http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0445514
department or school: Arts, Faculty of
department or school: Music, School of
data provider: DSpace
degree campus: UBCV
creator: Sawatzky, Grant Michael
issued: 2024-10-08T22:34:33Z
issued: 2024
related degree: Doctor of Philosophy - PhD
degree grantor: University of British Columbia
description: In the influential 1989 study Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music, William Rothstein developed a method for analysis of eighteenth and nineteenth-century European common-practice music that describes how melodic gestalts and their supporting harmonic progressions relate to the metrical alternation of strong and weak beats, especially hypermeter (metrical structure beyond the notated bar). The interaction of these two kinds of temporality constitutes the “phrase rhythm” of the music. Interacting temporal structures exist in much other music, but application of Rothstein’s method to a broader corpus is hindered when the music is without the formulaic harmonic progressions that help define gestalts, or does not feature regular pulsation at certain levels of its meter. To overcome these limitations, I propose a way to generalize Rothstein’s insights. I reconceive phrase rhythm as arising from the “grouping-complex”: a network of interrelationships among different ways of partitioning the same span of musical time. These ways include event affiliation, gestalt segmentation, rhythmic/motivic parallelism, and partitioning by phenomenal accent, among others. Theorists, I show, recognize these more general partitions, but have not investigated how they can interact independently of alignment to well-formed meter or involvement in tonal prolongation. This approach makes it possible to identify and describe distinctive phrase-rhythmic effects (e.g., overlap, elision, and phrase expansion) in music that does not feature the melodic, harmonic and metrical schemata of the common-practice corpus. I demonstrate these effects in passages by Debussy, Mussorgsky, and Bartók. Moreover, I avoid the “conformational” analytical frame of much writing about phrase structure and meter, wherein a passage is described in terms of its conformity to some a priori model that is taken to be “normative.” The “generative” analytical frame I favour allows for the description of emergent phrase-rhythmic stru…
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/89354
note: PHRASE RHYTHM AS GROUPING COMPLEX: HEARING STRUCTURE IN “IRREGULAR” MUSIC by GRANT MICHAEL SAWATZKY B.Mus., University of Saskatchewan, 2005 M.A., University of British Columbia, 2013 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Music - Theory) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) October 2024 © Grant Michael Sawatzky, 2024 ii The following individuals certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies for acceptance, the dissertation entitled: Phrase Rhythm as Grouping Complex: Hearing Structure in “Irregular” Music submitted by Grant Michael Sawatzky in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Music - Theory Examining Committee: Dr. John Roeder, Professor Emeritus, Music Theory, School of Music, UBC Supervisor Dr. Alan Dodson, Professor, Music Theory, Department of Music, Mount Allison University Supervisory Committee Member Dr. Leigh VanHandel, Associate Professor, Chair of Music Theory Division, School of Music, UBC Supervisory Committee Member Dr. James T. Enns, Professor and Distinguished University Scholar, Department of Psychology, UBC University Examiner Dr. T. Patrick Carrabré, Professor, Composition, School of Music, UBC University Examiner iii Abstract In the influential 1989 study Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music, William Rothstein developed a method for analysis of eighteenth and nineteenth-century European common-practice music that describes how melodic gestalts and their supporting harmonic progressions relate to the metrical alternation of strong and weak beats, especially hypermeter (metrical structure beyond the notated bar). The interaction of these two kinds of temporality constitutes the “phrase rhythm” of the music. Interacting temporal structures exist in much other music, but application of Rothstein’s method to a broader corpus is hindered when…
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note: – "\ "| "\"""– "\ "| "\"""– "\""" "● "● "● "● "● "● "● "● "● "● "● "●"" "● " " "● " " "● " " "● """ "● " " " " " "● "" 154 frame, where “each measure or each metrical unit could be viewed as a unique projective situation in which uniqueness or particularity arises both from the measure’s internal constitution and from its assimilation of prior events (and its potential for being assimilated into future events)” (Hasty 1997, 149). While the projective aspect of Hasty’s account is not central to my project, his “particularity” is an important concept that serves as a precedent in the existing music theory literature for an approach to rhythm that adopts a decidedly generative (rather than conformational) outlook while also privileging an intra-opus frame of reference for the describing how a certain metrical situation arises for a particular passage. In Meter as Rhythm, Hasty rarely provides details for what aspect(s) of the music informed the decision to assign beginnings/continuations to a particular moment, instead devoting the bulk of discussion to a description of the nature of the time-organizing metrical processes (or environments) that result. I do not doubt that he holds very precise notions about exactly which aspects of the music inform the metric qualia his symbols represent—I am merely pointing out that the reader is seldom given the chance to peak behind the curtain. For example, in the context of Hasty’s explanation of a descending C-major scale whose first metric duration is understood to begin from a rest (his example 9.15), he tells the reader that this particular “silent beginning” arises because of the way that “tonal differentiation is employed to support distinctions between beginning and continuation” (Hasty 1997, 125), yet he offers almost no explanation at all as to the harmonic how-and-why of this claim.92 My Example 2-10 aims to 92 In the 1400-word commentary on the example the only sentences that include any specific pitch/harmonic details …
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type: 9.15
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Phrase rhythm as grouping complex : hearing structure in “irregular” music
date issued: 2024-11
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0445514
language: eng
degree discipline: Music - Theory
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: University of British Columbia
rights: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
scholar level: Graduate
contributor: Roeder, John Barlow
type: Text
type: Still Image
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89354