![]() ![]() Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Rubato needs the framework of an inflexible beat from which it can depart and to which it must return. Such modifications of tempo, known as tempo rubato-i.e., “robbed time”-are part of the music’s character. In a loosely knit passage a tautening of tempo may be required in a crowded passage a slackening may be needed. It is impossible to adhere in a musical manner to the metronomic beat for any length of time. The tempo of a work is never inflexibly mathematical. A change within such limits does not affect the rhythmic structure of a work. In performance it is likely to vary according to the performer’s interpretative ideas or to such considerations as the size and reverberation of the hall, the size of the ensemble, and, to a lesser extent, the sonority of the instruments. The tempo of a piece of music indicated by a composer is, however, neither absolute nor final. The expressions slow tempo and quick tempo suggest the existence of a tempo that is neither slow nor fast but rather “ moderate.” A moderate tempo is assumed to be that of a natural walking pace (76 to 80 paces per minute) or of a heartbeat (72 per minute). The pace of the fundamental beat is called tempo (Italian: “time”). Just as one is aware of the body’s steady pulse, or heartbeat, so in composing, performing, or listening to music one is aware of a periodic succession of beats. The unit division of musical time is called a beat. Plato’s observation that rhythm is “an order of movement” provides a convenient analytical starting point. In music that has both harmony and melody, the rhythmic structure cannot be separated from them. Rhythm can exist without melody, as in the drumbeats of so-called primitive music, but melody cannot exist without rhythm. Whatever other elements a given piece of music may have (e.g., patterns in pitch or timbre), rhythm is the one indispensable element of all music. ![]() Unlike a painting or a piece of sculpture, which are compositions in space, a musical work is a composition dependent upon time. Theories requiring “ periodicity” as the sine qua non of rhythm are opposed by theories that include in it even nonrecurrent configurations of movement, as in prose or plainchant. As in the closely related subjects of verse and metre, opinions differ widely, at least among poets and linguists, on the nature and movement of rhythm. The notion of rhythm also occurs in other arts (e.g., poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture) as well as in nature (e.g., biological rhythms).Īttempts to define rhythm in music have produced much disagreement, partly because rhythm has often been identified with one or more of its constituent, but not wholly separate, elements, such as accent, metre, and tempo. In its most general sense, rhythm (Greek rhythmos, derived from rhein, “to flow”) is an ordered alternation of contrasting elements. Rhythm, in music, the placement of sounds in time.
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