: Metrical structure - levels of metrical grouping In Music, Mind and Brain: The Neuropsychology of Music they use a technique to find the most "salient" level of grouping. Link to passage text here This is important in musicology

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Let's talk about the music before we talk about the metric breakdown. The piece is in cut time (2/2) and the first measure is a pickup and starts from the second beat. In cut time you would count this meter as 1 - 2 where beat 1 would be felt as a stronger beat.

What this is showing in a very round about way is the note hierarchy and how it lines up with the meter and a measure. By doing this you also see the importance of each beat and its divisions in the meter. It also seem that the 5th dot seen in the first full more is to indicate the start of the section.

In this example, every place where you see 4 dots you have the first beat which is the strong beat. Every place where you see 3 dots is the second beat of the measure which is weaker than the strong beat. Every place where you see 2 dots is the up beat of that beat. Every place where you see 1 dot is between the up beat and down beat.

Another way to represent this and how it is typically represented in this meter is through counting the meter like this 1 - e - + - a - 2 - e - + - a. If you look at the analysis you have you'll notice the 1 is represented by the four dots, the 2 is represented by the three dots, the + is represented by the two dots, and the e and a are represented by the single dot.