Stressing the third beat more than the first in 4/4: is it syncopation?
The definitions of syncopation I've come across generally talk about stressing the offbeat (see, for example, Wikipedia) where "offbeat" sometimes refers to placing the accent in between beats (on the "and") and in other cases it's about emphasising the weak beats (such as beats 2 and 4 in 4/4 or beats 2 and 3 in 3/4). Most explanations of syncopation include only these basic examples.
More generally though, syncopation is about subverting the listener's rhythmic expectations and interrupting the regular metric patterns. I feel like this broader definition would include putting unusual emphasis on beat 3 in 4/4 even though, as far as I understand, beat 3 is not usually considired "weak" of "offbeat".
OVERWERK — Canon was the track that prompted my question, though in this example the effect I'm describing is heard on the hypermetric level, which complicates things. After 0:35 there's a clear grouping of measures into 4-measure phrases ("hypermeasures") where the emphasis on individual measures ("hyperbeats") follows the usual 4/4 pattern of strong-weak-medium-weak. After 0:47 though this pattern is subverted and replaced by medium-weak-strong-weak, and this new pattern then governs most of the rest of the track. (The hypermeasures don't merely shift their starting points: 4-measure phrases clearly continue to start on the "medium"-accented measures.)
Would you call something like this syncopation (hypermetric syncopation in this specific example)? Perhaps there's a more appropriate and specific name for that? Or maybe I'm ovethinking things and this metric device is what it is and doesn't need to be called anything special?
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To me, the context-agnostic definition of syncopation has always been "something unexpected". Usually applied to rhythm, but it has been used in many other music dynamics too. In that sense, the answer depends on both the particularities of the genre-style, and the song itself.
In other words, it depends on the expectations that have been established; first by convention / tradition / influence, and then the expectations that the song carves as it develops. It's a very relative concept, that doesn't have one single definition.
With that in mind, it doesn't really make a lot of sense to apply the concept to isolated, miscro-scoped, rhythmic patterns like "stressing n beat in a/b", or structure abstractions like "hypermetre". And it doesn't help that everyone uses syncopation to mean whatever they like (including everyone at Wikipedia).
Would you call something like this syncopation (hypermetric syncopation in this specific example)? Perhaps there's a more appropriate and specific name for that? Or maybe I'm ovethinking things and this metric device is what it is and doesn't need to be called anything special?
If you want appropriate, specific, and accurate semantics, I'd stay a million miles away from "syncopation", literally. Unless you've already established a clear idea of what you mean by it, but you'd betraying the very concept of syncopation that way.
If you are somewhat subverting expectations rhythmically, chances are that everyone will understand what you mean, but it is used for rhythms that don't subvert expectations, and things that are not rhythms, so it might not be a very useful concept to use in formal, academic, scenarios.
Yes, the Wikipedia writer classes a simple backbeat as syncopation.
I disagree. I'd just call that a 'backbeat'. Reserving 'syncopation' for rhythms with accents that DON'T align with the prevailing beat.
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