Lessons in Music Form | Page 6

the art-creator?
20. Define the conditions that confirm the principle of unity in music.
21. Define the evidences of variety in music.
CHAPTER II.
FUNDAMENTAL DETAILS.
TIME.--Time is the same thing in music that it is everywhere else in
nature. It is what passes while a piece of music is being played, sung,
or read. It is like the area of the surface upon which the musical
structure is to be erected, and which is measured or divided into so
many units for this, so many for that, so many for the other portion of
the musical Form. Time is that quantity which admits of the necessary
reduction to units (like the feet and inches of a yardstick), whereby a
System of Measurement is established that shall determine the various
lengths of the tones, define their rhythmic conditions, and govern the
co-operation of several melodies sung or played together. Time is the

canvas upon which the musical images are drawn--in melodic lines.
TEMPO.--This refers to the degree of motion. The musical picture is
not constant, but panoramic; we never hear a piece of music all at once,
but as a panorama of successive sounds. Tempo refers to the rate of
speed with which the scroll passes before our minds. Thus we speak of
rapid tempo (allegro, and the like), or slow tempo (adagio), and so
forth.
BEATS.--The beats are the units in our System of Measurement,--as it
were, the inches upon our yardstick of time; they are the particles of
time that we mark when we "count," or that the conductor marks with
the "beats" of his baton. Broadly speaking, the ordinary beat (in
moderate tempo) is about equivalent to a second of time; to less or
more than this, of course, in rapid or slow tempo. Most commonly, the
beat is represented in written music by the quarter-note, as in 2-4, 3-4,
4-4, 6-4 measure. But the composer is at liberty to adopt any value he
pleases (8th, 16th, half-note) as beat. In the first study in Clementi's
"Gradus ad Parnassum," the time-signature is 3-1, the whole note as
beat; in the 8th Sung Without Words it is 6-16, the sixteenth note as
beat; in the last pianoforte sonata of Beethoven (op. 111), last
movement, the time-signatures are 9-16, 6-16, and 12-32, the latter
being, probably, the smallest beat ever chosen.
MEASURES.--A measure is a group of beats. The beats are added
together, in measures, to obtain a larger unit of time, because larger
divisions are more convenient for longer periods; just as we prefer to
indicate the dimensions of a house, or farm, in feet or rods, rather than
in inches.
Measures differ considerably in extent in various compositions,
inasmuch as the number of beats enclosed between the vertical bars
may be, and is, determined quite arbitrarily. What is known as a Simple
measure contains either the two beats (heavy-light) of the fundamental
duple group, or the three beats (heavy-light-light) of the triple group,
shown in the preceding chapter. Compound measures are such as
contain more than two or three beats, and they must always be
multiplications, or groups, of a Simple measure; for whether so small

as to comprise only the fundamental groups of two or three beats (as in
2-4, 3-8, 3-4 measure), or so large as to embrace as many as twelve
beats or more (as in 4-4, 6-4, 6-8, 9-8, 12-8 measure), the measure
represents, practically, either the duple or triple species, Simple or
Compound. Thus, a measure of four beats, sometimes called
(needlessly) quadruple rhythm, is merely twice two beats; the species is
actually duple; the alternation of heavy and light pulses is regular; and
therefore the third beat is again an accent, as well as the first, though
less heavy. A measure of 6-8 is triple species, with accents at beats one
and four, precisely as if an additional vertical bar were inserted after the
third beat. In a word, then, the size of the adopted measure is of no
consequence, as long as it is retained uniformly through the section to
which it belongs; and there is no real difference between 2-4 and 4-4
measure, excepting in the number of bars used.
A curious and rare exception to this rule of the compound measure
occurs when five or seven beats are grouped together. This involves a
mingling of the duple and triple species, and, consequently, an irregular
disposition of the accents; for instance, 5-4 measure is either 3+2 or
2+3 beats, with corresponding accentuation:
[Illustration: Beat accentuation]
RHYTHM.--This word signifies arrangement,--a principle applied, in
music, to the distribution or arrangement of the tones according to their
various time-values. The system of measurement (or metric system)
furnishes tone material with all the details of division, proportion and
comparison; but this, alone, is not rhythm.