Cognitive and Aesthetic Aspects of Metrical Ambiguity

Moreover, such music invites not just our individual engagement, but the collective, coordinated engagement of the entire audience. We are hearing in time (and often as a result, moving in time), together. William H. McNeill, the respected historian who has written on Toynbee, Technology and Military History, and the Rise of Western Civilization, also wrote a fascinating book on a rather different topic. Keeping Together in Time, inspired in part by McNeill’s own experience on the parade ground in WWII, is a study of “dance and drill in human history.” There he develops his theory of “Muscular Bonding”—the collective enactment of a shared rhythm. McNeill especially notes the social aspect of such coordinated action, as it: