The Short

8 ACCENTUATION IN THEORY
problems. The meaning of signs and written instructions varied from time to time, place to place and composer to
composer, leading to confusion about their significance that has persisted to the present day.
Categories of Accentuation
Throughout most of this period accents were seen as falling into several basic categories. At a fundamental, almost
subliminal, level was the accentuation connected with the metrical structure of the music, which was integral to the
relationship between melodic figuration and harmony change, and the positioning of dissonance and resolution; this
was variously known as grammatical or metric accent, or, in England, simply as accent. Superimposed upon this basic
framework was a level of accentuation that was designated rhetorical, oratorical, or expressive accent or, by some
English writers, emphasis. 3 A number of theorists further subdivided this type of accentuation. Heinrich Christoph
Koch described two kinds of expressive accent, which he called oratorical and pathetic, the latter being an intensified
version of the former. Some theorists seem to have regarded accentuation whose function was to define the extent and
subdivision of musical phrases (here referred to as structural accent) as a distinct category, 4 but it is not always possible
to see where the dividing line between this and expressive accent occurs. The majority of writers made no firm
distinction between accentuation that emphasized phrase structure or rhythmic features, thus clarifying the rhetorical
meaning of the music, and accentuation that was essential to its emotional content (since phrase structure and rhythm
are inextricably linked with expression), yet it seems clear that this sort of notion lay behind the tripartite division of
Koch and others.
Similar analyses of functionally different types of accentuation continued to be made in the following century,
modified, however, in response to changes in musical style. Mathis Lussy broadly adhered to a three-part
categorization, identifying metric, rhythmic, and pathetic accentuation, as counterparts to instinct, intelligence, and
emotion respectively. Yet by the time Lussy wrote, there were, as he put it, ‘certain modern theoreticians’ who rejected
the idea of the metric accent as such. 5 Perhaps the most radical rejection of the received notion of metrical accent came
from Hugo Riemann, who arrived at the view that it was almost entirely irrelevant to the accentuation demanded by
particular musical phrases. In an essay in 1883 he regretted that the old grammatical accent system had been constantly
reproduced, even in his own earlier writings,
3
4
5
e.g. by John Wall Callcott, A Musical Grammar (London, 1806) and John Jousse, The Theory and Practice of the Violin (London, 1811).
This type of accentuation was described by, among others, Schulz, Türk, and later Fink and Lussy.
Le Rhythme musical son origine, sa fonction et son accentuation (Paris, 1883), 33.