How can complexity remain perceptible rather than disorienting? Pieter Schuermans’s research starts from the question of what makes a listening experience rewarding. He looks for the answer in a balance between recognition and discovery.
The metapulse
The metapulse is his proposal for approaching an aspect of musical time. It is a recurring cycle of pulses that mediates between bodily experience and cognitive understanding: before we think time, we feel time. As a container, it offers multiple musical layers a shared temporal framework and gives the listener a foothold. In this way he can extend the limits of the perceptible, horizontally (how long a musical identity can unfold in time) and vertically (how many identities and layers can sound at once).
Keywords: metapulse, perceptible complexity, multilayering, hypermeter, prime-number structures, embodied music cognition, construction and intuition, the composer–performer–listener network, repeated listening as a creative act.
Doctorate
In 2021 he obtained his Doctorate in the Arts at KU Leuven (LUCA School of Arts), with the dissertation Chaotic Pulse, Pulsating Chaos: On the Multilevel Organizing Principles of Duration and Time in the Perception of Music. The principal outcome of this work is the concept of the metapulse, which he coined and developed in the dissertation.
The album Chaotic Pulse – Pulsating Chaos (Etcetera Records, KTC 1714, 2021) was recorded with Ataneres Ensemble and Kugoni Trio, conducted by the composer.
Scores on Lirias:
- Accretion Dance (2019)
- Escape Velocity (2018)
- Double Dotted (2009)
Current research: Varanasi
From 31 January to 28 February 2027 he will take up a NIRMAN Independent Residency in Varanasi, India. There he will examine how the metapulse relates to cyclic temporal organisation in other musical cultures, in particular the tāl cycles of North Indian music. The host is Irfana Majumdar, who herself researches tala and cyclic time.
Talks and publications
- Closing keynote, Compositional Thinking Between Pattern and Chaos, at the international symposium Mind, Art, Knowledge: Dialogues between Cognitive Science, Artistic Practice and Philosophy (MAK 2026), Brussels, 15–17 June 2026.
Doctoral supervision
He currently supervises five doctoral researchers:
- Axelle Bruyne, Exploring and Analyzing Violin Extended Techniques and Artistic Processes: Applications in 21st Century Compositions
- Marijn Simons, Artificial Intelligence as an Assistive Tool: Realizing Conceptual Structures in a Composition for String Quartet
- Matias Mucchi, Resonance Between Movement, Sound and Space
- Yentl Tijssens, Woven Sound: A compositional study of multilayering as a contemporary contrapuntal framework
- Didier François, Resonance, Contact and Bow Technique in the Belgian Violin School
