Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- Part I COMMUNICATION AND THE MARKET
- Part II MUSICAL GRAMMAR
- 4 Metre, phrase structure and manipulations of musical beginnings
- 5 National metrical types in music of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
- 6 Schoenberg's ‘second melody’, or, ‘Meyer-ed’ in the bass
- Part III RHETORICAL FORM AND TOPICAL DECORUM
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index of concepts
- Index of names and works
5 - National metrical types in music of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Introduction
- Part I COMMUNICATION AND THE MARKET
- Part II MUSICAL GRAMMAR
- 4 Metre, phrase structure and manipulations of musical beginnings
- 5 National metrical types in music of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
- 6 Schoenberg's ‘second melody’, or, ‘Meyer-ed’ in the bass
- Part III RHETORICAL FORM AND TOPICAL DECORUM
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index of concepts
- Index of names and works
Summary
The first metric organization … which seems to coincide with that of the Italians, is [also] preferred in France. That in (Q) has from time immemorial been at home in Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Moravia and so on; that in (R) in Poland. Isn't it foolish to recast the ears and nerves of entire kingdoms and to try to reduce them to a single rule?
Joseph RiepelPerhaps it is the same with rhythm as with so many things about which it is impossible to come to an understanding, because different meanings are given to the same word.
Camille Saint-SaënsRhythm and metre are among the chief means of communication in music, but communication about rhythm and metre is fraught with difficulty. Communication between North American and European scholars, for example, is made vastly more difficult by the different theoretical traditions from which they spring. Continental musicologists are often imprinted, whether they realize it or not, with the legacy of Hugo Riemann, for whom the musical phrase was invariably end-accented, with the cadence marking its strongest beat. American theorists tend to follow – again, often unthinkingly – the tradition of Gottfried Weber and Heinrich Schenker, for whom phrases are normally beginning-accented, allowing cadences to fall on relatively weak metrical positions, either a weak beat or a weak bar within a larger metrical unit, the hypermeasure.
This study grew out of my frustration over this impasse, which seemed to render impossible further progress in the theory of rhythm.
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- Communication in Eighteenth-Century Music , pp. 112 - 159Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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