A seminal work in music theory for over two decades, Christopher Hasty's Meter as Rhythm is foundational to new subfields in ethnomusicology and music cognition, and recently being investigated in non-music fields from literary studies and poetics to physics and biology. This Twentieth Anniversary Edition makes the work readily available across this wide spectrum of scholarship.



Drawing on insights from the modern "process" philosophy of Bergson, William James, and A. N. Whitehead, Christopher Hasty's Meter as Rhythm releases meter from its mechanistic connotations and recognizes it as a concrete, visceral agent of musical expression. Hasty reinterprets oppositions of law and freedom, structure and process, determinacy and indeterminacy to form a theory that engages diverse repertories and aesthetic issues. The revised 20th anniversary edition facilitates the work's current contexts of application, from new subfields in ethnomusicology and music cognition to non-music fields like literary studies, physics, and biology.