Phrase Rhythm in Tonal Music

Phrase Rhythm and Loss in the Music of Maurice Ravel

“…Phrase rhythm is here understood as the interaction of phrase structure and hypermetre, where phrase structure is the melodic and harmonic content of a directed tonal utterance and hypermetre is the rhythmic organisation of a passage such that a listener can perceive time spans at the level of the bar as either beginnings or continuations within larger time spans. The recognition of the independence of phrase structure and hypermetre comes from the work of William Rothstein (1989, pp. 5–13) 5 .…”

“…2222The relationship of phrase rhythm to form is not a primary consideration for much phrase‐rhythm scholarship, but the general correlation of tonal and thematic stability with relative regularity of phrase rhythm is mentioned at the margins of several studies; see Bhogal (2004, p. 145), Caplin (1998, pp. 13 and 17) and Rothstein (1989, p. 99). It is generically expected then that reprises, sites of thematic return and most often too of tonal resolution have relatively regular phrase rhythm.…”

“…Bars 1–27 are an instrumental introduction in C minor. The boundaries given for the antecedent and consequent phrases are the beginning and end of the vocal groupings that deliver a stanza of text, which are not always equivalent to the tonic or dominant starting points/endpoints of the phrase, nor to the start and end of hypermeasures; on the potential non‐congruence of harmony, melody and hypermetre, see Rothstein (1989), pp. 5–13.…”

“…88Yust locates the former strategy in a tradition of Schenker‐influenced analysis which often takes as a starting point the alignment of hypermeasures with tonal middlegrounds and allows for temporal plasticity atop that base, citing among others Schachter (1976, 1980 and 1987), Yeston (1976), and Rothstein (1989; 2018, p. 123); Ito (2013), which extends the approach of Rothstein (1989) into ‘hypermetric schema’, follows in this tradition. The second strand of theory is sceptical of that sort of irregularity in hypermetre and focuses instead on the separability of metric structure from phrase structure, generally considering hypermetre as a metre‐like regular frame against which groupings can shift; Yust traces the foundational distinction between metre and grouping to Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983), and cites Kramer (1988), Temperley (2003), and Ng (2012) in this category; Stefan Caris Love's concept of the ‘hypermetric floor’ as the highest, most persistently regular rhythmic level in a piece also belongs in this category (2016, pp.…”

The Development‐Ending Dominant and the Late Cadence in vi: Changing Norms in the Sonatas of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven

“…The Schenkerian view of sonata form, moreover, offers another explanation of the high counts in Table . Invoking Schenker, William Rothstein suggests that ‘in the vast majority of sonata forms the harmonic goal of the development is […] V’ (, p. 112). And, as Hepokoski and Darcy assert, ‘[W]hen a major‐mode exposition ends, as it usually does, with a tonicized dominant […] the entire development may be heard as a prolongation of this V, regrasping it and activating it as a chord […] at the end’ (, p. 198).…”