CHAPTER 1
What is Rhythm?
RHYTHM IS A FUNDAMENTAL FEATURE of all aspects of life.1 Creating music, listening to music, and dancing to the rhythms of music are practices cherished in cultures all over the world. Although the function of music as a survival strategy in the evolution of human species is a hotly debated topic, there is little doubt that music satisfies a deep human need.2 To the ancient philosopher Confucius, good music symbolized the harmony between heaven and earth.3 The nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche puts it this way: âwithout music life would be a mistake.â4 And the Blackfoot people roaming the North American prairies âtraditionally believed that they could not live without their songs.â5
Of the many components that make up music, two stand tall above all others: rhythm and melody. Rhythm is associated with time and the horizontal direction in a typical Western music score. Melody, on the other hand, is associated with pitch and the vertical direction. Rhythm can do very well without melody, but melody cannot exist without rhythm. Although rhythm and melody may be studied independently, in music, they generally interact together and influence each other in complex ways.6 Experimental results have shown that melody and rhythm (pitch and time) can be encoded in the human brain, either independently or in a combined manner, which depends on the structure of the melody as well as the experience of the listener.7 Of these two properties, rhythm is considered by many scholars to be the most fundamental of the two, and it has been argued that the development of rhythm predates that of melody in evolutionary terms.8 âRhythm is musicâs central organizing structure.â9 The ancient Greeks maintained that without rhythm, melody lacked strength and form. Martin L. West writes: ârhythm is the vital soul of music,â10 the philosopher Andy Hamilton notes that ârhythm is the one indispensable element of all music,â11 and Ton de Leeuw considers that ârhythm is the highest and most autonomous expression of time-conciousness.â12 Joseph Schillinger writes: âThe temporal flow of music is primarily a matter of rhythm.â13 Christopher Hasty offers a concise universal definition of music as the ârhythmization of sound.â14 From the scientific perspective, psychological experiments designed to assess the dimensional features of the music space, based on similarity judgments of pairs of melodic fragments, suggest that the major dimensions are rhythmic rather than melodic.15 The American composer George Gershwin believed that the public loved his music because of its rhythm, and in analyzing his rhythms, Isabel Morse Jones writes: âGershwin has found definite laws of rhythm as mathematical and precise as any science.â16
Curt Sachs asks the question: âWhat is rhythm?â and replies: âThe answer, I am afraid is, so far justâa word: a word without a generally accepted meaning. Everybody believes himself entitled to usurp it for an arbitrary definition of his own. The confusion is terrifying indeed.â17 In other words, there is no simple answer to this question. Christopher Hasty cautions that ârhythm is often regarded as one of the most problematic and least understood aspects of music.â18 James Beament echoes this sentiment when he writes: âRhythm is often considered the most difficult feature of music to understand.â19 For Robert Kauffman âThe difficulties of dealing with rhythm are immense.â20 Wallace Berry writes: âThe awesome complexity of problems of rhythmic structure and analysis can be seen when one appreciates that rhythm is a generic factor.â21 Berry goes on to note that another consideration that makes studying rhythm difficult is the fact that meanings ascribed to terms such as ârhythm,â âmeter,â âaccent,â âduration,â and âsyncopationâ are vague and used inconsistently. Elsewhere he writes more concisely: âRhythm is: everything.â22 In spite of some of these difficulties, or perhaps because of them, many definitions of rhythm have been offered throughout the centuries. Already in 1973, Kolinski wrote that more than 50 definitions of rhythm could be found in the music literature.23 Before diving into the geometric intricacies of rhythm that are explored in this book, it is instructive to review a few examples of definitions and characterizations of rhythm, both ancient and modern.
Plato: âAn order of movement.â24
Baccheios the Elder: âA measuring of time by means of some kind of movement.â25
Phaedrus: âSome measured thesis of syllables, placed together in certain ways.â26
Aristoxenus: âTime, divided by any of those things that are capable of being rhythmed.â27
Nichomacus: âWell marked movement of âtimesâ.â28
Leophantus: âPutting together of âtimesâ in due proportion, considered with regard to symmetry amongst them.â29
Didymus: âA schematic arrangement of sounds.â30
Aristides Quintilianus: âRhythm is a scale of chronoi compounded according to some order, and the conditions of these we call arsis and thesis, noise and quietude.â31
Vincent dâIndy: âRhythm is the primordial element. One must consider it as anterior to all other elements of music.â32
S. Hollos and J. R. Hollos: âIn its most general form rhythm is simply a recurring sequence of events.â33
S. K. Langer: Rhythm is âThe setting-up of new tensions by the resolution of former ones.â34
H. W. Percival: âThe character and meaning of thought expressed through the measure or movement in sound or form, or by written signs or words.â35
D. Wright: âRhythm is the way in which time is organized within measures.â36
A. C. Lewis: âRhythm is the language of time.â37
J. Martineau: âRhythm is the component of music that punctuates time, carrying us from one beat to the next, and it subdivides into simple ratios.â38
A. C. Hall: âRhythm is made by durations of sound and silence and by accent.â39
T. H. Garland and C. V. Kahn: âRhythm is created whenever the time continuum is split up into pieces by some sound or movement.â40
J. Bamberger: âThe many different ways in which time is organized in music.â41
J. Clough, J. Conley, and C. Boge: âPatterns of duration and accent of musical sounds moving through time.â42
G. Cooper and L. B. Meyer: âRhythm may be defined as the way in which one or more unaccented beats are grouped in relation to an accented one.â43
D. J. Levitin: âRhythm refers to the durations of a series of notes, and to the way that they group together into units.â44
P. Vuust and M. A. G. Witek: âRhythm is a pattern of discrete durations and is largely thought to depend on the underlying perceptual mechanisms of grouping.â45
A. D. Patel: âThe systematic patterning of sound in terms of timing, accent, and grouping.â46
R. Parncutt: âA musical rhythm is an acoustic sequence evoking a sensation of pulse.â47
C. B. Monahan, and E. C. Carterette: âRhythm is the perception of both regular and ...