We now read differently, thanks to the hours spent in front of the screen, skimming, skipping, only infrequently scrolling back to reexamine a particularly interesting or elusive passage. If we are reading differently, our minds are beginning to work differently. To the extent of that, I suspect we are beginning to listen to music differently as well.

If we agree with the late Joseph Brodsky's observation that "Aesthetic choice is a highly individual matter, and aesthetic experience is always a private one," we must recognize that the electronic medium does not readily support that condition. Birkerts maintains that "while circuit and screen are ideal conduits for certain kinds of data–they are entirely inhospitable to the more subjective materials that have always been the stuff of art. That is to say, they are antithetical to inwardness... The main reason has to do with time... The time of the self is deep time, duration time... To the extent that we immerse ourselves in a book, listen to music, sink into the visual realm of a painting, to that degree we surrender our awareness of the present as a coordinate on a grid... All circuit-driven communications, by contrast, are predicated upon instantaneousness."

And that brings us to James Gleick's Faster. As he describes the condition of a society in a rush, of the "compression of time that characterizes the life of the century now closing," you recognize this compulsion in the acceleration devices at every hand--the door-close button, the speed-dial button, the remote control and countless other mechanisms. Time is now micro-measured in nano-seconds. We have the modern concept of "real time" which means right now or sooner. And now, in Internet time, thought and consideration give way to immediacy of communication, the imperative instantaneousness.

Gleick's book links up all the familiar patterns of compacted functioning. Obvious ones are cell-phoning and multi-tasking which may gratify with the "saturation of parallel pathways of the brain" but also condition behavioral patterns not exactly conducive to contemplation and considered decision making.

The various media exploit the acceleration. Television news is compressed by commentators to create "instant reflectivity" and of course, sound bites. Studio editing equipment "measures raw bits of tape in hundredths of a second," enabling movie and video films to be jammed with faster images of more movement in less time and advertising spots to concentrate more information in less and less time. In chapters like "The Paradox of Efficiency," "365 Ways To Save Time" and "Eat and Run," we see the reflection of a society and culture racing to the horizon.

The musical public has to be affected. The art that has always assumed that listeners would devote time to 40- or 50-minute compositions and to full evening performances now faces an impatient public. Record companies provide the "compilation-anthology-sampler" category of CDs, assuming that "no single track will demand more than a few minutes' [time] investment." The surviving classical music stations program with an eye on "saving the minute." There are countless examples of performing institutions caving in or catering to this hurrying, restlessness of the public.

Music is different, and to rush or compress or abridge it is to negate its whole function. In pronouncing the truism that "music is the art form most clearly about time," Gleick points to the central issue but also, I believe, to the saving grace. Music is our best hope to help us hold on to our lives and control the pace and rhythm of it. It can yet hold us to an understanding and appreciation of time. Immersion in the time play which is part of every great work's expressive scheme can be a restorative of temporal perspective. The day's rushing, the seconds or minutes "saved," suddenly lose significance when we are submerged in a great symphony. Just that separation or stepping aside may be an important motivation to attend concerts–a sanctuary where time may be held still, in suspense.

It is true that some of the new music heard in that sanctuary compresses and layers information to extreme limits, overwhelming the senses and intellectual capacity, like speech that is too fast and too concentrated. And at the other end of the spectrum, perhaps in the same concert, some new music keeps the amount of musical information down to the point where minimal attention and intellectual processing will lead to gratification for many and tedium for others. But the experiencing of these extremes also fulfills our need to regain our temporal composure, to reset our tempo for living.

It may well be that music in its example and inspiration may restore meditation, contemplation, the time we have lost and continue to lose in the mad race to save time. Music, perhaps uniquely, has that power.

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