The Music of the Temporalists
By André Pogoriloffsky
Published 2011, 214 pages
CreateSpace Publishing
This book is a fictional music-theory tale told as a first-person account. The story is about a middle-aged Parisian pianist who enters another dimension and experiences a two-year stint in a parallel world inhabited by people known as the Temporalists. The author meets a Temporalist musician-guide who instructs the author about the nature of music as Temporalists know it. In the Temporalist world, music is based on time instead of harmony, and beats are based on multiples of a 50 millisecond grid system and a base-line 100 ms temporal mode. The storyline expands on this in great detail. Some of the discussion subjects delved into include: the seven primary temporal modes, intermediate and higher modes, compound temporal modes, temporal music structure, assimilation and memorization, seismography, pulsatory groupings and harmonies, modulations, accents, false beats, acciaccaturas, dynamics, brain recognition, sensations, cognition, vibrations, infra- and ultrasounds, the poetry of pulses and rests, cultural biases, and many others.
The book is well-researched and includes a list of 53 real-life scientific reference sources concerning music, time, psychology, and the human brain, and will appeal to readers interested in various aspects of music theory. The temporal theory discussions get deep quickly. Thankfully, there are also some humorous sections included in the book, generally when the author deals with his wife or with the Temporalists in non-musical situations. Overall, the book is a bit difficult to read due to awkward English sentence structure, occasional misuse of words, and the complex subject matter.
Andre Pogoriloffsky is the pen name of Andrei Covaciu-Pogorilowski. He was born in February, 1968 in Bucharest, Romania, where he currently resides.
Bruce McCollum
