| dc.description.abstract | The thesis investigates how listeners perceive and conceptualise musical time by placing Henri Bergson’s philosophy of duration at the centre of rhythm and meter studies. I argue in this thesis that rhythm belongs to embodied perception and intuition, while meter is an abstract framework that retrospectively organises that perceptual flow. Building on this distinction, my study critiques and extends two influential modern theories: Christopher Hasty’s metric projection model and Justin London’s entrainment model. Through close theoretical analysis, interdisciplinary dialogue, and four diverse case studies drawn from Western classical, modernist, and Iranian repertoires, the thesis demonstrates that both scholars still presume a universal capacity to infer or entrain to metric structures. By justifying how rhythm belongs to the realm of perception, the Bergsonian framework accommodates metrically unstable or culturally unfamiliar music and explains how even untrained listeners engage meaningfully with such works.
Beyond clarifying the rhythm-meter relationship, the thesis contributes to the phenomenological turn in music studies while simultaneously challenging its more inward‐looking tendencies. It shows that perception is always an interaction with external musical material, whether scores, sounds, or performer gestures, and that a fully democratic approach to musical time must integrate these externalities with lived bodily experience. The study concludes by hinting at practical implications for rhythm pedagogy and suggesting empirical and cross-cultural research paths that could further refine an inclusive as well as perception-centred understanding of musical time. | |
