Have you ever thought that music lives in time?
That time is an integral property of music, its actual essence, a necessary and obligatory condition for its existence, a vast canvas where its lines flow and its colors shimmer; an eternal and limitless space for fantasy? Have you noticed that time can be different: viscous & slow or instantly flashing before us?Do you feel what an endless world these questions open up for us?
Maria has been fascinated by these questions for several years now and has dedicated her research to this topic. If you like this line of thought, follow the updates about new lectures, courses and seminars where Maria talks about the interaction of music with space and time, shares ideas of the wonderful philosophers and musicians and analyzes music from the standpoint of time and space. Audiences of all walks of life are welcome, from professional musicians to non-musicians with zero background.Upcoming events
Research details
As a musicologist, Maria has been developing a unique system for teaching music through the concepts of time and space, which includes the terminology set and the teaching methodology. The method of Understanding Music through the Concepts of Time and Space is based on the presumption that music is a type of art that has a quality of duration and exists in time, as opposed to some other types of art that exist in space, such as sculpture or painting. While any piece of music lasts a certain number of minutes and seconds, it also contains a notion of virtual or musical time, that is a sequence of events that happen in the piece, in parallel with the clock time.
Research goals
- To attract attention to some philosophical concepts that have been recently neglected in the modern educational system, among which are the questions of what time really is, is it only about the absolute clock time or maybe there are other aspects.
- To discuss the idea of the musical time that, unlike the absolute time, is flexible, can stretch, shrink, stop, or rewind
- To promote the process of thinking as an alternative activity to the modern-life choices of how people tend to get rest and re-energize (computer, media)
- To sparkle genuine interest in classical music
Conferences
The Athens Institute for Education and Research, 27th Annual International Conference on Education, 19-22 May 2025, Athens, Greece. Connecting Caplin to Kramer: Applying Jonathan Kramer’s Types of Virtual Musical Time to William E. Caplin’s Classical Form Analysis
The Athens Institute for Education and Research, 15th Annual International Conference on Visual and Performing Arts, 10-13 June 2024, Athens, Greece. Understanding Music through the Concepts of Time and Space
University of Calgary, Canada, School of Creative and Performing Arts, Annual International Conference Confounding Expectations: Creativity, Expression, and Emotion in Music. Emotions in Music through the Concepts of Time and Space
Publications
Mirakhmedova, Maria, “Understanding Music Through the Concepts of Time and Space,” paper presented at the 15th Annual International Conference on Visual and Performing Arts, Athens, June 10-13, 2024. (pending)
Maria Mirakhmedova. “Time as a Concept in the Songs of Musorgsky.” M.A. Thesis, University of Calgary, 2021. PDF
