Agogic Contrast in French and English Themes: Further Support for Patel and Daniele (2003)

Abstract

A. D. Patel and J. R. Daniele (2003) compared the rhythms of musical themes written by French and English composers. They found a significant difference that mirrors known prosodic differences in French and English speech. Specifically, Patel and Daniele found the note-to-note durational contrast to be higher in English music than in French music. Their study was based on 137 English themes and 181 French themes that were selected according to stringent criteria. Here we report a replication of Patel and Daniele with a greatly expanded sample of nearly 2000 themes.