# Furiants



## Sol Invictus (Sep 17, 2016)

Yesterday, I came across a video on YouTube of a gentleman analyzing Dvorak's 9th and he described the scherzo movement as a furiant. Is anyone familiar with this musical form and could point me in the direction of some of their favorites?


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

The Scherzo of Dvorak #9 is not a Furiant - but the scherzo of #6 is most definitely a Furiant - so is Slavonic Dance #8...
the Furiant has the consistent rhythmic figure of:

3/2 + 3/4 + 3/4. or it could be 3/4 +3/8 + 3/8.

fast, driving rhythm typifies this dance form, very energetic, with a nice swing to it, due to the mixed meter pattern.

In Dvorak's time, composers did not write much in mixed of asymmetric time signatures. Hence - These Dvorak Furiants are written in 3/2 time, straight thru - but Dvorak trusted the musicians of the day to know the Dance form, and to place the accents in the correct place.
Jumping ahead to the 20th century - Bartok or Stravinsky would have written the correct time signature


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

As far as I can work out, you can write any waltz in 3/2 or 3/8 time, and it would sound exactly the same. What then would be the point of writing bits of a single movement in various incarnations of this rhythm?


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

The easiest way to get furiant rhythm is to think of "I like it here in America," which is the same juxtaposition of the two meters but backwards. (123-123-12-12-12 instead of 12-12-12-123-123, which is a furiant).


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Funny said:


> The easiest way to get furiant rhythm is to think of "I like it here in America," which is the same juxtaposition of the two meters but backwards. (123-123-12-12-12 instead of 12-12-12-123-123, which is a furiant).


Not sure what you mean here. When I tried to come up with some sort of melody here, my rhythm went something like this:

I *like* it *here* in A*me*ri*ca*. Plain old 4/4 or something. Presumably I'm not as creative as Dvorak - no big surprises there.


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

He means the tune "America" from the musical West Side Story


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

The Furiant is a Czech men's dance ; the title is a Czech slang word for a dashing, swaggering , flashy young man . 
This dance makes use of a rhythmic device called a Hemiola ; two measures in 3/4 time divided into three half note beats .


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

brianvds said:


> As far as I can work out, you can write any waltz in 3/2 or 3/8 time, and it would sound exactly the same. What then would be the point of writing bits of a single movement in various incarnations of this rhythm?


the audience would not know whether a piece was written in 3/4 or 3/8 - only that it was in triple time, as in a waltz...

a furiant is not a waltz -

the rhythm pattern is:
1+ 2+ 3+ 1+a 2+a

The subdivision remains constant


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

superhorn said:


> This dance makes use of a rhythmic device called a Hemiola ; two measures in 3/4 time divided into three half note beats .


but straight 3/4 over 2 measures does not place the accents correctly...Bartok or Stravinsky would have written the more accurate time signature 3/4 + 3/8 + 3/8

in straight 3/4, the accent on the first 3/8 measure falls on "and" of beat 2, which is inaccurate.

a similar pattern appears in Brubeck's "Blue Rondo a la Turk" -

in that song the pattern is:

1+ 2+ 3+ 4+a / 1+ 2+ 3+ 4+a -

Someone once tried to argue that 9/8 was the correct time signature, because there are 9 eighth notes/measure....but there is no way the the rhythm pattern fits in compound triple time.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Nate Miller said:


> He means the tune "America" from the musical West Side Story


Ah, okay. I went to have a quick listen on YT; it's a well known song. If someone asked me to make a rhythmic analysis of it, I'd be at a complete loss. I have almost no sense of rhythm. 

Still not too sure though why the rhythmic pattern would be a juxtaposition of various "3" rhythms. If you use 3/4 and 3/8 in the same piece, would it make a difference to the tempo of the various bits? I.e. would the 3/8 bits be perceived as twice as fast as the 3/4 bits?

Listening to the piece I also wonder of one could use triplets for the "I like it" and "here in A-" bits? Perhaps something like two measures of, say, 2/8 for the aforementioned bits, and one of 3/8 for the "-merica" ?


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

"America" simply uses the different rhythm patterns within a measure with six subdivisions...it is used frequently esp in Latin American music..Ginastera used it often - check out Final Dance of "Estancia".

"America" is, IIRC, written in 6/8, alternating with 3/4...the eighth note is constant, it does not vary in speed...
the accent pattern is simply mixed - 2 beats of 3 "pieces", alternating with 3 beats of 2 "pieces":

1+a 2+a / 1+ 2+ 3+, or *** ***/ ** ** ** = *I* like it *H*ere in A / *M*e *R*i *C*a



> If you use 3/4 and 3/8 in the same piece, would it make a difference to the tempo of the various bits?


no, the eighth note subdivision remains constant


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Dvorak 6's Scherzo is also a Furiant. That mixed meter is even more clear in that one than the 9th:


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Heck148 said:


> "America" simply uses the different rhythm patterns within a measure with six subdivisions...it is used frequently esp in Latin American music..Ginastera used it often - check out Final Dance of "Estancia".
> 
> "America" is, IIRC, written in 6/8, alternating with 3/4...the eighth note is constant, it does not vary in speed...
> the accent pattern is simply mixed - 2 beats of 3 "pieces", alternating with 3 beats of 2 "pieces":
> ...


I can see that could work, though I am unclear as to whether it is the only way to do it. For one thing, listening to the piece, it is not clear to me that the 6/8 bit couldn't also be conceived of as two bars of 3/8. Or could one perhaps think in terms of a single bar of 9/8? Perhaps my ideas here would result in music that sounds subtly different. I probably don't have a sufficiently good ear to pick up such a difference...


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

brianvds said:


> I can see that could work, though I am unclear as to whether it is the only way to do it. For one thing, listening to the piece, it is not clear to me that the 6/8 bit couldn't also be conceived of as two bars of 3/8.


good question - possibly 6/8 could be split into two 3/8 bars - but that isn't what is written - so the performers must make the emphasis on the first eighth note of the measure - the accent on the 4th eighth note slightly less. this is also consisted with the lyrics of the song.



> Or could one perhaps think in terms of a single bar of 9/8? Perhaps my ideas here would result in music that sounds subtly different. I probably don't have a sufficiently good ear to pick up such a difference...


Technically, it could be written as 9/8, because there are 9 eighth notes/measure - but musically it is wrong, because the accents would fall in the wrong places


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I tried to experiment a bit with MuseScore, to see how various rhythmic patterns could work, only to find that I cannot work out how to change time signature within a piece...


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## Funny (Nov 30, 2013)

Cross rhythms and metric games are fun to listen to and fun to delve into, but let's bear in mind that classical music notation's way of putting these pulse relationships to paper is just one arbitrary convention, and a flawed one at that. A piece isn't "really" in 3/4 or 3/8 or 3/2, those are all equally valid shorthands to describe music where a strong pulse is felt every third beat. Similarly, saying something is in 6/8 rather than 3/4 or vice versa seems like a simple enough assertion - but when you start using cross-rhythms like the furiant does, it becomes pointless to argue which one the music is "really" in. 

Check out the first movement of Haydn's Symphony #28, which jockeys between 6/8 and 3/4 but with a more prevalent 6/8 feel (i.e. a two-beat pulse) that only seems to erode near the end when 3/4 (a three-beat pulse) becomes more prominent. Most of us would say it's "really" in 6/8, yet it's all written in 3/4 (maybe Haydn also couldn't figure out how to get the program to change time signatures in the course of a piece!). 

For this kind of music I suggest listening to and enjoying the interplay with your ears, to whatever extent it makes sense to you, rather than worrying about the perfect way to capture it in classical music notation, of which there really isn't one.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> Dvorak 6's Scherzo is also a Furiant. That mixed meter is even more clear in that one than the 9th


right. I already cited that - so is Slavonic Dance #8...I don't think Sym #9/III is a furiant..the rhythm pattern does not really fit.


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