- syncopation
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/sing'keuh pay"sheuhn, sin'-/, n.1. Music. a shifting of the normal accent, usually by stressing the normally unaccented beats.2. something, as a rhythm or a passage of music, that is syncopated.3. Also called counterpoint, counterpoint rhythm. Pros. the use of rhetorical stress at variance with the metrical stress of a line of verse, as the stress on and and of in Come praise Colonus' horses and come praise/The wine-dark of the wood's intricacies.4. Gram. syncope.[1525-35; < ML syncopation- (s. of syncopatio), equiv. to LL syncopat(us) (see SYNCOPATE) + -ion- -ION]
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▪ musicin music, the displacement of regular accents (accent) associated with given metrical patterns, resulting in a disruption of the listener's expectations and the arousal of a desire for the reestablishment of metric normality; hence the characteristic “forward drive” of highly syncopated music. Syncopation may be effected by accenting normally weak beats in a measure, by resting on a normal accented beat, or by tying over a note to the next measure.The pattern is typical of much folk-dance music, especially in eastern Europe, and its use in the Western written tradition may be traced to the 14th century. It is a characteristic element of jazz and figures prominently in the music of Igor Stravinsky (Stravinsky, Igor) and other 20th-century composers.* * *
Universalium. 2010.
