Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart

"A superb book. Through detailed and sensitive re-hearings of a range of chamber music by Haydn and Mozart, Danuta Mirka persuades us how the syntactic manipulation of meter contributes to the sound of "classical style" as much as more familiar harmonic or formal conventions. What I find particularly remarkable about this study is the brilliant way the author is able to gain analytic traction using both historical music theory sources as well as insights drawn from contemporary cognitive psychology. It is a model for the kind of synthetic analysis so sorely needed in the field of music theory today."--Thomas Christensen, Professor of Music and the Humanities, University of Chicago "To explain a joke, it is often said, is to kill it. But when the jokester is an eighteenth-century composer, writing for connoisseurs, some explanation is in order. In this exceptionally lucid book, Danuta Mirka helps the reader to listen with eighteenth-century ears. In so doing, she sheds new light on the genius of Haydn and Mozart and on the music theory of their time."--William Rothstein, Queens College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York "Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart exemplifies--if not pioneers--a sort of "synthetic analysis" that should hopefully prove an inspiration for theorists in other areas as well." --Notes "An excellent monograph. Mirka's combination of psychological perspective with detailed study of historical sources, insightful analysis of compositions, and critical engagement with modern music-theoretical views is extremely stimulating." --Bruno Repp, Music Perception "This is an extraordinarily good book. The theoretical reasoning is careful and rigorous; the analyses are perceptive and convincing; the historical discussions are thoughtful and sensitive; the writing is first-rate. . . . What distinguishes MMHM, then, is not just its uniquely synthetic character, but the extremely high quality of every aspect of the book." --Journal of Music Theory "Mirka provides a revelatory study that should open the ears of all musicians, not least performers." --Early Music "In Mirka's hands, eighteenth-century theory is alive and full of implications for analysis. . . . this is certainly one of the most significant contributions to the history of music theory to appear in the last ten years." --Music & Letters "One of the most significant contributions to the history of music theory to appear in the last ten years." --Music & Letters "The actual range of metrical strategies covered in this study is very wide...The analyses bring these features to life in entertaining and enthralling manner." --Early Music "A signal achievement in music history, theory and analysis. By focusing on Haydn's and Mozart's chamber music of 1787-1791 and embedding that music into its contemporaneous discursive context, Mirka has opened a window not only onto our understanding of eighteenth-century music, but also onto broader issues in rhythmic theory, music perception and cognition, musical rhetoric and form, and musical styles and genres. For all these things, we should give Danuta Mirka many benedictions of her own." --Eighteenth-Century Music "An illuminating book...[Mirka] succeeds admirably in bringing us twenty-first-century listeners as close as possible to the listening experience of educated eighteenth-century musicians, and in teaching us to delight in Haydn's and Mozart's metric manipulations." --Music Theory Online "A welsome addition to the impressive body of work on rhythm and meter that our field has produced during the past few decades...She succeeds admirably in bringing us twenty-first-century listeners as close as possible to the listening experience of educated eighteenth-century musicians, and in teaching us to delight in Haydn's and Mozart's metric manipulations." --Society of Music Theory