Chapter Two

THE BOOK AND THE NUMBERS

Lyric Time

O

Fthe two orders of time that the musical sets against

one another, lyric time—the time of the numbers, as

opposed to the time of the book—is the more chal-

lenging to think about. Lyric time counts on repetition, which

often passes unnoticed, and that is why it is challenging. We do

not think about repetition, although it is going on all around

us, or in us. We assume we are making progress in our affairs,

and we would rather think about that.

Repetition in song and dance fools everyone with its com-

plexity. Popular songs seem simple and direct in performance,

but once one looks at the contraption to see how it works—I

borrow the phrasing from Auden, who said that is what should

be done to poems—one is surprised at the layers of craft that

combine to give the illusion of simplicity.^1

All popular songs share this intricacy to some extent—it comes

from the combination of melodic, rhythmic, and lyric patterns

of repetition. Music gains meaning through the accretion of

repeated combinations of phrases and rhythms, and dancers

give body to these patterns through the repetitive gestures and

(^1) Auden, “The Dyer’s Hand” and Other Essays, pp. 50–51. Repeated elements
can only be understood in relation to material that does not recur. Nonrecur-
ring elements create a different context for each repetition, with the result that
each repetition refers to its previous manifestation over a ground of difference.
Theodor Adorno’s theory of music, with Beethoven as the leading point of ref-
erence, provides a full definition of repetition in this sense. Clear guidance is
available in Jarvis, Adorno: A Critical Introduction, pp. 124–37. Adorno’s writ-
ings on Beethoven have been collected in Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, ed.
Tiedemann.