Rhythm and Meter: Discussion

When analyzing the rhythm and meter of a contemporary choral piece, it is important to keep in mind that the experience of meter and rhythm can be decidedly different for the listener and for the performer. The performers of music understand the rhythm through the bias of what is notated in the sheet music. Assuming the audience is not made up of individuals who are familiar with the sheet music, they might have a similar sense of meter to what the performers have, or it could be different. If there is a steady beat that repeats in regular intervals in the melody, the accompaniment, or any other part of the musical ensemble, the listener uses this to form their expectation of how the piece will progress metrically. They expect strong beats to happen at predictable times, for beats to be subdivided similarly throughout, and for the rhythm/phrasing of the piece to move on the stronger beats. Since the audiences’ experience of meter and rhythm can be different than the performers, these can and ought to be interpreted meaningfully.Both the composer and the performers have the opportunity to satisfy or subvert metrical expectations in their own right. The composer has the option to place accented syllables or new notes in places between regular beats, which is known as syncopation. Syncopation feels different to listeners, however, based on whether the beat is clear or not. (“She Lingers On” by Zanaida Robles in the following Applications section demonstrates an example without a clearly audible beat.) In other instances, a conductor or performer might choose to hold a fermata for a long/short time, or to stretch out/speed up phrases, playing against what the listener expects as well. (See “Even When He Is Silent” By Kim Andre-Arnesen in the following applications section.)

The sheet music will likely have a notated time signature which divides measures into beat and subdivisions of those beats. This might suggest a regular or irregular beat pattern, regular or mixed subdivisions in a measure, or it might change time signature suddenly so as to impair the predictability of a meter. In its application, notated time signature and heard meter are two potentially different things. It must be acknowledged that there are various different ways to notate the same rhythm. For example, it is impossible to tell by listening alone whether a piece is in 4/4, 4/8, or even 4/16. So while it is impossible to tell with 100% certainty what the written time signature is for a piece without looking at it, a sense of meter is much more attainable. Meter can be identified by observing the subdivision of a beat (simple, compound, mixed, etc.) and the number of strong beats grouped together (duple, triple, quadruple, etc.) The purpose of the two numbers written as the time signature is to give the performer a sense of meter with which to understand the piece. There are many ways of writing music that play against the listener’s sense of meter, and of course there is nothing to say that the time signature cannot change from one measure to the next.

As a conductor or performer, one must be familiar with the point of view of the audience as well as themselves. When choosing how to shape the phrase of the piece, one can highlight different aspects of music by placing stress on certain notes or gliding through them. You can execute difficult passages by emphasizing where strong beats are, slowing down/speeding up slightly, or not. You can choose to bring out moving, rhythmic lines from the texture, or draw attention to some other aspect of the music. Most of these interpretive decisions are rooted in the text/mood of the overall piece. It is extremely important to understand all these perspectives and the motivation behind them to help all parties to have the most enriching experience possible.