Music, Time, and Its Other

Music, Time, and Its Other explores the relation between the enigmatic character of our temporal experiences and music's affective power. Taking account of competing concepts of time, Savage relates music's power of expression to the disproportion between our temporally finite existence and eternity. By showing how works by Bach, Carolan, Debussy, Schoenberg, Messiaen, and Glass give voice to time's deficiency in relation to the nonbeing of time, Savage sets out a new approach to music, aesthetics, politics, and the critical roles played by judgment and imagination.

Roger W. H. Savage is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. His publications include Hermeneutics and Music Criticism and the edited volume Paul Ricoeur in the Age of Hermeneutical Reason: Poetics, Praxis and Critique. He was a Fulbright Scholar and a Moore Institute Visiting Fellow at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Introduction 1. Music and time 2. The myth of Syrinx 3. To the glory of God 4. Hope's despair 5. Figure of solicitude 6. The ends of time 7. Mimesis, aesthetic experience, and politics