A Dynamical Systems Perspective on Music

Any analytical approach makes a claim about the nature of its object and what is important in it. It is appropriate therefore for me to preface my advocacy of a dynamical systems approach to the analysis of music with a brief statement of my own view of music, concentrating on two points. This will be followed by an attempt to show how dynamical systems theory fits in with that view, and the application of the theory to music will be illustrated by an analysis of the Sarabande from the Sixth Unaccompanied Cello Suite in D major by J. S. Bach (BWV 1012). The first point is my conviction that music is essentially constituted of performances. Music is an ongoing engagement with certain sounds, imagined or real, on the part of perceivers, whether these perceivers be performers. or listeners. Anything else to do with music-scores, for example, is secondary. The second point is that the coupling of the flow of sounds with the attention of perceivers is controlled by the temporality of the sounds, and is therefore limited to a now whose content changes ceaselessly. Music takes place in its own almost total sonic absence. Someone scrutinizing a score has simultaneous access to large spans, but a listener has only the sound of the moment to work with; what might appear as detail from the