REPETITIVE MODELS in TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY MUSIC: TEMPORALITY and EXPRESSION

Abstract

Unlike the pointillist-serial aesthetics of the mid-twentieth century contemporary music employs narrative strategies that stimulate listeners to form mental constructs. This involves using the potential of mid-level formal units to establish orientation points for the listener exploring two repetitive models (deadlocked time and frozen time) that emerge as discrete building blocks from the current cognitive-theoretical perspective. Through analogical thinking this article seeks to explain the potential references of these repetition-occurrences towards a temporal suspension and provides multiple examples based on selected passages from Ivan Fedele (b. 1953) Matthias Pintscher (b. 1971) Gérard Pesson (b. 1958) Unsuk Chin (b. 1961) and Michael Jarrell (b. 1958). This inquiry suggests an apprehension capable of bringing an expressive stand to the forefront. It also scrutinises how cognitive approaches revolving around analogical thinking can be employed extensively in the analysis of post-tonal music. © 2025 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.