# rhythm



## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Listening to Steve Reich's _Drumming_ put some questions in my mind.

Take something like Glass's _Aguas da Amazonia_. Probably not a great work, certainly not from the point of view that sees harmony as the essence of music. But pay attention to the rhythms at work there, and you'll hear it's not quite as effortless a composition as it might seem.

Interestingly, people were more shocked by the rhythmic innovations of Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_ than by the harmonies. I wonder if one reason subsequent discussion has focused more on the harmony than on the rhythms is that harmony is easier for most of us to talk about? Or just that harmony was central to the projects of composers like Schoenberg, and so it came to dominate the discussion?

Why has rhythm been relegated to a topic of secondary importance?

And, in the western classical tradition, what works have explored rhythm most creatively?


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Looking forward to see what develops here! As a guitarist, I have always been drawn toward the rhythm much more than leads. In classical, the rhythm is what I most often appreciate in symphonies and in concertos. I think we can choose to see it as being secondary but all one has to do is listen to the music we create to see just how important it is in music.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Not to derail the topic, but I have often noticed -- though never discussed -- that most of the great themes in classical music have not only a distinct melodic profile, but a distinct rhythm also. Try tapping out almost any well known theme from, say, a symphony, and note how many times you can actually identify the theme from its rhythm alone.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

science said:


> Interestingly, people were more shocked by the rhythmic innovations of Stravinsky's _Rite of Spring_ than by the harmonies. I wonder if one reason subsequent discussion has focused more on the harmony than on the rhythms is that harmony is easier for most of us to talk about? Or just that harmony was central to the projects of composers like Schoenberg, and so it came to dominate the discussion?


Rhythm was actually very important to Schoenberg's music, and, I believe, is one of the reasons why people so strenuously reject it. He and those who followed in his footsteps looked at rhythm from a very different perspective from Stravinsky or Messiaen. They would look at rhythm as a matter of subtracting or adding beats (or fractions thereof) to a measure, while Schoenberg saw rhythm as a way of developing motifs, of helping to distinguish elements in polyphony. So his motifs would run over the bar line, and frequently the bar lines don't make all that much sense in relation to the music, which had its own rhythmic impulse.

As a concrete example, the first movement of the String Quartet #3 begins with a measure-filling group of staccato eighth notes. These run under the movement throughout the "exposition". When the "development" arrives, the motif is reduced to six of these, but instead of changing the time signature/beat, they are allowed to run "over the bar line" and displace the rhythm.

In Stravinsky, this would usually be accompanied by a change in time signature, with accents to let the auditor know that this new rhythm was dominating.



> Why has rhythm been relegated to a topic of secondary importance?


Because classical music developed primarily from a melodic/harmonic standpoint. It is also important to note that rhythm is certainly not unimportant in classical music. Sometimes a motif is a rhythm i.e. Beethoven's 5th.



> And, in the western classical tradition, what works have explored rhythm most creatively?


Music by Stravinsky, Messiaen, Carter, Boulez, and Takemitsu (for allowing the pulse to disappear entirely).


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> Music by Stravinsky, Messiaen, Carter, Boulez, and Takemitsu (for allowing the pulse to disappear entirely).


You forgot the most important!:










, 




This concerto is an absolute masterpiece in terms of rhythm, since the times of Stravinsky I think nobody has made such revolutionary advances in rhythm like Ligeti.


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## Andreas (Apr 27, 2012)

It seems to me that a steady rhythm, a fixed time signature indeed used to be a cornerstone of classical music up until, say, Stravinsky and Bartok, notwithstanding the usual exceptions. Maybe the impressionists had even before that worked on a vanishing of rhythm, and perhaps even Wagner, too. But on the whole, classical music remained foot-tappable.

If Schoenberg was pushing an emancipation of dissonance, maybe Stravinsky was pushing an emancipation of rhythm.

Anyway, I'm wondering, with many advanced rhythmic techniques - irregular rhythms, polyrhythms, phase shifting - since, is writing music nowadays with a steady, discernable rhythm akin to writing in traditional tonality?

A discernable rhythm is obviously no requirement for music. Pieces like Atmosphères or Threnody seem to prove that. However, an absence of a discernable rhythm seems to push the music toward a hovering, ambient-like quality. Which, of course, is perfectly fine.

However, I also feel that rhythm is the most essentially musical quality of music, as it is by far its strongest organizing (and therefore most artifical) element. The most human element, perhaps, one could also say. That is, of human design.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Listen to any of the Mendelssohn scherzos from his chamber and orchestral music. Masterful, infectious rhythms.


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## Alypius (Jan 23, 2013)

A great topic. Glad to see this thread revived. Stravinsky was the composer whose music first caught my ear when I was a teenager and first drew me into exploring classical music. And what first grabbed me was his exuberant rhythmic creativity. Polyrhythms have been much less central to the development of the Western classical tradition than it has been either to American jazz or to many folk traditions around the world (e.g. West African drumming; Balinese gamelan music). My sense is that Western classical composers have tended to concentrate their creativity elsewhere (e.g., developing enormously sophisticated melodic counterpoint / polyphony and harmonic sequences and orchestral tone colors). Such a generalization is risky, I realize, since polyrhythms play a certain role in Renaissance music and there is certainly enormous rhythmic sophistication in 18th and 19th composers, whether Bach or Beethoven (esp. certain quartets and piano sonatas). In any case, it's clear that rhythm finally took center stage in the Western art music tradition in the early 20th century with Stravinsky and Bartok. And as Science noted in the opening post, with the minimalists, especially, with Steve Reich (who, I've read, began his career as a jazz drummer), rhythmic explorations became central. 

Here's a list of works that I find in which rhythm exercising a central place, out front (arranged chronologically):

Maurice Ravel: String Quartet in F major, mvts. II & IV (1903)
Claude Debussy: "Golliwog's Cake Walk," from Children’s Corner (1908)
Serge Prokofiev: Piano Sonata #2 in D minor, mvts. II & IV (1912)
Igor Stravinsky: Sacre du printemps (1913)
Sergei Prokofiev: Piano Concerto #2, mvts. II & IV (1913)
Igor Stravinsky: L’histoire de soldat (1918)
Heitor Villa-Lobos: Choros #10 (‘Rasga o Caroção) (note: 2nd half with chorus) (1926)
Béla Bartók: String Quartet #4, mvt. IV & V (1928)
Maurice Ravel: Piano Concerto in G (1931)
Béla Bartók: String Quartet #5 (1934)
Béla Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936)
Béla Bartók: Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, Sz. 110 (1937)
Silvestre Revueltas: Sensemayá (1938)
John Cage: Bacchanale, for prepared piano (1940)
Lou Harrison: Suite for Percussion (1942)
Aaron Copland: Rodeo, mvt. 4: "HoeDown" (1942)
Igor Stravinsky: Symphony in Three Movements (1945)
Darius Milhaud: Concerto for Marimba and Vibraphone, op. 278 (1947)
Igor Stravinsky: Agon (1957)
Terry Riley: In C (1964)
Steve Reich: Drumming (1971)
Steve Reich: Clapping Music (1972)
Iannis Xenakis: Psappha (1975)
Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians (1976)
Arvo Pärt: Tabula Rasa (1976)
Iannis Xenakis: Pleiades, for 6 percussionists (1979)
Lou Harrison: Double Concerto for Violin and Cello with Javanese Gamelan (1982)
György Ligeti: Études for piano (1985)
Steve Reich: Six Marimbas (1986)
Iannis Xenakis: Rebonds (1988)
Toru Takemitsu: From me flow what you call time (1990) (concerto for 5 percussionists)
Joseph Schwantner: Percussion Concerto (1994)
Charles Wuorinen: Percussion Quartet (1994)
Philip Glass: Symphony no. 3 (esp. mvt. II) (1995)
John Adams: Century Rolls (1996)
John Adams: Hallelujah Junction (1996)
John Adams: Dharma at Big Sur (esp. Mvt. II) (2003)
Jennifer Higdon: Percussion Concerto (2005)
Michael Daugherty: Raise the Roof (for timpani and orchestra) (2007)
Steve Reich: Double Sextet (2007)
Einojuhani Rautavaara: Percussion Concerto (“Incantations”) (2008)
Dobrinka Tabakova: Concerto for Violincello and Strings (2008)
Bryce Dessner: String Quartet (2013)

I look forward to seeing what others post (esp. in 18th and 19th century music).


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Rhythm is something I'm quite interested right now because two of the composers I'm listening to - Grisey and Ferneyhough - use it in interesting ways. I think changes in rhythm was an essential part of Grisey's ideas about perceived time, and it's been interesting to listen to Le noir de l'étoile, which is a long percussion piece, from this point of view. 

As far as Ferneyhough is concerned, in the more recent music, well the rhythms change all the time it's hard to grasp them. But I think he's a master at that - at elusiveness, at music which doesn't quite live long enough to relish, like something ineffable.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

Please note that Brahms was nearly obsessive about writing through the bar-line and in many ways obscuring it.


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## Jobis (Jun 13, 2013)

Mahlerian is right; I think Schoenberg deserves more credit for his use of rhythm. It's incredibly subtle and brilliant. 

I feel like Wagner was a weird precursor to the kind of driving 'pulse' rhythms of the minimalists, I mean just listen to the Act I prelude of Die Walkure or the intensely rhythmic theme of the nibelungs working as Wotan and Loge descend to nibelheim in Das Rheingold.


I should add that Sofia Gubaidulina is a composer who thought that in the 20th and 21st centuries rhythm would be the most significant aspect of CM, as harmony had been of the greatest significance in the 18th and 19th centuries, and polyphonic or single monophonic line in earlier times.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Mahlerian said:


> Music by Stravinsky, Messiaen, Carter, Boulez, and Takemitsu (for allowing the pulse to disappear entirely).


*Mahlerian, what do you think of Lutosławski's use rhythm in his Symphony No. 4?*


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