I would like to hear from anyone who is interested in participating as a speaker or performer, or who would like to show a video excerpt of a performance. The White House is now connected to the public via e-mail, though still on a limited basis. The following message was distributed through our local ethnomusicology network at Indiana University. You should receive a written reply in due course. You might want to wait until the Clinton folks get things sorted out.
Music exists in time and only in time.
Music theory and musicology have traditionally been concerned with scores, yet the temporal study of music demands confronting music as performed and as heard. Taking cues from both cognitive psychology and critical theory, the seminar will consider music to be imperfectly represented by scores. We will study performances and perceptions as well as notated music. We will focus not only on rhythm and meter as written but also on such intangibles as motion, continuity, progression, pacing, proportion, and tempo. This seminar is essentially about how music unfolds in time, uses time, and possibly even creates its own time.