|
|
|
|
|
|
|
rhythms, and we can supplement it from indications in the musical texts, where the arsis is often marked by dots above the note-symbols. This evidence will be cited later when particular rhythms are discussed. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
There is an obvious analogy betwen these 'feet', as Greek writers call them, with their arsis and thesis, and the 'bars' with up-beats and down-beats by which most Western music of recent centuries is conventionally measured out. In transcribing the ancient musical documents into modern notation it will be convenient to treat the 'feet' as bars and to place bar-lines accordingly. But it is important to note certain differences between these Greek bars and those to which the modern musician is accustomed. He will think of a bar as containing a certain number of beats (two, three, four, or whatever) which are equally spaced and which do not necessarily coincide with the start of a note; and he will think of the first one as being the down-beat, perhaps associated with some kind of accent. In the Greek method of beating time, the beat-cycle is constituted from elements which may be of unequal duration, and are practically always coextensive with a note or a group of notes; the down portion may follow the up portion rather than precede it. Where it does follow it, it might seem appropriate to shift our bar-lines so that the down-beat comes at the beginning of a bar, as in Example 5.1. But this prejudices the ques- |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
tion whether the ancient down-beat had any kind of accentual significance; it makes what are certainly four measures into more than four; and it obscures the identity of the units perceived by the ancients. It is surely preferable to mark out the measures which they recognized as such, when we can identify them. We must just bear in mind that this demarcation does not carry any implication of a dynamic accent at any particular point.15 There is no reason why we |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
15 Jaap Kunst, after recommending ethnomusicologists transcribing exotic melodies to use bar-lines 'for the sake of legibility . . . where the rhythm seems to call for' them, observes 'No doubt one will frequently feel, when tackling the same phonogram some days later, an inclination to distribute the bar-lines differently. The reason for this is the fact that accentuation in the music of many exotic peoples is |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
(Footnote continued on next page) |
|
|
|
|
|
