Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart: Chamber Music for Strings, 1787-1791

by Danuta Mirka

Overview

Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart makes a significant contribution to music theory and to the growing conversation on metric perception and musical composition. Focusing on the chamber music of Haydn and Mozart produced during the years 1787 to 1791, the period of most intense metric experimentation in the output of both composers, author Danuta Mirka presents a systematic discussion of metric manipulations in music of the late 18th-century. By bringing together historical and present-day theoretical approaches to rhythm and meter on the basis of their shared cognitive orientations, the book places the ideas of 18th-century theorists such as Riepe, Sulzer, Kirnberger and Koch into dialogue with modern concepts in cognitive musicology, particularly those of Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, David Temperley, and Justin London. In addition, the book puts considerations of subtle and complex meter found in 18th-century musical handbooks and lexicons into point-by-point contact with Harald Krebs's recent theory of metrical dissonance. The result is an innovative and illuminating reinterpretation of late 18th-century music and music perception which will have resonance in scholarship and in analytical teaching and practice. Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart will appeal to students and scholars in music theory and cognition/perception, and will also have appeal to musicologists studying Haydn and Mozart.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199354085
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2014
Series:	Oxford Studies in Music Theory
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Danuta Mirka is Reader in Music at the University of Southampton. She is the author of of The Sonoristic Structuralism of Krzysztof Penderecki and coeditor, with Kofi Agawu, of Communication in Early Music.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Note on Terminology, Language, and Musical Examples

Chapter 1. Musical Meter between Composition and Perception
1.1. The Concept of Meter in the Late Eighteenth Century
1.2. Revival of the Hierarchical Concept of Meter in the Twentieth Century
1.3. Toward a Dynamic Model of Meter
1.4. Borrowing from a Different Model

Chapter 2. Finding Meter
2.1. Statistical Parameters
2.2. Harmony
2.3. Streaming and the Role of Bass
2.4. Cadence (Structural Accent)

Chapter 3. Sustaining Meter — Challenging Meter
3.1. Metrum and Regularity of Beats
3.2. Missing Beats
3.3. General Pauses
3.4. Fermatas
3.5. Syncopations

Chapter 4. Changing Meter I: Change of Period
4.1. Imbroglio
4.2. Submetrical Dissonance
4.3. Hemiola

Chapter 5. Changing Meter II: Change of Phase
5.1. Chains of Rhythmical Dissonances
5.2. Other Parameters in Displacement Dissonances
5.3. Imitation
5.4. Ligaturae, Retardation, Anticipation
5.5. Syncopated Accompaniment
5.6. Remark on Subliminal Dissonances

Chapter 6. Changing Meter III: Change of Tactus
6.1. Changes of Taktteile in Compound Meters
6.2. Changes of Taktteile in Double Measures
6.3. Perceptual Factors
6.4. Taktteile and the Tactus

Chapter 7. Analyses of Long-Range Metrical Strategies
Haydn, String Quartet in C major, Op. 50 No. 2, First Movement
Haydn, String Quartet in F minor, Op. 55 No. 2, Finale

Chapter 8. Wit, Comedy and Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart's Personal Styles
8.1. Haydn
8.2. Mozart
8.3. Haydn's Earlier and Later String Quartets
8.4. Inconclusive Conclusion

Bibliography
Index of Compositions by Haydn and Mozart
General Index

Editorial Reviews

"A superb book. Through detailed and sensitive re-hearings of a range of chamber music by Haydn and Mozart, Danuta Mirka persuades us how the syntactic manipulation of meter contributes to the sound of "classical style" as much as more familiar harmonic or formal conventions. What I find particularly remarkable about this study is the brilliant way the author is able to gain analytic traction using both historical music theory sources as well as insights drawn from contemporary cognitive psychology. It is a model for the kind of synthetic analysis so sorely needed in the field of music theory today."—Thomas Christensen, Professor of Music and the Humanities, University of Chicago

"To explain a joke, it is often said, is to kill it. But when the jokester is an eighteenth-century composer, writing for connoisseurs, some explanation is in order. In this exceptionally lucid book, Danuta Mirka helps the reader to listen with eighteenth-century ears. In so doing, she sheds new light on the genius of Haydn and Mozart and on the music theory of their time."—William Rothstein, Queens College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York

"Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart exemplifies—if not pioneers—a sort of
"synthetic analysis" that should hopefully prove an inspiration for theorists in other areas as well." —Notes

"An excellent monograph. Mirka's combination of psychological perspective with detailed study of historical sources, insightful analysis of compositions, and critical engagement with modern music-theoretical views is extremely stimulating." —Bruno Repp, Music Perception

"This is an extraordinarily good book. The theoretical reasoning is careful and rigorous; the analyses are perceptive and convincing; the historical discussions are thoughtful and sensitive; the writing is first-rate. . . . What distinguishes MMHM, then, is not just its uniquely synthetic character, but the extremely high quality of every aspect of the book." —Journal of Music Theory

"Mirka provides a revelatory study that should open the ears of all musicians, not least performers." —Early Music

"In Mirka's hands, eighteenth-century theory is alive and full of implications for analysis. . . . this is certainly one of the most significant contributions to the history of music theory to appear in the last ten years." —Music & Letters

"One of the most significant contributions to the history of music theory to appear in the last ten years." —Music & Letters

"The actual range of metrical strategies covered in this study is very wide...The analyses bring these features to life in entertaining and enthralling manner." —Early Music

"A signal achievement in music history, theory and analysis. By focusing on Haydn's and Mozart's chamber music of 1787-1791 and embedding that music into its contemporaneous discursive context, Mirka has opened a window not only onto our understanding of eighteenth-century music, but also onto broader issues in rhythmic theory, music perception and cognition, musical rhetoric and form, and musical styles and genres. For all these things, we should give Danuta Mirka many benedictions of her own." —Eighteenth-Century Music

"An illuminating book...[Mirka] succeeds admirably in bringing us twenty-first-century listeners as close as possible to the listening experience of educated eighteenth-century musicians, and in teaching us to delight in Haydn's and Mozart's metric manipulations." —Music Theory Online

"A welsome addition to the impressive body of work on rhythm and meter that our field has produced during the past few decades...She succeeds admirably in bringing us twenty-first-century listeners as close as possible to the listening experience of educated eighteenth-century musicians, and in teaching us to delight in Haydn's and Mozart's metric manipulations." —Society of Music Theory

From the Publisher