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Metrical Issues In John Adams's Short Ride In A Fast Machine, Stanley V. Kleppinger

Glenn Korff School of Music: Faculty Publications

Employs several potential rebarrings of this fanfare's opening measures to represent the ways in which a listener might apprehend the music's complex metrical features. Meter is manipulated by this music in such a way as to make its very presence uncertain at best, though enough regularity (i.e., periodicity) is present at multiple hierarchical levels to tease the listener into making constant attempts to discover and latch on to a metered surface. The resulting aural sensation reflects that of wrestling to keep control over a powerful machine, as the work's title suggests. Concludes with a consideration of the music's potential metrical …