Chapter

Ancient to the Future

EXCERPT

Music is an art of time, or of duration. It cannot be grasped synchronically, in a single moment. Indeed, music is only possible because we never live entirely in the moment. The Now, as we experience it psychologically, takes the form of what William James calls the specious present: a ‘duration-block’ within which ‘we seem to feel the interval of time as a whole, with its two ends embedded in it…