"All practising musicians with an interest in the baroque owe it to themselves to be exposed to the ideas contained in this book." -- Continuo "This is a book from an excellent musician in the early field who turns out also to be a most persistent scholar... " -- Early Music ..". the book offers a vast quantity of data from a wide range of sources.... George Houle is to be congratulated for his honest presentation of the entire spectrum." -- Music Educators Journal The treatment of meter in performance has evolved dramatically since 1600. Here is a practical guide for the performer, with many quotations from early manuals and treatises, and abundant examples.

"All practising musicians with an interest in the baroque owe it to themselves to be exposed to the ideas contained in this book." —Continuo "This is a book from an excellent musician in the early field who turns out also to be a most persistent scholar . . . " —Early Music " . . . the book offers a vast quantity of data from a wide range of sources. . . . George Houle is to be congratulated for his honest presentation of the entire spectrum." —Music Educators Journal The treatment of meter in performance has evolved dramatically since 1600. Here is a practical guide for the performer, with many quotations from early manuals and treatises, and abundant examples.

Beating Time & Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era chronicles the shifting relationships between ideas about time in music and science from the sixteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. Centered on theories of musical meter, the book investigates the interdependence between theories of meter and conceptualizations of time from the age of Zarlino to the invention of the metronome. These formulations have evolved throughout the history of Western music, reflecting fundamental reevaluations not only of music but also of time itself. Drawing on paradigms from the history of science and technology and the history of philosophy, author Roger Mathew Grant illustrates ways in which theories of meter and time, informed by one another, have manifested themselves in the field of music. During the long eighteenth century, treatises on subjects such as aesthetics, music theory, mathematics, and natural philosophy began to reflect an understanding of time as an absolute quantity, independent of events. This gradual but conclusive change had a profound impact on the network of ideas connecting time, meter, character, and tempo. Investigating the impacts of this change, Grant explores the timekeeping techniques - musical and otherwise - that implemented this conceptual shift, both technologically and materially. Bringing together diverse strands of thought in a broader intellectual history of temporality, Grant's study fills an unexpected yet conspicuous gap in the history of music theory, and is essential reading for music theorists and composers as well as historical musicologists and practitioners of historically informed performance.

This book is about thinking in music. Music listeners who understand what they hear are thinking in music. Music readers who understand and visualize what they read are thinking in music. This book investigates the various ways musicians acquire those skills through an examination of the latest research in music perception and cognition, music theory, along with centuries of insight from music theorists, composers, and performers. Aural skills are the focus; the author also works with common problems in both skills teaching and skills acquisition.

The English "ayre", which enjoyed a short vogue from about 1596 to 1622, is a distinctive subgenre of the lyric. Based on Edward Doughtie's seminal critical edition, LYRICS FROM ENGLISH AIRS, 1596-1622 and published in 1970, SMALL PROPORTIONS provides the first extended examination of the ayre's literary devices and attributes. 25 illustrations.

In Rhythm. Advanced Studies, Erik Hojsgaard, composer and professor of aural training at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, provides a detailed guide to reading and understanding advanced use of rhythm. The 451 exercises and their corresponding notes allow those professionally involved with music to further develop their technical and practical skills in this specific area. The book also includes exercises aimed at developing modern composition techniques. Danish professor and composer Per Noergaad writes: The many aspects of aural training in this book by Erik Hojsgaard have been inspired by his deep insight into western music and its thousand-year-old traditions. Written with clarity that allows for rhythm and polyphony to be presented in an understandable form, Hojsgaard's book is both musical and entertaining. There is no doubt that one gains new insights and musical joys after working through the book's exercises.

In this book Christopher Hasty presents a striking new theory of musical duration. Drawing on insights from modern "process" philosophy, he advances a fully temporal perspective in which meter is released from its mechanistic connotations and recognized as a concrete, visceral agent of musical expression. Part one of the book reviews oppositions of law and freedom, structure and process, determinacy and indeterminacy in the speculations of theorists from the eighteenth century to the present. Part two reinterprets these contrasts to form a highly original account of meter that engages diverse musical repertories and aesthetic issues.