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Temporality in Musical Meaning: A Peircean/Deweyan Semiotic Approach

Temporality in Musical Meaning: A Peircean/Deweyan Semiotic Approach felicia e. kruse Xavier University I. Introduction Imagine a single musical tone--for instance, the A above middle C that the oboe plays to tune an orchestra. Now imagine this tone, with no variation in dynamics, pitch, or timbre, extended over the course of "an hour or a day," existing, as Peirce describes in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (W3:262),1 "as perfectly in each second of that time as in the whole taken together; so that, as long as it is sounding, it might be present to a sense from which everything in the past was as completely absent as the future itself " (W3:262). Imagine a world consisting of nothing but the sensation of this single oboe A, and having never consisted of anything but it. In such a world, Peirce indicates, there would be no consciousness of the passage of time. It is indeed doubtful whether one would be conscious of the tone at all, since there would be no background of experience in terms of which to interpret the sound, either perceptually or rationally.2 Although the sound waves would register physically in the ear, the distinctive timbre of the oboe would not be perceived because http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Pluralist University of Illinois Press

Temporality in Musical Meaning: A Peircean/Deweyan Semiotic Approach

The Pluralist , Volume 6 – Oct 26, 2011

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Publisher
University of Illinois Press
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Copyright © University of Illinois Press
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1944-6489
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Abstract

felicia e. kruse Xavier University I. Introduction Imagine a single musical tone--for instance, the A above middle C that the oboe plays to tune an orchestra. Now imagine this tone, with no variation in dynamics, pitch, or timbre, extended over the course of "an hour or a day," existing, as Peirce describes in "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (W3:262),1 "as perfectly in each second of that time as in the whole taken together; so that, as long as it is sounding, it might be present to a sense from which everything in the past was as completely absent as the future itself " (W3:262). Imagine a world consisting of nothing but the sensation of this single oboe A, and having never consisted of anything but it. In such a world, Peirce indicates, there would be no consciousness of the passage of time. It is indeed doubtful whether one would be conscious of the tone at all, since there would be no background of experience in terms of which to interpret the sound, either perceptually or rationally.2 Although the sound waves would register physically in the ear, the distinctive timbre of the oboe would not be perceived because

Journal

The PluralistUniversity of Illinois Press

Published: Oct 26, 2011

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