Syncopation

More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn't normally occur".

Richard Middleton[7] suggests adding the concept of transformation to Narmour's[8] prosodic rules which create rhythmic successions in order to explain or generate syncopations.

The accent may be shifted from the first to the second beat in duple meter (and the third to fourth in quadruple), creating the backbeat rhythm: Different crowds will "clap along" at concerts either on 1 and 3 or on 2 and 4, as above.

Many Italian and French compositions of the music of the 14th-century Trecento use syncopation, as in of the following madrigal by Giovanni da Firenze.

"[9] Composers of the musical High Renaissance Venetian School, such as Giovanni Gabrieli (1557–1612), exploited syncopation for both their secular madrigals and instrumental pieces and also in their choral sacred works, such as the motet Domine, Dominus noster: Denis Arnold says: "the syncopations of this passage are of a kind which is almost a Gabrieli fingerprint, and they are typical of a general liveliness of rhythm common to Venetian music".

[10] The composer Igor Stravinsky, no stranger to syncopation himself, spoke of "those marvellous rhythmic inventions" that feature in Gabrieli's music.

Christopher Hogwood (2005, p. 37) describes the Hornpipe as “possibly the most memorable movement in the collection, combining instrumental brilliance and rhythmic vitality… Woven amongst the running quavers are the insistent off-beat syncopations that symbolise confidence for Handel.”[12] Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No.

According to Malcolm Boyd, each ritornello section of the first movement, "is clinched with an Epilog of syncopated antiphony":[13] Boyd also hears the coda to the third movement as "remarkable... for the way the rhythm of the initial phrase of the fugue subject is expressed... with the accent thrown on to the second of the two minims (now staccato)":[14] Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert used syncopation to create variety especially in their symphonies.

[15] (2) By placing accents on normally weak beats, as in bars 25–26 and 28–35: This "long sequence of syncopated sforzandi"[15] recurs later during the development section of this movement, in a passage that Antony Hopkins describes as "a rhythmic pattern that rides roughshod over the properties of a normal three-in-a bar".