Meter

What Dominique Pagani says

Dominique Pagani distinguishes metre from rhythm: metre is an a priori structure written into the score, while rhythm is what the metre did not foresee1. He sees constant metre as a constraint that the plastic arts impose on music, a way of re-spatializing it2. In his view, it is an invariant shared by Baroque music, rock and jazz: each segment of time repeats the previous one identically at regular intervals, which is reassuring3. He contrasts it with the unpredictability that appears with Beethoven, linked to the central place that freedom comes to hold, and with the alternation of tension and release that belongs to swing45. A stable metre, he says, has to be offset by melody and harmony. He also follows how it changes in popular music: rock'n'roll keeps an offbeat, the afterbeat, which disappears with disco and the drum machine6. Finally, he makes an economic link: music sales are directly proportional to the stability of the metre7.

1. 1La Musique de l'Histoire26 Apr 2015 · 1:22:38
2. 2La Musique de l'Histoire26 Apr 2015 · 29:56
3. 3B comme Bach16 Dec 2014 · 3:29
4. 4#5 Libéralisme-libertaire, consommation libidinale et musique...27 Sept 2014 · 21:59
5. 5Musicosophie 8. Bonheur et malheur en musique11 Jan 2021 · 1:38:09
6. 6B comme Bach16 Dec 2014 · 10:59
7. 7#5 Libéralisme-libertaire, consommation libidinale et musique...27 Sept 2014 · 18:47

Summary produced automatically from 7 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.