ABSTRACT A Temporal Basis for Acousmatic Rhythm JAMES ANDEAN Over the last 20 years or so, acousmatic music has experi- enced what we might call the “rhythmic turn”: Meter and pulse have become a great deal more prevalent in recent acousmatic repertoire than in the decades prior. Of course metered pulse has never particularly been a taboo in acous- matic music, but, like melodic or harmonic materials, rhythm was, at least initially, a territory that musique concrète and acousmatic music could reference or access but that was not central to the art form. his does not, however, mean that rhythm has been absent from non-metered acousmatic music; instead, we ind rhythm naturally, though sometimes unconsciously, embedded within the objet sonore [1]. Surprisingly little attention has been paid to acousmatic rhythm in research literature; considering the recent upsurge in more openly rhythmic approaches within the genre, it is perhaps time to examine acousmatic rhythm more closely. his article is intended as a small opening contribution that will briely consider acousmatic rhythm from perhaps its broadest vantage point, as a range of temporal levels, and contrast these with perspectives drawn from a range of re- lated ields. ELECTROACOUSTIC RHYTHM We might begin by irst taking a moment to consider views on rhythm within electroacoustic music more generally. A certain amount of electroacoustic theory has proposed rhythm to be an, or even the, essential element of music. Xenakis proposed rhythm as an ultimate sine qua non [2], while Stockhausen proposed rhythm to be the fundamental parameter of all sound, which he famously demonstrates in Kontakte [3]. More recently, Curtis Roads has similarly de- clared rhythm in electroacoustic music to be “the dominant element in a lux of ever-changing parameter interactions,” or even “the sum total of all parameter interactions” [4]. Taking inspiration from Stockhausen and Xenakis, a pri- mary thread in electroacoustic theory with regard to rhythm is an approach that extends rhythmic concerns across all temporal layers, from the smallest to the most extended con- ceivable time scales. Roads usefully identiied a range of these time scales, from ininite all the way down to ininitesimal: • Ininite • Supra • Macro • Meso • Sound object • Micro • Sample • Subsample • Ininitesimal [5] Roads describes this as a sliding continuum: “Time scales interlink. A given level encapsulates events on lower levels and is itself subsumed within higher time scales. Hence to operate on one level is to afect other levels” [6]. In other words, rhythm in electroacoustic music is nested across the entire range of time levels—from the vastest to the tiniest imaginable divisions, well beyond the limits of perceptibility. ACOUSMATIC RHYTHM Some of this, however, has relatively little application to acousmatic music, in that, while theoretically fascinating, it is perhaps perceptually dubious. he connections between rhythm and pitch or timbre, as described by Stockhausen and Xenakis, are essentially mathematical: Despite these theo- retical relationships and continua, we nevertheless perceive James Andean (educator), Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre, De Montfort University, Leicester LE1 9BH, U.K. Email: <james.andean@dmu.ac.uk>. See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/lmj/-/26> for supplemental files associated with this issue. In an attempt to begin to redress the relative lack of literature focused on rhythm in acousmatic music, this article is intended as a brief look at the acousmatic perspective on rhythm. The article begins with a quick overview of discussion around rhythm in electroacoustic music in general, then contrasts this with some of Pierre Schaeffer’s views on rhythm and finally compares the perceptual temporal levels identified by Schaeffer with similar levels drawn from electroacoustic music, contemporary music and cognitive psychology. 68 LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 26, pp. 68–70, 2016 doi:10.1162/LM J_a_00979 ©2016 ISAST