Time point

For other uses, see Timepoint.

In music a time point or timepoint (point in time) is "an instant, analogous to a geometrical point in space".[1] Because it has no duration, it literally cannot be heard,[2] but it may be used to represent "the point of initiation of a single pitch, the repetition of a pitch, or a pitch simultaneity",[3] therefore the beginning of a sound, rather than its duration. It may also designate the release of a note or the point within a note at which something changes (such as dynamic level).[4] Other terms often used in music theory and analysis are attack point[5] and starting point.[6] Milton Babbitt calls the distance from one time point, attack, or starting point to the next a time-point interval,[7] independent of the durations of the sounding notes which may be either shorter than the time-point interval (resulting in a silence before the next time point), or longer (resulting in overlapping notes). Charles Wuorinen shortens this expression to just time interval.[8] Other writers use the terms attack interval,[5] or (translating the German Einsatzabstand), interval of entry,[9] interval of entrance,[10] or starting interval.[11]

  1. ^ Kramer 1988, p. 454.
  2. ^ Kramer 1988, p. 97.
  3. ^ Babbitt 1962, p. 72.
  4. ^ Wuorinen 1979, p. 131.
  5. ^ a b Lejaren Hiller and Ramon Fuller, "Structure and Information in Webern's Symphonie, Op. 21", Journal of Music Theory 11, no. 1 (Spring 1967): 60–115. Citation on p. 94.
  6. ^ Hubert S. Howe, Jr., Electronic Music Synthesis: Concepts, Facilities, Techniques (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975): p. 28
  7. ^ Babbitt 1962, p. 67.
  8. ^ Wuorinen 1979, p. 130.
  9. ^ Armin Klammer, "Webern's Piano Variations, Op. 27, 3rd Movement", translated by Leo Black, Die Reihe 2: "Anton Webern" (English edition, 1958): 81–92, citations on pp. 81, 82, 86; Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Structure and Experiential Time", translated by Leo Black, Die Reihe 2: "Anton Webern" (English edition, 1958): 64–74, citation on p. 64; Richard Toop, Six Lectures from the Stockhausen Courses Kürten 2002 (Kürten: Stockhausen-Verlag, for the Stockhausen Foundation for Music, 2005): 30, ISBN 3-00-016185-6.
  10. ^ Pascal Decroupet, "Rhythms—Durations—Rhythmic Cells—Groups, Concepts of Microlevel Time-Organisation in Serial Music and Their Consequences on Shaping Time on Higher Structural Levels", in Unfolding Time: Studies in Temporality in Twentieth-century Music, Geschriften van het Orpheus Instituut 8, edited by Marc Delaere and Darla Crispin, 69–94 (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 2009): p. 85. ISBN 9789058677358.
  11. ^ Dieter Schnebel, "Epilogue", translated by Sharmila Bose, in Stockhausen in Calcutta, selected by Hans-Jürgen Nagel, pp. 1–5 (Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1984): 2.