Rhythm without Time: Difference & Phenomena

by Scott Wollschleger and Corry Shores

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[The following is a presentation we gave at the London Graduate School's Rhythm & Event conference, 29 October 2011. May I thank Eleni Ikoniadou and all those involved in organizing the conference, and may I thank John Mullarkey for his incredible help with my research.]

Scott Wollschleger
Corry Shores

"Rhythm without Time:
Difference & Phenomena"

Presentation at the London Graduate School
Rhythm & Event conference

[Audio]

Deleuze defines the phenomenon as the flash of difference communicated between the terms of heterogeneous series. Now, following Husserl, we might consider simultaneous and successive elements of our phenomenal consciousness. At any moment of our visual awareness, for example, there will be variations throughout our field of vision that are all given together at once. But even if we are staring at a motionless scene, there will still be slight variations in the way things appear from moment to moment. Yet from this Husserlian perspective, there will be associating similarities within each moment and also carrying-on between moments. A more traditional phenomenology might be concerned with how these parts synthesize into self-same phenomenal objects over the course of time. A Deleuzean phenomenology, however, would instead be concerned with the differences flashing between the simultaneous and successive series of variations. So, something appears phenomenally when it stands-out. And something stands-out on the basis of a differential relation. A Deleuzean phenomenology would regard these differential flashes as lying at the basis of phenomenal appearings.

Deleuze also describes rhythm in similar terms. The rhythm of sensation, for example, involves the differential coupling of continuously varying waves of intensity. What we wonder is whether time as we normally understand it in phenomenology and music is in fact not what is most immediately involved in our experiences of musical and phenomenal rhythm.

[Audio]

In Husserl’s phenomenal time consciousness, for example, each moment overlaps with its neighbors, creating a bloated and somewhat extending now-moment of our awareness. The now of consciousness is not instantaneous, and it is impossible for any moment to be discontinuous with the rest. It is on the basis of these continual overlappings of moments that objects become constituted as self-same, despite their variations over time. Also, in Merleau-Ponty’s portrayal of phenomenal time, each moment is thoroughly integrated with the rest. What we now experience already in an implicit way is indirectly announcing future phenomena, because all moments of our consciousness are woven together like a fabric. One value of Deleuze’s concept of rhythm is that is can give us a way to understand phenomenal givenness on the basis of a different sort of temporality, one which is bordering on being a sort of non-temporality.

In Difference & Repetition, Deleuze distinguishes cadence repetition from rhythm repetition. Cadence repetition is “a regular division of time, an isochronic recurrence of identical elements.” Consider if we were to focus on the ticking of a clock. At first it might begin as the phenomenon in the forefront of our awareness. But as its homogenous and redundant pattern becomes increasingly monotonous, it fades from our attention, becoming less phenomenal. If the clock malfunctioned, however, and produced irregular ticking, it would pop back into our awareness again. This is something like what he calls rhythm repetition. It is heterochronic rather than isochronic. Its recurrences appear through unequal and incommensurable relations. Deleuze writes “The reprise of points of inequality, of inflections or of rhythmic events, is more profound than the reproduction of ordinary homogeneous elements.”

Deleuze derives this concept of rhythm as heterochronic from the theoretical writings of music composers Messiaen and Boulez. Boulez speaks of rhythm in terms of an irregular pulse. He says that one way he accomplishes it is by dividing the time into such a nuanced pattern that only a machine could perform it with perfect precision. This causes the human performer to produce a rhythmic pulse that continually defies a regime of regularity. According to Messiaen, a military march is not rhythmic, because there is nothing about its regular pattern that interferes with the listener’s pulse, breathing, or heartbeats, and thus she receives no shock. He continues, “the march, with its cadential gait and uninterrupted succession of absolutely equal note-values, is anti-natural. True marching is accompanied by an extremely irregular swaying: it’s a series of falls, more or less avoided, placed at different intervals.” What seems to underlie these notions is that rhythm is characterized by motion and change; and if the same standardized patterns are repeated without variation, then the motion stagnates and loses its rhythmic feel.

Deleuze says that artists and musicians should hone our attention so that we directly perceive the infinitely intricate differential variations of rhythm from moment to moment. He writes, “When Fred Astaire dances the waltz, it is not 1,2,3, it is infinitely more detailed. When Africans dance, they are not seized by a rhythm demon, they hear and perform all the notes, all the times, all the tones, all the pitches, all the intensities, all the intervals.” Here is some of Fred Astaire’s infinitely intricate waltzing.

[Audio]

Like Fred Astaire, when Horowitz plays the waltz, he adds infinitely more rhythmic detail. Compare the mechanized midi version with Horowitz’s rendition. [Below we use Stephen Malinowski’s amazing Music Animation Machine.]

[Audio]

When discussing non-pulsed time, Deleuze refers us to Boulez’ Eclat. In this piece, Boulez instructs the musicians not only to vary the tempo, but also to do so in continuous variation, as if slowing down or speeding up a turn-table. He indicates these tempo disfigurations with up and down arrows. We will look at the opening part.

[Audio]

We might feel the acceleration in the way that the piano notes seem to tumble out with increasing rapidity. We repeat those notes, each time slowing them down so we might perceive the variation more closely.

[Audio]

In this clip we see Boulez overseeing the performance, and we might also sense the continuous variations of tempo.

[Audio]

We will now look more closely not merely at successive heterogeneity but also at simultaneous heterogeneity, which adds another layer of differential rhythm.


We see these two rhythmic differentiations at work in Michael Gordon’s composition, Yo Shakespeare, described as having “irregular rhythms, sudden, precise tempo changes, and simultaneous different meters.” Or as Gordon himself says “there's […] three types of dance rhythms going on at the same time […] almost as if there are three different dance rooms with three different dance bands playing at [once] […] playing different songs and different tempos, but somehow you […] dance to it.”

A glitch in Gordon’s computer program allowed him to juxtapose even and odd divisions of time along the motion of particular instruments. So each such instrumental voice collides with itself in a continual stutter. Yet also, each instrumental motion is in metrical defiance with the others.

[Audio]

Let's now consider Deleuze’s analysis of Leibniz’ micro-perceptions. They are the differential relations between perceptions that have diminished to the infinitely small. They have vanished, but the relation between them remains. To help us visualize this, Leibniz describes a geometrical figure with two triangles, constructed with the same line. As this line moves to the right, one triangle increases while the other decreases.



Yet the sides of both triangles remain proportional, so the ratio of the larger one always indicates the ratio of the smaller one. This holds even as the smaller triangle’s sides diminish to the infinitely small. They have vanished, but their differential relation remains, still discernible in the larger triangle.

Our micro-perceptions are also like these differential relations between vanished terms. For example, when we perceive green, we are really noticing the differential relations between infinitely small perceptions of blue and yellow. At their basis, all our perceptions are primarily these undetectable micro-perceptions.


So the perception of green is not merely the addition of yellow and blue, like when we mix paint. Green results not from their assimilation and bleeding into one another, but rather from their jarring up against each other.

So at any moment, seeing green might be a matter of viewing differential flashes between simultaneously given tiny blues and yellows.

Now, to better grasp the phenomenality of successive variations, I suggest we turn to filmmaker Stan Brakhage.

Deleuze refers to him when discussing the infinites of variation in our fields of perception. One thing Brakhage says he likes about film are its “sharp hard clarities of snapping individual frames.” In many later works, he hand-painted every frame individually. Each one could be a work of art on its own. But, is it only the pictures that we notice when watching his films? Or is there phenomenal content to the differences between the images, which are responsible for making each new frame stand-out in the first place?

First consider this simpler example from an earlier work. Moving one frame to the next, we change from black to red then return to black, all between other shifting imagery. We will repeat this rapid transition here a few times, because it is easy to miss.

[Audio]

Is the phenomenon the red or the black, or is it not the shock we feel between the two?

Rhythm and phenomena in this Deleuzean sense are based on differential relations between simultaneities and within instantaneities. In other words, at their basis, neither rhythm nor phenomena are most fundamentally experienced throughout an extended flowing passage of time. They are given in immediacy. I would like to close with this passage from Brakhage where he articulates a sort of rhythmic appearance of phenomena that are given to him on the basis of their differential incompatibilities.

Questions Section

[Audio only]

Audio gratefully taken from:
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2011/10/corry-shores-scott-wollschleger-manhattan-school-of-music-rhythm-without-time/
Thanks for recording the presentations and making them available


Conference page:
http://www.thelondongraduateschool.co.uk/blog/symposium-rhythmevent/

Characterizing Rhythm: Messiaen's Analysis of the Rhythmic Characters (personnages rythmiques) in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring

by Corry Shores
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[The following includes a selection (pp.143-151) from my M.Phil Thesis: The Rhythm of Sensation on the Surface of Sense: Communication in Deleuze as NonSensed and Intense. Defended and archived at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2008.]

Characterizing Rhythm:

Messiaen's Analysis of the Rhythmic Characters (personnages rythmiques) in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring

Painters may use a variety of techniques to shift our eyes around the painting and give us a sense of rhythm. According to Gilles Deleuze, the painter Francis Bacon accomplishes rhythms that are similar to what Messiaen calls personnages rythmiques. There are three types of these rhythmic characters, shared by both Messiaen and Bacon. [We discussed them at greater length at this entry.] The material we present here is technical. It is for those who want know precisely what Deleuze is referring-to when speaking of rhythmic characters.

Messiaen describes the characters in an interview with Claude Samuel.

Olivier Messiaen:

I don't know if Stravinsky himself has realised the great innovation in The Rite which I've called "the rhythmic characters". I'm very proud of this term, which seems really explicit to me.

Claude Samuel:

It is explicit but all the same it demands fuller explanation.

Olivier Messiaen:

Very well. I spoke a moment ago of Beethoven as the creator of "development by elimination". This development consists in taking a thematic fragment and gradually taking notes away from it until it becomes entirely concentrated in an extremely short moment. Now, this elimination and its opposite, amplification - which, in other words, cause a theme to die or revive by the subtraction or addition of a certain number of note-values, as if it were dealing with a living being - constitutes the birth of the rhythmic characters, with the difference that with Beethoven only a single character is active.

In this system of rhythmic characters you have, in principle, several characters present. Let's imagine a scene in a play between three characters: the first acts in a brutal manner by hitting the second; the second character suffers this act, since his actions are dominated by those of the first; lastly, the third character is present at the conflict but remains inactive. If we transpose this parable into the field of rhythm, we have three rhythmic groups: the first, whose note-values are always increasing, is the character who attacks; the second, whose note-values decrease, is the character who is attacked; and the third, whose note-values never change, is the character who remains immobile. (Messiaen & Samuel 36-37c)

We will examine these characters in more detail. To do so, we will make use of Stephen Malinowski’s amazing Music Animation Machine, along with our own diagrams which mimic his innovations.

Augmentation adds rhythmic values to the notes, that is, it makes their durations longer. Diminution does the opposite: it subtracts rhythmic values by decreasing the durations of notes (This and the following from Messiaen Traité de rythme).

In “classic” augmentation, for example, the rhythmic values of notes are added upon themselves:

We might graphically represent the extension this way:

Below we use the Music Animation Machine to animate the augmentation.

[Click on play button, even though no image shows until then]

And diminution of a ‘point’ reduces the rhythm by a third:

According to his student Pierre Boulez, we may credit Messiaen’s rhythmic discoveries to his studies on Stravinsky (Boulez 173). In his classes, Messiaen performed detailed analyses of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, discovering the above notions, as well as the rhythmic characters, which he came to employ in his own compositions. In his general descriptions of the characters, the personnages rythmiques, Messiaen has us imagine a scene in a play involving three characters: a) the first one brutalizes b) his victim, all while c) a spectator watches, but remains inactive. In Stravinsky’s rhythmic characters, the note values of the active figures become augmented, while those of the passive diminish; and, the inactive immobile one’s values remain the same throughout, and are often non-retrogradable, that is, they remain the same whether played forward or backward. The result is a sort of boxing match, with two contenders each taking his toll on the other, all before the observing audience.

Yet, Messiaen discovers a complexity in Stravinsky’s personnages rythmiques, which Deleuze finds as well in Bacon’s Figures: the roles of the figures change between active and passive frequently, almost like wrestlers interchanging positions of dominance as they struggle with one another.

We will first look at a part Messiaen’s analysis of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, “Glorification De l'Elue,” where he differentiates the personnages rythmiques and describes their combat. Generally speaking, what Messiaen discovers in this section is that there are 4 small unique repeating series of notes, which he considers the rhythmic characters, and he names them A, B, C, and D. Figures A and B increase and decrease in size as they repeat, which gives us the impression that they are battling each other, with one or the other taking the lead at certain times. All the while, D remains the same, and is thus the witness or attendant figure. Figure C changes only once, and does not seem to fit into any of the three roles.

In the diagram below, we can see the series of changes for each figure:

Messiaen reduces the more complex notation down to eighth note patterns so that the characters may be identified. To better recognize them in our listening, we will use box diagrams to represent the sonic qualities of figures. (The vertical axis displays pitch, and the horizontal, like before, is duration. Pitch will sometimes be reduced and approximated).

His first figure is character A, who varies between active and passive, and is played by the English horns along with the flute and piccolo, which begin the movement:

which Messiaen symbolically condenses to:

which has a value of 5 eighth notes. (He ignores the initial grace notes and counts silence with the previous note).

On the Music Animation Machine, it looks like:

It moves fast, but we can watch it animated.

This figure repeats again, remaining the same length.

The figure appearing after that second instance of A is the B character, played by the stringed instruments:

Which Messiaen reduces to:

We it animated here (ignore the very last instant):

The A pattern returns again repeating three times, first at the same rhythmic value as before, 5 eighth notes,

following with an augmentation to 7 notes:

Then it reduces to a value of 4 eighth notes, and is overlapped by C:

Let's listen to all three. Notice the first one is the original length; the second one is longer, and the third is shorter and cut-off by the figure that follows.

The next figure, C, overlapping A and played by the trombones, is always made up of triplets building with a strong crescendo (box rendition is simplification):

This is followed by character D, the immobile rhythm, played by the tympani:

Then C returns with an extra triplet (box diagram is simplified):

Then the immobile D returns,

followed by A again in its decreased 4 eighth-note form, overlapped by C in its own former shorter form,

followed again by the immobile D:

[The last instant of this clip begins the next B]

But when B returns, it has diminished from its previous 9 note value to 6:

Character A then returns to its original 5 eighth-note value, following with B returning to its 9 eighth-note value,

and the A occurs again twice both times still at a value of 5, but follows again increasing to its 7 value form, then ending this section of the movement with its 4 value form

We can hear a recording with the proper instruments in this clip below. It plays the entire section we have so far examined.

What Messiaen observes is a higher order of rhythm. Each rhythmic character is rhythmic in its own right. But the rhythm of each rhythm changes through the repetitions. Look again at the comparison chart.

The fluctuations of A have their own sort of rhythm. Messiaen sees A and B as changing active and passive roles, depending on which increases or decreases following the other, all while D remains constant, like an observer. In a sense, D is also like the frame of reference when all motion is considered relative. For, relative to the first two instances of C, for example, D becomes smaller. But because D was chosen as the point of rhythmic reference, all other characters will take on the active and passive, augmenting and diminishing roles.

We will see that in Bacon's paintings, we feel augmenting and diminishing (active and passive) forces from the different characters, all while one character will be the attendant observer. However, the role of attendant also shifts. This creates higher orders of rhythm in the painting.

Boulez, Pierre. Notes of an Apprenticeship. Transl. Herbert Weinstock. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968.

Messiaen, Olivier. Traité de rythme, de couleur, et d’ornithologie (1949-1992), Tome II. Paris: Alphonse Leduc: 1995.

Messiaen, Olivier, and Claude Samuel. Conversations with Olivier Messiaen. Transl. Felix Aprahamian. London: Stainer & Bell, 1976.

Thank you Stephen Malinowski for creating and sharing your incredible Music Animation Machine.

Midi file from:

http://www.woodwind.org/clarinet/Music/Blumberg.html