Questions concerning music and its inextricably intertwined and complex interface with time continue to fascinate musicians and scholars.

For performers, the primary perception of music is arguably the way in which it unfolds in ‘real time’; while for composers a work appears ‘whole and entire’, with the presence of the score having the potential to compress, and even eliminate, the perception of time as ‘passing’.

The paradoxical relationship between these two perspectives, and the sub...