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[0.1] Ragtime and big-band jazz, rhythm and blues, rock and funk, salsa and electronic dance music are characteristically duple at multiple levels of the metric hierarchy. These and other African-diasporic and popular repertories commonly stretch a series of three-unit, or "dotted," spans across a pure-duple frame, inducing pulse conflicts at one or more metric levels. The terms associated with this class of rhythms include tresillo (Cuba), bossa nova (Brazil), secondary rag (American ragtime), and second-line rhythm (New Orleans). When these durational patterns repeat cyclically over extended spans of time, as ostinati, they are among the core conveyors of a song's identity, feel, or groove. They also arise more transiently, often at moments that listeners identify as hooks (Traut 2005).[0.2] The phenomenon of layering dotted rhythms over a duple frame is found in a number of African repertories, both north and south of the Sahara (Toussaint 2013). It seems to be a generally accepted hypothesis that this rhythmic practice was channeled by the slave trade from Africa to the Caribbean, from which it washed symmetrically into adjacent mainland regions on both sides of the equator, eddied into urban musics on both continents, and ultimately emptied into what we now recognize as the vast ocean of global musical culture, where its status sits somewhere on the continuum from prominent to ubiquitous.[0.3] Musicians and popular-music scholars have characteristically classified rhythms of this genus as syncopations or polymeters (Copland 1927, Sargeant 1938). The two terms suggest two distinct models of the dotted spans: syncopation relates a meter to a rhythm, while polymeter suggests a relationship between two distinct meters. The approach here occupies a middle ground, treating dotted spans primarily as rhythmic patterns with properties, such as cyclicity and quasi-isochrony, that are shared by meter. The patterns thus have the potential to blossom into meters if developed in certain ways, although in the repertories studied here those potentials are rarely fulfilled. (We will study one exception, presented here as Audio 2). Iyer 1998 (87-88) writes of similar properties in some musics of West Africa: "When two meters appear to the listener, it is because there are periodic groupings of short, serially organized rhythmic fragments or phrases, and their periodicity seems to imply a different meter from the primary one. . . . Most commonly it is some variety of triple meter that seems to appear over some variety of duple meter."[0.4] Recent music-theoretic work has identified a cluster of related properties that rhythms of this genus share, including non-isochronous meter and maximal evenness (London 2004), maximal individuation and maximal evenness (Rahn 1996, Butler 2006), rhythmic oddity and Euclidean algorithms (Toussaint 2013, Osborn 2014). This paper treats these rhythms as three-generated, and theorizes them as a species of prime generation, which was introduced in this context by Jeff Pressing in 1983. (As this term may feel uncomfortably scientistic for some readers, I shall sometimes substitute more vernacular terms, such as extended tresillo, tresillo family, and funky rhythms.) This paper argues that a generative model both honors aspects of the way that these rhythms might be experienced by musicians, listeners, and dancers "in real time," and brings out some compelling abstract relationships between African-American rhythmic systems and the tonal systems at the foundation of European musical practice and theory.[1.1] In Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing (if It Ain't Got That Swing)," composed in 1931, the bass projects a half-note pulse, and also participates in a quarter-note pulse with the hocketing chords, forming a fast duple meter. Duple proportions also characterize relations among pairs of slower pulses: there are two half-note beats to a bar, and four bars to a phrase; call-and-response phrase-pairs articulate eight-bar segments; and segments group by fours to constitute thirty-two bar "song form" (AABA) quatrains. …

[1] After the Rite: Stravinsky's Path to Neoclassicism (1914-25) is Maureen Carr's second book tracing the evolution of Stravinsky's compositional process through lengthy and extensive study and analysis of his musical sketches.(1) Moving chronologically from "Jeu du rossignol mecanique" (1913) in Le Rossignol to Serenade in A (1925), this volume investigates the development of Neoclassicism in works immediately following The Rite of Spring (1913).(2) Many of these pieces, including Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920), Pulcinella (1919-20) and Octet (1919-23), are frequently discussed in the literature;(3) others, such as Renard (1915-16) and Etude pour Pianola (1917), are less well known. Carr's study shows the importance of analyzing the sketches of these lesser-known pieces, arguing that they foreshadow later pieces in significant ways.[2] In the introductory chapter, Carr explores influential movements in various art forms prominent in 1914 St. Petersburg. These movements aimed to reject the past, with a shared focus on the aesthetics of futurism and formalism. Carr's argument clarifies how those artistic manifestos relate to each other and to the development of Neoclassicism. Several concepts presented here are valuable to investigate because they are directly connected to Stravinsky's Neoclassicism.(4) In literature, Viktor Shklovsky promoted futurism in poetry through his essay on "The Resurrection of the Word" (1914) (8), which led to the idea of "defamiliarization" appearing in "Art as Technique" (1917) (23). The notion of "defamiliarization" plays a crucial role in Stravinsky's departure from his "Russian" pieces.(5) For example, the abrupt fragments and multiple ostinati seen in earlier works from the Russian period become more prominent, evolving into discrete strata and blocks. Aspects of Stravinsky's formal design provide another example of "defamiliarization." Although the composer models the sonata form of eighteenth-century music, Carr reveals that, in works such as the Piano Sonata, he gives new meaning to the form through defamiliarizing the archetype of the formal structure (271).[3] The effort to change the perspective from subject to object is essential to understanding Neoclassicism. Composer Arthur Lourie contributed to a futurist manifesto promoting Eastern art, entitled "We and the West," which states "the art of the West is the embodiment of a geometric world view proceeding from object to subject; the art of the East is the embodiment of an algebraic world view proceeding from subject to object" (quoted in Carr, 8). Carr's critique of this manifesto, describing it as a false dichotomy and being too divisive of the East and West, is reasonable (11). However, it is true that Russia is in a unique position between Europe and Asia, making it a likely location for artistic movements that spring forth from cultural ideologies of both the East and West.[4] Stravinsky's objective approach to his compositions relates to Lourie's manifesto as well as to Michael Fokine's new principle of the ballet. Fokine, the groundbreaking choreographer and dancer, outlined his "Five Principles" for the "New Ballet" to the editor of the Times (London). The fourth principle in his article concerns objectivity in dance. Fokine asserts that the new ballet should advance from subjectivity, with "the expressiveness of the individual body," to objectivity, with "the expressiveness of a group of bodies" and "the combined dancing of a crowd" (21). Like these artists, Stravinsky tried to compose from an "objective stance."(6) Throughout Carr's analysis, the reader can witness how the composer establishes and maintains objectivity in his compositions.[5] There are basically three stages in the development of Stravinsky's Neoclassicism, as Carr explains: (1) Stravinsky begins to use "blocks" more apparently than he did in the pieces of his Russian period; (2) he appropriates different musical idioms such as ragtime for his compositions; and (3) he abstracts musical models from the past and assimilates them into his compositions. …

1. IntroductionIt's been given to [Ravel] to bring color back into French music.. . . At first he was taken for an impressionist. For a while he encountered opposition. Not a lot, and not for long. And once he got started, what production!--Leon-Paul Fargue, 1920s (quoted in Beucler 1954, 53)Don't you think that it slightly resembles the gardens of Versailles, as well as a Japanese garden?--Ravel describing his Le Belvedere, 1931 (quoted in Orenstein 1990, 475)In "Japanizing" his garden, Ravel made unusual choices, like his harmonies. His love for the style japonais responded to his own taste for what was precious and perfect. Did he not have a small salon where le Japon brought together the most incongruous of objects?--Helene Jourdan-Morhange 1938 (196)[1.1] This article develops an aesthetic orientation called "color counterpoint," inspired by Ravel's dedication to fantasy as evidenced by his fascination with Chinese and Japanese art and calligraphy. Drawing upon visual and literary Japonisme in France--the impact of style japonais on the Parisian arts and letters--I provide a historical and graphical context to demonstrate how Ravel's musical textures may have been shaped by East Asian pictorial imagery. Music analyses focus on selected textures in "Habanera," and "Le grillon" (from Histoires naturelles), and are compared to the opening measures of Jeux d'eau and the Sonata for Violin and Cello. I chose these textures not only to illustrate a particular analytical technique, but also to illuminate a particular method of interpretation.[1.2] The first premise guiding my methodology is that Ravel's musical textures are best understood as being miniaturist and almost visual. Miniaturism is defined here as the craft of expressing profundity or intensity of feeling within a limited space or time. Texture is defined as a phenomenon generated by a type of additive process, as explained by Ralph Turek:Additive process: A compositional technique frequently employed by Stravinsky and other twentieth-century composers in which a texture is created through the gradual superposition of diverse and unchanging elements. These elements (a melodic figure, a rhythmic ostinato, and so on) typically are heard separately at first. Their subsequent combination and recombination in various registers and instrumental groups may be seen as a form of development. (Turek 1992, 551)Ravel's additive approach to texture, I will argue, involves structures in miniature.(1) My second premise, in the words of art historian Simon Shaw-Miller, is "that no such easy division between 'music' and 'image' or 'music' and 'vision' can be made, that even with classical music, vision shadows sound" (2013, xiii). Through an interpretive analysis grounded in historical viewpoints and a consideration of the composer's inclinations toward miniaturism, I propose that a strong familiarity with style japonais as a visual language offers a clearer conceptual awareness of Ravel's musical language and overall aesthetic.[1.3] Through my conception of color counterpoint, I investigate the sensations and possible meanings of particular additive attributes and behaviors: contrapuntal layering of textural elements, strict immediate repetition, and temporal juxtaposition of contrasting elements. "Color" as applied to sound avoids narrower definitions focusing on instrumental timbre alone and encompasses ornamental gestures in instrumental music and vocal coloratura. "Counterpoint" communicates the polyphonic nature of diverse gestures and prolonged streams of musical texture coming in simultaneous or nearly simultaneous contact with one another.(2) "Color counterpoint" expresses the music's mesmerizing undercurrents that can induce the sensation of floating or flying or the feeling of a dancer travelling across a stage, even in music that has traditionally been studied in terms of machine-like repetition. …