn something of the complexities of time from common English phrases that include the word time. Time can be big, ripe, good, high, hard, flying by; we can make, make up for, play for, find, borrow, pass, mark, kill, keep, tell, have, lose, waste, and be on time; time has nicks, mists, its tests and stitches, races, whales. We may have all the time in the world, or no time; be at the right place at the right time, or at no time; be before our time, or on time, or once upon a time.