Simultaneity in the Arts
Milton Allen Kaplan · Journal of Aesthetic Education · 1973
During the telecast of a World Series game, when the tying run is on third base and the tension is razor-sharp, the viewer is almost beside himself with frustration. Since the TV camera must focus on one object at a time, the baseball fan finds that while he is watching the player at home plate swishing his bat back and forth, he cannot see the runner on third base, who is threatening to charge down the base path and change the outcome of the game. Fortunately, the TV technician has come to the rescue of the thwarted viewer. The screen is split in half, and while one camera concentrates on the batter, the other catches the base runner cavorting up and down the base line. The armchair viewer thus has the satisfaction of seeing two related events simultaneously. This technique, I must point out, is by no means unusual in mass media. In the motion picture we find that the split screen is being used occasionally, perhaps most recently in Woodstock, to play one scene against another. Many years ago, when radio was the stage for a drama of the ear, directors often used the overlap, a device that superimposed one voice on another to create the effect of simultaneity. These technical devices are a far cry from the intricacies of a Bach fugue, but I do find an important common element. Bach can start with one theme and then introduce a second that is played simultaneously with the first. In an intricate fugue, he can have as many as four separate themes playing together, each distinct and yet each blending with the three others so that four utterances sounding at the same time create a fifth one, which is the fusion of all four.