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This video was first presented at the Birmingham Baroque Biennial Conference in July 2021 - this edition of the Conference was held online.

ABSTRACT
Despite Einstein’s Relativity (1905), we still live and make music within a classical understanding of Time ‘like an ever-rolling stream’. This is Newton’s Absolute Time (Principia 1687), only gradually accepted over subsequent decades. The works of Monteverdi and Schütz, even Lully and Purcell, are music of an earlier, pre-Newtonian Time.

That Time is Aristotelean, ‘a number of change/motion in respect of before and after’ (Physics). What implications might the philosophy, principles and practice of Aristotelean Time have for the historical Science, Art & Use of 17th-century music?

The Baroque embodiment of Time as the movement of the Tactus hand can be hypnotic, facilitating Flow. Tactus unites philosophical Time and musical notation with real-time duration and practical musicking. (Milan 1536, Grant 2015). Zacconi (1592) lists its qualities and synonyms. Time’s character is presented in Baroque dramas.

Like the Music of the Spheres, Time is defined by astronomy, imitated by clocks, reflected in the human pulse. Tactus represents the Divine Hand. Dante’s Primum Mobile drives musical Proportions and Divisions.
Period sources assume that tempo giusto must be found (not chosen at whim), but without high-precision clocks. The quality of Baroque Time is experiential, not quantitative (Carissimi 1696). A minim is calibrated to 1 second (Mersenne 1636), yet Time varies subtly.

Caccini and Monteverdi disrupt measure differently. Mindful of the myth of Phaeton, Frescobaldi requires Tactus when ‘driving Time’. Chant and preludes are written with note-values, yet ‘unmeasured’.

Did over-confidence in Absolute Time lead to c1900 rubato? What counts in modern-day Early Music?