Description

Book Synopsis
This study deals with time and with music, and the link between the two is the suggestion that music is a modeling of the way we construct time. Time—the now, duration, succession and order of succession; the past, the future—is seen as a resource for managing systemic disequilibrium and as the evolutionary elaboration of the now. As organic dynamical systems humans maintain themselves by means of self-regulatory actions, nows, and these nows are proposed as feeding off a pre-temporal, interindividually accessed energy in nature, an ongoing cosmic proto-present. Speech is a way out of sensory immediacy and a way into a complex shared world where coordination and planning take place away from the distractions of the present as given by the senses. Music is presented as one of a group of behaviors comprising the arts and games that evolved in parallel with language to compensate for its abstractness. Language tends to the complexly abstract and music favors the complex, sensorially concrete: like speech, music operates on a synthetic plane, but provides synthetic occasions for sensory immediacy at a level of complexity to match that of language.

Time and the Warm Body: A Musical Perspective on the Construction of Time

    Product form

    £100.35

    Includes FREE delivery

    RRP £111.50 – you save £11.15 (10%)

    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Wed 5 Aug 2026.

    A Hardback by David Burrows

      Trusted by thousands of customers. See 2,385+ Customer Reviews

      View other formats and editions of Time and the Warm Body: A Musical Perspective on the Construction of Time by David Burrows

      Publisher: Brill
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 20/07/2007
      ISBN13: 9789004158702, 978-9004158702
      ISBN10:

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      This study deals with time and with music, and the link between the two is the suggestion that music is a modeling of the way we construct time. Time—the now, duration, succession and order of succession; the past, the future—is seen as a resource for managing systemic disequilibrium and as the evolutionary elaboration of the now. As organic dynamical systems humans maintain themselves by means of self-regulatory actions, nows, and these nows are proposed as feeding off a pre-temporal, interindividually accessed energy in nature, an ongoing cosmic proto-present. Speech is a way out of sensory immediacy and a way into a complex shared world where coordination and planning take place away from the distractions of the present as given by the senses. Music is presented as one of a group of behaviors comprising the arts and games that evolved in parallel with language to compensate for its abstractness. Language tends to the complexly abstract and music favors the complex, sensorially concrete: like speech, music operates on a synthetic plane, but provides synthetic occasions for sensory immediacy at a level of complexity to match that of language.

      Recently viewed products

      © 2026 Book Curl

        • American Express
        • Apple Pay
        • Diners Club
        • Discover
        • Google Pay
        • Maestro
        • Mastercard
        • PayPal
        • Shop Pay
        • Union Pay
        • Visa

        Login

        Forgot your password?

        Don't have an account yet?
        Create account