You could say that when you listen to classical music, you are taking a trip in a time machine. Or, as Shirley MacLaine might put it, “Classical music is the soundtrack of your previous lives.”

The contemporary American composer Sebastian Currier goes even further, suggesting (quote):

“It's only a little bit of an exaggeration to say that music is made of nothing BUT time - well, and air too … melodic or rhythmic gestures are made of a series of events moving forward in time. … And the rest is air. A musician bows a string, blows air in a cylinder, strikes a metal object, and a series of sound waves take that information to our ears … It has always been fascinating to me that an art form that is so penetrating … is made of such ephemeral stuff.”

Sebastian Currier even gave the title “Time Machines” to one of his works, a piece for violin and orchestra, that received its premiere performance in New York City on today’s date in 2011 with the German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter as the soloist, and the New York Philharmonic conducted by Alan Gilbert. Each of the work’s seven movements explores some aspect of the relationship between the perception of music and time, ranging from “Fragmented Time” at its opening to “Harmonic Time” at its close.