Motion as Music: Metre in Eighteenth-Century Contredanses

In recent years music theorists have shown renewed interest in rhythm and metre, or how music is structured in time. Understanding of metre has also shifted from something present “in” music to a mode of perception, a listener behaviour. But despite this necessary shift, the role of the body in the experience of metre has been largely overlooked. In this presentation, Alison brings together cognitive research on the nature of metre with a collection of eighteenth-century French contredanses to show how this popular social dance would have shaped contemporary listeners’ experience of metre and music in general.