Dactyl, Anapest Or Spondee

OscarP wrote:

Question, considering 4 beats, if the scanning of the accents is F F F D, are we talking about Dactyl, Anapest or Spondee?

Thank you

None of the three: the metric feet are in four beats and this is (optimistically) in five.

Dactyl is short short long (u u __ ), Spondee is long long ( __ __ ), Anapest is long short short ( __ u u).

However, there probably exists some variation from which you can trace Beethoven's Fifth, take a look here:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dattilo_%28metrica%29

I do not know the context, but thinking about classical quantitative metrics (I am referring to Greek poetry), specifically in relation to the “quantity” of syllables, they could be short (ٮ) or long (―) and the grouping of long and short syllables constituted the feet.

Short syllables build the “time” and, based on this, there are feet of:

2 beats Pyrrhic

3 beats Trochee and Iamb

4 beats Dactyl, Anapest and Spondee

5 beats Bacchius

6 beats Molossus

The combination of various feet gave rise to verses: dactylic hexameter, dactylic pentameter, archilochean, glycine, adonic

Other components of the classical foot are “arsis” (or weak part) and “thesis” (or strong part) of the foot; this applies to music and Greek quantitative poetry, whereas the opposite occurs in late Latin accentual metrics.

Curiosity.. shouldn't Beethoven's Fifth, metrically, be D D D F ( u u u __ )?

Zedef wrote:

Curiosity.. shouldn't Beethoven's Fifth, metrically, be D D D F ( u u u __ ) ?

Are we referring to the theme of the first movement?