rhythm

—rhythmless, adj.

/ridh"euhm/, n.

1. movement or procedure with uniform or patterned recurrence of a beat, accent, or the like.

2. Music.

a. the pattern of regular or irregular pulses caused in music by the occurrence of strong and weak melodic and harmonic beats.

b. a particular form of this: duple rhythm; triple rhythm.

3. measured movement, as in dancing.

4. Art, Literature. a patterned repetition of a motif, formal element, etc., at regular or irregular intervals in the same or a modified form.

5. the effect produced in a play, film, novel, etc., by the combination or arrangement of formal elements, as length of scenes, speech and description, timing, or recurrent themes, to create movement, tension, and emotional value in the development of the plot.

6. Pros.

a. metrical or rhythmical form; meter.

b. a particular kind of metrical form.

c. metrical movement.

7. the pattern of recurrent strong and weak accents, vocalization and silence, and the distribution and combination of these elements in speech.

8. Physiol. the regular recurrence of an action or function, as of the beat of the heart, or the menstrual cycle.

9. procedure marked by the regular recurrence of particular elements, phases, etc.: the rhythm of the seasons.

10. regular recurrence of elements in a system of motion.

[1550-60; < L rhythmus < Gk rhythmós; cf. rheîn to flow]

Syn. 9. flow, pulse, cadence.

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(as used in expressions)

biological rhythm

circadian rhythm

rhythm and blues

rhythm and metre

sprung rhythm

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▪ music

Introduction

      in music, the placement of sounds in time. In its most general sense rhythm (Greek rhythmos, derived from rhein, “to flow”) is an ordered alternation of contrasting elements. The notion of rhythm also occurs in other arts (e.g., poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture) as well as in nature (e.g., biological rhythms).

      Attempts to define rhythm in music have produced much disagreement, partly because rhythm has often been identified with one or more of its constituent, but not wholly separate, elements, such as accent, metre, and tempo. As in the closely related subjects of verse and metre, opinions differ widely, at least among poets and linguists, on the nature and movement of rhythm. Theories requiring “periodicity” as the sine qua non of rhythm are opposed by theories that include in it even nonrecurrent configurations of movement, as in prose or plainchant.

Elements of rhythm

      Unlike a painting or a piece of sculpture, which are compositions in space, a musical work is a composition dependent upon time. Rhythm is music's pattern in time. Whatever other elements a given piece of music may have (e.g., patterns in pitch or timbre), rhythm is the one indispensable element of all music. Rhythm can exist without melody, as in the drumbeats of primitive music, but melody cannot exist without rhythm. In music that has both harmony and melody, the rhythmic structure cannot be separated from them. Plato's (Plato) observation that rhythm is “an order of movement” provides a convenient analytical starting point.

beat

      The unit division of musical time is called a beat. Just as one is aware of the body's steady pulse, or heartbeat, so in composing, performing, or listening to music one is aware of a periodic succession of beats.

Tempo

      The pace of the fundamental beat is called tempo (Italian “time”). The expressions slow tempo and quick tempo suggest the existence of a tempo that is neither slow nor fast. his “moderate” tempo is often assumed to be that of a natural walking pace (76 to 80 paces per minute) or of a heartbeat (72 per minute). The tempo of a piece of music indicated by a composer is, however, neither absolute nor final. In performance it is likely to vary according to the performer's interpretative ideas or to such considerations as the size and reverberation of the hall, the size of the ensemble, and, to a lesser extent, the sonority of the instruments. A change within such limits does not affect the rhythmic structure of a work.

rubato

      The tempo of a work is never inflexibly mathematical. It is impossible to adhere in a musical manner to the metronomic (metronome) beat for any length of time. In a loosely knit passage a tautening of tempo may be required; in a crowded passage a slackening may be needed. Such modifications of tempo, known as tempo rubato—i.e., “robbed time”—are part of the music's character. Rubato needs the framework of an inflexible beat from which it can depart and to which it must return.

Time

      The mind apparently seeks some organizing principle in the perception of music, and if a grouping of sounds is not objectively present it imposes one of its own. Experiments show that the mind instinctively groups regular and identical sounds into twos and threes, stressing (accent) every second or third beat, and thus creates from an otherwise monotonous series a succession of strong and weak beats.

      In music such grouping is achieved by actual stress; i.e., by periodically making one note stronger than the others. When the stress occurs at regular intervals, the beats fall into natural time measures. Although in European music the concept of time measures reaches back to a remote age, only since the 15th century have they been indicated by means of bar lines. Thus, the terms measure and bar are often used interchangeably.

      The time measure is indicated (musical notation) at the opening of a piece by a time signature; (time signature) e.g., ²/₄, ⁴/₈, ³/₄, ⁶/₈. The length of each beat in a measure may be a time unit of short or long duration:

      The signature ⁴/₁ (above) means that the whole note (1) is the unit in each measure, and there are four (4) of them to each measure. In the second illustration, ⁴/₂, the half note (2) is the unit of measurement, with four of them (4) to each measure, etc.

      The two basic types of time measure have either two or three beats and admit of many different notations.

      “Four time,” or “common time,” is really a species of duple time allied to “two time,” as it can hardly be thought of without a subsidiary stress at the half measure; i.e., on the third beat; thus:

      Duple, triple, and quadruple time measures—i.e., those in which there are two, three, and four beats to a measure—are known as simple time. The division of each of the component beats into three produces compound time:

      More complex times, such as the quintuple, ⁵/₄, usually fall into groups of 3 + 2, as in “Mars” from Gustav Holst's suite The Planets and in the second movement of Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony. Rimsky-Korsakov, in Sadko, and Stravinsky, in Le Sacre du printemps, use 11 as a unit. Ravel's piano trio opens with a signature of ⁸/₈ with the internal organization 3 + 2 + 3. Folk song and folk dance, particularly from eastern Europe, influenced the use of asymmetrical time measures, as in the “Bulgarian Rhythm” pieces in ⁷/₈ and ⁵/₈ in Bartók's Mikrokosmos.

metre

 The combinations of long (—) and short ([breve]) syllables are known in prosody as feet (foot). The system of notating the musical equivalents of feet derives from the application of prosody to music. The foundations for European music were laid in ancient Greece, where classical (classical literature) music and poetry were regarded as parts of a single art. These principles were adopted by the Romans and were transmitted, by way of Latin poetry, to medieval Europe. The feet of classical poetry and their equivalents in music are shown in the Table—>. And in late antiquity St. Augustine (Augustine, Saint) (354–430), in De musica, added more.

Rhythmic metre

 Until the 12th century (Middle Ages), church music (liturgical music) was virtually limited to unadorned plainchant (plainsong). The early composers found that polyphony required a rhythmical organization to keep the parts together; so rhythmic metre was adopted (see Table—>). Compared with a hypothetical flow of beats equal in stress, metre adds significance to what was merely a forward flow in time—though the continuation of a metrical pattern may itself become monotonous. Thus, metre, though “rhythmic” by comparison with pulse, is not the whole of rhythm. The 13th-century musicians often varied the rhythmic modes by combining several of them simultaneously in different parts of polyphonic composition.

Polyphonic metre

      Theoretically, metre appears to be without stress accent, and certainly much polyphonic music of a later period, such as the masses of Palestrina, has an almost stressless flow. Yet these works reveal a subtle rhythmical organization. At a later period metre and time measure cannot be wholly separated. In their “purest” forms they may be extremes, but in music predominantly of one type, the other element is rarely wholly absent, though on an instrument such as the organ, actual dynamic stress is impossible. After all, metres like the spondee, ♩♩, and the dispondee, ♩♩♩♩, need an accent on the first beat to keep their identity. Notwithstanding the opposite tendencies of metrical organization and stress accent, however, some metre is obviously subject to stress, so that metre and time measure become very closely linked, as in the scherzo of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, where a measure has a strong first beat and at the same time follows a metre.

Organic rhythm

      In broad terms, the time framework of music is composed of tempo, time measure, metre, and period; and its rhythmical life hangs on rubato, musical motif (which may already include cross accent), and metrical variation, as well as on asymmetry and balance of phrase. Whereas the former are more or less measured and rational, the latter are organically inspired and numerically irrational—the very life of the music.

Prose rhythms and plainsong

      Rhythm is, therefore, not any one of these rational or formal features, nor is it composed solely of a combination of these factors. Yet rhythm requires the background of a rational framework in order that it may be fully perceived, but this framework need not embrace all the rational factors described above.

      Thus plainchant, as it is known in modern times, makes no use at all of measure or of regular metre but is supremely rhythmical in conception; its “free” rhythms are felt. Whereas so much music has for its framework a regular repetition of underlying accent, whether stress or durational, the framework of plainchant is irregular. Its rhythm belongs to the Latin tongue and springs from the correct accentuation of the text and the dynamic quality inherent in the word grouping.

Rhythm, melody, and harmony

      Thus far, music's structure in time has been examined separately from its structure in tone, but no such separation is really possible. Melody and rhythm are intimately connected. Moreover, various styles of music tend to standardize their melodic cadences and, with them, their time divisions (e.g., Mozart's melodic rhythm is much more regular than Prokofiev's).

      In music employing harmony, the rhythmic structure is inseparable from harmonic considerations. The time pattern controlling the change of harmonies is called harmonic rhythm. In 17th- and 18th-century music, harmony tends to limit rhythmic subtleties and flexibility of the melodic elements (as well as determining the basic type of melody) in regard to stress accents. It is, therefore, no accident that the polyphonic music of Indonesia and Southeast Asia, like much European music, exhibits certain four-square melodic tendencies. By contrast, the music of India and the Perso-Arab world employs a melody instrument or voice performing in a given metre offset by a drum playing cross rhythms or (in the Arab world) a quite different metre; with no harmony (except a drone) to impede its flow, the rhythm can reach a structure of great subtlety and complexity.

Rhythm, structure, and style

      In European music the great variety of styles derives its relation to melody from different concepts of rhythm. They include the strict rhythmic modes of the 13th century; the free oratorical speech-rhythms of the Renaissance; the almost stressless flow of Renaissance polyphony; (polyphony) the strong body rhythms of the Baroque; the freedom of the late Romantics; and the primitivistic rhythms of the 20th century with composite and ever changing time signatures.

      Thus, study of musical history shows a varying attitude toward rhythm, sometimes closer to strict rule, sometimes to “freedom,” as the temper of the times and the relative influence of poetry, dance, and folk music decree. Plato's definition of rhythm as “an order of movement” might, therefore, be expanded. As a determining factor in the vitality of music, rhythm may be described as “an inspired, organic order of movement,” communicating intelligibly to the senses. From the analytical viewpoint, it operates in the rational framework described, which it varies in terms of rubato, motif, etc. Ultimately, rhythm is the organic process of music in time; (time) it is music's direction in time. The quality of rhythm is the quality of life; however vitally the composer conceives his music, he must depend upon the performer to recreate it rhythmically.

Peter Crossley-Holland

Additional Reading

Curt Sachs, Rhythm and Tempo (1953), the most comprehensive work on rhythm in music, ranges over many non-Western cultures as well as over the successive periods of Western musical history. Detailed rhythmical analyses of Western music since the 17th century appear in Grosvenor W. Cooper and Leonard B. Meyer, The Rhythmic Structure of Music (1960). Studies of special periods are available in Charles F. Abdy Williams, The Aristoxenian Theory of Musical Rhythm (1911); W.F. Jackson Knight, St. Augustine's De Musica: A Synopsis (1949); William G. Waite, The Rhythm of Twelfth-Century Polyphony, Its Theory and Practice (1954); Philip F. Radcliffe, “The Relation of Rhythm and Tonality in the Sixteenth Century,” Proc. R. Musical Assn., 57:73–97 (1931); and Henry D. Cowell, New Musical Resources (1930, reprinted 1969). Particular applications of rhythm have been studied in Charles F. Abdy Williams, The Rhythm of Song (1925); and William Thomson, The Rhythm of Speech (1923). Aesthetic aspects are considered in Margaret Glyn, The Rhythmic Conception of Music (1907); and Mathis Lussy, Le Rythme musical, 3rd ed. rev. (1897; abridged Eng. trans., A Short Treatise on Musical Rhythm, 1909). Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Le Rythme, la musique et l'éducation (1920; Eng. trans., Rhythm, Music and Education, 1921), is the pioneer work in its aspect of the field; musical rhythm has been put in wider perspective by Elsie Fogerty, Rhythm (1937).

▪ poetry

      in poetry, the patterned recurrence, within a certain range of regularity, of specific language features, usually features of sound. Although difficult to define, rhythm is readily discriminated by the ear and the mind, having as it does a physiological basis. It is universally agreed to involve qualities of movement, repetition, and pattern and to arise from the poem's nature as a temporal structure. Rhythm, by any definition, is essential to poetry; prose may be said to exhibit rhythm but in a much less highly organized sense. The presence of rhythmic patterns heightens emotional response and often affords the reader a sense of balance.

       metre (q.v.), although often equated with rhythm, is perhaps more accurately described as one method of organizing a poem's rhythm. Unlike rhythm, metre is not a requisite of poetry; it is, rather, an abstract organization of elements of stress, duration, or number of syllables per line into a specific formal pattern. The interaction of a given metrical pattern with any other aspect of sound in a poem produces a tension, or counterpoint, that creates the rhythm of metrically based poetry.

      Compared with the wide variety of metrical schemes, the types of metrically related rhythms are few. Duple rhythm occurs in lines composed in two-syllable feet, as in Shakespeare's line,

      In metrical schemes based on three-syllable feet, the rhythm is triple:

      Rising rhythm results when the stress falls on the last syllable of each foot in a line:

      The reverse of this is falling rhythm:

      Running, or common, rhythm occurs in metres in which stressed and unstressed syllables alternate (duple rhythm, rising or falling). Gerard Manley Hopkins (Hopkins, Gerard Manley), in reaction against traditional metres, coined the term sprung rhythm (q.v.) to apply to verse wherein the line is measured by the number of speech-stressed syllables, the number of unstressed syllables being indeterminate.

      The rhythms of free verse (q.v.) derive from the systematic repetition of language elements other than metrical stress patterns. Differentiation between the rhythmical basis of free verse and that of metrical verse involves a relative, rather than an absolute, distinction regarding the range of language features considered and the extent to which they are patterned. Since metrical verse is principally concerned with the distribution of relative stress values, it does not account for the significance of other linguistic features that may contribute to rhythmic effect. In free verse, rhythm most commonly arises from the arrangement of linguistic elements into patterns that more nearly approximate the natural cadence of speech and that give symmetry to the verse. The rhythmical resources available to free verse include syntactical patterning; systematic repetition of sound, words, phrases, and lines; and the relative value of temporal junctures occasioned by caesura (a marked pause in the middle of a line), line length, and other determinants of pace. Some authorities recognize in the highly organized patterning of imagery a further source of poetic rhythm. The following lines from Walt Whitman's “Song of Myself ” illustrate many of these rhythmical devices:

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,

Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;

Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all

so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the

bank,

She hides, handsome and richly drest aft the

blinds of the window.

      The rhythms that are characteristic of particular poets are sometimes ascribed to units of breath, as in the essay “Projective Verse” (1950) by the poet and critic Charles Olsen: “And the line comes (I swear it) from the breath, from the breathing of the man who writes, at the moment that he writes . . . .”

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