Rhythm: European Conception of Rhythm Versus That of Other Cultures

In my opinion, over the centuries, there has been an increasingly progressive mastery of the means.

I can offer you a starting point regarding harmony (since you mention it): if you notice, the harmonic rhythm has progressively slowed down, because the ability to play with other elements allowed everything not to be based solely on this component. Clearly, it was necessary to emancipate oneself also at the level of the ear.

Harmonic rhythm is the speed of chord changes, which, if you notice, has undergone an increasingly progressive slowing down.

In Bach it is very fast, in Beethoven it is much slower, think of Wagner (there is a piece practically all in Eb)... and finally Grisey.... with spectralism.

What can you play with if you are on a single chord? With other components of music, one of which is rhythm.

You will understand that only a detachment from tonality can allow you to do anything with rhythm; having only one chord is a great simplification.

Obviously the 20th century, which it seems you want to exclude, but it is a century of music... moved precisely in this direction...

I hope this helps... a vast topic that is difficult to dismiss in two words

My discourse refers to polyrhythm versus homorhythm: one example could be comparing a Bach invention that has a "linear" rhythm with a piece of a polyrhythmic nature, for example, a jazz piece.

Jazz, which is polyrhythmic and polymetric music, has a conception of shifting accents compared to classical music: let me explain better.

The rhythm of classical music is based on the conception of accents: F d Mf d. Whereas jazz does not have this concept: it has in its rhythm a component that classical music (understood as the conception of accents I mentioned previously) generally does not have, namely syncopated time.

A few lines of a post can cause confusion: I recommend searching for Mike Longo on Google.

camy86 wrote:

My argument refers to polyrhythm versus homorhythm: one example could be comparing a Bach invention that has a "linear" rhythm with a piece of a polyrhythmic nature, for example, a jazz piece.

Jazz, which is polyrhythmic and polymetric music, has a conception of shifting accents compared to classical music: let me explain better.

The rhythm of classical music is based on the conception of accents: F d Mf d. Whereas jazz does not have this concept: it has in its rhythm a component that classical music (understood as the conception of accents I mentioned previously) generally does not have, namely syncopated time.

What sense is there in comparing music separated by 3 centuries? Try taking a look at Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring"... and making a comparison between the classical world and the Jazz world of that time... and from there, step by step up to the present day.

The rhythm of classical music has not been based on the conception of accents: F d Mf d for almost a century... as it happens, precisely since Jazz also began to gain ground.

If you exclude the 20th century a priori, Jazz is automatically excluded

camy86 wrote:

A few lines of a post can cause confusion: I recommend searching for Mike Longo on Google.

From wiki

Michael Josef "Mike" Longo (born March 19, 1939 in Cincinnati, Ohio)

Could it be a coincidence, 1939?

camy86 wrote:

with the exception of the '900

...previous examples? Perhaps one needs to look to the East

I am not so sure that the harmonic rhythm slowed down in a constant and homogeneous way... I mean, okay, there are Bachian situations where harmonies change on eighth notes, but that Bach is an exception is told to you by all the rest of the music being made during that period.

It's a difficult subject to treat, anyway. Full of insights. And, contradicting myself immediately, I say that even if the harmonic rhythm probably did not slow down in a homogeneous way, it seems possible to say that the richness of the rhythmic and metric patterns of the Renaissance and the Baroque was progressively lost. That, yes. I mean, I think so. The dozens of different dances, of "secular" vocal and instrumental styles, the still living memory of contrapuntal procedures with direct rhythmic consequences, such as suspensions, imitations, polyphonies of well-defined melodic profiles. All that which is crackling and joyful in Mozart, for example, which in my opinion, and probably according to contemporaries as well, can be considered archaic or folk-like

responses were added in the meantime :-)

We are paying close attention to the dates until the very end. Jazz is not a constant thing; there have been styles, evolutions, and influences. When I have time, I go looking for Russian things from the late 1800s, because I think we can find interesting ones well before jazz arrived.

I understand Thallo, but reading the history at a high level and "purifying" it from exceptions, the tendency is the one I described (I know well that it is a huge simplification). Think about it, if you compress the harmonies in Beethoven... you practically have Bach

If you skim through some sonatas, they are a festival of the Neapolitan sixth, etc.

... not by chance do some spectralists claim to have been born from Wagner

it really changes the perspective... Bach changes harmonies, not keys, for example. That is, he does not make particularly wide use of modulations. But the arrival of large sonata forms brings modulation to play a fundamental role that was not present in Bach. Bach often moves but only slightly; Liszt perhaps moves more slowly but goes very far.

Let us not forget, then, that the harmonic rhythm we are talking about is a concept that changes its connotations if applied to counterpoint or tonal writing. Contrapuntal writing forces you to change quickly, while harmonic writing gives you much more freedom. But, again, when Wagner or Schumann change chords, they make drastic changes that perhaps have a greater weight on our perception of rhythm. Because performing V-I twenty times in 8 measures doesn't change much; changing 4 keys, however, makes the experience of time much more animated and suspended.

Perhaps it would be interesting to understand what sensations the variations in harmonic rhythm bring.

I leave a link to a very famous Wagnerian piece, the prelude to "Parsifal", a piece that I have always considered very Bachian, inspired by the chorale style.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ3yTbvwjkI

Open content (youtube)

thallo wrote:

responses were added in the meantime :-)

We must pay close attention to the dates until the very end. Jazz is not a constant thing; there have been styles, evolutions, and influences. When I have time, I go looking for Russian things from the late '800s, because in my opinion we can find interesting ones well before jazz arrived.

Without overthinking it, one can talk about ragtime, but I am curious to hear those pieces. It is a precursor to jazz and syncopated time. In fact, the bass generally has homorhythmic figures while the melody is written with accents shifted relative to the classical conception of rhythm.

So, speaking more simply of a ragtime piano piece in 2/4, we have:

homorhythmic left hand (usually eighths or quarters played on the strong accents) + right hand with syncopated rhythm = polyrhythm.

Now I don't know if I am saying something obvious, regardless of the polyrhythm, but I was never taught any other type of approach besides the classical one. This opened me up and explained better to me what rhythm is.

Let's take a simple triplet as an example: to me, and I think to almost everyone, they taught us to say one-two-three, in order to understand the rhythm and be able to solfège it.

Then, instead, after starting to associate words or syllables that are musical, the rhythmic sequence has a different and more musical meaning: the rhythm therefore assumes a behavioral attitude, in addition to a mathematical division.

For example, in India, they teach ta-ca-ti instead of one-two-three.

A book I recommend where I learned this concept is

How To Sight Read Jazz and Syncopated Type Rhythms - Mike Longo

So, for every rhythmic figure, instead of saying the usual thing, a succession of syllables is associated, which varies from individual to individual, in order to identify each rhythmic figure. From the syncopation to the quintuplet.

P.s. I hope I haven't written too much nonsense, and on the contrary, I urge you to correct or integrate what I have written.

I don't remember in which Brahms ballad there is an entire page of 2 against 3....

Chopin's Etude op. 25 no. 2 is also quite polyrhythmic...

Variation no. 16 from Beethoven's Variations in C minor, sixteenth-note quadruplets against eighth-note triplets

Variation no. 32 from the same Variations in C minor, irregular groups of 7 against thirty-second-note quadruplets!

In jazz, I would look for polyrhythm especially in latin jazz or in actual latin music.

A piece regarding this: Herbie Hancock - Succotash!

ciao

micamahler wrote:

I don't remember in which Brahms ballad there is an entire page of 2 against 3....

Studying Chopin's op. 25 no. 2 is also quite polyrhythmic...

Variation no. 16 from Beethoven's Variations in C minor, sixteenth-note quadruplets against eighth-note triplets

Variation no. 32 from the same Variations in C minor, irregular groups of 7 against thirty-second-note quadruplets!

In fact, I said in general; then it is clear that there are exceptions.

However, polyrhythm is present in swing and bebop, not just in Latin rhythms.

What I want to emphasize is that in jazz, unlike the conception of traditional rhythm with strong and weak accents, there are only strong accents distributed in a way that gives the rhythm a non-repetitive flow compared to what it is in classical music.

Let's say in a certain type of jazz, not in all jazz.

Regarding the Indian rhythmic conception, I studied it for my thesis and, as far as I know, the first influences in the West were actually in classical music. Minimalists, as usual, specifically La Monte Young and Terry Riley (so, very early '60s). I emphasize that I am referring only to rhythm, because if we talk about other elements, then the Indian influence starts earlier.

The Indian musical metric conception is not divisive but additive. The Western system divides a piece into measures and the measures into fractions, assigning an accentual weight (strong or weak) to each beat of the fraction. So, I take a cake (which already has its shape) and divide it into slices, deciding which slice will have powdered sugar on top and which won't :-) Indians, instead, reason directly in beats, making long rows distributed according to rhythmic patterns called Tala. It's like baking muffins instead of making cakes; you reason in single portions and can decide from time to time how many muffins to put and which ones to pour the decoration on.

This also leads to extreme consequences that I would never be able to explain to you... because, obviously, the complexity arises when one starts dividing or overlapping rhythm upon rhythm :-)

camy86 wrote:

What I want to emphasize is that in jazz, unlike the conception of traditional rhythm with strong and weak accents, there are only strong accents distributed in a way that gives the rhythm a non-repetitive flow as it is in classical music.

I am not so convinced. Syncopation has always existed. Its effect is played out, produced precisely as a consequence of the fact that in our brain there exists an innate idea of rhythmic regularity. The sensation of surprise, of energy, is released from the deception that syncopation plays on this "rhythmic feeling": we expect a weak beat and instead the accent arrives.

All this has always existed in Western music. For example, in Renaissance music, hemiola (the transition from binary to ternary subdivision) was a widespread stylistic device in cadences. What has changed is the use that, over the centuries and across genres, has been made of "surprise rhythmic variations."

Therefore, I do not find it correct to distinguish between jazz and classical. It is, however, quite correct to distinguish different historical eras. And obviously different cultural contexts (we know how different Indian music is from ours).

I'm sharing this, I also wanted to mention hemiola.

I'll add that I find bebop rhythm to be as repetitive as an Alberti bass, but those are just opinions...

Polyrhythm in Latin is decidedly more predominant compared to traditional jazz; you only need to see any concert by Camilo or Valdez or anyone else to see how much space the rhythm takes up compared to usual!

I would add that I don't find it very sensible to say that jazz (of the 20th century) contains polyrhythm while classical music (up to the 1800s) does not; it seems like a bit of a missed comparison.

it's a bit like saying: in Ravel I find chords that I don't find in Bach.

I believe you!

The muffin example is beautiful! In fact, that's exactly what I mean!

In the European tradition of counting one and two and three and four: in other conceptions, the rhythm is not like that.

As Claudio said, the European principle (the classical one) is divisive, while the non-European one (African, Indian, etc.) is additive. And they are two totally different approaches to conceiving rhythm.

The repetitiveness of the Alberti bass, in my opinion, cannot be compared to bebop: the way boppers play is based on the non-repetition of phrasing using syncopated rhythmic cells that are different from one another.

Sorry, but I don't understand the point of comparing the galant style and a Jazz Style...

Since he was talking about jazz and classical music, I also took elements from one and the other. I mentioned the Alberti bass to give an example of "rhythm" in comparison with a bebop drum kit in a fast tempo. It was a huge generalization. Obviously, a Parker solo has greater rhythmic variety than an Alberti bass...

That being said, that there are differences between the European world and the African world (for example), this is quite true, but I continue to think that comparing the rhythmic aspect of jazz with that of classical music that does not go beyond the 1800s is like saying:

- In general, the harmonic conception of ragtime—without counting what came after it, such as bop, modal, or whatever else—has remained little developed. -

or yet

- In general, the harmonic conception of jazz—without counting, for example, Miles Davis and those who came after him—has remained little developed -

I conclude: if you take Mahler's Ninth Symphony, I wonder where one perceives a repetitive pattern....