Dissertation Index
Author: Hudson, Stephen S. Title: Feeling Beats and Experiencing Motion: A Construction-Based Theory of Meter Institution: Northwestern University Begun: May 2016 Completed: May 2019 Abstract: Musical meter is often described as an objective grid-like system of time-points that is created by musical sounds. I define meter instead as any pattern of felt beats an individual listener chooses to hear, a physical and cognitive interpretation of the music that is (re-) created in the moment of listening. We construe meter through embodied metering practices: dance gestures, patterns of counting, or epistemologies of rhythmic motion. Many metering practices have conventional metering constructions, specific associations between sounding features, patterns of felt beats, and paths of motion through these beats. Drawing on concepts from cognitive science and performance studies, I explore how this embodied knowledge is constituted and applied in both planning of musical phrases by a performer, and in-time perception and cognition of musical rhythms by any listener or participant. Metering constructions and practices are often performed by and associated with certain communities and identities. I take a culturally-situated approach to meter and felt motion, studying traditions of embodied movement and bodily discipline including headbanging in heavy metal (Chapter 1), characteristic dance rhythm topics in non-dance concert music of the eighteenth century (Chapter 2), motivic manipulation and developing variation in late Romantic chamber music (Chapters 3 and 4), and prosody and speech gestures in operatic recitative (Chapter 5). Contrary to many existing theories of meter, I argue that our feelings of beat are not necessarily organized in cyclical grids, but are improvised on the spot by stitching together familiar motions. I also explore how movements often embody and perform aesthetic ideologies and cultural meanings, with these hermeneutic frameworks often shaping listeners’ choice of movements, their proprioception of their own movements, and their perception of the qualities of rhythm and motion in the music they are listening to. Keywords: Meter, Rhythm, Perception, Performance, Agency, Cognitive Linguistics, Embodied Cognition TOC: Introduction 12 Context: Theories of Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Moving Together: Entrainment and Coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Theorizing Beats and Meter as Motions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Chapter Outlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 1 Headbanging Beats and Metering Constructions 38 Headbanging Through the History of Heavy Metal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 Headbanging as a Dance Movement Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Defining Metering Constructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Metal Metering Constructions: Backbeat and Phrase-Ending 3+3+2 . . . . . . 57 Motional Syncopation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Microtiming, Motional Gestalts, and Subdivision Discipline . . . . . . . . . . 71 The Status of 3+3+2 Rhythms as Meter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 Listening with the Phrase-Ending 3+3+2 Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 2 Experiencing Dance Rhythms Without Dancing in 18th-Century Music 97 Feet First: Moving Between Dance Steps and Classical Theories of Prosody . . 103 The Dance Steps Fade Away, but the Topic Remains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Theorizing Motion As Accentual Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 Syntax in Functional Dance Music . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 Wolfgang Caspar Printz: A Syntax of Dance Rhythm c. 1700 . . . . . . . . . . 128 Metering with Dance Rhythms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Beyond Printz: Motional Syncopation and Change in Metrum . . . . . . . . . 154 Summary and Conclusion: Metrum vs. Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 3 Motivic Motion as Meter in Late-Romantic Chamber Music 170 Defining Motives and Their IncompatibilityWith Past Theories of Meter . . . 176 Motive as a Motional Category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181 Compatibilities Between Motive and Meter: Entrainment and Orientation . . 196 Transforming Motive, Transforming Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 Re-turning to Re-barring and Variable Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216 4 Interlude: Metering Ravel’s Piano Trio 222 Ravel’s Zortziko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Choosing Between Motional Conceptual Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Retrospective Hearing and Developing an Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Merging Compatible Motions: Weird Joins and Metrical Transmutation . . . . 233 Variable Meter: Metrical Expansion, Deletion, and Overlap . . . . . . . . . . . 240 Motional Blur and Dissolution of Meter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 5 Entrainment Without Recurrence in Operatic Recitative 250 Natural Tonal Rhythm: Pitch Schemas as Metering Constructions . . . . . . . 258 Rhythm in Prosody and Construction Grammar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270 Overt and Covert Entrainment to Co-Speech Gestures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 277 Conducting Patterns and Notated Meter in Speech-like Rhythm . . . . . . . . 286 Entrainment to Speech Rhythms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 294 Conclusion: Reconsidering Periodicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304 References 309 Contact: sshudson@u.northwestern.edu |