Pacing Scenarios: How Harmonic Rhythm and Melodic Pacing Influence Our Experience of Musical Climax

This paper reconsiders the commonly held assumption that acceleration to a fast rate of harmonic or melodic change creates tension, particularly at points of climax, and that deceleration helps create relaxation afterward. Challenges to this assumption are presented: deceleration just before a climax causes tension to mount; acceleration just after a climax conveys a sense that tension is released. I propose a set of pacing scenarios, each of which pairs acceleration or deceleration with intensification preceding, or abatement following a climax. Excerpts from late nineteenth-century works illustrate the energetic and kinetic qualities of each pacing scenario. Normative and non-normative successions of pacing scenarios are defined and their formal roles within the first movement of Brahms's A Major Violin Sonata are explored.