Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Notes to the Reader on Sources and Terminology
- Introduction The Pledge of Allegiance
- Part One Establishing an Historical Perspective
- Part Two The Art of Interpreting Rests
- Part Three Case Studies in Musical Punctuation
- Afterword
- Appendix A Translation of Marpurg's Lessons on Musical Punctuation, from His Kritische Briefe über die Tonkunst, vol. 2
- Appendix B Chronological Chart of Punctuation References
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Chapter Eight - Musical Verse—Johann Mattheson’s “Curious Specimen” of a Punctuated Minuet
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Notes to the Reader on Sources and Terminology
- Introduction The Pledge of Allegiance
- Part One Establishing an Historical Perspective
- Part Two The Art of Interpreting Rests
- Part Three Case Studies in Musical Punctuation
- Afterword
- Appendix A Translation of Marpurg's Lessons on Musical Punctuation, from His Kritische Briefe über die Tonkunst, vol. 2
- Appendix B Chronological Chart of Punctuation References
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- Eastman Studies in Music
Summary
In this chapter we begin to know and to practice the connection of melodic sections with regard to their rhythm and punctuation. To attain this objective the shortest compositions common in music are chosen first, because the different possible ways of connecting their few melodic sections can be most easily perceived and imitated. These short compositions are:
1. the current dance melodies
2. the melodies to odes and songs, and
3. all short pieces arbitrarily arranged with respect to the meter, the rhythm, the length, the punctuation, and the tempo.
In the previous chapter, on recitative, we discussed the way in which musical punctuation seeks to express the most predominant structures of language, those of prose. In this chapter, we now turn the tables to view musical punctuation, still as it seeks to imitate language, but from the perspective of music's most predominant structures. The general consensus among eighteenth-century music theorists, as expressed above by Koch, is that the basics of musical punctuation are to be derived from the most recognizable and distinctly defined forms of the day, what we are describing as the verse-like structures of music. These verse forms come in both vocal and instrumental varieties, but it is the latter which best depict the pleasing regularity of meter, accent, and cadence. True, the melodies to songs and odes (the chorale and figured melodies) make good punctuation models: John Gunn [45] adapts forty favorite Scotch airs for the violoncello (or the violin or German flute) in 1793 as familiar models for the study of proper phrasing; and Türk recommends in 1789 “short songs set for the clavichord by good composers.” But the character of these melodies still depends on the contents of the poetry, and their overall form on the structure of the strophes. These compositions, according to Koch, presuppose a certain knowledge of vocal music and the rules of language, a two-sided and therefore more difficult branch of composition. And as we understand from Schuback, even for those who have acquired the necessary knowledge of declamation, the manipulation of poetry to the rhythm and meter of melody is a matter of constant compromise and little pleasure.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth CenturyPunctuating the Classical 'Period', pp. 203 - 230Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008