ABSTRACT
The initial impetus for researching rhythmic issues in baroque music was prompted by the fact that French baroque sources discussed the performance of rhythm in greater detail and with greater emphasis than others. Given the obvious differences in terms of character among the sampled recordings and the emphasis scholars put on dotted rhythms, it is important to take a closer look at what happens in these performances. A more detailed discussion of eighteenth-century views on rhythm and metre is provided. This chapter offers the rhythmic analysis not in order to set, so to speak, 'posthumous' criteria against which to measure performances of the distant past in a self-fulfilling way, but in order to illustrate one's understanding of how the theoretical discussions of documents presented earlier might be applied to practice.
