Metrical Displacement and Metrically Dissonant Hemiolas

Abstract

Hemiolas are by definition metrically dissonant, in durational disagreement with the notated meter. But when extended metrical shifts (known also as afterbeats or afterbeat displacement) displace a composition in part or in whole to the right (in order to emphasize the closing beat of each segment, phrase, and period), cadential hemiolas emerge as consonant agents, in the large rhetorical scheme of things. These hemiolas, which intensify the end-accented beats, assert the notated meter, not the metrical displacement. In so doing, they either reinforce the basic metrical premise of the piece or reset the durational clocks of the piece for proper cadential closure. Examples range from Handel’s keyboard suites and Concerti Grossi, op. 6, as well as Bach’s English Suites, to Couperin’s B-minor Passacaille and Brahms’s Capriccio, op. 76/2.

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