|
|
|
|
|
|
the first, and other variants corresponding to those of iambic: , etc. Again, the first half of the bar was taken as the thesis and the second half as the arsis.29 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
However, a trochaic sequence, when continued to a pause, almost always ends , that is, with an iambic close, and from one point of view trochaic rhythm is identical with iambic, only with the bar-lines shifted one place to the right, or, to put it in ancient terms, with the feet or metra differently demarcated. It was natural to adopt this alternative segmentation when the sequence began . . ., even if it was to end . . . . In beginning so, composers were seeking a different effect from that of : a more 'downhill' effect, which they often emphasized by means of word-ends coinciding with the trochaic bar-lines. It was felt as a running or tripping rhythm, and the name 'trochaic' expresses this.30 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The third rhythmic genus recognized by Aristotle and Aristoxenus is the paeonic, in which the thesis and arsis are in the durational ratio 2 : 3. This is quintuple time, something not very familiar in Western music but well known in the folk music of Eastern Europe and elsewhere.31 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In the Archaic and Classical periods this rhythm was normally expressed in the note-patterns and , rarely. According to Aristides Quintilianus the first long note constituted the thesis and the rest of the foot the arsis. Others, however, divide , and say that either part may be the thesis.32 Paeonic rhythm was associated with an energetic form of dance, and while we have |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
29 According to Arislid. Quint. p. 38. 4. But in 47 POxy. 3162 it was apparently marked the other way round. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
30 Damon ap. Pl. Resp. 400b, cf. Ion, TrGF 19 F 42, Arist. Rh. 1408b36, Anon. Ambros. p. 223. 2ff. Stud., etc. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
31 Finns, Tatars, Turks, Hungarians, Bulgarians, Russians, Basques; in modern Greek song, Georgiades 21-5, 80-2, 161; S. Baud-Bovy, La Chanson populaire grecque du Dodécanèse (Paris, 1935); Essai sur la chanson populaire grecque (Nauplia, 1983), 5f.; cf. Sachs, RT 93f., 126. Russian composers have sometimes used this type of rhythm in concert music, for example Tchaikovsky in the second movement of his Pathétique symphony and Rachmaninov in his tone poem The Isle of the Dead. For other occasional examples in the Western musical tradition see Sachs, 340-4; NG XV. 512f. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
32 Aristid. Quint. p. 37. 6; Anon. Ambros. p. 227. 12 Stud.; 'Mar. Vict.' (Aphth.) Gramm. Lat. vi. 41. 2. |
|
|
|
|
|