Metric Manipulations in Post-Tonal Music

Abstract

This article explores the continued use of eighteenth-century metric manipulations by composers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These manipulations, called imbroglio, close imitation, and imitative imbroglio, are motive-driven and involve the perceptual interaction of meter, motivic parallelism, and perceptual streaming. Their defining features and local perceptual effects, which primarily involve metrical dissonance, are demonstrated in short passages by Schoenberg, Penderecki, Britten, Debussy, Webern, Barber, and Adès. Their larger form-functional and text-expressive potential is demonstrated in analyses of longer passages by Schoenberg, Webern, and Barber.