Hypermeter, Phrase Structure, and Rhetorical Figures

The theory of music-rhetorical figures, originating with Joachim Burmeister and Christoph Bernhard, was relaunched by Johann Mattheson and further developed by Johann Adolph Scheibe and Johann Nikolaus Forkel. Its integration into the theory of melody was attempted by Heinrich Christoph Koch in Musikalisches Lexikon (1802). The renewed attempt, undertaken in this chapter, reveals an unsuspected bond between two conceptually interrelated but historically unrelated branches of eighteenth-century music theory. The chapter explores effects of rhetorical figures upon hypermeter. It focuses on two rhetorical figures—ellipsis and anadiplosis—and indicates that further rhetorical figures account for some of the phrase expansions discussed in chapter 6.