Rhythm

Rhythm, 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 so-called 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 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.
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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 but rather “moderate.” A
moderate tempo is 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 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 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 at the opening of a piece by a 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:

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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, and so on.
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.

Rhythm
QUICK FACTS

Metre

The combinations of long (—) and short ([breve]) syllables are known in prosody as feet. 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 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 (354–
430), in De musica, added more.
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Rhythmic metre

Until the 12th century, church music was virtually limited to unadorned plainchant. 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.

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Polyphonic metre

Theoretically, metre appears to be without stress accent, and certainly much polyphonic music of
a later period, such as the masses of Giovanni Pierluigi da 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, 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, and so on. Ultimately, rhythm is the organic process of music in time; it is music’s
direction in time. The quality of rhythm is the quality of life; however vitally composers conceive
their music, they must depend upon performers to recreate it rhythmically.