Music Analysis as a Description of Eventing in Time: A Phenomenological Description of Bartók's Improvisation op. 20 no. 3

Abstract

This article offers a phenomenological description of Béla Bartók's Improvisation op. 20 no. 3, with a focus on temporality as experienced in listening. Such a description aims at understanding the structure of eventings, through which we encounter and experience, grasp and take up the work's Gestalt in time as a singular dynamic whole, which is its being as becoming, its presentation in its idea and form. As a result, what we hear, perceive and understand as we listen to the work is revealed as the unfolding of a complex network of intersecting eventings, the crossing of contrarily directed motions, interpenetration of intonations and gestures, circularities on different perceptual levels from delaying and returning notes, intonations, gestures and themes, to thematic repetition and variation, their recallings and cross-referencing. These micro-eventings yield eventings on a larger perceptual level that include ternarity, cyclicity in its broadest sense and a concentric concave-shaped contour. This is the work's Gestalt; the unique balance as ratio, correlation and interrelation, not equilibrium, of all these eventings and temporalities.