Meter's Influence on Theoretical and Corpus-Derived Harmonic Grammars

Abstract

Harmonic changes both inform how we hear metrically strong beats, and contribute to the ways composers express metric emphasis, at least so says a certain consensus of music researchers and pedagogues. Even in previous centuries, theorists such as Koch and Kirnberger suggested that harmonic changes should align with metric emphases,1 and in recent decades several researchers have constructed theories in which tonal changes at various time scales should ideally support the music’s meter.2 These kinds of insights have been supported by music cognition research which finds that harmonic changes or fluctuations in tonal stability influence participants’ understanding of a passage’s meter.3 Even music-theory pedagogy encourages students to consider using harmonic changes to support a meter: when teaching chorale-style model composition, textbooks instruct