Full Description
In 1960s and 1970s singer-songwriter music, some artists used malleable metric settings alongside other features of self-expression in performance. This resulted in songs with extremes of self-expressive timing flexibility that cannot be accounted for using a single conception of meter. This book proposes a theory of flexible meter that recasts metric structure as encompassing the variety of metric scenarios presented by the self-expressive performance practice of singer-songwriters, from metric regularity to metric ambiguity, and vacillations between these two possibilities. Author Nancy Murphy explores performances by Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Paul Simon, and Cat Stevens to investigate the individual metric style of each artist and how their flexible metric techniques contribute to the self-expressive rhetoric of the singer-songwriter performance tradition.
Contents
Abstract
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Captions
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: The Self Expressive Rhetoric of Flexible Meter
Self-Expressive Features
Flexible Meter and "The Fiddle and the Drum"
Self-Expression and the Singer-Songwriter
Expectations for Singer-Songwriter Music
Bob Dylan and The Folk Revival
Flexible Meter as Self-Expression in Singer-Songwriter Music
Chapter 2: The Theory of Flexible Meter
Types of Flexible Meter
Regular Meter
Reinterpreted Meter
Lost Meter
Ambiguous Meter
Metric Potential
Chapter 3: Regular and Reinterpreted Meter
Regular Meter
Reinterpreted Meter
Joni Mitchell's Rhapsodic Sentiments
Paul Simon: Reinterpreted Meter Expressing Enigmatic Lyrics
Cat Stevens's Introspection
A Closer Look: Joni Mitchell's "Lesson in Survival"
Chapter 4: Self-Expressive Innovations: Lost Meter
Bob Dylan's "Only a Pawn in Their Game"
Cat Stevens's "Time"
Joni Mitchell's "Blue"
Chapter 5: Intensifying "Imperfection": Ambiguous Meter
Bob Dylan's "Down the Highway"
Bob Dylan's "Restless Farewell"
Joni Mitchell's "The Fiddle and the Drum"
Buffy Sainte-Marie's "Sir Patrick Spens"
Chapter 6: What Happens Next? Self-Expressive Flexible Meter
Beyond 1982
Future Singer-Songwriters
Buffy Sainte-Marie's "My Country" (1966)
"My Country" (1966, Rainbow Quest)
"My Country" (2017, Medicine Songs)
Conclusion: Flexible Meter as Self-Expression
Index
