Meter as Rhythm

Abstract Rhythm is often regarded as one of the most problematic and least understood aspects of music. Restricted to those attributes that are susceptible to calibration and measurement, rhythm is usually identified with meter, durational pattern, or durational proportion. But how shall one account for those attributes of rhythm that point to the particularity and spontaneity of aesthetic experience as it is happening? Drawing on insights from the modern “process” philosophy of Henri Bergson, William James, and A. N. Whitehead, this book releases meter from its mechanistic connotations and recognizes it as a concrete, visceral agent of musical expression. It reinterprets oppositions of law and freedom, structure and process, determinacy and indeterminacy to form a theory that engages diverse repertories and aesthetic issues. Ultimately, this revised 20th anniversary edition of Christopher Hasty’s Meter as Rhythm facilitates the work’s current contexts of application, from new subfields in ethnomusicology and music cognition to non-music fields like literary studies, physics, and biology