Temporal Transformations In Cross-Cultural Perspective:

Augmentation In Baroque, Carnatic And Balinese Music1

Michael Tenzer

or the contemporary musician in search of a range of structural and cultural

connections between different musics, cross-cultural analysis offers many

attractive possibilities. Such connections may be hidden among contrasting compositional

and performance practices of each music but reveal their similarities at a more abstract
level of temporal process. As a disciplinary venture, cross-cultural analysis may help to
reconcile music theory and ethnomusicology, while for individuals it may suggest ways
to combine, juxtapose, and integrate ones diverse musical perspectives.2 But comparison
across any boundary requires reconsidering basic assumptions so that clear descriptive
1

This article in its original form was presented as a keynote lecture to the 8th Congress of the German
Society for Music Theory (GMTH), Music Theory and Interdisciplinarity (VIII. Kongress der Gesellschaft
fr Musiktheorie (GMTH) Musiktheorie als interdisziplinres Fach) held in Graz, Austria, October 9-12
2008. It was also read to colloquia at University of British Columbia and Florida State University. I am
grateful for the generous and helpful critiques received at these presentations, as well as for the supportive
and insightful remarks made by an anonymous reader for this journal. The GMTH conference organizers
published a slightly different version of this article in the conference proceedings. The citation is M.
Tenzer, Temporal Transformations in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Augmentation in Baroque, Carnatic and
Balinese Music in: Music Theory and Interdisciplinarity. 8th Congress of the Gesellschaft fr
Musiktheorie Graz 2008 (musik.theorien der gegenwart Vol. 4), edited by Christian Utz, Saarbruecken:
Pfau 2010, pp. 517-530.
2
Early ethnomusicologycomparative musicologywas explicitly oriented toward cross-cultural
analysis. Celebrated works of pre World War II scholars (Ellis 1885 and Sachs 1943 for example) and
some who came later (such as Kolinski 1965 and 1973 or Lomax 1976) were concerned with taxonomical
approaches to musical elements, styles, and meanings. But such approaches ultimately found disfavor due
to a general cultural shift toward relativism and a perceived paucity of culturally valid tools. Since the
1960s ethnomusicology has taken an overwhelmingly culture-specific rather than comparative approach,
but at the same time many researchers have become increasingly fluent as performers in multiple traditions.
The potential suggested by this evolving state of affairs is both a rationalization and impetus to reconstruct
cross-cultural analysis in the light of relativism and cultural specificity, and attempt it anew.

Temporal Transformations In Cross-Cultural Perspective

language can emerge and lead not only to new categories of learning, but beyond them to
new experiences and construals of music.
In this study I will suggest that studying processes of time transformation crossculturally can lead to both musical and cultural insights. I will consider how the
technique of temporal augmentation interacts with other aspects of musical structure in
three works from different cultures: the fugue in C Minor from Book 2 of the Well
Tempered Clavier (BWV 871; ca. 1740) by J.S. Bach in the European Art music
tradition, a varnam (a type of concert etude) from the South Indian Carnatic tradition by
Manambuchavadi Venkatasubbaiyer called Jalajaksha, composed in the 1800s, and the
anonymous traditional Balinese dance composition Baris, which has an uncertain
provenance but is probably more than a century old.3 The fugue is a keyboard work, the
varnam a melody with text that can be sung or played instrumentally, while Baris is a
composition most often played on the gong kebyar, a large set of Balinese gamelan
instruments. The Bach is fully notated and subject to modest ornamentation in
accordance with performance practice. The varnam is notated simply with solfge
syllables (swara) that are intricately ornamented in performance. Baris is transmitted
orally and subject to variation through preset changes executed by the entire ensemble,
and instantiated unpredictably by the dancers spontaneous cues.
Although I shall ultimately hypothesize that cross-cultural research on musical
temporality can affirm some cognitive universals, my purpose is primarily to speak of
3

Recordings were the basis for the analyses and transcriptions. The Bach fugue was performed by Glenn
Gould, piano (Sony Classical CD 052603). I recorded Jalajaksha at a singing lesson in Madras with my
teacher Vidya Hari in January 1989, and Baris in July of that year in the courtyard of STSI (Sekolah Tinggi
Seni Indonesia; the Balinese Arts Academy [now renamed ISI]) with a group comprised of students and
faculty led by I Nyoman Windha.

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musical structure and process in the examples I have chosen, for specifically musical
appreciation and enrichment. I have separate kinds and amounts of insider experiences
learning the repertoires under discussion but I cannot compare the selected compositions
unless I stand outside of all three and attempt to be fair to them.4 A kind of neutrality
some might call it cultural grey-outmight be suggested by transcribing all the music
into Western notation, as I have done.5 But this is not what is intended; rather the point is
to accept the limitations of the notation technology and combine notation with listening
and description in order to analyze and explain. Indeed neutrality is illusory or
impossible, but the desire to compare is wholesome. The hope is to apply my expertise in
each of these musics astutely, to generate whatever insight the act of comparison may
allow. In offering analysis and explanation, I accept the inability to fully suppress any
biases the notation and my own training may suggest.

CONCEPTS AND INITIAL CONSIDERATIONS

Musical structure is formed by interaction between sounding elements, the
transformations enacted upon them, and the temporal contexts and dimensions in which
they are heard. A musical element is a component such as a melody, a set of durations, or
perhaps even a process or conceptwhatever is sanctioned and recognized by the culture
bearers. The temporal context in which elements exist is generically either measured or
unmeasured time, or perhaps some other emergent time framework should the hard

I have learned and composed European and Balinese music consistently since the 1970s. Although my
interest in Carnatic music is abiding I studied its performance directly only for a short period in 1988-89.
5
This may bring to mind the neutral trace postulated in Nattiezs semiotic tripartition (1990). Notation
may suggest such objectification, but it is fallacious to ally the two.

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Temporal Transformations In Cross-Cultural Perspective

distinction between those two types eventually fail to hold, as some research suggests
(Clayton 1996, Widdess 1994). By dimension I mean the scope of the acoustical and
temporal contexts an element occupies during its transformations: its number of streams
or layers, its overall duration, its density, and so on. Augmentation is a temporal process
that is part of the larger family of temporal transformations acting upon musical elements.
Mainly it is a species of variation, in which an elements identity changes; what is at
issue is the nature and degree of the change, and the strategies brought to bear in
perceiving the similarities and differences between an element and its transformed
version.
Temporal augmentation is thus a transformation acting upon a musical element in a
particular temporal context and dimensional state. If we take the word augmentation in its
full sense, there are of course many kinds that one could sort into subcategories:
incremental ones such as ritardando or rubato, augmentation acting on part of an object
rather than all of it, augmentation at varying rates, etc.anything that increases duration
of part or all of a durational series. In my examples augmentation manifests as the
familiar strictly multiplicative increase (by a factor greater than 1). It appears consistently
in each of the repertoire items at hand, while elements, temporal contexts, and
dimensions all manifest in different ways.
In the fugue the element to be augmented is the set of durations inherent in the
melodic pattern we call the fugue subject; in the varnam it is that of any or all of the
compositions melodic sections; and in the Balinese dance, it is the durations of a melody
played in the musics central register that I will refer to with the proper Balinese term
neliti. In the fugue the durations of the notes of the subject are doubled, and in the

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Balinese example the duration of each neliti tone is quadrupled. In the varnam the
melody may appear in three states, the durations among them related by a ratio of 3:4:6.
As for the temporal contexts involved, all of the musics are organized within a
framework of evenly spaced pulsations. They are in addition metric and periodic, and
sometimes cyclic as well, but in different ways that constrain how the augmentation is
perceived. I would like to clearly distinguish among these terms for current purposes.
Meter is the coordination of two (or more) pulse streams of different speeds related by
simple multiplicative ratios, such that all time points in the slower one(s) coincide with
time points in the faster one(s). Periodicity is recurrencenot just of an abstract or static
metric support system but of a rhythmic event or grouping in an analogous metric
context. Cyclicity is a near-synonym to periodicity, but for the present repertoire I
differentiate the two by defining cyclicity as a larger experience of return that
synchronizes and resets most or all levels of meter, periodicity, content, and grouping.
Relevant to the analyses are three species of periodicity (Figure 1). In the Bach fugue
periodicity is noncyclic and configured, meaning that while meter is present, periodicity
emerges contextually from the actual, constantly changing patterns that Bach composed.
These are elements identifiable by culturally aware listeners: the fugue subject and its
answer stated at the outset and repeated in numerous transformations of pitch, interval,
register, duration, etc., the brief codettas and longer sequences linking appearances of the
subject, countermelodies that accompany the subject,6 as well as conventionalized
cadences and all other viable contenders for creating recognizable pattern. Since the
patterns are of different durations and identities as well as multiply concurrent and often
6

Many fugues have strict countersubjects in polyphony with the subject, but not the one under discussion.

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Temporal Transformations In Cross-Cultural Perspective

Figure 1. Definitions, and temporal contexts in the chosen repertoire

Meter: synchronization of pulse streams

Periodicity: recurrence of a musical element.
Cyclicity: recurrence that resynchronizes/resets two or more levels of meter, periodicity and grouping
Configuration: Periodicity created contextually by the grouping of musical patterns
Marking: Periodicity created by a dedicated sounding (ie materialized) or non-sounding (ie unmaterialized)
stratum

JS Bach,
Fugue in
Cm WTC2
Varnam:
Jalajaksha
Balinese
Baris

Metric

Periodic

Cyclic

Marked

unmaterialized

materialized

Configured
x

desynchronized, the periodicity of the fugue is always in flux, even while the meter is
stable. Because the patterns never reset fully for a true cyclic return, the sense of
periodicity as recurrence is weak, especially in comparison to the other music under
consideration.
In the Balinese piece Baris, periodicity is cyclic, punctuated and materialized.
Punctuated suggests marking the cycle at specific positions with instruments consigned
to that special purpose; the cycle is therefore materialized by their sounding. The
identifying period comprises a succession of 8 pulsations in a repeatable, so-called
circular unit. The unit has an identity that is neither as abstract as meter nor as particular
as a specific composition. It also has a melody specific to this composition, stratified into
intercalated layers. The cycle is materialized by the repetitions of these strata and by the
punctuating presence of gongs: the muffled-sounding kempli on each beat,7 the highpitched klentong (or tong) at the midpoint, and the large, deep gong (the proper Balinese

Beat and pulsation are used synonymously.

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term) at the end/beginning point. Each beat is thus materialized by the kempli, while the
superposition of gong at the end/beginning and klentong at the midpoint prioritizes those
moments over others. Without the different gongs we would determine the periodicity
contextually from melodic configuration, as in Bach. Also unlike the fugue, the
periodicity does not change and other musical elements must fit to it. Transformations
applied to drumming patterns, dynamics and other elements must bow to the laws of this
strict cyclicity. Virtually all layers of musical content reset with the large gong, so cycle,
period and meter are coterminous.
In the varnam Jalajaksha, periodicity is punctuated and unmaterialized. The music
also has a cyclicity one could call mixed, because lines of text and the melodies to which
they are set repeat locally, but the music is through-composed at the level of the entire
composition. Like the previous example, this music rests on a recurring succession of
eight beats, arranged hierarchically and with an independent identity. But this identity is
unmaterialized in sonic terms; rather it is expressed visually with chironomy (the hand
gestures of Indian tla-keeping). The fact that the punctuation is done non-acoustically
demotes it from the status of an actual musical force to that of a measurement device, and
may help explain why the music need not hew to the period but may instead veer off
from it for quite some distance before returning. When it does returnand it always
does, eventually, to a position analogous to that from which it beganthe periodicity
resets on a larger scale. If text and melody also reset at these points we experience
cyclicity. But the cycles are less strongly marked than in the Balinese example, in which
content explicitly repeats every eight beats.

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ANALYSES
Arriving now at the analyses themselves, my focus is on how a culturally informed
listener perceives the unfolding process of augmentation, and in so doing comes to
reevaluate the sense of orientation in the musics time.

Fugue in C Minor, The Well Tempered Clavier, Book 2

Consider the passage extending from a conventional cadential arrival on the dominant
harmony, m. 14-21, in which the augmented subject is heard twiceonce in the alto
voice at measure 14, and later in the bass (see Figure 2(a), an exploded version of the
keyboard score with grouping periodicities bracketed and numbered, and Figure 2(b), a
schema of these periodicities). The augmentation lasts for eight pulsations, twice the four
of the original subject. During the opening exposition, the subject entries and the codetta
(also of four pulsations) established four beats as a normative periodicity. This is
gradually blurred en route to measure 14, via cadential preparation so tortuous in Bachs
idiom that the idea of a second expositiona common procedureemerges as the likely
candidate for reasserting stability in what follows. Immediately, in the top voice, the
subject does return in the tonic key, thus for an instant it seems as though our expectation
will be met.
But as soon as the augmented subject begins on beat two, we are fairly sure we will
not have another exposition, or at least not a conventional one, since the first exposition
proceeded so differently. Yet it takes some time to grasp what is in fact happening. By
the third notated beat (the second quarter-note of the augmentation) we are sure that it is
something new, as no previous secondary voice has ever had this particular rhythm and

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Figure 2(a). J.S. Bach, Fugue in C Minor BWV 871 (The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2), mm. 14
21: periodicities, tactus rates, and tonic chord arrivals
8 (q pulsations between tonic arrivals)

(downward arrows
signify tonic arrivals)

b
j n
n
&bb c
J
4

(+2)

8 (q pulsations in grouping period)

# . n b
n

stretto

6
4

n "
.
6+?

6+?

(+2)

b
&bb c

B bbb c

n n n n n b b n b b n n .

? b b c j
b
Tactus:

Measure: 14

j n b n b " n b .

15

12+?

16

n " "b

17

18

(2

19

J
+

3)

20

21

Figure 2(b). Schema of layered periodicity in the Bach fugue

Measure 14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Legend:
subject
free material

augmented subject

sequential material

rest

Audio Example 1: Bach, Fugue in C minor from WTC 2, Exposition followed by

the passage discussed (Glenn Gould, piano)

160

21

Temporal Transformations In Cross-Cultural Perspective

contour. It is not until the fourth notated beat of the measure that we have three full
quarter notes of the augmentation, giving us at last the necessary and sufficient
informationbecause of the emerging duration and contour profileto realize that an
augmentation is unfolding. At this point we must think backwards to revise our projection
of the operative periodicity from four pulsations to eight. And because the tactus is part
and parcel of the subjects construction, we must also now reset the tactus rate. In other
words, if we want to grasp the identity of the subject at this slower speed at this moment
we are impelled to refocus our perception of the tactus to half its prior rate, and to rehear
the ordinary statement of the subject in the upper voice as a diminution, rather than a
normative flow. We have to work hard to go back in time, in order to slow down time.
We are released from this slow-motion at the end of the augmented subject, which
closes with a strong dominant-to-tonic progression. The soundscape re-shifts, and we reentrain to the prior tactus. Thoughts of a second exposition briefly return when the same
voice continues on to give the subjects answer in its standard rhythm. But now, when the
soprano and tenor voices respond with stretto at two-beat intervals, the periodicity is
blurred again. The upper two voices continue the stretto for one more time each, keeping
the periodicity overlapped and suppressing coordinated articulations among the voices.
As the music progresses and Bach fleshes out the motivic connecting tissue, longer
overlapped periodicities of 6 and 12 beats emerge in the upper voices, generating
additional complexity. When the augmented subject arrives in the lowest voice a quasistable inverted tonic comes at its second note (the middle of m. 19), creating an
ambiguous and seemingly misaligned sense of arrival. And because the end of the
augmented subject on the first beat of m. 21 is similarly weak, the root position

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dominant-tonic cadence at beats 12 of m. 20 (the subjects fourth and fifth notes) feels
stronger in retrospect, though not where it ought to be with respect to the structure.
This series of varied tonic chords does not weaken the augmentations 8-beat periodicity,
but the 2+3+3 grouping occasioned by the harmony recasts its orientation with regard to
both the other voices and its own internal tendencies.
Augmentation in this fugue is heard first as a doubling of duration in direct
juxtaposition with a normative periodicity, and then again later, detached from the
normative, to bring order to a complexity in which the individual voices periodicities
neither align nor exert control. It is powerful both in its ability to regulate multiple
strands of time, and in the demands it places on our perceptions to reevaluate time and
enrich our grasp of it.

Jalajaksha
Augmentation in Jalajaksha is an optional part of the performance practice that is not
built into the composition. South Indian varnam are composed melodies set in given rga
and tla, often sung or played at the beginning of a performance. They generally have a
bipartite structure, each part of which has subsections. The first opens with the setting of
two poetic couplets (the pallavi and anupallavi), followed by sargam, in which solfge
syllables are themselves sung (mukthayiswaram). In the second part one or several lines
of text are set (the caranam), followed by more composed solfge (the cittaswaram). The
sargam melodies may use complex motifs that often make them sound as if they are
improvised, but they are notthey are planned out just like the rest. As indicated earlier,

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some text lines may be immediately repeated with the same melody, creating local
periodicity.
Jalajaksha uses the 5-tone Hamsadvani rga (CDEGB). It is set in adi tla, in which
8 beats are counted 4+2+2 using a 4-beat laghu gesture (a light hand clap followed by the
right thumb touching three fingers starting from the pinky) and then two 2-beat dhrutam
(down-up hand waves). In Figure 3(a)s transcription I remove the singers pitch and
rhythmic embellishment of the essential composed melody, and show the tla gestures
below the top staff using whole and half- notes for the downward hand claps and waves,
and stemless black noteheads for the less important finger counts and upward waves.
The top staff of Figure 3(a) and the top row of Figure 3(b) show three tla periods
(measures of 8/4) of Jalajaksha, as sung in its ordinary duple subdivision setting, Once
the performer sings it this way, it is often then resung at double the ratei.e., in
diminution to quadruple subdivisionand then a third time at two-thirds the rate of the
diminution, thus augmented to ternary subdivision.8 Hence the ratio of 3:4:6 I mentioned
earlier should actually be 6:3:4, reflecting the order of appearance. The systems and rows
in the Figures are vertically aligned to show that what filled three tla in the duple setting
fills one-and-a-half tla in the middle systems quadruple setting, and two tla in the
ternary setting shown at the bottom. Hypothetical sped-up tla gestures are given
below each staff for reference, but in practice the tempo and the tla gestures do not
change, remaining as they were for the original version.
This is a standard technique in Indian music, but what is its effect? The music begins
with two synchronized periodicities: one given by the tla gestures, the other emergent
8

The first operation is thus a multiplication by .5, and the second a multiplication by 1.333.

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Analytical Approaches To World Music Vol. 1, No. 1 (2011)

Figure 3(a). Varnam Jalajaksha, pallavi section, showing the tla gestures and alignments between
different versions
Hamsadhvani Raga (CDEGB)
Adi (4+2+2) tala

8 Pallavi
&2

8w
2 Tala, as gestured
1.Ja

la

ja

ksha

throughout

(all tones indicate one beat of

value; whole and half-notes show

ni

8 beats emphasized by hand gestures)

&2

8
2

1.Ja la

ja

ksha

Tala, "as if" for doubled version

(shown for reference only)

& 82 j j

8
2

1.Ja la

ja

Tala, "as if" for ternary version

(shown for reference only)

ni

j

sim.

ksha

me

da

ba

si

ni

nne

da

nne

da

2.Cha

la

ma

ba

ru

lu

si

2.Cha

la

j j

ko
w

si

di

ra

ru

3.Che

J
ma

2.Cha

la

ma

ru

lu

(Anupallavi)

nna

ba

Composer:
Manambuchavadi Venkatasubbaiyer

lu

li

ne

la

ra
va de

ko
w

ya

nna

j j

di

ra

3.Che

Text line pair = 4 tala

Text/melody periodicity
Tala gestures periodicity
Meter
2. Doubled version [6:3:4]
Cycle
Text line pair = 2 tala

Tala gestures periodicity

Meter
3. Ternary version [6:3:4]
Text line pair = 2 2/3 tala

Text/melody periodicity
Tala gestures periodicity
Meter

Audio Example 2: The pallavi of Jalajaksha at three speeds (Vidya Hari, singer)
164

\
I. Original version [6:3:4]

Cycle

li

Figure 3(b). Schematic representation of periodicities in Jalajaksha

Text/melody periodicity

Text (in Telugu):

O lotus-eyed one, this Devadasi
is intensely in love with you.
To protect your companion, aren't you coming?
O handsome Venkatesa!

Cycle

mira

Temporal Transformations In Cross-Cultural Perspective

from the alignment of text, melody and tla. The tla has a dual role: it marks a neutral
pulse stream on which anything can be overlaid, while its hand gestures provide an
inviolate timespan that resets every eight beats, no matter what is overlaid. The
periodicity of the text/melody combination is heard in terms how it aligns with the tla.
At the beginning of Jalajaksha this alignment is simple: each line of text fills exactly two
tla. The top staff of Figure 3(a) shows the pallavis first text line (Jasi) unfolding over
this two-tla span, plus, in a third tla, the first half of the second text line (Chalu). In
the quadruple version there is a new line of text at the onset of every tla instead of every
other tla, so we hear three full lines of text (including the first line of the anupallavi) in
three tla.
When the subdivision rate changes to a ternary one that is numerically out of synch,
text and melody decouple from the tla. Only when all of the levels realign would we
speak of a true cycle. The text unfolding over a single tla period in the original version
lasts for two thirds of a tla in the ternary version; the full line sung over two tla in the
original version lasts for one and one third tla; and the entire pallavi text couplet lasts
two and two thirds tla. Three couplets would have to go by, lasting (2 x 3 =) 8 tla all
together, before a full realignment. Because of how this particular song unfolds, this
moment only arrives even farther down the line, after allowable adjustments in the form
of extra text/melody repetitions are made.
Unlike the introduction of the augmented subject in Bachs fugue, the moment of
transition to ternary in Jalajaksha can be anticipated. Although it is the performers
choice, we know it is an option within the performance tradition and we hope that this
demonstration of skill will arrive to impress us. If the tempo is not too fast, we should

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know by the second note that the tense complexity of ternary subdivision is in effect, and
this requires us, as in the case of Bachs fugue, to retrospectively interpret what we have
heard. But now we must brace ourselves to manage the multiple, asymmetrically related
strata all the way until the distant cyclic arrival. During this time we must internally
reconcile every note in the song with its new home in a new landscape of subdivisions.
Most tones that were commetric now becomes contrametric, and vice versa. To stay with
the music we are forced to manage two time flows at once.

Baris
The Baris dance and its ostinato-based music are canonical in Balinese gamelan.
Here we are concerned with the central portion of the dance, which is based on a melody
of 8 tones (Figure 4(a)). As mentioned earlier, this stratum of the structure is called neliti
in Balinese. These tones, and the small gong kempli coinciding with each of them,
provide a tactus at the fast tempo but are too slow to be perceived that way in the
augmented version. Every eight beats nearly everything resets, marking a single unit of
meter, period and cycle. In the recording the neliti is played first very fast in the
beginning, at an average rate of = 180 (about 2.75 seconds per cycle) for 17 repetitions.
It is then heard seven times in augmentation at about one quarter of the tempo, i.e. = 45,
then again at the original tempo for 19 times. In each case numerous variations in
drumming, surface phrasing, and dance movement are overlaid. The tempi constantly
fluctuate, especially in the slow section, according to the dances movement vocabulary.
But the neliti continuity is unbroken throughout.

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Figure 4(a). Structural transcription of the augmentation process in Baris showing tactus rates and
melodic strata
Figuration

#
& #

Kempli
(tactus)

&#

1 2 3 4
Gong

5 6 7 8

Tong

Neliti (melody)

#
& #
#
& #

E
C
#
#
&

Figuration

&#

#
#

& #

Gong

Neliti (melody)

&

Kempli
(tactus)

Tong

()

Figure 4(b). Stages in the perception of augmentation in Baris

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Audio Example 3: The central section of the Baris dance at two speeds (gamelan
of the STSI conservatory, Denpasar, Bali)

The nelitis most important note is the one coinciding with the large gong stroke,
shown here as the pitch E. The same tone arrives with the tong, or small gong. These two
Es are also played by a prominent, sustaining bass instrument, giving the melody
especially when it is fastthe quality of a drone due to the recurring emphasis on this
pitch. At the fast tempo we follow the contour of the nelitis other notes: up, then back to
the origin in the first half; then up, down below the origin, and back in the second half.
The fast figuration pattern is two beats long and thrice repeated to fill the period,
returning always to the E every other beat and in-between as well: an extension of the
drone.
At the slow tempo the drone notes at the beginning/end and the middle of the cycle
are separated by almost eight seconds, which is longer than the window of the
psychological present.9 Thus the character changes completely. The neliti is filled out
with a new tone interpolated between each of the original ones, and this new 16-note
melody is felt as the tactus, still only half as fast as the previous tactus. The figuration
patterns, too, change style in order to follow the original neliti, which now descends one
level through the gamelans orchestration to an instrument in the next-lower register. The
eight-beat cycle is still maintained by the muffled kempli, but its attacks are almost 2
seconds apart, too slow to be felt as tactus anymore.

See London (2004, 30).

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Temporal Transformations In Cross-Cultural Perspective

The five points A through E in Figure 4(b) represent stages in a culturally aware
listeners growing perception that augmentation is occurring. At A we hear the gong, and
immediately afterwards derive the new tempo from the characteristic quadruple
subdivision of the figuration style. At B, a new note in the neliti stratum not present
earlier tells us ambiguously that we could have a new melody on our hands. The repeated
G at C is a stylistic mark of the figuration heralding the nelitis arrival on that same pitch
at the next beat. This is the third tone of the expanded 16-tone neliti, but the second tone
of the original 8-tone neliti. What is going on? Knowing the style might lead one to
suspect an augmentation in process, but it cannot be confirmed because we have only
heard two pitches of the original melody, which is insufficient. Points D and E replicate
the roles of points B and C, confirming the arrival of the third original neliti tone. By this
point we are quite sure, so we project backward to B and D, as we did in both the varnam
and the fugue, in this case understanding the tones there as interpolations filling in the
expanded space between the tones of the original melody.
From this point on, with a mental representation of the original neliti to guide us,
navigating the slow tempo is possible. It is nonetheless an experience of abstraction
requiring several kinds of simultaneous awareness, because the fourfold temporal
expansion consigns the original melody to a background realm where it acquires an
audible but, because of the augmentation, a rather more structural, and less immediately
tactile quality.

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COMPARISONS
At the beginning of The Time of Music, Jonathan Kramer quoted Artificial
Intelligence pioneer Marvin Minskys speculation that music was a form of play
through which we learn about the world. Minsky mused: how does one learn time? Can
one time fit inside another, can two of them go side by side? In Music we find out!
(Minsky 1982: 4-5 in Kramer 1988:1). The preceding analyses conclude that in each of
these cultural contexts, augmentation plays with time by stretching it out, but also by
juxtaposing and alternating it with other kinds of time, making us sustain awareness of
multiple strata. Though related simply, such pairs of strata literally force us to engage
with time as an abstraction.
In all the above cases a musical elementa melodymaintains a clear identity. We
recognize it faithfully despite changes imposed on it, including coming to terms with its
specifically temporal transformations. We hear two kinds of time at once, and must travel
through time at two speeds at once. Our own memory allows us to do this even when we
dream or daydream normally, but music gives this capacity rigorous quantitative
organization. We thus experience our minds with uncommon precision. It is of interest
that in Bachs style augmentation often occurs at moments of climax or peak complexity,
as if through the ears of a meta-protagonist who imposes a special clarity from without.
The moment of augmentation is often a goal of the individual composition, while the
clarity it confers is a goal of musical perception itself: a heightened, perhaps even
spiritual stepping-away from ordinary ego-centered awareness. This is equally true in
South India, where mastery of augmentation and diminution proportions over unchanging
tla is a potent marker of discipline and advancement. In Bali, augmentations occur, as in

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Baris, embedded in the center of extended compositions, especially those performed at

rituals in a temples sanctum sanctorum. Such compositions attain high levels of
abstraction, which is why they have particularly strong associations with the sacred.
When Balinese hear them they may feel transported to a numinous realm. That these
closely related associations hold in all of these musics points to the existence of a
common landscape of musical consciousness, where it is possible and desirable to learn
how thoroughly our mundane conception of self depends on our ordinary experience of
time. At the moment of augmentation, dwelling in two times at once, we become
someone else, someone perhaps wiser and more aware.
Underpinning the analyses and structuring their compatibility are the notions that
meter, memory, and perception are as universally fundamental to preparing a musical
phrase as a pot, flame, and water are to cooking a German goulash, Indian curry, or
Indonesian gul. Focus on time and periodicity abstracts a higher level of relevance in
relation to which musical and cultural particularities such as pitch system appear to be
lower. This is as if, in a recipe, one declared that a liquid base is what chefs everywhere
need to flavor a stew, and that the choice of wine, buttermilk or coconut milk is a
secondary concern. To suggest that time is musics liquid base is not to say that pitch
systems or compositional strategies are anything but fundamental to musical experience,
especially in light of their total integration with cultural practices and the expertise
needed to assimilate or reproduce them. But if humans are all equipped to grasp pulsation
and tactus, to predict future events and recall earlier ones, and to quantize time
relationships at multiple levels, then it is neither an accident that we should be able to
hear augmentations across cultures in meaningful ways, nor that each of these cultures

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apparently discovered and value the technique independently of one another. Though we
hear these temporal transformations as culturally distinctive, the states of mind they
engender are importantly similar because they grant access to a distinct musical
perception that is supraculturally grounded.

ISSUES AND DEBATES

A growing number of publications have appeared applying theories of rhythm and
meter to African and Indian Music (Temperley 2003, Arom 1991), contour theory to
Balinese and Indian music (Tenzer 2000, Clayton 2000, Morris 2006), and more. This is
not the forum to summarize or survey these; I mention them only to emphasize that there
is reason for optimism about cross-cultural comparisons prospects. I think it will be
meaningful for the education of future musicians. It can however feel regrettable that all
of this comparative scholarship is by scholars working in Western academe, for thick
historical and social reasons that inevitably raise questions of power and authority on the
one hand, and motivation or interest on the other.
To many ethnomusicologists, moreover, this venture remains fraught because it
overlooks indigenous ways of knowing. Counter-hegemonies are what we should be
promoting, and instead of building our own synthetic apparatus we should concentrate on
fostering understanding of musicians everywhere who have far more trying issues than
what kinds of music analysis to do. Why even have cross-cultural discourse on music
analysis if it is only for one small part of the world to use, or should one say wield? There
is no reason to argue against these eloquent concerns to strengthen and raise

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consciousness about the precious individualities of all musics, the belief systems behind
them, and the empowerment of the musicians who transmit them.
But waiting for all systems to be go, for a world in which there is consensus and
power sharing across the board, is a recipe for inaction. Moreover the stalemate would
appear to be between anachronistically framed conceptions of putatively opposing social
formations: indigenous cultures and western academe. But there is really only one social
category pertinent to this venture: the contemporary cosmopolitan musician. Such
musicians, wishing to move from inaction to action, should apprehend different musics in
terms of their cultural significance to a responsible extent. This must be reconciled with
the irresistible challenge to grasp musical diversity with ones own ears in ones own
way, based on as much research and apprenticeship as life permits, and with the hope that
ones analytical discoveries and displays shall in time be validated through dialogue and
debate.10
How, indeed, can I vouch for the salience of the foregoing analyses? There is really
only one, rather painfully obvious way: because I submit that I have enough experience
with each music to assert some cultural relevance in each case, to have been sufficiently
sensitive to insider knowledge to be able to claim the benefits of detaching and
examining these issues both apart and together. It is equally obviousyet to me
surprising and remarkablethat in doing these analyses I did not feel as though I was
10

Another option is to renounce the paradigm of analysis as creative act of discovery in favor of a classic
structuralist procedure. This entails rigorous formulation of universal musicological categories (such as
identifying generic types of time and pitch organization, etc.) and the refusal to allow the specificity of
different musics and musical perceptions to dislodge them. Such specific perceptions, on the other hand,
would be admissible only to the extent that they can be confirmed either directly or experimentally by the
culture bearers. The analysts subjective experience becomes essentially irrelevant. This is the approach
taken by Arom (1991 and other works).

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crossing any boundaries. These were three musics, but I am only one analyst, and one
mind. The analyses will be convincing to the extent that the expertise behind them is
credible. Yet even if their internal arguments are sound (and I hope they are), a reader
without expertise would be in no position to confirm their salience. Readers must proceed
on faith to a certain extent, and accept that the more one knows the culture the more one
can critique the analysis.
It may seem like a cop-out to offer a supposedly cross-cultural system only to devolve
back to the trump card of cultural specificity and insider knowledge. However I think this
is not only inevitable but desirable, and it reflects how complex and irrational
insider/outsider relations are. The process of filling in all the cultural gaps so that we can
at some point have the broadest possible analytical perspective on music will be long,
slow, imperfect, and depend on more and more thinkers with cross-cultural experience
taking an interest in the venture. It would be marvelous if this was not a disciplinary or
ideological journey, since neither music theory alone, nor cognition, nor anthropology
nor any other culturally-oriented humanism, will get us where we want to go by itself,
and the frameworks separating these fields will increasingly cease to reflect the
boundaries of peoples interests and desires.

REFERENCES
Arom, Simha. 1991. African Polyphony and Polyrhythm: Musical Structure and
Methodology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Clayton, Martin. 1996. Free Rhythm: Ethnomusicology and the Study of Music Without
Meter. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 59.2: 323-332.
______. 2000. Time in Indian Music: Rhythm, Meter and Form in North Indian Rag.
New York: Oxford.
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Ellis, Alexander J. 1885. On the Musical Scales of Various Nations. Journal of the
Society of Arts 33: 485-527.
Lomax, Alan. 1976. Cantometrics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
London, Justin. 2004. Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter. New
York: Oxford.
Kolinski, Mieczyslaw. 1965. The General Direction of Melodic Movement.
Ethnomusicology 9: 240-64.
______. 1973. A Cross-Cultural Approach to Metro-Rhythmic Patterns.
Ethnomusicology 17: 494-506.
Kramer, Jonathan. 1988. The Time of Music. New York: Schirmer.
Minsky, Marvin. 1982. Music, Mind, and Meaning. In Music, Mind, and Brain: The
Neuropsychology of Music, edited by Manfred Clynes. New York: Plenum.
Morris, Robert. 2006. Architectonic Composition in South Indian Classical Music: The
Navaragamalika Varnam. In Analytical Studies in World Music, edited by
Michael Tenzer. New York: Oxford.
Nattiez, Jean-Jaques.1990. Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music.
Translated by Carolyn Abbate. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sachs, Curt. 1943. The Rise of Music in the Ancient World. New York: Norton.
Temperley, David. 2000. "Meter and Grouping in African Music: A View from Music
Theory", Ethnomusicology 44.1: 65-96.
Tenzer, Michael. 2000. Gamelan Gong Kebyar: The Art of Twentieth Century Balinese
Music. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Widdess, Richard. 1994. Involving the Performers in Transcription and Analysis: A
Collaborative Approach to Dhrupad. Ethnomusicology 38.1: 59-80.

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