Annotation for Berry, Wallace

Metric and Rhythmic Articulation in Music

Annotation (by James Halliday):

This article is a continuation of Berry's rhythmic theory as discussed in Stuctural Functions in Music (Berry 1976). In this article, unlike in Structural Functions, Berry concentrates only on tonal music, in particular on two famous C major preludes, one by J. S. Bach (WTC Book I) and one by Chopin (Op. 28 No. 1). In both of these examples, Berry discusses both lower level rhythmic groupings as well as deep metric structure underlying the works as entire pieces. Of particular interest are his proportionate reductions of the Chopin Prelude, which he finds can be reduced to a piece of half its original length in terms of what he calls the piece's "basic course of action," (20) and his discussion and illustrations of overlapping harmonic functions in the Bach Prelude. For keywords, as well as a discussion of the basic ideas of Berry's metric theory, see discussion of Structural Functions in Music (Berry 1976).