The Short

Ex. 1.15. Türk, Klavierschule, I, 4, §59
CATEGORIES OF ACCENTUATION 25
metre, the skilful player, responding to the nature of the melody, the texture and harmonic structure of the music, and
so on, would almost certainly seize upon the sense of the piece and give it an appropriate accentuation and phrasing.
Many composers were clearly felt by their more theoretically minded contemporaries to reflect too little on the metre in
which their conceptions could best be expressed. Nevertheless, it can scarcely be doubted that thoughtful composers
strove hard to find the metre that most closely fitted the predominant accentual characteristics of their ideas. Instances
of the same theme notated in different metres in Beethoven's sketchbooks may well reflect his search for the most
appropriate pattern and intensity of metrical stress for a particular idea. A similar motive may also lie behind the
rescoring of whole movements in different metres by, for example, Mozart and Mendelssohn. 55
The continuing elaboration and systemization of a hierarchy of metrical accent appropriate to each metre, in a stream
of nineteenth-century theoretical works, especially by German authors, seems distinctly at odds with the increasingly
free approach of the more experimental musicians of that period, but such theoretical elaborations were, to a
considerable extent, the result of a desire to endow Musikwissenschaft with the dignity of a historico-scientific discipline.
Indeed, there were few nineteenth-century theorists who did not acknowledge, at least in parentheses, that the rigid
hierarchy of metrical accent was overridden in practice by the requirements of the particular musical context. It seems
probable that while, with minor modifications, theoretical understanding of metrical and structural accentuation during
the period as a whole remained constant, practical application of that theory diverged ever further from it, in line with
developing musical aesthetics. Just as the music of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century was
characterized, in general, by distinct and regular rhythmic patterns, so the coincidence of metrical and structural
accentuation was correspondingly more frequent, and
55 See below, Ch. 8.