The Principles of English Versification | Page 6

processes, effort alternates with rest: it grows stronger and weaker, contracts and expands in turn. This pulse of attention varies in different persons according to the peculiar rhythm of the organism. In the same person, under normal conditions, it remains nearly constant. It is always subject to modification by the psycho-physiological conditions of the moment, especially by the emotions and by external circumstances. In a series of identical equidistant stresses, those which coincide with the pulse of attention seem the stronger: this is what is called subjective rhythm. Since this coincidence is nearly always somewhat inexact, there results an easy accommodation of the pulse of attention, although even in the subjective rhythm there has already occurred an objective influence capable of affecting us sensibly.[4]
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [4] Paul Verrier, Essai sur les Principes de la M??trique | | Anglaise (Paris, 1909), Deuxieme Partie, Livre II, ch. x, | | pp. 56, 57; and cf. p. 90, n. 1. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+
Thus we have always at hand both a more or less efficient bodily metronome in the pulse and in respiration, and also a "cerebral metronome" capable not only of easy adjustment to different rates of speed but also of that subtlest of modulations which psychologists call the 'elastic unit,' and which musicians, though not so definitely or surely, recognize as tempo rubato.
The sense of rhythm, as has been said, differs remarkably in different individuals--just as the sense of touch, of smell, of hearing.[5] To some, rhythm appears chiefly as a series of points of emphasis or stresses alternating with points of less emphasis or of none at all; such are called, in scientific jargon, 'stressers.' To others the principal characteristic of rhythm is the time intervals; such are called 'timers.' But this is a practical, not a philosophical distinction. For it is the succession of points of emphasis which even the most aggressive stresser feels as rhythmic; and succession implies and involves a temporal element. The stresser's only difficulty is to feel the approximate equality of the interval. The essential thing, however, is to understand that, while time is the foundation of speech-rhythm, stress is its universal adjunct and concomitant.[6]
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [5] A simple experiment will illustrate this. Place two | | persons back to back, so that they cannot see each other, | | and have them beat time to an audible melody; as soon as the | | music ceases they will begin to beat differently. (Verrier, | | II, p. 65.) The difficulty of keeping even a trained | | orchestra playing together illustrates the same fact. | | | | [6] "If rhythm means anything to the average individual, it | | means motor response and a sense of organized time." | | Patterson, p. 14. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+
The explanation of this duality is simple. A series of identical tones
[Illustration: Identical notes] etc.
contains a simple objective rhythm. The pronounced timer will feel it clearly; the extreme stresser will not. Change the series to
[Illustration: Alternate long and short notes] etc.,
or
[Illustration: Alternate longer stressed notes and shorter unstressed notes] etc.,
and both will feel it; for in the last example both time and stress are obvious, and in the other the longer notes of the series produce the effect of stress.[7] Most persons, therefore, with a greater or less degree of consciousness, allow their physical or cerebral metronome to affect the simple
[Illustration: Identical notes] etc.,
so that they hear or feel either
[Illustration: Alternate stressed and unstressed notes] etc.,
or
[Illustration] etc.,
It is thus that the clock says tick-tock, tick-tock, the locomotive chu-chu, chu-chu. Timers are in the minority.
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | [7] Musicians often 'dot' a note for the sake of emphasizing | | the accent, especially in orchestral music and with such | | instruments as the flute, where variations of stress are | | difficult to produce. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+
A converse phenomenon of the subjective introduction of stress into a series of identical tones at equal intervals is the subjective 'organization' of a series of irregular beats. Some do this more easily and naturally than others, but the tendency is present in all who are not absolutely rhythm-deaf. The "minute drops from off the eaves" beat out a tune, the typewriter develops a monotonous song, the public speaker 'gets his stride' and continues in a sing-song.
Thus, when there are equal intervals but stress is absent, we more or less unconsciously supply it; when there are distinct stresses at irregular intervals we organize them into approximately regular intervals. We have in us by instinct and by development both the ability and also the need to draw forth rhythm wherever it is latent. Rhythm becomes one of our physical and mental pleasures, manifest in primitive dancing and balladry, sailors' chanteys, and the simple heave-ho's of concerted labor. It induces economy of effort, and so makes work lighter; and