The idea that eighteenth-century musicians conceived their compositions as comprised of the punctuation marks of language is one that immediately captivated my interest and curiosity as a performer. I could readily imagine a full cadence as the musical expression of a period, a lesser point of repose as analogous to a comma or a colon, a vehement rhythmic pattern as an exclamation point, an upturned melody as suggestive of a question mark, and on and on. The process of further pursuing this very vivid analogy to language not only profoundly impacted my playing, but led me far deeper than I had anticipated into a whole new and rich linguistic world—one inhabited by the likes of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—with its varied and complex rhetorical, philosophical, scientific, social, and political influences.

My particular interest in the subject of musical punctuation lies in what the analogy can teach us about the moment-by-moment inflections and nuances (sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic) within the single musical period. Rather than focusing on larger periodic structures (how individual sentences become the building blocks for movement-length forms), I have directed my attention towards how music's smaller and more discreet rhythmic and tonal gestures can be manipulated to create the diverse effects of punctuation. I want to understand how the rise and fall of melody impacts simple harmonic progressions, half cadences, and full cadences. And I ask: how also might the addition of articulation symbols—a series of two-note slurs, or perhaps a longer slur over the bar line—affect the structure and/or expression among the punctuation points of a musical sentence? To what extent do displaced rhythmic and melodic emphases and accents alter the overall metrical orientation and direction of a phrase? I believe it is the performer's ability to recognize, analyze, and above all, persuasively execute these and similar punctuation-related details, which ultimately brings the musical language of the classical “period” to life, a language that is at once compelling, spontaneous, imaginative, and meaningful.

The present work is organized into three parts. The first, which requires the least technical musical knowledge, explores the details of the role of punctuation in eighteenth-century rhetorical theory. In its chapters, I aim to establish the nature of the analogy as well as the historical basis for punctuation's application to music.