Review

Author(s): A. H.
Review by: A. H.
Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Jan., 1962), pp. 72-74
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/732822
Accessed: 25-07-2015 19:57 UTC

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MUSIC AND

72

LETTERS

probably not look under 'Croll' for research on the Mannheim School.
Nevertheless, Gerhard Croll's paper is a valuable complement to an
earlier essay by Walter Senn, and draws attention to the fact that some of
the Mannheim musicians come from Diisseldorf, without denying that
others came from Innsbruck. (Will the ancient battle between Riemann
and Adler ever die ?) Wolfgang Boetticher writes about stylistic problems
in the late works of Lassus, distinguishing between the trends of the time
and the composer's personal development. Vincent Duckles gives a
remarkably complete list of seventeenth-century settings of poems by
John Donne, from William Corkine to Pelham Humfrey. Dragan
Plamenac reports on German polyphonic songs of the fifteenth century in a
Prague manuscript, and his account is illustrated by facsimile reproductions. Gilbert Reaney discusses rhythmical values in the transcription of
conductus of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and Walter Rubsamen
sketches the history of an eighteenth-century ballad opera (both these
papers have musical illustrations). Space and commonsense forbid
mention of many other papers which extend, alphabetically, from Putnam
Aldrich on 'Obligatory Improvisation of Ornaments' to Franklin
Zimmerman on 'Advanced Tonal Design in the Part-Songs of William
F. W. S.
Byrd'.
The RhythmicStructureof Music. By Grosvenor W. Cooper & Leonard B.
Meyer. pp. ix + 212. (University
University Press, 1961, 48s.)

of Chicago

Press; Cambridge

From its first pages this splendidly produced book provokes questions.
The cover advertisement declares it to be "perhaps the first usable textbook in English for the study of rhythm", and since Sachs's 'Rhythm and
Tempo' (I953) was also of American provenance the claim turns on
'textbook'. The authors' apologia indicts theorists for scant writing and
music schools for casual teaching about rhythm; I cannot uphold them
from my own possibly favoured experience, for although I can name no
relevant British book since Abdy-Williams's 'The Rhythm of Modern
Music', I find no lack of rhythmic perception in recent theoretical
musicography. Andrews's contributions to 'Grove' and 'The Oxford
Harmony' and Wishart's 'Harmony' fairly reflect modern English
teaching to adult music students, who are surely corrected if they consider
melody, harmony or rhythm in vacuo, divorced from style and expression.
Cooper and Meyer certainly do not deal with rhythm in vacuo. Unlike

Sachs they are not concerned with historical changes of rhythmic ideal, but
they examine a wide range of works from Bach to Bart6k. Their commentaries are concentrated on musical processes as perceived and enjoyed by
musicians, and they eschew entirely the misleading attempt to translate
the meaning of music into words.
Their level of writing varies from the illuminating to the platitudinous,
the distinguished to the naive, and they tend to be verbose. Their commendable distinction between the whole (rhythm) and its tributaries
(metre, accent, duration) could be clear and short if they simply declared
the meaning of the Greek word. Yet their general scheme from simple to
complex is admirably clear and well graded. Even the first chapters

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REVIEWS

OF BOOKS

73

contain matter not to be scamped. Interest begins to rise considerably in

Chapter IV, 'Rhythm and Meter', and again in the sections of Chapter V
called 'Extended Anacrusis', 'Rhythm and Tension', etc. Whole paragraphs later in the book class it with the few works of analysis which show
experienced musicians what they have missed. I acknowledge considerable
exercise of my own limited perception, and therefore benefit to my future
teaching, from what I have read under 'Rhythm and Morphological
Lengths', 'Continuity and Form' and 'Themes, Non-themes and
Continuity'.
Since it is not easy to find a short extract by which the reader may
test the reviewer's justice I resort to a mixture of direct and indirect
reference:
Although the role of syncopation is sometimes primarily that of characterising a
theme or passage, more often it performs a crucial function in shaping the whcle
pattern of musical progress. And this is precisely what it does in the first period of the
minuet of Mozart's Symphony in G miner ... The initial group is three measures.
The primary metric level is that of the measure. On the lowest rhythmic level the
accent which should arrive at the beginning of measure 2 is suppressed and the
rhythm is fused together by the syncopation across the bar. The suppression of this
accent makes all the beats, beginning with the B flat in measure i, anacrustic to the
last G of the group and its after-beat, D. However, the first G is also accented, and
one may ask why the whole group is not a trochee or even perhaps a dactyl . . .
Whenever an accent is suppressed . . . the mind searching for the stability of an
accent, with reference to which it can group weak beats, places particular stress on
the subsequent downbeat. Furthermore, the stronger the potential of the unrealised
accent-the stronger it would have been if it had not been suppressed-the more
effective the syncopation and the more forceful the impulse towards the next accent.

After more than a page the authors reach three explanations of the
integration and vitality of Mozart's melody, the third being "that the
suppressed beat" early in the piece "shapes the progress of the subsequent
melodic motion" by making "the whole theme a search for a D which
comes on a strongly accented beat". This D is not forthcoming until the
last note at the double bar of the minuet. This is fine teaching.
Discussion of the complete melody of the minuet (without the trio)
runs to four pages, and invites one to envisage the pagefuls written by
students who take this course in 'rhythmic structure'. Granting Tovey's
premise that the first stage of analysis, functional or otherwise, is to
perceive what happens, we assume that for a particular exercise or
student much of what happens is too petty or obvious to be worth
recording. The stampede for degrees encourages students to compile
detailed statistics of the obvious, arrange them in patterns or with graphs
and diagrams, and swell the pile of almost useless dissertations and textbooks. There is a difference between teaching a student to verify at firsthand some portion of a generalization about the movement of population
and letting him spend most of three years searching parish registers to see
when there were more illegitimate births in Wapping than in Wandsworth,
just because the Professor of Geography wrote a thesis, took a doctorate,
published a book and has a bee in his bonnet about population.
My almost unqualified admiration for Cooper's and Meyer's book as
an exegesis is tempered by my distrust of its proposed use. The authors
force one to consider it as a 'textbook'. Beneath their clear and ample
music-type quotations they place diagrams which translate the 'rhythmic

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74

MUSIC

AND

LETTERS

structure' into symbols either taken from prosody or devised ad hoc. The
diagrams for the later chapters need three strata representingthree degrees
of analysis from detailed to broad. What appears under the staves of the
full score of Beethoven's eighth symphony, the final example, is naturally
complex, yet an assignment of graded exercises at the ends of chapters is
designed to bring students to this advanced proof of their rhythmic
perception by diagram. That may not be a great waste of their time if their
supervisors are musicians of the authors' calibre. We should welcome
teaching which leads to the thorough study of a few works rather than to
the retailing of criticism upon much unknown or superficially known
music; but should students devote the time demanded by half these
assignments within the usual three-year or four-year course? I mistrust
symbolic translation beyond the necessary one of conventional notation.
"Get your nose out of the score and judge it with your ears", said a wise
friend last night when I was trying to 'understand' some music by Henze.
My first privileged inspection of a German music school took me to
what was called a 'master class' under the revered Pfitzner. As he played a
Haydn sonata to five students and said that a certain phrase had an
interesting rhythm, five pencils recorded the comment. If its truth were
not obvious, why were the writers studying music at all and how had they
reached a 'master class'? I believe its truth was obvious but that they
ceremonially recorded ex cathedrapronouncements. How, except by his
spoken or written word, do we discover the extent of a student's musical
perception ? By his performance and his imitative or academic composition.
If it is agreed that the essentials of a course are history of music, listening,
playing and singing at sight, plenty of vocal or instrumental practice,
along with academic composition that gets to grips with structures more
complex than chorales and minuets, this book can be recommended as
considerably illuminating all these branches of study; but can its full
demands as a textbook make the dull student a better composer, player or
A. H.
teacher ? Perhaps it can if he studies in Chicago.
MusicalischesTheatrum.By Johann Christoph Weigel. Facsimile reprint,
ed. by Alfred Berner. P1. 36 + pp. xii. 'Documenta Musicologica.
Erste Reihe: Druckschriften-Faksimiles, XXII.' (Barenreiter, Cassel
& Basel; Novello, London, 196I, 30s.)
According to Dr. Berner, this set of thirty-six engravings of musicians
in the act of playing instruments was first published between 1715 and
I725, and has some affinities with Mattheson's 'Das Neu-Eroffnete
Orchestre'. J. C. Weigel was a Nuremberg engraver of whom little was
known before Dr. Berner gathered together the biographical facts for this
reprint. Although these excellent drawings are to some extent derivative
and contain a number of obvious mistakes, they are extremely valuable in
showing, interalia, the individual instruments of the Bach period in action.
But because of these inaccuracies in depicting actual instruments,
Dr. Berner, a wise and experienced scholar, seems reluctant to claim too
much for the playing positions that are shown, and indeed suggests that
the work "did not originate as studies from life". To some extent this may
be true in view of the mixed sources of the material; but that it was at least
Weigel's intention

to show true playing positions is suggested by the

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