Music and Rhythm

Music and rhythm are discussed anew in this book: Besides the primary notated rhythms, there are secondary rhythms that depend on components, namely on the properties and qualities of sounds and sound formations. The texture of components rhythms exhibits rhythmic weights; meter and beat appear as the results of composition, not as prescription.

This book sets forth the first really novel theory of rhythm since Hugo Riemann: the components theory. Its approach will be of interest to musicologists and music theoreticians alike as well as to music performers, since it will enable them to describe and understand the rhythmic shape of music better and more fully than was previously possible. Instead of conceiving rhythm simply as interplay of short and long, of accents and meters, the present analysis takes its departure from secondary rhythms that are not notated but depend on specific qualities of a given sound or sound formation. Together with the basic rhythms, these components rhythms form a total rhythmic texture, whose temporal and weight structure allows a novel way of perceiving musical meter as not being primarily prescriptive but above all as the product of an overall compositional calculation of component rhythms.

Autorentext

Peter Petersen is professor emeritus of Musicology at the University of Hamburg, where he taught from 1985 to 2005. He has dealt with questions of musical rhythm since the 1970s. Additional areas of interest to him are music theater and music of exile. He has also published specialized studies on Bartók, Berg, Dessau, Lutoslawksi, Ligeti, Henze and Hölszky.

Inhalt
Contents: Rhythm Meter Beat Pulse Accent Component Rhythmic Weight Accumulation of Rhythmic Weights Rhythmic Theory Accentual Theory Sound Pitch Diastematy Dynamics Articulation Timbre Phrase Prosody Harmony Texture Upbeat Syncope Hemiola Augmentation Diminution Isometry Heterometry Symmetry.