How Musical Rhythm Reveals Human Attitudes. an Annotated Translation by Nigel Nettheim
Alf Gabrielsson · 2012
How Musical Rhythm Reveals Human Attitudes. An Annotated Translation by Nigel Nettheim, by Gustav Becking. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang AG, 2011, 339 pp. ISBN 978-30343-0308-8. $74.65.Gustav Becking (1894^1945) was a German musicologist, student of Hugo Riemann in Leipzig and Johannes Wolf in Berlin. He was professor of musicology at the University of Erlangen and from 1930 professor of music history at the German KarlFerdinand-University in Prague. His best-known publication is Der musikalische Rhythmus als Erkenntnisquelle, published in 1928 and dedicated to the memory of Hugo Riemann. It has now been translated into English by Nigel Nettheim as How Musical Rhythm Reveals Human Attitudes.Using a wealth of musical examples from European tonal music, roughly from 1700 to 1900, Becking claimed that there are, behind and not discernible in the musical notation, undercurrents of special rhythmic character that can be perceived by musically sensitive listeners, in this book represented solely by Becking himself. In one of his first examples, he compared the initial eight bars of Beethoven's Piano Trio, op. 70 no 2 with the beginning of the second movement of Mahler's second symphony, both of them in A flat major and in triple time. But what kind of different motion in the two cases! Beethoven strides robustly forward, Mahler's music floats; that is, the motion overcomes the restraint of in different ways. Beethoven's strong beats of the bar are imbued with weight; the first quarter-notes of each bar are heavy and saturated with from beginning to end; it is as if they were standing on the ground[. . .] Who would think of weighing down Mahler's theme with such a burden! Here the handling of is in many ways the direct opposite of Beethoven's; the strong beats of the bar afford only a slight foothold for gravity (pp. 32-33). There are lots of similar eloquent descriptions throughout the book, reflecting Becking's enthusiasm and commitment to his subject.In order to bring some order into the variety of rhythmic undercurrents in music, Becking however proposed a nonverbal alternative, namely to indicate the perceived rhythmic flow by accompanying movements (German: Mitbewegungen, Begleitbewegungen), a method earlier used by Eduard Sievers in connection with recitation of text. Using a small and light baton, one should move one's arm and hand to fit as closely as possible to what one hears-not in order to conduct the music but to let oneself be conducted by the music. Listening to metrical music, one's motion will then inevitably go downward on the strong part/beat of the bar, followed by some manner of an upward motion to be able to begin again with the downstroke of the next bar. The shape of this motion pattern is different, claimed Becking, for the music of different composers.He started by discussing appropriate accompanying movements to music by Mozart and Beethoven, using excerpts from each that look similar in notation (same meter, similar rhythm patterning, etc.) but still result in clearly different beating figures (German: Schlagfiguren). According to Becking, Mozart's downstroke is direct and straight, whereas Beethoven's downstroke is pressed around with the expenditure of great effort. The shaping after the downstroke-the subordinate beat-stroke in the middle and the upstroke-follows a rounded contour in both composers. The difference in the beating figure as a whole is thus mainly due to the difference in the downstroke, pointed in Mozart, rounded in Beethoven. This is illustrated in drawings that may give an intuitive feeling for the different beating figures and encourage readers to try them themselves, Becking hoped.Proceeding further, Becking claimed that Throughout the whole range of music of all times and places, the line of demarcation can be drawn between onsets that are rounded and pointed, pressed and free, Beethovenian and Mozartean. As well, the unity of personality always guarantees that the determination will remain constant through all the works of a given composer (p. …