February 18, 1964 ••••• It's terribly difficult to write. Rhythm is at once the most physical and vulgar of music's architectures, and the most subtle and extrasensory. It's muscular and it's intuitive - and words are of little help to either. But these things come to mind: It should be our commonalways-present understanding, it seems to me, that Music I s untouched canvas is Time. Everytime we sing -- every time, rehearsal or performance, we work on Time. Music is from Now to Somewhen. It has not mass, substance, dimension, shape, weight. It has Time. Sculpture is a Space-Art; it has mass and propor ·tion. Painting is a Space-Art; it has height, breadth, and by the illusion of perspective, depth; it has design and proportion; it has color and light (and this may introduce a qualification, for the quantum and relativity theories may make Light and Time pretty close neighbors -- for all I lmow). Ballet deals principally with movement through space. Drama and literature have strong Spatial preoccupations. But Music has Time 1 Now Time has dual implications. On the one hand it has Eternality. And for all we know forever may be of instant's duration. At any rate, Eternality must be One-ness. There can be no last-time or this-time in Forever. There can be only Now. In one there cannot be Two. Eternality is indivisable. Now and Forever are one and the same. On the other hand Time has -- by all our experiences -- the implication of Change and of Recurrency, of Cycle and Growth. Tomorrow is a very real thing to most of us. All of man's moral and religious systems are built upon it. We fight wars so that there will be a Time when no wars will be fought. We ascribe to Time periodicity: we say we have high-tide twice a day, thirteen full moons a year; we say it takes nine months to mature the human embryo; and from there on man still has a 11 traditional Seven Ages11. We believe we can 11shapen Time, change it, give it form. It seems to me that without a very sure awareness to Form in Time (aspects of which are Recurrency and Growth) and without a very strong faith in the power of men to change and determine their own Life-Time, we're in no position to give Time-Form to Music. "Form11 is not too fortunate a word, for it suggests the static and set. That isn't at all what we mean by Time-Form. Time-Form is heartbeat, ~ulse; Time-Form is yesterday, today, tomorrow; Time-Form is Rhythm. And within Rhythm, Time-Form is movement, going somewhere, growth. This issues
in a lot of very practical
procedures
for us.
At the head of the list is the absolute inviolability of the pulse of great music. Any tampering or insensitivity here will crip9le or kill. Music has a right to its own life. It has its own pulse, its own heart-beat. It has its own growth, its own 11Seven Ages11• ( In a paradoxical, but not contradictory sense, Drama resides in the inevitable, in the thing everybody knows is going to happen, in mustness. And most of the mustness in Music is the beat, the beat.) Any great artist