Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:03:44.207Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Series:   Elements in Music since 1945

Theory of Prominence

Temporal Structure of Music Based on Linguistic Stress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2022

Bryan Hayslett
Bryan Hayslett
Affiliation:
New York University

Summary

Many twentieth and twenty-first century composers have written music with rhythmic structures that must be understood through a framework distinct from even, periodic meter, which has been a salient musical feature of Western classical music for centuries. This Element's analytical system outlines structure and phrasing in sections of music without even perceptible meter. Instead of entrainment to meter, Bryan Hayslett theorizes that listeners perceive rhythm in similar ways to how they perceive the rhythm of language. With gesture as the smallest organizational grouping unit, his analytical system combines Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff's generative theory of tonal music with Bruce Hayes's metrical stress theory from linguistics. The listener perceives the shape of a gesture according to the structure of its constituents, and larger-level phrasing is perceived through the hierarchical relationship of gestures. After developing a set of rules, the author provides analyses that outline temporal structure according to perceptual prominence.
Get access

Keywords

linguisticsphrasingmusic theoryperformancemusic and language
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in Music since 1945
Online ISBN: 9781108884402
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 03 November 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barlow, Harold, & Morgenstern, Sam. A Dictionary of Musical Themes. 2nd ed. London: Faber & Faber, 1983.Google Scholar
Bigand, E., & Pineau, M. (1997). Global Context Effects on Musical Expectancy. Perception and Psychophysics 59, 1098–1107.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chittum, D. (1971). Music Here and Now: Gesture and Organization in New Music. American Music Teacher 21(1), 23, 46.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic Structures, The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (1968). Language and Mind, New York: Harcourt Brace & World.Google Scholar
Daniele, J., & Patel, A. (2013). An Empirical Study of Historical Patterns in Musical Rhythm: Analysis of German & Italian Classical Music Using the nPVI Equation. Music Perception 31(1), 10–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deliège, I. (1987). Grouping Conditions in Listening to Music: An Approach to Lerdahl & Jackendoff’s Grouping Preference Rules. Music Perception 4(4), 325–359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankland, B., McAdams, S., & Cohen, A. (2004). Parsing of Melody: Quantification and Testing of the Local Grouping Rules of Lerdahl and Jackendoff’s A Generative Theory of Tonal Music. Music Perception 21(4), 499–543.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fry, D. (1955). Duration and Intensity as Physical Correlates of Linguistic Stress. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 35, 765–769.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fry, D. (1958). Experiments in the Perception of Stress. Language and Speech 1, 126–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, J. J. (1966). The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Godøy, R. I., & Leman, M. (2009). Musical Gestures: Sound, Movement, and Meaning, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Green, A. R. (2008). Scintillation II, Boulder, CO: Self-published by Composer.Google Scholar
Halle, M., & Vergnaud, J. R. (1987). An Essay on Stress, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hatten, R. S. (2004). Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hatten, R. S. (2010). Performance and Analysis – Or Synthesis: Theorizing Gesture, Topics, and Tropes in Chopin’s F-Minor Ballade. Indiana Theory Review 28(1/2), 45–66.Google Scholar
Hayes, B. (1995). Metrical Stress Theory, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Huron, D., & Ollen, J. (2003). Agogic Contrast in French and English Themes: Further Support for Patel and Daniele (2003). Music Perception 21(2), 267–271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyla, L. (1987). Dream of Innocent III, New York: Carl Fischer.Google Scholar
Hyla, L. (2002). Amnesia Redux, New York: Carl Fischer.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. (2003). Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution, New York: Oxford University Press.Google ScholarPubMed
Jackendoff, R., & Lerdahl, F. (1981). Generative Music Theory and Its Relation to Psychology. Journal of Music Theory 25(1), 45–90.Google Scholar
Koelsch, S., Rohrmeier, M., Torrecuso, R., & Jentschke, S. (2013). Processing of Hierarchical Syntactic Structure in Music. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110(38), 15443–15448.Google Scholar
Krumhansl, C. (1995). Music Psychology and Music Theory: Problems and Prospects. Music Theory Spectrum 17(1), 53–80.Google Scholar
Lalitte, P., Bigand, E., Kantor-Martynuska, J., & Delbé, C. (2009). On Listening to Atonal Variants of Two Piano Sonatas by Beethoven. Music Perception 26(3), 223–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Large, E., & Palmer, C. (2002). Perceiving Temporal Regularity in Music. Cognitive Science 26, 1–37.Google Scholar
León, T. (1983). Four Pieces for Solo Cello, New York: Peermusic.Google Scholar
Lerdahl, F. (1992). Cognitive Constraints on Compositional Systems. Contemporary Music Review 6(2), 97–121.Google Scholar
Lerdahl, F. (2001). The Sounds of Poetry Viewed as Music. In Zatorre, R. & Peretz, I., eds., The Biological Foundations of Music, New York City, NY: New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 930, pp.337–354.Google Scholar
Lerdahl, F., & Jackendoff, R. (1983). A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lester, J. (1986). Notated and Heard Meter. Perspectives of New Music 24(2), 116–128.Google Scholar
Liberman, M., & Prince, A. (1977). On Stress and Linguistic Rhythm. Linguistic Inquiry 8, 249–336.Google Scholar
London, J. (2012). Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter, 2nd ed., New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McNeill, D. (2000). Language and Gesture, New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Palmer, C., & Krumhansl, C. (1987). Independent Temporal and Pitch Structures in Determination of Musical Phrases. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 13, 116–126.Google Scholar
Palmer, C., & Krumhansl, C. (1990). Mental Representations for Musical Meter. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 16, 728–741.Google Scholar
Patel, A., & Daniele, J. (2003a). An Empirical Comparison of Rhythm in Language and Music. Cognition 87, B35–B45.Google Scholar
Patel, A., & Daniele, J. (2003b). Stress-Timed vs. Syllable-Timed Music? A Comment on Huron and Ollen (2003). Music Perception 21(2), 273–276.Google Scholar
Peretz, I., & Coltheart, M. (2003). Modularity of Music Processing. Nature Neuroscience 6, 688–691.Google Scholar
Takemitsu, T. (1984). Orion, New York: Schott Music.Google Scholar
Takemitsu, T. (1984). Orion and Pleiades, Tokyo: Schott Music.Google Scholar
Trevarthen, C., Delafield-Butt, J., & Schögler, B. (2011). Psychobiology of Musical Gesture: Innate Rhythm, Harmony and Melody in Movements of Narration. In King, E. & Gritten, A., eds., New Perspectives on Music and Gesture, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 11–44.Google Scholar
Zbikowski, L. (2011). Musical Gesture and Musical Grammar: A Cognitive Approach. In King, E. & Gritten, A., eds., New Perspectives on Music and Gesture, Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 83–98.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Theory of Prominence
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Theory of Prominence
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Theory of Prominence
Available formats
×