Time is the basic element of musical form: rhythm, tone, and melody become music only when organized over time. And musical time can seem either fleeting or interminable: think, for instance, of Chopin’s “Minute” Waltz or Wagner’s complete Ring cycle. Over the course of history, time itself has been measured by changing principles. While in feudal society it was cyclical, based on patterns of the natural world, the rise of trade and the Age of Discovery ushered in a new, chronological understanding of time. Likewise, while the music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras utilized older notions of cyclical time, eighteenth-century composers had begun to think of time as sequential and their music as a linear series of events rather than a continual recurrence of themes. The works on today’s program engage with these shifting concepts of time, each piece showing its maker exquisitely conscious of the ebb and flow of history.