Extending from Bushnell’s discussion (2014) on the nonlinear, polychronic tragic temporality in staged drama, I argue that the serial, minimalist, sonata-form first movement of Joe Hisaishi’s East Land Symphony is a musical-temporal metaphor for the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Unique ways of realizing and transforming the row reinforce unambiguously articulated thematic areas indicated by multiple congruous parameters such as tempo, meter, ostinati, motives, presence of general pauses, and completeness of linear row realizations. Bushnell’s “multi-dimensional tragic present” finds its musical equivalence in Hisaishi’s movement in four overlapping aspects: 1) the reimagining of the reversed recapitulation in a serial, minimalist fashion, the expressive effect of which is tragic (Jackson 1996); 2) the weakening of the themes in the recapitulation in length, textural-instrumental layers, presence of motives, and replacement of the transition; 3) the paradoxical “redemption” of the ineffective generic sonata structure (Darcy 1997) by the relatively more compelling extra-generic coda, which tragically destroys the themes by harking back to the materials of the development section instead of the exposition (Hatten 2006), and 4) the inability to realize the row and its related motives in their complete form toward the end of the movement. In stark contrast, the conceptually and temporally distant second movement furnishes complete linear statements of another row at its opening, stretching the polychronic tragic temporality to inter-movement levels. Through these temporal manipulations of sonata-serial expectations, Hisaishi creates a purely musical tragedy representing and memorializing the Great Earthquake.

Despite the broad analytical attention focused on Morton Feldman’s treatment of temporality in his late music, little work has explicitly addressed the constituent elements of his rhythmic language, nor the possible developments of these elements across a composition. Dora Hanninen (2004, 227) has noted that the challenge is predominantly “qualitative” (rather than quantitative, notwithstanding the large timescales of his late works), where near repetitions and minute, seemingly random adjustments result in a “superabundance of nuance that eludes conceptualization.”

In this paper, I propose an adaptation of beat-class set theory for the analysis of Feldman’s rhythmic materials in his compositions of the 1980s. Just as pitch-class set theory embraces a degree of abstraction from the musical surface in the pursuit of certain equivalences, the application of similar principles in the area of rhythm suggests the possibility of similar connections. As I demonstrate through analyses of Triadic Memories (1981), Piano and String Quartet (1984), and For Christian Wolff (1986), attending to the beat-class sets in Feldman’s music reveals patterns of continuity not captured through traditional metric or motivic analyses.

These analyses highlight how Feldman’s use of rhythm complements and accentuates procedures unfolding in pitch, timbral, and registral space. More importantly, this methodology offers a means of overcoming the “superabundance of nuance” Hanninen identifies in his music, a feature that has hitherto remained challenging for analysts. More generally, I seek to advocate for the application of beat-class set theory to a broader range of repertoire than the minimalism to which it has historically been confined.

Can a convention of ballet performance—the final series of turns en manège—give rise to a stock musical strategy? In this paper, I argue that the balletic convention of ending a solo variation with a series of turns gave rise to musical settings that accommodated those turns. I identify two major musical elements in these endings: first, an increase in tempo, and second, a strong duple metrical emphasis. The Sugar Plum Fairy variation from Act II of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker, for example, closes with a rapid sequence of turns en manège (in a large circle). The accompanying music accelerates to match the dancer’s pace. It emphasizes the first and third beats of each measure, underscoring each of the dancer’s steps onto their supporting leg and subsequent piqués in each turn.

My findings here are based on choreomusical analyses of pas variations from Tchaikovsky’s three full-length ballets Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Swan Lake, which all bear the artistic imprint of the choreographer Marius Petipa. I then extend my observations to several of Tchaikovsky’s works that were not composed for the ballet stage. In doing so, I show how the physicality of Petipa’s choreography may have influenced Tchaikovsky’s rhythmic decisions in his first and second piano concertos, Op. 23 (1875, rev. 1879 and 1888) and Op. 44 (1880), and how a subversion of this balletic expectation might have informed his opera Iolanta (1891).