Pictorial Experience and the Perception of Rhythm

Painting, drawings, and engravings are frequently described as rhythmic, or as possessing rhythmic features, but it is far from clear how such observations are to be understood. The central problem here is that rhythm is standardly recognized to be an inherently temporal phenomenon: rhythmic structure or organization unfolds in time. If rhythm is essentially durational, how can a static configuration of marks and lines be rhythmic? Chapter 19 defends the view that although the experience of viewing a picture takes place in time, and thus is successive, it cannot be temporally structured in a sufficiently determinate manner to sustain the attentional focus required for the communication of even simple rhythmic patterns. With reference to examples of both representational and abstract art, and to recent empirical research, the author argues that graphic art is non-sequential and that this has important consequences for picture perception.

Entrainment and the Social Origin of Musical Rhythm

Chapter 12 develops Maurice Halbwachs’ concern with social interaction in theorizing rhythm. Taking inspiration from Halbwachs’ view of rhythm as social not natural, the chapter outlines a new approach to the question that Halbwachs leaves unanswered: If musical rhythm is social in origin, how does it come into being—how is his “prior collective agreement” reached? Alfred Schütz, although casting Halbwachs as the straw man in his famous essay “Making Music Together,” did not contest the latter’s point about the social origin of rhythm. Schütz’s argument—that all communication is made possible by what he called the “mutual tuning-in relationship” in which individuals come to share their experience of inner time—does contradict Halbwachs: for Schütz, rhythmic coordination is prior to any collective agreement. The author argues that rhythm in fact emerges spontaneously both in individuals and, crucially, in interactions between them, and that it is therefore both natural (physiological) and social in origin.

Metric Entrainment and the Problem(s) of Perception

Chapter 11 discusses the limits and mechanisms of our perceptual faculties for auditory rhythm. Perhaps more than vision, a consideration of auditory perception, and our auditory perception of rhythm in particular, reminds us that the perceptual process is not a linear chain of information from the external world to the mind, but an active interplay between mind and world. But while considering our senses as perceptual systems—as cross-modal—solves some problems of perception, it creates other, perhaps deeper ones, the author argues. In the case of musical rhythm, our rhythmic percepts are often non-veridical, as we add accents, beats, and grouping structure to otherwise undifferentiated stimuli.

Rhythm and Popular Music

Chapter 9 explores how rhythm functions and affects us in popular music, restricting that term to the post-1950s period, and arguing that in such music, measured time becomes a resource for creating fields of energy that empower us as embodied human agents. One typical layer of sound in popular music is what the chapter identifies as “explicit” rhythm: a constant (metrical) layer of percussion that has no precise pitch. In relation to this layer, the rhythmic qualities of all the other layers of sound—vocal/melodic, harmonic, bass-lines, etc.—are heightened, as they emphasize beats that fit in with or pull against the (metric) level emphasized by the percussion. This gives the music a pronounced rhythmic character that appeals to our bodies by providing opportunities to move creatively with the emphases sounded by the different layers of the music. The account is illustrated with the example of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.”

Rhythm, Preceding Its Abstraction

Chapter 7 takes a non-reductive approach to the understanding of musical rhythm based on reflections on the author’s musical practice. In particular, the author argues that, preceding its abstraction, rhythm centrally resides in “doings” and “happenings” in our bodies and interactions between each other. Further, the author claims that active (pre-abstracted) rhythm resides in our somatic and cognitive awareness of these “doings” and “happenings” by way of experience and attention. The line of thought developed in the chapter stems from a number of related observations from musical practice concerning how “lived rhythm,” unlike “represented rhythm,” comes into being via interpersonal- and self-attention.

The Life of Rhythm

Chapter 6 poses the question: Why does rhythm speak to us so deeply? Patterns of accented or percussive sound that move us are meaningful, yet we find it hard to say what associations or connotations create that meaning. It argues that John Dewey’s Art as Experience has deep insights on this question, and focuses on their implications for jazz improvisation. For Dewey, both player and listener are like the live organism interacting within its environment. Hagberg addresses Dewey’s understanding that “rhythm is a universal scheme of existence, underlying all realization of order in change, [that] pervades all the arts, literary, musical, plastic and architectural, as well as the dance”; that “The supposition that the interest in rhythm which dominates the fine arts can be explained simply on the basis of rhythmic processes in the living body is but another case of the separation of organism from environment.”

The Ontology of Rhythm

Chapter 3 defends a static conception of rhythm, according to which movement is not essential. It investigates the complex ontology of rhythm, setting out the types of entity on which rhythm is founded and their relationships with rhythm itself. No single essential characterization will work, the author argues; rather there is a series of types branching off from simple paradigms. Rhythm in music is characterized in its simplest form by a certain kind of repetitive temporal pattern, which forms the basis for variations and combinations generating the whole range of musical rhythms. For the case of music, though not for rhythms in general, this range is limited (though not constituted) by anthropological constraints concerning pitch, tempo, volume, and complexity.

Rhythm, Meter, and the Poetics of Abstraction

Chapter 21 addresses the neglect of sound and rhythm within literature, arguing that poetry is not more rhythmic than prose. It argues that like works of music and poetry, works of prose have rhythm, to which the pauses, inflections, stresses, and pronunciation of its language all contribute. As such, like poetry, prose literature should be considered musical. While poetry is distinct from prose, in that the former is lineated and the latter is not, this distinction does not result in poetry being more rhythmic. The author reflects on the interpretative demands of attending to rhythm in literature, arguing that rhythm in prose literature is generally worth attending to, for rhythm plays various important roles in prose.

Temporal Processing and the Experience of Rhythm

Chapter 14 considers the physiological, psychological, and social origins of rhythm. It reviews analytical data from music performances of Australian Aboriginal groups, arguing that processing differences for vocal and instrumental rhythms suggest dynamic neural models; these challenge an abstract conception of rhythm. As a result, it is difficult to regard the rhythm of speech as at the origin of vocal music, and which in turn gives rise to instrumental music. The author holds that vocal rhythms in speech and music, and instrumental rhythms, derive from different ways of interacting with our environment and are controlled by different temporal mechanisms. Thus instrumental music should be considered in parallel to vocal music, not as derived from it.

How Many Kinds of Rhythm Are There?

The universe of possible rhythms comprises a timescape with a timescape embedded within it; that is, the full complement of rhythms that can be imagined engulfs its own subset, namely those rhythms already created or discovered by human agents. But if, in response to the question posed by the title, we endeavor to partition this whole to construct a typology of rhythm, we face from the outset a stark methodological choice. Do we opt to separate out perception and experience to create an abstract rhythm science mapping the terrain of the possible, or do we seek an anthropology of the rhythms humans have made and perceived? Chapter 13 views rhythm’s potential 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.