Conflict, Vagueness, Dissolution : Challenges to meter in Contemporary Jazz
Martin Pfleiderer, Universitätsbibliothek Gießen
2018
Music's temporal structure is organised at various time levels. While the level of musical form corresponds to longer time distances, rhythm refers to the small scale temporal structuring of sonic events. Musical rhythm can be defined as the time structure of a gestalt-like sequence of musical sounds that have differing degrees of salience or accentuation and lie within a time frame of a few seconds (Pfleiderer 2006: 154ff.). Since an event can be accentuated in various ways, e.g. loudness,
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... tion, position within a musical phrase and within its pitch contour, relation to the harmonic and metric context, timbre etc., there are many ways of shaping and perceiving sound sequences as rhythms. Moreover, the temporal structure of what we listen to actively shapes our expectations of what we are going to hear-within a certain piece of music as well as within a musical style. Furthermore, musical expectations and anticipations seem to be a basis and prerequisite for surprise and enjoyment in music-with regard to form, harmony, and rhythm (Huron 2006) . Expectations that are built up in regard to small scale temporal regularities of sound sequences are widely supported and enhanced by our attentional, cognitive and bodily entrainment to music and are commonly referred to as musical meter. Meter is a recurring pattern of attentional energy resulting in more or less stable expectations of what will happen next, and when it will happen, respectively. If these attentional peaks are regular, they are perceived as a series of periodic pulses or beats and, if there is a coordinated set of two or more periodicities, as a metrical grid or scheme. In part, this comes naturally to us, not only because we are highly experienced in listening to music and are therefore familiar with various metric schemes or metric templates, but also because regular entrainment is generally widespread in human behaviour. If a regular pulse line or one of these metric templates is
doi:10.22029/jlupub-870
fatcat:frx5wliufvegphluskpji32xlu