If I may reopen an elderly thread, I would say that a "story," or Western approach of clear beginning, middle, end; with a general introduction, climax, and resolution is far more limiting to the length of a piece.
Take a generic piece of 20th/21st Century orchestral music. There's a limit to HOW long you can drag out that "story" before it's just "too long."
However, take a more eastern approach, and go for music that does NOT progress, like a long free-form jam session, or Theater of Eternal Music, or a great deal of traditional and classica musics from the Indo-Arabian area; That stuff can go on, more or less unchanging for hours, and you never tire of it.
With progressing, "story" music, the music is only interesting for as long as you can continue introducing and developing ideas. Repeat yourself too much, and the piece becomes redundant and tiring.
However, the constant nature of NON-storytelling music, allows the listener to keep finding new things in the music. If you listen to a multi-timbral drone for two hours, you just keep finding slight variations, you just keep finding new harmonics you didn't hear before, and the music pulls you in and... well, there's a reason drone-based musics are often associated with trance-like states.
I would say that a story-telling, beginning, middle, end, well crafted type "song" is definitely limited by its material. For a pop/rock-type tune, that limit might be 5-10 minutes, maybe 15, before you really tire of it. For a symphony, the limit might be in the more Mahlerian range of 2-3 hours.
But for music that intentionally does NOT progress, that has NO story to tell, there is really only the limit of the needs of your daily life. The question is not, how long can the music interest you and provide a backdrop to your time, but how much time can you afford to spend with the music.
|