New Conceptions of Musical Time

[PotashPie]

This was excerpted from one of my textbooks, I forgot to list the source. If anybody wants it, I can give it later. But this idea really helped me in listening to Messiaen and Varese, as well as Minimalism and John Cage.

New Conceptions of Musical Time

Linear time: Music that imparts a sense of linear time seems to move towards goals. This quality permeates virtually all of Western music from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras. This is accomplished by processes which occur within tonal and metrical frameworks.
Nonlinear time: Music that evokes a sense of nonlinear time seems to stand still or evolve very slowly.

Western musicians first became aware of nonlinear time during the late 19th century. Debussy's encounter with Javanese gamelan music at the 1889 Paris Exhibition was a seminal event.

Moment Form: broken down connections between musical events in order to create a series of more or less discrete moments. Certain works of Stravinsky, Webern, Messiaen, and Stockhausen exemplify this approach.

Vertical Time: At the other extreme of the nonlinear continuum is music that maximizes consistency and minimizes articulation. Vertical time means that whatever structure that is in the music exists between simultaneous layers of sound, not between successive gestures. A virtually static moment is expanded to encompass an entire piece. A vertical piece does not exhibit large-scale closure. It does not begin, but merely starts. It does not build to a climax, does not set up internal expectations, does not seek to fulfill any expectations that might arise accidentally, does not build or release tension, and does not end, but simply ceases.
Minimalism exemplifies vertical time, but instead of absolute stasis, it generates constant motion. The sense of movement is so evenly paced, and the goals are so vague, that we usually lose our sense of perspective.

[Mandryka]

Human minds seem to be made to view time as flowing from past through present to future, it seems to be inevitable that we conceptualise the music as structured in horizontal time rather than as an unordered sequence of NOWs.


Feldman must have understood this. I don't know what he was doing with his later music really, it's a real enigma, but I bet that time, our experience of time, is a major part of what he was exploring. Perhaps he wanted to make us lose our perspective, a bit like a roller coaster makes us disoriented. Or perhaps he wanted us to confront the idea that experiencing time as just NOWs is possible.

If the latter, his late music may be a failure.

[PotashPie]

Human minds seem to be made to view time as flowing from past through present to future, it seems to be inevitable that we conceptualise the music as structured in horizontal time rather than as an unordered sequence of NOWs.


Feldman must have understood this. I don't know what he was doing with his later music really, it's a real enigma, but I bet that time, our experience of time, is a major part of what he was exploring. Perhaps he wanted to make us lose our perspective, a bit like a roller coaster makes us disoriented. Or perhaps he wanted us to confront the idea that experiencing time as just NOWs is possible.

If the latter, his late music may be a failure.

I'd forgotten about Feldman, but he's perfect for this. As a close associate of Cage, I see him as a sort of "Existential" version of Cage. Like Schopenhauer was a sort of depressed Buddhist.

Yes, I think Feldman, and Cage's music, was is about "being" in time. Is that disorienting? I think that, if anything, it would be "centering."

This concern with "being" I see in Messiaen. Religion, or spirituality, seems to have always been concerned with time as being, rather than measured time.

The way our calendars and clocks are reflects this. There is no "zero month" or day, or year, clocks have no zero (except military time); because zero was a verboten number due to religious reasons (God is creator of all, therefore "nothingness" does not exist except as a lack, which is sin). Privatio Boni.

There are some interesting books on this avoidance of zero as well.

[Crudblud]

It's interesting too how the structure of time in film (apart from some very minor exceptions) follow the structure of dreams, which is actually non-linear.

In film, the non-linearness often lies in the common practice of skipping the boring bits between each scene, a film is a collection of moments.

I wonder how that would work with music?

I know then as we have "polystylism" and what I dread to call "post-modernism", you can often find jumps between quotations and original material.
A famous example being Berio's awesome Sinfonia.

The distinction between narrative and abstract film must be made, because music is necessarily abstract, and must deal with "narrative" (in this sense meant as the progression of musical events, not in the sense of "story") outside of the sense of character, setting, drama etc. Obviously, one can attach any of those elements to a piece of music, and many have tried, but ultimately in dealing, at least with non-representative sound, which covers the greatest breadth of music, we are confronted with sequences of sounds meaningful only in their relation to other sounds in the context of a structure. Non-linearity in narrative cinema works by playing on our expectation that we will begin at the beginning and end at the end. We can comprehend that events are out of chronological order in the following: "1: John tells Mary to leave. 2: Mary has been invited to a party. 3: John is organising a party at his house. 4: Mary offends John at the party," but we can easily rearrange the sequence presented in order to understand it in a linear fashion because we understand cause and effect.

It is possible, then, that the idea of non-linearity in music might only be applicable to certain kinds of music which have a well defined "narrative" logic that makes the moment-to-moment cause and effect clear. For example, in common practice sonata form there is a "narrative" beginning, middle, and end, the parts defined clearly by a harmonic scheme which informs the development of themes, modulations of key, and an eventual recapitulation. If the composer writes a developmental event which occurs logically near the end of the development but places it near the beginning of the development, we can say that the music is non-linear because of the established "narrative" logic at of the form.

But how to determine this from "narrative" in looser forms, particularly the obscure and often unique forms encountered throughout the 20th century and in the present day? In some sense all music is linear because it must be. The developmental considerations equivalent to "narrative" are irrelevant since we will always begin at the beginning and end at the end, no matter the logic used to get there, furthermore the logic is not immediately apparent and is preceded by the visceral reception of the music, and is therefore a secondary consideration. There isn't really an escape from music's dependence upon time, and the linear manner in which we experience time — we have no choice but to accept that the sequence of events is linear. But this also depends on whether the music is what we hear or what was written by the composer, are they distinct, and can music therefore be non-linear by construction but linear in experience? I think the answer is probably yes.

There might be music that is intended to be organised by the performer according to certain rules and chance operations, resulting in a different performance each time, this is true of some Cage compositions. But is indeterminacy equivalent to non-linearity, or does the fact that the sequence is each time determined beforehand, and the fact that there is no sequential logic to defy but a multiplicity of legitimate sequences, prevent it from being non-linear? I think the latter is probably closer to the truth.

The Sinfonia, your assessment of which I will happily agree with, is a combination of music and text, which in some cases comments on and informs the musical quotations themselves, as well as referring to the piece itself and to the fact that it is a performance, at least in the In fließender Bewegung. Berio deals there (as in many of his other large works) in musical theatre, and the Sinfonia is a hybrid, not merely "music" but "music+". For this reason I wouldn't cite it as an example of non-linear music, because the music exists simultaneously and in a reciprocal relationship with extramusical performance elements.

So, the position I will take is that non-linearity is a possible feature of music in terms of its construction, at least when there is a definite linear "narrative" logic that can be deviated from, but that in performance and in listening to a performance any such non-linearity is cancelled out by the fact that we cannot experience time itself out of sequence.

[Mandryka]

But how to determine this from "narrative" in looser forms, particularly the obscure and often unique forms encountered throughout the 20th century and in the present day? In some sense all music is linear because it must be. The developmental considerations equivalent to "narrative" are irrelevant since we will always begin at the beginning and end at the end, no matter the logic used to get there, furthermore the logic is not immediately apparent and is preceded by the visceral reception of the music, and is therefore a secondary consideration. There isn't really an escape from music's dependence upon time, and the linear manner in which we experience time — we have no choice but to accept that the sequence of events is linear. But this also depends on whether the music is what we hear or what was written by the composer, are they distinct, and can music therefore be non-linear by construction but linear in experience? I think the answer is probably yes.

. . .

So, the position I will take is that non-linearity is a possible feature of music in terms of its construction, at least when there is a definite linear "narrative" logic that can be deviated from, but that in performance and in listening to a performance any such non-linearity is cancelled out by the fact that we cannot experience time itself out of sequence.

I think the good candidate exception to the claim in bold is long durational music like in late Feldman or in La Monte Young, where the music seems to disorient the listener so much that it's hardly possibly to think "ah yes, this is a variation of something I heard three hours ago . . . "

The difference between a Persian rug and Feldman's second quartet is this: you can stand back in space and view the whole rug at once, in an instantaneous regard.

But how to determine this from "narrative" in looser forms, particularly the obscure and often unique forms encountered throughout the 20th century and in the present day? In some sense all music is linear because it must be. The developmental considerations equivalent to "narrative" are irrelevant since we will always begin at the beginning and end at the end, no matter the logic used to get there, furthermore the logic is not immediately apparent and is preceded by the visceral reception of the music, and is therefore a secondary consideration. There isn't really an escape from music's dependence upon time, and the linear manner in which we experience time — we have no choice but to accept that the sequence of events is linear. But this also depends on whether the music is what we hear or what was written by the composer, are they distinct, and can music therefore be non-linear by construction but linear in experience? I think the answer is probably yes.

. . .

So, the position I will take is that non-linearity is a possible feature of music in terms of its construction, at least when there is a definite linear "narrative" logic that can be deviated from, but that in performance and in listening to a performance any such non-linearity is cancelled out by the fact that we cannot experience time itself out of sequence.

The bit in bold is interesting because it assumes that in, for example, Canonical Form (Babbitt) or Schoenberg's late piano music there is a connection somewhere in the construction of the music linking earlier to later. Even if true it's not necessarily audible, as you say. But then the move is to  visceral reception. That seems to limit the music, like saying that in linear causal music you can listen with both heart and head, but in music where the narrative is hermetic or non existent, only the emotional way of listening is possible.

It would be interesting to think of an intellectual  way of experiencing music with no apparent narrative -- maybe focusing on the harmonies in the NOW.

Millionrainbows deserves the credit or the blame for giving me these ideas -- that's me pushing them at arm's length because I'm not sure that they lead anywhere.

[Mahlerian]

The bit in bold is interesting because it assumes that in, for example, Canonical Form (Babbitt) or Schoenberg's late piano music there is a connection somewhere in the construction of the music linking earlier to later. Even if true it's not necessarily audible, as you say. But then the move is to  visceral reception. That seems to limit the music, like saying that in linear causal music you can listen with both heart and head, but in music where the narrative is hermetic or non existent, only the emotional way of listening is possible.

Both composers placed a high value on the linear, narrative construction of music.  As much as Babbitt's music in particular may appear at first hearing to be an undifferentiated sequence of events, it does, like the music of the Baroque, present an unfolding of materials in time and is intended to be heard as such.

I find the connections easier to hear in Schoenberg than in Babbitt, for a number of reasons, but in neither case does the music seem purely like an eternal moment without past or future.  Certainly, at the end of works by either composer, I hear the musical argument as conclusively resolved.

I should say that there certainly are features of post-war modernism that do hinder perception of linear narrative as this was understood beforehand, and this is obviously an intentional choice on the part of composers working in that style.  The dabbling with aleatoricism in Stockhausen's Klavierstuck XI(?) or Boulez's Third Piano Sonata, eg, should be taken as part of the same trend to look at musical narratives in a different way from before, not to remove them entirely.

[Mandryka]

Both composers placed a high value on the linear, narrative construction of music.  As much as Babbitt's music in particular may appear at first hearing to be an undifferentiated sequence of events, it does, like the music of the Baroque, present an unfolding of materials in time and is intended to be heard as such.

I find the connections easier to hear in Schoenberg than in Babbitt, for a number of reasons, but in neither case does the music seem purely like an eternal moment without past or future.  Certainly, at the end of works by either composer, I hear the musical argument as conclusively resolved.

Transient moment rather than eternal.

I wish someone would help me a bit with Babbitt's piano music.  I've tried to see some order in there but failed. In early music you have rhythmic variation of a simple tune,  is that's what happening in canonical form?

I'm sure you're right about Schoenberg, and it has been a great pleasure for me to get to know how to listen to his music. The Schoenberg I was thinking of was Op 19/1 and some of  op 23 really, but I'm sure you're right as I said.

[Crudblud]

I think the good candidate exception to the claim in bold is long durational music like in late Feldman or in La Monte Young, where the music seems to disorient the listener so much that it's hardly possibly to think "ah yes, this is a variation of something I heard three hours ago . . . "

The difference between a Persian rug and Feldman's second quartet is this: you can stand back in space and view the whole rug at once, in an instantaneous regard.

Yes, but that wasn't the point I was making, which is that we necessarily experience music (and time) as one event following another. Whether we understand why a particular event is followed by another particular event, or whether we can always relate latter materials to the opening bars, is quite a different matter.

The bit in bold is interesting because it assumes that in, for example, Canonical Form (Babbitt) or Schoenberg's late piano music there is a connection somewhere in the construction of the music linking earlier to later. Even if true it's not necessarily audible, as you say. But then the move is to  visceral reception. That seems to limit the music, like saying that in linear causal music you can listen with both heart and head, but in music where the narrative is hermetic or non existent, only the emotional way of listening is possible.

It would be interesting to think of an intellectual  way of experiencing music with no apparent narrative -- maybe focusing on the harmonies in the NOW.

Millionrainbows deserves the credit or the blame for giving me these ideas -- that's me pushing them at arm's length because I'm not sure that they lead anywhere.

I think it is more logical to assume connections than to assume no connections. The connections might be obscure, possibly inscrutable due to a certain arbitrariness on the part of the composer, yet entirely grounded in the composer's own logic. In the case of Babbitt, and I must admit I do not know the piece you cite, we know that the work is the result of the interaction of systematic processes upon a pattern; even if we assume that logic is not inherent in composition and that composition can therefore be illogical, we can point to Babbitt's methods as proof of a logic. I think it's possible that knowledge of construction in this instance does not necessarily aid comprehension in listening, rather imposes restrictions upon the listener which act as barriers to comprehension by way of building up assumptions based on what they already associate with the contents of "the interaction of systematic processes upon a pattern" as a phrase. In other words, at a certain level of knowledge, "What the fuck is going on with this music?" becomes "Why doesn't this sound like I think it should?", or lack of comprehension becomes self-denial of comprehension.

In saying "visceral" what I mean is "immediate," the immediate sensation hitting the ear. I don't think this is a matter of emotional listening versus intellectual listening, rather of the mind's reflexive attempt to render the immediate sensation as a comprehensible event, a process that triggers both emotional and intellectual responses that come together to form an experience which the mind can then draw upon to ease comprehension in subsequent exposure to that same immediate sensation, as well as aid comprehension when exposed to other immediate sensations. I'm not a neuroscientist, so this is getting into pretty murky territory, but based on my own experiences it at least appears to be the case that the mind is constantly performing this reflex process, no less so in its approach to music than to any other kind of thing.

[Mandryka]

I think it is more logical to assume connections than to assume no connections.

It was a long and interesting post that you made and I need a bit of time, but the bit I clipped is something I've thought about before.

Donald Davidson and Willard Quine used to talk about The principle of charity -- basically the idea is that when you're trying to make sense of some intentional actions, you should do so in a way which makes the agent as rational as possible. Of course it may not apply to 20th century music where Dadaist ideas had an influence (Cage etudes for example)

Anyway it may be that the connections in the music are there in the nuts and bolts as it were -- the composer was aware of them because they form part of his system of composition. But they're not really audible. I bet that's the case for Babbitt.

There may be analogues with explaining actions, even an irrational person's actions are caused by a chain of neurological events, but at the level of belief - desire psychology, there's no explantion (Thomas Nagel wrote about this years ago):

Musical Connections -- score -- neurological states -- physical stance (Dennett)
No connections -- listeners' experiences -- psychological states -- intentional stance

(Sorry if this post is a bit opaque -- I'm helping myself to some philosophical concepts.)

[ahinton]

Given the durations of some of his works, where might Sorabji be thought to fit into this?

[aukhawk]

I think possibly we don't all hear these things in the same way anyway - and that may or may not be a matter of musical education or literacy.  After all, to appreciate the structural implications of sonata form you first have to assimilate that convention - don't you?  Personally I have very little appreciation of tonal progression and I am quite fond of modal music, and Indian classical music, and highly chromatic music.

I personally have a lot of problems when people discuss the overall structure or long-term progression of a piece of music, whereas on the other hand I hear nothing but forward propulsion in a piece like Reich's Music for 18 Musicians

The difference between a Persian rug and Feldman's second quartet is this: you can stand back in space and view the whole rug at once, in an instantaneous regard.

... we necessarily experience music (and time) as one event following another. Whether we understand why a particular event is followed by another particular event, or whether we can always relate latter materials to the opening bars, is quite a different matter.

So that, for example, it's not uncommon for someone to use 'arch' as a metaphor for musical structure - and I just don't get it.  We look at an arch and we see a symmetrical thing.  Translated into music, the result is quite different.  When the music starts, we (or should I say I) have no expectation of how it will end (I mean in the long term - we - or I - do have very short-term expectations involving rhythms and melodies and cadences) however when the music ends we may have some residual memory of how it started and progressed (though even this in my case is not very strong).  In that sense an arch-shaped piece of music is completely un-symmetrical - for example the same melody, played at the start or at the end, has a different impact.
When we hear the start of Rheingold, are we really supposed to be anticipating the end of Gotterdammerung ?  If not, then I don't have much difficulty viewing the entire Ring cycle as "a series of NOWs".

[PotashPie]

With minimalism, it's easier to hear it as "now." Also, in Indian raga, there is no harmony or chord progression, so the melody against the drone is what we experience as color change, tension, and sonority, and this all happens "vertically" instead of narratively. I think Stockhausen is best appreciated this way, as well as most serial music.

Narrative understanding can only come to us by memory, after the fact, so this kind of music involves "memory in time." This is like reading; we take in the words one by one, and by the end of the sentence, we have a thought.

Looking at a picture, we take it in all at once, or almost so. It's a more instantaneous experience.

[Mister Sharpe]

With minimalism, it's easier to hear it as "now." Also, in Indian raga, there is no harmony or chord progression, so the melody against the drone is what we experience as color change, tension, and sonority, and this all happens "vertically" instead of narratively. I think Stockhausen is best appreciated this way, as well as most serial music.

Narrative understanding can only come to us by memory, after the fact, so this kind of music involves "memory in time." This is like reading; we take in the words one by one, and by the end of the sentence, we have a thought.

Looking at a picture, we take it in all at once, or almost so. It's a more instantaneous experience.

Excellent discussion, million, though I can't agree with your last statement.  I agree, of course, that time is implicitly part of the nature of music, vertically or narratively as you describe, and that time is less contingent in art as thing in itself, but a painting too unfolds to the viewer over time (traditional narrative art or not).  Sure, some artists, esp. modern artists. seek an initial quick shock or impact, but even their work if worthwhile rewards an expenditure of time.  (Calder's mobiles, say, and other works with movement are exceptions, of course, where spontaneous momentary perception and a narrative of movement over time both apply).   Anyway, the experience of someone who examines a painting over half an hour is surely to be richer than that of someone who looks and runs. 

[Crudblud]

To Crudblud quite a few posts ago:

With film/movie (I'm not talking avant-garde at all) it is a series of non-linear moments or overall story-beats which all add to the overall story arch. These moments are generally assembled chronologically, apart from flashbacks. This is directly paralleled with how the human mind dreams.

The way a movie is structured, or moreso the script it's usually based upon will skip minutes, days, years or even decades, it's just the way film/movies work.

Eg:
Scene 1 - character one and two talk and discover the main plot device.
Scene 2 - Two days later character one receives a phone call, in which he gains his main motivation to pursue the main plot device
Etc.

That isn't non-linearity, it's non-realtime scripting. Realtime scripting must be linear, but linearity is not exclusive to realtime scripting.

Anyway it may be that the connections in the music are there in the nuts and bolts as it were -- the composer was aware of them because they form part of his system of composition. But they're not really audible. I bet that's the case for Babbitt.

Right, I'm regarding the music as separate from the experience of listening to it. The music (or at least an approximation of it) is the catalyst, but it is infinitesimal in the broad scheme of the "personal everything" that the mind draws upon to create the experience.

Musical Connections -- score -- neurological states -- physical stance (Dennett)
No connections -- listeners' experiences -- psychological states -- intentional stance

The rest of your post I'm not so sure I understand, but I'd be interested in learning more about the above scheme.

[Mandryka]

The rest of your post I'm not so sure I understand, but I'd be interested in learning more about the above scheme.

You might want to get hold of Dan Dennett's book called The Intentional Stance.  I'm suggesting that the "levels of abstraction" may be a useful way of  making sense of music.

At the root of all this is an idea I have that when you listen to a performance, you (the listener) are charged with the task of interpretation, like when you listen to someone speaking or behaving in some other way. And some of the apparatus that Willard Quine, Don Davidson, Dan Dennett, Hilary Putnam, John McDowell, Simon Blackburn, Chris Peacocke etc have developed to account for making sense of actions can be fruitfully carried over to giving an account of what it is to experience art.

That's why I was so taken by the suggestion (above) that it's better to assume connections. That seems like a really interesting principle for guiding musical experience to me.

I'm out of that world of philosophy now, doubtless there are some major developments which I'm not aware of. And as usual, what I say could lead nowhere!

[PotashPie]

What about Webern? To you in your understanding, are his miniatures a reduction of time or just form? Or both?

I see Webern as reduced in time, and of necessity, this led to shorter forms. He knew that the long narrative of tonality was gone.

A lot of his music I hear as "sonorous areas" where certain intervals predominate. This is due to row considerations. Instead of trying to hear tonality, I listen for intervals.
Like, this certain area may have a lot of tritones or fourths/fifths. Try this on the Symphony, or the Bagatelles.

So, from this, we can say that "verticality" is sonorous and colorful, constructed with harmony or harmonic elements. Steve Reich's Four Organs produces its "progression" exclusively by sustaining notes; a perfect example of how vertical elements can be used to create "progression" or longer forms.

"Horizontality," by contrast, is best exemplified by linear elements; like Gregorian chant, it can suggest tonality, but is really not "tonal" in the modern sense. We "read" chant like we read a book. The notes, like words, come one after the other, until we conclude, rightly or wrongly, that we are in a "tonality." But we are not; our memory suggests it, but the "final" note may contradict this if it ends a fourth away from where we thought we were. It turns out we were listening to a "succession," not a "progression."

[PotashPie]

In some sense all music is linear because it must be. The developmental considerations equivalent to "narrative" are irrelevant since we will always begin at the beginning and end at the end, no matter the logic used to get there, furthermore the logic is not immediately apparent and is preceded by the visceral reception of the music, and is therefore a secondary consideration. There isn't really an escape from music's dependence upon time, and the linear manner in which we experience time — we have no choice but to accept that the sequence of events is linear. But this also depends on whether the music is what we hear or what was written by the composer, are they distinct, and can music therefore be non-linear by construction but linear in experience? I think the answer is probably yes.

So, the position I will take is that non-linearity is a possible feature of music in terms of its construction, at least when there is a definite linear "narrative" logic that can be deviated from, but that in performance and in listening to a performance any such non-linearity is cancelled out by the fact that we cannot experience time itself out of sequence.

I agree with your position in regard to certain kinds of music, namely, music like Babbitt's, in which the "narrative" is hidden in some way, abstracted, beyond immediate comprehension.
But with other forms of music such as minimalism, this brings to mind the role memory plays in all of this. If a pattern is memorable, such as a melody or chord progression, it can be remembered and developed, and be part of a chain of remembered events; but if the music consists of short patterns, which are very self-similar and repeated, this becomes more difficult. If patterns shift almost imperceptibly, such as adding an eighth note, and the accents shift, it becomes a maze of patterns, and harder to remember and "track" with the awareness.
I think this was Reich's and Glass' intention in their "hardcore" repeating works. I am reminded of a book on Shingon Buddhism, in which the initiate is to count beads for a period of weeks, and must try to keep track. Usually, the first attempts are failures, as the initiate loses track of the count. As awareness sharpens, and focus increases, this becomes achievable. No doubt, the players in Glass' ensembles experienced something similar.

[Mandryka]

So, from this, we can say that "verticality" is sonorous and colorful, constructed with harmony or harmonic elements. Steve Reich's Four Organs produces its "progression" exclusively by sustaining notes; a perfect example of how vertical elements can be used to create "progression" or longer forms.

Yes.

"Horizontality," by contrast, is best exemplified by linear elements; like Gregorian chant, it can suggest tonality, but is really not "tonal" in the modern sense. We "read" chant like we read a book. The notes, like words, come one after the other, until we conclude, rightly or wrongly, that we are in a "tonality." But we are not; our memory suggests it, but the "final" note may contradict this if it ends a fourth away from where we thought we were. It turns out we were listening to a "succession," not a "progression."

I am sure you are right. Can you find an example on YouTube?

I think this was Reich's and Glass' intention in their "hardcore" repeating works.

What is "this" referring to here? (I'm sure it must be obvious and I'm just being stupid, I hope you're not pissed off by the question.)  Something that one of the composers actually said about the "this" would be interesting.

I am reminded of a book on Shingon Buddhism, in which the initiate is to count beads for a period of weeks, and must try to keep track. Usually, the first attempts are failures, as the initiate loses track of the count. As awareness sharpens, and focus increases, this becomes achievable. No doubt, the players in Glass' ensembles experienced something similar.

This is presumably a practice which is part of a process leading to greater awareness and control. I've always wondered whether Glass, Reich, Feldman & Co. saw their music a bit like a Buddhist priest sees their meditation practices - for players and/or listeners.

If not, I guess Four Organs is like an etude, or an experiment, a preliminary exercise.

[PotashPie]

What is "this" referring to here? (I'm sure it must be obvious and I'm just being stupid, I hope you're not pissed off by the question.)  Something that one of the composers actually said about the "this" would be interesting.

The preceding context explains it, I thought:

If a pattern is memorable, such as a melody or chord progression, it can be remembered and developed, and be part of a chain of remembered events; but if the music consists of short patterns, which are very self-similar and repeated, this becomes more difficult. If patterns shift almost imperceptibly, such as adding an eighth note, and the accents shift, it becomes a maze of patterns, and harder to remember and "track" with the awareness.
I think this was Reich's and Glass' intention in their "hardcore" repeating works.

In other words, it was their intention to "lose" the listener in the myriad patterns, thus making narrative connection more difficult, and forcing us to be "in the moment".
The liner notes to the Tilson-Thomas/Ralph Grierson recording of "Four Organs" were written by Reich himself, so that might be something you could read.

[starrynight]

With minimalism, it's easier to hear it as "now." Also, in Indian raga, there is no harmony or chord progression, so the melody against the drone is what we experience as color change, tension, and sonority, and this all happens "vertically" instead of narratively. I think Stockhausen is best appreciated this way, as well as most serial music.

Narrative understanding can only come to us by memory, after the fact, so this kind of music involves "memory in time." This is like reading; we take in the words one by one, and by the end of the sentence, we have a thought.

Looking at a picture, we take it in all at once, or almost so. It's a more instantaneous experience.

Some music has progression but it tends to be slower, minimalism and ambient music being an example.  So one of the main differences with time is probably faster and slower movement. 

Of course some music could have a circular structure to it, even potentially having a looping nature and that could affect someone's time experience of it.  In that sense something could have progression but at the same time have a feeling of not leaving it's beginning.