Historical Hypermetrical Hearing: Cycles and Schemas in the String-Quartet Minuet

[1.1] Vienna, late eighteenth century: Elise, the young adult daughter of a wealthy family, attends a string-quartet performance. She hears such a work not at a formal concert, but rather at the home of an aristocrat, in a gathering as much social as musical (Klorman 2013, 1-15, 59-60). The performers are likely sight-reading (Klorman 2013, 73). Elise might never hear this particular quartet again, nor will she have the opportunity (nor likely the inclination) to ever study a score (Klorman 2013, 2; Parker 2002, 45). What is "hypermeter" to Elise?[1.2] As a regular guest at these gatherings, and an amateur musician herself, Elise is well acquainted with the local style. But she has not studied the latest compositional treatises, nor does she pay any special attention to meter. Subtle metrical effects intended for the most knowledgable listeners (Kenner) may be lost on her.(1) Instead, her hearing unconsciously draws on her past musical experiences: these govern what she expects and how she reacts to the unexpected.(2) She is not necessarily able to articulate the substance of these expectations and reactions, but they determine how easily she follows a piece and which of its moments stand out.[1.3] Throughout this paper, the character of Elise will stand for a community of historical listeners. Their perception of hypermeter likely differed from our own, in ways elaborated below. To describe their understanding of hypermeter, I propose a cyclic model of hypermetrical perception. The model depicts listeners' moment-to-moment impressions of hypermeter, manifested as sensations of metrical accent, expectation, surprise, confusion, tension, and relief. For greater specificity, I focus exclusively on the minuet and trio in the string quartet. However, the model should be adaptable to all other late eighteenth-century genres.* * *[2.1] Two traits distinguish Elise's listening context from our own. First, she is usually hearing a piece for the first time. Our depiction of her hearing should not be overly subtle, and it should make ample allowance for states of hypermetrical uncertainty. Second, unlike ourselves, Elise is narrowly and deeply immersed in her local musical culture, while modern listeners hear an extraordinary variety of styles and genres, but explore few in any depth. These traits are complementary: because Elise only hears a piece once or twice, she relies on her familiarity with the style to make sense of unfamiliar pieces.[2.2] Eighteenth-century metrical theory is one possible guide to Elise's hearing (cf. Mirka 2009; Rothstein 1989, 2008). But the main goal of eighteenth-century theorists like Kirnberger and Koch was not to model perception, but rather "to teach a beginning composer how to correctly notate music" (Mirka 2009, x; my emphasis). Their conceptions of meter must be understood in this light. At best, they provide circumstantial evidence of historical perception; at worst, their ideas can be downright misleading, since they were pursuing other goals.[2.3] Instead, Elise's perception depends first and foremost on the music she hears (and plays) (Byros 2012, 2013; Gjerdingen 1988, 2007). Through exposure to the style, Elise unconsciously internalizes its small- and large-scale conventions--its statistical tendencies (Huron 2006). She comes to make unconscious predictions as she listens, and she experiences unfamiliar pieces in light of these predictions' success or failure.[2.4] Elise has heard hundreds of minuets, both in chamber performance and while dancing. This experience establishes a norm of duple and quadruple hypermeter. Musicologist Tilden A. Russell has surveyed "almost 100 eighteenth-century recueils [anthologies]" of published minuets for amateur performance, concentrated in the period from 1760-1820 (Russell 1999, 399). While unusual phrase structures and formal plans crop up, Russell concludes that "about one in four" anthologies "contains only minuets in which the number of measures in every reprise is divisible by four" (Russell 1999, 399; my emphasis). …