Readership: Scholars of music theory; history of music theory; music perception & cognition; and scholars of Haydn and Mozart's chamber music
Danuta Mirka, Senior Lecturer, University of Southampton
"entertaining and enthralling" - Early Music
"Mirka displays astonishing theoretical rigour and meticulous attention to detail ... 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." - Mark Anson-Cartwright, Music and Letters
"A book as wide-ranging and thoughtful as Mirka's provides many opportunities for scholarly engagement ... 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." - Justin London, Eighteenth-Century Music
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 2.1.1.: Stress (Dynamic Accent) 2.1.2.: Length (Agogic or Durational Accent) 2.1.3.: Pitch (Melodic Accent) 2.2.: Harmony 2.2.1.: Harmonic Change 2.2.2.: Harmonic Stability 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 Notes References Index
