Annotation for Kramer, Jonathan D.

Studies of Time and Music: A Bibliography.

Annotation (by Artie Samplaski):

This bibliography was written for a special "Musical Time" issue of Music Theory Spectrum. At the time of its compilation, issues of time still received short shrift in music theory as a discipline; as Kramer notes, neither The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (the main English-language encyclopedia for music) nor RILM (the international bibliographic project that attempts to list all scholarly publications in music) had a separate category for time, and The Music Index (another major bibliographic series, which is not limited to scholarly publications) had only recently begun to list articles under the heading 'Time.' Kramer's goal was to fill that gap by making available a listing of studies about time "which treat music in a substantive manner." His job was made difficult by the necessity of defining the field of 'musical time,' since studies about time are interdisciplinary and he did not wish to be either too restrictive or too inclusive. Furthermore, categories within the bibliography were "no more rigorously defined than the field itself," and a number of items could ift any of several slots--Kramer does not attempt any cross listings. An incomplete list of areas largely omitted includes references dealing with music therapy, music notation, child development, music appreciation, and music education, as well as any master's theses or items originally published before 1900. Kramer's list of categories is: Aesthetics; Analysis; Contemporary Techniques; Ethnomusicology; Harmonic Rhythm; Information Theory; History; Music Theory; Other Arts; Perception; Phenomenology; Proportion; Psychology; Rhythm and Meter; Science and Technology; Tempo; and Textbooks and Bibliography. A total of 859 items are listed.