Works in Odd Time Signatures
Dan Thedens
to find my way through the VAST repertoire.
I particularly like music played in odd time signatures
(five, seven, eleven, etc) among the non-classical music
I listen to. Among the classical works I do have, Holst's
The Planets and some Stravinsky (Firebird Suite) are ones I
have found to my liking.
Can anyone suggest/recommend classical works having odd numbered or
otherwise unusual meters?
=====================================================================
Dan Thedens
Cardiovascular Image Processing Lab
University of Iowa
" " : John Cage 4'33"
=====================================================================
David Brooks
|> Can anyone suggest/recommend classical works having odd numbered or
|> otherwise unusual meters?
I find that both Ravel and Holst could write in 7/4 and 5/4 and have the
rhythm seem natural and unforced. Try the former's Daphnis and Chloe --
the final dance is mostly in 5, and there's a gorgeous dance early in the
ballet (not in the suites) in 7.
Holst's Perfect Fool suite (now recommended twice in 2 days :-), and, if
you like to hear voices trying it, Hymn of Jesus, have some extended bits
in odd meters.
And, of course, there's the Take Five Waltz from Tchaikovsky's 6th
symphony.
Mmmm... conductor story: when <name> (I forget; may have been Toscanini)
was shown the score of Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta,
he said "Looks like Tombola".
From the nature of your query, I guess you'd rather hear tonal music.
There's any amount of new stuff out there with complex meters. I even read
a book on notation once that recommended writing arrhythmic music in 5, to
avoid any attempt by the players to impose a regular pulse.
--
David Brooks dbr...@osf.org
Systems Engineering, OSF uunet!osf.org!dbrooks
Destroy the environment and public health systems: vote Libertarian in 1992.
Christop...@cs.cmu.edu
in evoking an image of the boat being rowed slowly into the isle in the
dark of night.
I'd recommend Ashkenazy/Concertgebouw on London.
-chris
Chris Brewster
Can anyone suggest/recommend classical works having odd numbered or
otherwise unusual meters?
Odd meters are most interesting (to me) when the odd number is *within* what we
normally consider a beat. Folk music in Bulgaria, Rumania, and Hungary uses
this quite a bit, and nationalist composers such as Bartok have incorporated it.
Also listen to Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares (the biggest hit in ethnomusicology;
I recommend volume 2). Prokofiev subdivides a slow beat into five in the finale
of (I think) his Fifth. Harry Partch is also strong on odd subdivisions.
Chris Brewster
c...@cray.com
GEnie: C.BREWSTER7
peter d. mark
>I am relative newcomer to the classical music world, and am trying
>to find my way through the VAST repertoire.
>
>I particularly like music played in odd time signatures
>(five, seven, eleven, etc) among the non-classical music
>I listen to. Among the classical works I do have, Holst's
>The Planets and some Stravinsky (Firebird Suite) are ones I
>have found to my liking.
>
>Can anyone suggest/recommend classical works having odd numbered or
>otherwise unusual meters?
this topic comes up from time to time. lots of people will mention
tchaikovsky's 6th symphony 3rd movement (sounds like a waltz but is
actually in 5). mentioned less, but equally or more interesting is
a part of copland's billy the kid which alternates measures in 5/4
with measures in 4/4, so if you like, you can view the music as being
in 9. also, parts of bernstein's clarinet sonata are in 5. i'm sure
more examples will come to mind later.
if you really want to hear unusual (and wonderful) time signatures,
check out bulgarian folkdance music! there are all sorts of rhythms
[kopanitsa (in 11), lesnoto (in 7)] built up from combining measures
of 2 beats and measures of 3.
peter
p...@cs.uoregon.edu
Ralph Becker-Szendy
>I particularly like music played in odd time signatures
>(five, seven, eleven, etc) among the non-classical music
>I listen to. Among the classical works I do have, Holst's
>The Planets and some Stravinsky (Firebird Suite) are ones I
>have found to my liking.
>Dan Thedens
>Cardiovascular Image Processing Lab
>University of Iowa
Middle movement of Tchaikovsky 6th is a valse-like dance in 5. Done
so nicely most people never notice it is in 3 until you point it
out to them.
Similar query: There are very few cases where the length of the
fundamental phrase (or main theme or whatever you want to call it) is
not 4 or 8 bars. Notable exception: The theme by Haydn (from one of
the cassations for wind instruments, if I'm not completely mistaken)
which Brahms used for the variations op. 53. One easily notices the
"restlessness" of the theme (and ensueing variations), but it takes a
while to figure out that the theme is 5 bars long.
--
Ralph Becker-Szendy RA...@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center RA...@SLACVM.BITNET
M.S. 95, P.O. Box 4349, Stanford, CA 94309 (415)926-2701
My opinion. This is not SLAC, Stanford U, or the US DoE speaking. Just me.
Roger Lustig
>In article <99...@ns-mx.uiowa.edu> the...@cipl.uiowa.edu (Dan Thedens)
>Similar query: There are very few cases where the length of the
>fundamental phrase (or main theme or whatever you want to call it) is
>not 4 or 8 bars.
Quite untrue. Listen to more Haydn!
> Notable exception: The theme by Haydn (from one of
>the cassations for wind instruments, if I'm not completely mistaken)
Actually, the "Haydn" part is the doubtful part. We don't know who
wrote it; the attribution to Haydn is sketchy, to say the least.
>which Brahms used for the variations op. 53.
56, but who's counting? 8-)
> One easily notices the
>"restlessness" of the theme (and ensueing variations), but it takes a
>while to figure out that the theme is 5 bars long.
Lots of irregular phrases. The Elvira MAdigan theme in K. 467 is 3 + 3.
Roger
Karl supersede Henning
>Can anyone suggest/recommend classical works having odd numbered or
>otherwise unusual meters?
You've mentioned Holst's /Planets/ ("Mars", 5/4) and Stravinsky's
/Firebird/ ("Finale", 7/4); others have mentioned Tchaikovsky's
faux waltz from the "Pathetique" (5/4), and Ravel's /Daphnis/
(5/4 and 7/4).
The "Promenade" in Musorgsky's /Pictures/ has measures of 5/4
interspersed with 6/4. Stravinsky's /Petrushka/ contains a
wealth of cross-metrical games: in Scene 1, there are bits
where the different parts of the orchestra play in 5/8 against
2/4, 7/8 against 3/4, &c.; and in Scene 3, there is the
famous (or oughtta be) juxtaposition of the ballerina's trite
waltz against the moor's plodding-yet-exotic 4/4. And of course
I really oughtn't consume bandwidth with /Le sacre/ ....
Stravinsky continued to wreak wondrous rhythmic havoc throughout
his career; lord love a duck.
Prokofiev's second violin concerto has a marvelous 7/4 episode
in the third movement (subdivided 2+3+2!); the third (and last)
movement of the seventh piano sonata is basically in 7 as well.
Shostakovich began to dabble in 5's and 7's in some of the
movements of the 14th symphony.
Bartok drew from muscular folk rhythms for many pieces; sometimes
"mis"-subdividing 4/4 as 3+3+2/8, sometimes extending this to 11/8
(3+3+2+3/8), as in the Contrasts for violin, clarinet & piano; but
this happens in some parts of the Music for strings, percussion &
celesta, the Concerto for orchestra, and the later quartets as well,
for example.
For the second theme of the overture to /Candide/, Bernstein
alternated so regularly between 2 bars of 2/2 plus a bar of 3/2,
that he might well have barred it in 7/2.
In one of the movements of Grainger's /Lincolnshire Posy/ for
symphonic band, the brass play homorhythmic chords through a
passage mysteriously bereft of barlines, and which would in
fact defy barring in, say, 4/4 ....
The third movement of Hindemith's Symphony "Mathis der Maler"
begins with a unison string line which, although included in
a bar of 4/4, is non-metrical. Part of the "Turandot" Scherzo
of the /Symphonic Metamorphoses on Themes of Carl Maria von Weber/
is in 5 (winding down towards the end). And the second part
of the Concert Music for strings & brass, Op. 50, has an accompaniment
figure in 5/8 chugging against the 4/4 melody (although here the
eighth-notes are the same value, which is not true of the example
from /Petrushka/, above).
"Putnam's Camp" from Ives' /3 Places in New England/ plays
rich rhythmical and metrical games at times, just so you
don't think everybody's marching in step ....
Messiaen used a peculiar "additive notation" system to create
rhythmical asymmetry, which he could have notated in meters,
had he so chosen. Examples abound in his Quartet for the End
of Time, among other pieces.
Schoenberg's /A Survivor from Warsaw/, on the other hand, is
in 4/4 in its entirety.
kph
--
"On the occasion of a concert of my pupils' works, a particularly sharp-eared
critic defined a piece ... -- the harmony of which, as can be proved, is barely
more complex than Schubert -- as the product of my evil influence." Schoenberg
Jon Conrad
>For the second theme of the overture to /Candide/, Bernstein
>alternated so regularly between 2 bars of 2/2 plus a bar of 3/2,
>that he might well have barred it in 7/2.
And within the operetta, he did indeed bar it in 7: the duet "Oh Happy
We," the source for this theme, is predominantly in 7/4. (I guess that
in the overture, he was committed to a half-note beat, and figured that
so unusual-looking a meter as 7/2 would waste more rehearsal time than
it was worth.)
Jon Alan Conrad
Robert Coren
|> Similar query: There are very few cases where the length of the
|> fundamental phrase (or main theme or whatever you want to call it) is
|> not 4 or 8 bars. Notable exception: The theme by Haydn (from one of
|> the cassations for wind instruments, if I'm not completely mistaken)
|> which Brahms used for the variations op. 53. One easily notices the
|> "restlessness" of the theme (and ensueing variations), but it takes a
|> while to figure out that the theme is 5 bars long.
|>
Likewise the Brahms Intermezzo in c# minor, Op. 117 #3. With a very
small number of exceptions, this entire piece is in 5-bar phrases.
Robert
Noam Elkies
>ralph (Ralph Becker-Szendy), in article <30...@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU>:
>|> Similar query: [odd phrase lengths; Example: "Brahms-Haydn" variations]
>
>Likewise the Brahms Intermezzo in c# minor, Op. 117 #3. With a very
>small number of exceptions, this entire piece is in 5-bar phrases.
...and likewise his Eb Rhapsody Op.119#4 which came up in the Maj -> Min thread
(though here some sections do have 4-measure groupings).
--Noam D. Elkies (el...@zariski.harvard.edu)
Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
Richard Carnes
>In article <30...@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU> ra...@unixhub.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Ralph Becker-Szendy) writes:
>
>>Similar query: There are very few cases where the length of the
>>fundamental phrase (or main theme or whatever you want to call it) is
>>not 4 or 8 bars.
>
>Quite untrue. Listen to more Haydn!
Indeed, and the later works of Mozart as well are full of hypermetric
subtlety and freedom; check out THE MAGIC FLUTE. And Roger mentions:
>The Elvira MAdigan theme in K. 467 is 3 + 3.
(Roger is, of course, referring to the sublime principal theme of the
slow movement of Mozart's best-known C-major piano concerto.) It's
more than that: it's 3 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 3 + 3. Observe that the high
note of the whole theme, the D-flat, occurs precisely at the midpoint:
the first bar of the 5-bar phrase (which is in the minor mode). (And
please note that the appoggiatura (A-G) in the latter 3 + 3 group
should be played as a QUARTER note, not an eighth.)
Mozart's C Major String Quintet begins with
5 + 5 + [10] + 5 + 5 + ?
The 10-bar group can be divided in different ways; note that its last
measure is a measure of rest: it sounds like a fermata but it actually
fits into the hypermetrical scheme. Later on in this gigantic
movement (and the exposition must be repeated, otherwise the end of
the exposition becomes nonsense), in the transition to the dominant,
Mozart compresses the theme into 4-bar phrases, achieving a sense of
forward motion which contrasts with the luxurious spaciousness of the
opening.
The first movement of the Brandenburg No. 3 is pretty interesting from
a hypermetrical viewpoint: see two recent articles in IN THEORY ONLY
(1991 or so) by Mauro Botelho and Justin London respectively.
Re Brahms: Don't forget the slow movement of the C Minor Piano Trio,
which is effectively in 7/4. The first movement of this piece has an
extra beat at a structurally important place, a favorite trick of
Brahms. A familiar and beautiful example of 5-bar phrases in Brahms,
besides that mentioned by Robert Coren, is the beginning of the
Rhapsody Op. 119 #4.
Now for Today's Pet Peeve: Will everyone please open their scores of
Beethoven's Fourth Symphony and strike out the sixth bar from the end
of the first movement? If this bar is allowed to remain, then: (1)
the analogy of these last bars to similar passages earlier in the
movement is diluted; and (2) either this very four-square movement
ends with a 5-bar phrase, or the last note of the movement becomes a
"stinger" such as one finds tacked onto the ends of marches for
military band. It is known that Beethoven was not infallible as a
proofreader of his own works, and this passage is a good example.
Richard Carnes
Jack Campin
> Can anyone suggest/recommend classical works having odd numbered or
> otherwise unusual meters?
The oddest you'll find anywhere is the Conlon Nancarrow player-piano study
in a time signature of sqrt (2) / 1. In extreme rational subdivisions of
the bar, the record may be held by the passage from Brian Ferneyhough's
Second String Quartet printed on the cover of the Arditti Quartet's
recording: I seem to remember the implicit granularity here is about 600
sub-beats (triplets within quintuplets in quadruple time against quadruplets
within triplets in triple time, or something like that). Completely
inaudible.
There's a passage in Britten's "Nocturnal" for guitar where the player has
to divide the same time period into successively 4, 5, 6,... 13 (I think)
units in a sort of precisely measured accelerando. Some guitarists can
play this so you can hear what's going on, but not many.
The most complex _perceptible_ meter I can think of is the duet for two
marimbas in Harry Partch's "Castor and Pollux Plectra and Percussion
Dances"; if I remember right this has one of them doing a 29/16 rhythm
in the same time as the other does a 34/16. The result, for me, beat
any TV jingle I've ever heard for sheer infuriating memorability; it
stayed superglued to my brain for weeks.
This could start another thread. What musical passages have people found
they just couldn't shake off? It took me months to get rid of a chronic
infection by the here-come-the-Teutonic-Knights motif in the first movement
of Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky". It was the harmony that did it, so I
couldn't even exorcise the thing by whistling it.
--
-- Jack Campin Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank
Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland 041 339 8855 x6854 work 041 556 1878 home
JANET: ja...@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk BANG!net: via mcsun and ukc FAX: 041 330 4913
INTERNET: via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk BITNET: via UKACRL UUCP: ja...@glasgow.uucp
Robert Coren
|> (Roger is, of course, referring to the sublime principal theme of the
|> slow movement of Mozart's best-known C-major piano concerto.) It's
|> more than that: it's 3 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 3 + 3. Observe that the high
|> note of the whole theme, the D-flat, occurs precisely at the midpoint:
What, the D two bars before doesn't count? :-)
|> the first bar of the 5-bar phrase (which is in the minor mode). (And
|> please note that the appoggiatura (A-G) in the latter 3 + 3 group
|> should be played as a QUARTER note, not an eighth.)
Is this (somewhat dogmatic) statement relevant to the point at hand?
|>
|> Mozart's C Major String Quintet.... Later on in this gigantic
|> movement (and the exposition must be repeated, otherwise the end of
|> the exposition becomes nonsense)...
Alas, would that more performers agreed with you, not just about this
movement, but about most repeats in Mozart, *especially* when the
transitions do interesting things. There seems to be a belief that
Mozart slow movements are "too long" to take the repeats. Try to finds
a performance of the "Prague" or the "Jupiter" with the absolutely
essential slow-movement repeats intact. (Nobody seems inclined to take
the second repeat in the last movement of the Jupiter, either.)
|>
|> Now for Today's Pet Peeve:
That was mine, in case you couldn't tell. :-)
Robert
Richard Carnes
>In article <1992Jan10.1...@zip.eecs.umich.edu>, car...@sparky.eecs.umich.edu (Richard Carnes) writes:
>|> (Roger is, of course, referring to the sublime principal theme of the
>|> slow movement of Mozart's best-known C-major piano concerto.) It's
>|> more than that: it's 3 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 3 + 3. Observe that the high
>|> note of the whole theme, the D-flat, occurs precisely at the midpoint:
>
>What, the D two bars before doesn't count? :-)
Aha, and the D before that. Anyway, the theme has a very rough arch
form (low-high-low), although it includes skips of greater than two
octaves.
>|> the first bar of the 5-bar phrase (which is in the minor mode). (And
>|> please note that the appoggiatura (A-G) in the latter 3 + 3 group
>|> should be played as a QUARTER note, not an eighth.)
>
>Is this (somewhat dogmatic) statement relevant to the point at hand?
No. The main reason for the quarter note is the parallelism with the
following bar.
>|>
>|> Mozart's C Major String Quintet.... Later on in this gigantic
>|> movement (and the exposition must be repeated, otherwise the end of
>|> the exposition becomes nonsense)...
>
>Alas, would that more performers agreed with you, not just about this
>movement, but about most repeats in Mozart, *especially* when the
>transitions do interesting things. There seems to be a belief that
>Mozart slow movements are "too long" to take the repeats. Try to finds
>a performance of the "Prague" or the "Jupiter" with the absolutely
>essential slow-movement repeats intact.
Amen. And many conductors add insult to the injury of omitting the
repetition in the "Jupiter" slow movement by having the violins
crescendo into the first downbeat of the development, which is a
dominant seventh in d minor (with a 4-3 accented passing tone). The
point of this chord, which these conductors have missed, is that it is
a shock, since the violins are obviously leading back to F major. You
don't "lead into" a surprise unless you want to spoil it; you don't
say, "Now pay attention, everyone! Here comes a big surprise!"
Richard Carnes
Karl handline Henning
>This could start another thread. What musical passages have people found
>they just couldn't shake off? It took me months to get rid of a chronic
>infection by the here-come-the-Teutonic-Knights motif in the first movement
>of Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky". It was the harmony that did it, so I
>couldn't even exorcise the thing by whistling it.
My current musical splinter :-) is the expansive melody from the trio
section of the second movement of Prokofiev's 5th Symphony (three phrases,
3/4). It is currently favored in a mild battle with the first theme
(after the introduction, in 9/8) from the third movement of Hindemith's
Symphony "Mathis der Maler" -- a melody which tends to stick with me
for a few days whenever I listen to it.
[hmmm ... two Prokofiev melodies between the two of us ... did
somebody whisper "Soviet realism"?]
:-)
Karl handline Henning
>... Try to find
>a performance of the "Prague" or the "Jupiter" with the absolutely
>essential slow-movement repeats intact. (Nobody seems inclined to take
>the second repeat in the last movement of the Jupiter, either.)
I have a recording of the K. 551 conducted by Christopher Hogwood
(Jaap Schroeder, concertmaster) in which the repeats are honored
(even the development-recapitulation repeat in the fourth movement,
I believe).
Noam Elkies
<1992Jan10....@acsu.buffalo.edu>:
>[...]
>Prokofiev's second violin concerto has a marvelous 7/4 episode
>in the third movement (subdivided 2+3+2!); the third (and last)
>movement of the seventh piano sonata is basically in 7 as well.
No need for the "basically" qualifier; this movement is in 7/8
throughout. Also subdivided 2+3+2, for that matter, though I
don't know of a performance that sounds like anything other
than 2+2+3, this despite Prokofiev's explicit instruction.
>Shostakovich began to dabble in 5's and 7's in some of the
>movements of the 14th symphony.
Long before that, in fact; there are 5- and 7-beat sections
in his E-minor Piano Trio and 24 Preuldes and Fugues, and that's
just his two pieces I happen to have played most recently.
(Specifically, in the Trio, the B-minor theme in the last movement
is mostly in 5/8; the E-flat minor Prelude is in 7/4, and the
G#-minor Fugue is in 5/4. Uh, I guess I can't yet claim I've
actually *played* this last one, but I'm working on it...) D.SCH.
certainly wasn't "dabbling" by the time he got around to writing
his 14th Symphony!
>For the second theme of the overture to /Candide/, Bernstein
>alternated so regularly between 2 bars of 2/2 plus a bar of 3/2,
>that he might well have barred it in 7/2.
As I mentioned when this thread last made its rounds here,
practically the entire first movement of his _Chichester Psalms_
is in 7/4, and the last is in 10/4. You made no mention of
Britten, who also made effective use of asymmetric measures
(I offered as examples the 5/4 movement of his Ceremony of Carols
and the two 7/4 sections of the Dies Irae in his War Requiem).
>Bartok [...] sometimes extending this to 11/8 (3+3+2+3/8),
>as in the Contrasts for violin, clarinet & piano; but this happens in
>some parts of the /Music for strings, percussion & celesta/, [...]
As it happens I played the celesta/piano II part in this wonderful
composition not too long ago. Yes, there are 11/8 bars in the first
movement, but it's not "in 11/8" or in any other fixed time signature,
since the meter keeps changing from bar to bar. Which brings me to
my question: the last bar of this movement is notated in 11/8, but
I count only the equivalent of 10 eighths in the score. Nitpicking,
you say; couldn't I have at least found a more meaningful typo?
But it seems that this is in fact not an error: that missing 8th
balances the 8th-note upbeat of this movement, in keeping with the
ancient convention that a piece of music must have a whole number of
measures (however silly it seems to apply it to Bartok's piece
where the length of the measure changes from one bar to the next),
i.e. if there's an upbeat of some fraction of a measure then the same
fraction is subtracted from the last measure. So I ask: what is
the origin of this curious tradition? And is it known why Bartok
chose to maintain it in his _Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta_?
--Noam D. Elkies (elk...@zariski.harvard.edu)
Department of Mathematics, Harvard University
David Brooks
> [Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta..]
>my question: the last bar of this movement is notated in 11/8, but
>I count only the equivalent of 10 eighths in the score.
This reminded me of another curiosity: Messaien's "Chronochromie" which
begins and ends with a silent 5/8 measure.
Head this at the London Promenade concerts, in 1968 I think. Some people
there liked to break into thunderous applause as soon as the music
finished, no matter how awful the performance. One guy must have known
Chronochromie from a recording, as he alone clapped and cheered at the end
(it isn't at all obvious that the piece had finished). Those of us who
knew about the piece smugly counted up to 5, and *then* clapped :-)
Anthony Ku
Dan Thedens wrote to All:
DT> Can anyone suggest/recommend classical works having odd numbered
DT> or
DT> otherwise unusual meters?
Try listening to Shostakovich music.
---
* Origin: Carnegie Hall BBS, from Lawrence, Kansas. (1:280/106)
peter d. mark
>writes (abbreviated):
>>I particularly like music played in odd time signatures
>>(five, seven, eleven, etc) among the non-classical music
>>I listen to. Among the classical works I do have, Holst's
>>The Planets and some Stravinsky (Firebird Suite) are ones I
>>have found to my liking.
>>=====================================================================
>>Dan Thedens
>>Cardiovascular Image Processing Lab
>>University of Iowa
>
>Middle movement of Tchaikovsky 6th is a valse-like dance in 5. Done
>so nicely most people never notice it is in 3 until you point it
>out to them.
>
>Similar query: There are very few cases where the length of the
>fundamental phrase (or main theme or whatever you want to call it) is
>not 4 or 8 bars. Notable exception: The theme by Haydn (from one of
>the cassations for wind instruments, if I'm not completely mistaken)
>which Brahms used for the variations op. 53. One easily notices the
>"restlessness" of the theme (and ensueing variations), but it takes a
>while to figure out that the theme is 5 bars long.
>
>--
>Ralph Becker-Szendy RA...@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU
i believe hovhannes's "mysterious mountain" qualifies.
peter
p...@cs.uoregon.edu
Chris Brewster
What musical passages have people found
they just couldn't shake off? It took me months to get rid of a chronic
infection by the here-come-the-Teutonic-Knights motif in the first movement
of Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky". It was the harmony that did it, so I
couldn't even exorcise the thing by whistling it.
My brain often works, musically, like those kids' toys that play back the most
recent sound from the environment ("How are you?" "How are you?" etc.).
Whatever tune I heard most recently automatically starts to repeat itself. This
feature (or bug) in my brain reaches maximum efficiency when I hear just a
fragment by chance, such as walking past a store. More serious are the
long-term ones that stay with me for months or years. These can be either
pieces I've been playing or pieces that I (once) loved.
So here's the antidote: whenever your mental tape-loop starts, force yourself to
think of another tune. This tune should be as catchy as possible, but don't
always use the same one. I can even get rid of the long-term ones this way.
Peter Delafosse
>
> What musical passages have people found
> they just couldn't shake off? It took me months to get rid of a chronic
> infection by the here-come-the-Teutonic-Knights motif in the first movement
> of Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky". It was the harmony that did it, so I
> couldn't even exorcise the thing by whistling it.
The song Villanelle from the cycle "Les nuits d'ete" by Berlioz.
Peter DeLafosse
pdel...@dsd.es.com
Bob Kosovsky
>> [Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta..]
>>my question: the last bar of this movement is notated in 11/8, but
>>I count only the equivalent of 10 eighths in the score.
>
tradition, is to be subtracted from the final measure.
Bob Kosovsky
Graduate Center -- Ph.D. Program in Music(student)/ City University of New York
New York Public Library -- Music Division
bitnet: k...@cunyvms1.bitnet internet: k...@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu
Disclaimer: My opinions do not necessarily represent those of my institutions.
bell...@qut.edu.au
Brewster) writes:
>My brain often works, musically, like those kids' toys that play back the most
>recent sound from the environment ("How are you?" "How are you?" etc.).
>Whatever tune I heard most recently automatically starts to repeat itself. This
>feature (or bug) in my brain reaches maximum efficiency when I hear just a
>fragment by chance, such as walking past a store.
Funny, this is a subject I never thought possible to be discussed. I have
noticed that whenever I am not hearing music, my brain is playing its own.
Sometimes it takes a little effort to pay attention at it but I believe SOME
music is always playing in the background. The most disturbing feature I've
noticed is its relatively imperviousness to the changes in situation and mood.
Very often the same piece continues over most of the day, and this goes on
independently of the arrival of good or bad news, through having dinner and
even sex. A few times I've sat for a two hours exam with a tune in my head,
and realized when I was going back home afterwards that it was still going on.
I'd very much like to know if others have noticed the same thing.
A second surprising feature is that very often the piece that pops up is
something I have not heard for the last fifteen or even twenty years, and I'm
at a loss to trace the source of such unexpected returns.
In my experience, the most frequent reason for some tune to start repeating
itself is not, as Chris says, the tune most recently heard, but something
associated by its name with something that was said or thought. In the case
of songs this is so consistent that reaches the ridiculous. During my youth,
my poor knowledge of English notwithstanding, I was very familiar with most
of the Beatles' lyrics. It was a constant source of surprises for me how at
a particular moment one of the Beatles' song would start up in my mind, and
it didn't generally start at the beginning but in the middle of a stanza. I
developed the habit of paying attention to it because invariably the first
phrase that popped up had a clear relationship with what I was thinking or
telling myself at the moment, and it helped a lot to clarify my own sub-
conscious thinking. Again, I'd like to know if somebody else has had similar
experiences.
>So here's the antidote: whenever your mental tape-loop starts, force yourself
>to think of another tune. This tune should be as catchy as possible, but don't
>always use the same one. I can even get rid of the long-term ones this way.
This works only occasionally for me. I don't find it all that bothersome in
general, but there are instances in which it becomes infuriating and clearly
out of control. This happens generally when I have a fever. An important part
of feeling ill is the appearance (and the extraordinary resilience) of the most
silly pop tunes in my mind. I'd say they turn up much louder and their endless,
pauseless repetition becomes unbearable. Again, have anybody noticed this
phenomenon? I'm very curious about it mainly because I've never heard or read
about it anywhere before. It seems to me it provides a rare insight into the
way the brains work. And I'm sure the way it does for different people must
vary widely. How about sharing your experiences about this?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hector Bellmann ARPA BELL...@qut.edu.au La musique consiste
AARnet hector@.fit.qut.edu.au a nous elever le
Fax 61-7-864-1507 Phone 61-7-864-2137 plus haut possible
Faculty of Information Technology, au dessus de ce qui
Queensland University of Technology, est.
GPO Box 2434 Brisbane QLD 4001 Australia. Gabriel Faure
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Cook
>
> What musical passages have people found
> they just couldn't shake off? It took me months to get rid of a chronic
> infection by the here-come-the-Teutonic-Knights motif in the first movement
> of Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky". It was the harmony that did it, so I
> couldn't even exorcise the thing by whistling it.
>
Part of Ralph Vaughn Willams' 'Fantasia on Greensleeves' ...
It ran through my head for about three weeks, then it finally
dawned on me why it was so familar - the same part was used
in a rock song by Emerson, Lake and Palmer, called 'Touch and Go'
- except at about twice the speed ... when I realised, I sat
and laughed for about five minutes, with the thought that
almost no-one else would know ....
Another reply in this thread mentions constantly having some
sort of music running through your head ... I am the same,
and this can often be annoying - I usually have the second-to-last
(or 3rd- or 4th-to-last) tune I have heard running though my head ..
the problem is, I often use music (eg heavy metal :) to 'psyche'
myself up for competitive cycling ... but if I hear an 'easy
listening' tune beforehand, guess what I have running through
my head during a race ? <sigh>
Also, ad music seems to stick all too well ... there is one
ad, which inevitably gets played on the radio as I'm eating my
breakfast, which sounds quite amateurish, and has a glitch in
it, but still manages to 'infect' my internal music-source,
and bug me until I've blasted my ears with something loud
and obnoxious :-)
--
David T Cook | e-mail: dc...@spam.adelaide.edu.au | Phone: +61 8 228 5709
`... this was physics as they knew it to be, an idiot standing at a
crossroads shouting "God went thataway!" and managing to point down
all four roads at once.' - James Blish (The Triumph of Time)
Todd McComb
>What musical passages have people found they just couldn't shake off?
>It was the harmony that did it, so I couldn't even exorcise the thing
>by whistling it.
I have also found that it is really harmony that sticks, and that whistling
tunes will usually get rid of them.
I have also been trying to whistle chords for years in order to remove this
difficulty. In some cases, I do alright (at least to me; my wife says it
sounds horrible.) If the harmony is very complicated, there's no chance.
The things I have been totally unable to stop are Bach's Art of Fugue,
Beethoven's Grosse Fugue (along with other passages in the big Bb quartet),
Bruckner's scherzo from the quintet in f, and the piano entry from Brahms'
second piano concerto. But, the all time winner is the first movement of
Brahms' Double Concerto. I can sort of whistle the blocked orchestral
introduction, but when the cello entry splits off it's hopeless.
I often have a few of these playing at once in my head, plus other things.
Such are the pitfalls of listening to classical music....
--
Todd McComb mcc...@turing.cs.rpi.edu [128.213.1.1]
Noam Elkies
k...@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu [Bob Kosovsky] writes:
:>[I wrote]:
:>> [Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta..]
:>>my question: the last bar of this movement is notated in 11/8, but
:>>I count only the equivalent of 10 eighths in the score.
:
:That's because the movement begins with an upbeat, which, according to
:tradition, is to be subtracted from the final measure.
Um, if you read my article from which the above sentence was extracted,
you'll see that I gave exactly this explanation --- my question was not
why the last measure is an eighth-note short, but what gave rise to this
tradition in the first place (and, if this is known, why Bartok chose
to follow the tradition in this case). Any ideas?
--Noam D. Elkies (elk...@zariski.harvard.edu)
Roland Hutchinson
>But it seems that this is in fact not an error: that missing 8th
>balances the 8th-note upbeat of this movement, in keeping with the
>ancient convention that a piece of music must have a whole number of
>measures (however silly it seems to apply it to Bartok's piece
>where the length of the measure changes from one bar to the next),
>i.e. if there's an upbeat of some fraction of a measure then the same
>fraction is subtracted from the last measure. So I ask: what is
>the origin of this curious tradition? And is it known why Bartok
>chose to maintain it in his _Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta_?
It comes from the prevalence of music with repeated sections, such as
binary-form dance movements, during the 17th century, the period when
most modern notational conventions became fixed. It avoids the need
for first- and second endings in each section--which is a jolly good
thing, since conventions for first- and second endings had not yet
become standardized. The distinction between repeat signs and double
bars was a bit fluid at first, the double bar with dots being commonly
employed regardles of whether or not a repeat was intended. So as
things settled down the convention came to be generally observed
whether there was a repeat or not.
I haven't any idea why Bartok (or his publisher) chose to retain this
convention in the case that you cite. My dim recollection is that he
does this in other pieces, but I haven't any scores close at hand to
check.
--
Roland Hutchinson Visiting Specialist/Early Music
Internet: rhut...@pilot.njin.net Department of Music
Bitnet: rhutchin@NJIN Montclair State College
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043
Daniel Hobbs
Jack Campin writes:
>What musical passages have people found they just couldn't shake off?
>It was the harmony that did it, so I couldn't even exorcise the thing
>by whistling it.
One possible approach to this is suggested by Freud's "Psychopathology
of Everyday Life," in which he argues that there is a psychological
significance to these unexplained compulsions, whether positive or
negative. For those not familiar with the argument, it boils down to
"we forget things or make goofs because they are associated, perhaps
unconsciously, with other things that we wish to forget or avoid."
While the argument in Freud is stated in negative terms, the question
here would be, why can't we get certain tunes out of our heads?
A method of free association, coupled with as much openness and
honesty as we can muster might provide a key. Since everyone
remembers different tunes, but the fact of, occasionally, being unable
to clear a tune from one's mind seems widespread, this technique of
searching for the cause within the individual, and not within the
music, seems appropriate.
I don't have any personal examples handy, although I remember being
unable to get a tune out of my head, and those experiences were not
entirely negative -- there was always something fascinating to me
about the tune, and only its incorrigible insistence was negative.
Maybe this gets us back to the "meaning in music" issue. I dunno.
However, can anyone out there give this kind of analysis for some tune
currently enjoying an unwelcome immortality inside your
head/brain/mind ??
Dan Hobbs
dan...@sequent.com
Anita Hsiung
In article <1992Jan14.1...@qut.edu.au> bell...@qut.edu.au writes:
>
>Funny, this is a subject I never thought possible to be discussed. I have
>noticed that whenever I am not hearing music, my brain is playing its own.
Interesting. I know there's always something playing in the
background. I may not swap the process into the fore often, but at a
low level, I can always hear music. For me, it's usually the little
snippet in the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (Rachmaninoff) after
the big moment and the piano goes back to being the main melody...
>I
>developed the habit of paying attention to it because invariably the first
>phrase that popped up had a clear relationship with what I was thinking or
>telling myself at the moment, and it helped a lot to clarify my own sub-
>conscious thinking. Again, I'd like to know if somebody else has had similar
>experiences.
For me, it's usually the music of Carmen, if it is related to what I'm
thinking or doing. When the debugging is about done and it seems as
if our system is working, it's the exciting overture buzzing in my
head. If it's a depressing day and everything is breaking, it's the
sadder parts of the opera!
>>So here's the antidote: whenever your mental tape-loop starts, force yourself
It doesn't bother me. The music never becomes forcefully repetitious.
I just get tired of a tune and go on to another one. ;^) Or make up
some weird sequence in my head...
-- Anita --
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Anita Hsiung | |
| ahs...@bbn.com | "Oh, that's just the banjo player's Porsche." |
| BBN, Inc. | |
| Canoga Park, CA | |
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Alves
Monocalliophrenia
(Callio from Calliope, the muse.)
Jack Campin
> > Jack Campin writes:
>> What musical passages have people found they just couldn't shake off?
> Part of Ralph Vaughan Willams' 'Fantasia on Greensleeves'... It ran through
> my head for about three weeks, then it finally dawned on me why it was so
> familar - the same part was used in a rock song by Emerson, Lake and Palmer,
> called 'Touch and Go' - except at about twice the speed ... when I realised,
> I sat and laughed for about five minutes, with the thought that almost no-
> one else would know ....
If you mean the middle section, it's an English folk tune, "Lovely Joan",
reprinted in Vaughan Williams and Lloyd's "Penguin Book of English Folk
Songs"; I'm not sure who collected it. It would make sense to sing it a
bit faster than the way it appears in the Fantasia - it's a kind of parodic
gypsy-rover-seduction ballad - though perhaps not at double speed.
I haven't heard the ELP version; most likely they got it from the Vaughan
Williams, as ripping off classical music was (I hope "was", I'd hate to
think those bozos were still going) their main source of income, and the
song hasn't been widely adopted around the folk circuit, despite advocacy
by feminist singers like Frankie Armstrong.
[ note the crossposting when following up! ]
Anne Sullivan
> Jack Campin writes:
>
> What musical passages have people found
> they just couldn't shake off? It took me months to get rid of a chronic
> infection by the here-come-the-Teutonic-Knights motif in the first movement
> of Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky". It was the harmony that did it, so I
> couldn't even exorcise the thing by whistling it.
>
> My brain often works, musically, like those kids' toys that play back the most
> recent sound from the environment ("How are you?" "How are you?" etc.).
> Whatever tune I heard most recently automatically starts to repeat itself. This
> feature (or bug) in my brain reaches maximum efficiency when I hear just a
> fragment by chance, such as walking past a store. More serious are the
> long-term ones that stay with me for months or years. These can be either
> pieces I've been playing or pieces that I (once) loved.
>
I too often have something I heard recently running through my head. That song Kodak
uses about "your true colors shining through" is one I can't seem to get rid of! Ugh.
Also bits of songs that my church choir is learning. Not always my part either.
Last year it was a section of tenor solo that kept "playing" in my head for weeks.
Sometimes phrases or sentences that I hear remind me of lyrics to a song and that gets
it going in my head.
My sister calls these "Tune Worms" and enjoys trying to insert them into people's heads
and watching the results. Her claim is that revolving doors are the best places for
insertion. (Hum something catchy as you walk through and listen for results.)
Anne Sullivan @ AG Communication Systems, Phoenix AZ (A joint venture of GTE and AT&T)
UUCP: ...!{ncar!noao!asuvax | uunet!samsung!romed!asuvax | att}!gtephx!sullivana
Internet: gtephx!sull...@asuvax.eas.asu.edu
Chris Brewster
My sister calls these "Tune Worms" and enjoys trying to insert them into
people's heads and watching the results.
I have only one thing to add:
YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS!!!
Oh, I'm sorry for doing that. I *really* didn't mean to plant that tune in
people's minds! Really.
Chris Brewster
Fred Goldrich
>
>Re Brahms: Don't forget the slow movement of the C Minor Piano Trio,
>which is effectively in 7/4. The first movement of this piece has an
>extra beat at a structurally important place, a favorite trick of
>Brahms. A familiar and beautiful example of 5-bar phrases in Brahms,
>besides that mentioned by Robert Coren, is the beginning of the
>Rhapsody Op. 119 #4.
>
Brahms is a virtually endless source of rhythmic interest;
just to follow up on these two examples --
o In the "Variations on a Hungarian Song" (for piano, Op. 21, #2),
both the theme and many variations are in 7/4 time, which Brahms notates
by means of a compound time signature -- 3/4 followed by 4/4.
o In terms of phrase lengths, check out the third movement of the
First Symphony: The opening phrase is five bars long; at its next appear-
ance (letter A, bar 19) it has grown to seven bars; and the next time
(letter C, bar 62), Brahms stretches it further, to nine!
-- Fred Goldrich
--
Fred Goldrich
fr...@marob.escc.com
Bob Kosovsky
>In article <1992Jan13....@timessqr.gc.cuny.edu>
>k...@cunyvms1.gc.cuny.edu [Bob Kosovsky] writes:
>:>>my question: the last bar of this movement is notated in 11/8, but
>:>>I count only the equivalent of 10 eighths in the score.
>:
>:That's because the movement begins with an upbeat, which, according to
>:tradition, is to be subtracted from the final measure.
>
>Um, if you read my article from which the above sentence was extracted,
>you'll see that I gave exactly this explanation --- my question was not
>why the last measure is an eighth-note short, but what gave rise to this
>tradition in the first place (and, if this is known, why Bartok chose
>to follow the tradition in this case). Any ideas?
The answer regarding repeats is partly the case - but there are certainly
pieces where there were no repeats, yet this convention continued.
Without proclaiming THE correct answer (if there is one, and if it is only one)
another reason has to do with phrase structure. By notating the final bar
in a way that relates it to the initial bar (or another one within the same
section) the composer is able to indicate the true length of the phrase.
I know I've seen pieces (and unfortunately can't remember them at the moment)
where there are entire bars of rests notated so that the phrase structure will
be followed. So, in a similar way, composers choose to clarify the lengths of
such constructions by maintaining that (in most, not all cases) the upbeat
be subtracted from the final bar.