A new perspective on the performance of dotted rhythms

Abstract

THE issue of how to perform dotted rhythms in Baroque music has been much debated in past decades. The greatest proliferation of papers on the matter occurred in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, but even as recently as the 1990s further arguments and evidence were put forward and then challenged. The consensus generally tended to advocate over-dotting where such patterns were predominant, and was challenged by the lone voice of the late Frederick Neumann.1 We now argue that the debate on dotting has overlooked a critical aspect of the problem—the distinction between the perception versus the performance of dotting. Our recent findings indicate that the two are not the same; a realization which may explain why divergent opinions could arise and, in turn, may put the controversy to rest. The following observation is not meant to revisit the musicological arguments; its intention is rather to draw the attention of readers to the results of a series of studies published in the music psychology domain because we believe the findings to be of interest to early music scholars and practitioners.2