Except for the most conservative music departments, most colleges and universities have instituted music major programs to accommodate the contemporary student whose interest lies in current practice, e.g., popular music, music business and/or industry and music production. Those involved in the creation of popular music are usually more aurally oriented, and create music based on what sounds as that which is accepted as popular music. These students typically attempt song writing, and perform either as soloists or with bands. Music business and industry majors demonstrate interest in pursuing careers in music production, recording, publishing, management, promotion, and essentially any area that does not involve primarily the creative aspect of composition or performance. However, regardless of a music major’s primary area of interest, he or she is still required to fulfill certain departmental musicianship requirements. While traditional majors in performance, composition or teaching for example, must successfully complete historically established musicianship courses, the current trend in musicianship offerings is an attempt to be more accommodating to various needs and concentrations. Musicianship for the Contemporary Musician, which can be completed in two semesters, will satisfy this alternative approach and still fully prepare the graduate to move freely in other facets of the profession. The author is a classically and formally trained pianist, composer and theorist, who has spent many years as a performer of classical, jazz, popular, rock and liturgical music, touring and studio musician, and professor of music. He is a multiple-charted and award-winning songwriter, commissioned composer, producer, arranger/orchestrator and lyricist (Billboard, et. al.), and a published author, composer and songwriter. His works—popular, piano, choral and instrumental—have been recorded and published by numerous record companies and publishers in the United States and abroad. The author speaks from dozens of years of experience in the music profession.

The articles in this collection create an interdisciplinary perspective. While attempting no unified vision, it approaches the subject from a variety of perspectives: aesthetics, psychology, sociology, ethnomusicology, compositional practice, and semiotics. While all composers are necessarily concerned with time, and while all theorists deal at least indirectly with music as a temporal phenomenon, the study of musical time has been fragmented. It is appropriate that no clear paradigm, model or direction has yet emerged in the study of muscial time, since time itself is both pervasive and elusive.