ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a few possibilities, using ideas from Jonathan Kramer's book The Time of Music as a point of departure. The details of Bruckner's own programmatic comments about the Eighth Symphony are well known: the death-clock or Totenuhr at the end of the first movement; the German Michael as an Austrian character in the Scherzo and Finale; and the death march and transformation in the Finale. Mr. Kramer's interesting and implicative study dating from 1988 identifies two basic classes of musical time: linear time and non-linear time. Linear time is goal directed and associated with left-brain activity, and can be linked to the metaphorical state of 'becoming'. Non-linear time, on the other hand, is static and associated with right-brain activity, and can be linked to the metaphorical state of 'being'. As in the exposition of the Scherzo, if each subsection contains the same number of hypermetric downbeats, they might be perceived as roughly equal in proportion in non-linear time.
