Metric hierarchy in music by Bartok, Copland and Stravinsky.
Item
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Title
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Metric hierarchy in music by Bartok, Copland and Stravinsky.
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Identifier
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AAI3047233
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identifier
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3047233
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Creator
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Kanovsky, Peninah Rachel.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Joseph Straus
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Date
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2002
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Music
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Abstract
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The background pulsations in music, the beat and the meter, serve to orient the listener through the rhythmic events of a musical work. In many early twentieth-century musical works, however, though evenly spaced beats exist on a low level, their groupings at the metric level are not uniform. Beats are arranged in groups of varying lengths, two beats, three beats, sometimes more, not always adhering to an apparent pattern. Determination of a hierarchical metric framework in such cases is thus problematic.;This study focuses on music by Copland, Bartok and Stravinsky, who extensively use beat groupings of varying lengths in their musical works. It maintains that in many cases, metric regularity and periodicity underlie the apparent variability of the beat groupings. Regular meter is used as a starting point in writing and interpreting the music, but goes through a transformation process that distorts the regular meter, so that a new, irregular one is created. The irregular meter is thus derived from an implicit periodic metric prototype that has been transformed by the composer to an irregular version by adding or deleting beats.;The definition of meter is expanded to include beats of variable durations called flexible beats. Similarly, the definition of hypermeter is expanded to include hyperbeats of variable durations called flexible hyperbeats . When irregular meter and hypermeter are treated as regular groups of flexible beats and hyperbeats, rather than flexible groups of fixed beats and hyperbeats, metric hierarchy can be found in depth, from submetrical levels to hypermeasures.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
