End-Accented Sentences: Towards a Theory of Phrase-Rhythmic Progression
| Autor: | Samuel Ng |
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| Rok vydání: | 2021 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Music Theory Spectrum. 43:43-73 |
| ISSN: | 1533-8339 0195-6167 |
| DOI: | 10.1093/mts/mtaa018 |
| Popis: | For centuries, theorists have debated whether musical phrases are normatively beginning-accented or end-accented. The last two decades of the twentieth century gave beginning-accented rhythm the upper hand; yet, recent work on end-accented phrases has reinvigorated the debate. I contribute to this discussion in two ways. First, I aim to rehabilitate a central position of end-accented rhythm by drawing attention to phrase-rhythmic tendencies in classical sentence structure. My analyses show that end-accented sentential schemas are well-established compositional options in various action spaces—including Primary and Secondary Themes—in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century instrumental music. Moreover, integral roles of end-accented sentential themes are substantiated by their production—in tandem with their beginning-accented counterparts—of large-scale progressions analogous to tonal and formal ones. Awareness of these sentential themes re-energizes the century-old debate and deepens our understanding of phrase rhythm as a source of musical meaning. Second, in order to achieve the first goal, I develop a theory of phrase-rhythmic progression for categorizing phrase-rhythmic types and mapping their trajectories. This theory fills a gap in current spatial representations of rhythm and meter, which focus on metric dissonances and hierarchies without considerations of phrase–meter interaction. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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