Beat (music)

“ Even in actual modern dance tunes of the best kind the impulse to add something independent to the fundamental rhythm is found in such devices as tying over the [Pg xlii] last note of a group of three in a valse to the strong beat of the succeeding rhythmic group, while the essential rhythm is maintained by the bass or other instruments of the accompaniment, and composers have even successfully devised such attractive ingenuities as the effect of three long beats being superimposed on two groups of the three lesser beats of the established rhythm. ”

“ In music a beat means a regularly recurrent swelling caused by the reinforcement of a sound and this is set up by the interference of sound waves which have slightly different periods of vibration as, for instance, when two tones take place that are not quite in tune with each other. This, then, is the principle of the heterodyne, or beat, receptor. ”

“ BATTUTA (Ital. beat, or measure) . 'A battuta,' like 'a tempo,' means a return to the strict beat. Beethoven uses the word in the Scherzo of the Choral Symphony—'Ritmo di tre battute,' 'Ritmo di quattro battute,' to signify that the rhythm in those places goes in groups of three bars or four bars respectively. ”

“ The beat of the pestle used by primitive man to crush grain, the blows of the flail, the rhythm of the quern and the spinning wheel, the rock of the cradle, and in short the entire series of industries where a regular beat or reciprocal motion suggests alternate action have been put forward as the probable origin of the dance, musical and verbal rhythm, and at length of the beat of music. ”

“ Thirdly, and finally, it is the melody, by virtue of which on these foundations of a beat characterized by rhythmical vitality and of distinctions and movements of harmony itself that the realm of tones is unitedly discharged in a spiritually free mode of expression, and conducts us thereby to the final main section of our subject, which will undertake to consider music in its concrete unity with the spiritual content it is intended to express in beat, harmony, and rhythm. ”

“ But the same principle applies to every type of English rhythm. As soon as the dominant beat—which is commonly, but not always, apparent in the opening measures of the poem—once asserts itself, the poet's mastery of technique is revealed through his skill in satisfying the ear with a verbal music which is never absolutely identical in its time-intervals, its stresses or its pitch, with the fixed, wooden pattern of the rhythm he is using.
For the human voice utters syllables which vary their duration, stress and pitch with each reader. ”

“ In any great piece of martial music these accents and these impulses in groups constitute the element that [Pg 197] moves us to comply with it ourselves; we beat time with hand or foot; we are infused with the momentum. And the force of the impetus may be observed at the close of nearly every piece of music where conventional chords ease off its stress. The last forty measures of the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven constitute a sort of brake on the huge moving mass. ”

“ Rhythm of bodily movement, the dance, is the earliest form of artistic expression known. It is accompanied in nearly every case with rude music, the object being to emphasize the beat and rhythmic movement with sound. The quickness with which children respond to simple repetition of beat, translating the rhythm of the music into movement, is merely recurrence of historical development. ”

“ Out of unbeautiful noise sprang beautiful music. Men discovered that through the voice they could make not only expressive noises, but also pleasant tones; they found, perhaps by accident, that they could do much the same thing with reeds and strings; they observed that when they beat their drums at regular intervals to mark the motion of the dance, they not only danced together more easily, but also experienced joy in the very sounds they made ”

“ The measure beat is highly syncopated. It will be observed that in the first eight measures the first notes of every other measure, which are in all dance music the strongest, are single notes. These alone keep up a semblance of order in the rhythm. By the extension of one measure to four beats, the sequence of notes is so changed that in the repetition of this first phrase the strong accent falls upon a full chord, thus greatly re-enforcing the intended crescendo.
The next two numbers in the scene are pictures of two figures common to nearly every fair, the Pierrot and the Harlequin. ”

“ Now that we have made ourselves acquainted with overtones and beats, we may proceed to the answer of our main question, Why do certain relations of pitch produce pleasant sounds, consonances, others unpleasant sounds, dissonances? It will be readily seen that all the unpleasant effects of simultaneous sound-combinations are the result of beats produced by those combinations. Beats are the only sin, the sole evil of music. Consonance is the coalescence of sounds without appreciable beats. ”

“ And who hears music, feels his solitude
Peopled at once—for how count heartbeats plain
Unless a company, with hearts which beat,
Come close to the musician, seen or no? ”

“ She will never learn the most necessary, most difficult and principal thing in music, that is time, because from childhood she has designedly cultivated the habit of ignoring the beat." ”

“ Generally the rhythm runs out with a series of what might be called inarticulate drum-beats, as if an impulse existed still unsatisfied, blindly making itself felt in these insignificant pulsations; an impulse which a finer melodic sense would have satisfied by the proper antithesis in relation to the first phrase, thus leaving the melody and the rhythm to complete themselves together, as always takes place in civilized music. ”

“ As rhythm is the heart pulsation of music, [69] it naturally took hold of the first singers of in any measure formulated melody, leading to swaying of the body, clapping of the hands, stamping of the feet, and quickly suggested the employment of other resonant means for marking its progress. Our drums were at first only hollow pieces of wood, our cymbals, triangle, and gong may have had double duties,—musical and culinary,—and our harp and piano were anticipated by single strings stretched to yield a sonorous tone regardless of pitch. ”

“ Ah! could we but see the vibrations of the atmosphere which a single musical chord produces—the rolling bass, the gliding alto, the sweeping soprano, and the soaring tenor, rolling onward in one broad channel of harmony, with its myriad tributary streams of thirds and fifths, and its curling, twinkling, shifting, blending, soaring mists of delicate-toned harmonics, how would our enjoyment of music be enhanced! ”

“ He loves to bang on the piano and blow his horn.
This craving for pleasure in sounds radiates through the sense of rhythm into graceful movements, the beginnings of dancing and dramatic action, even from the crudest rhythmic kicking 16and tapping movements of the infant. His speech becomes rhythmic, melodic, dynamic, beautiful. His whole body becomes reverberant in response to the sounds of nature. Laughter progressively acquires new and beautiful forms. Even crying may give satisfaction of an artistic sort. The swinging of the pendulum of the old clock on the wall is music. ”

“ These simple sequences of harmony, consisting almost wholly of triads, this mixing and sustaining of the voices, at one time increasing to the most tumultuous forte, at another dying away into the softest pianissimo; the continual and lengthened sustaining of single tones to a degree attainable only by the lungs of a castrated person, and then especially the soft introduction of a chord, while that of other voices is still faintly sustained, give to this music, in spite of all its deficiencies, something so peculiar, that one feels irresistibly attracted by it. ”

“ Beats give rise to a peculiarly disagreeable intermittent sensation. The maximum roughness of beats is attained by 33 per second; beyond 132 per second, the individual impulses are blended into one uniform auditory sensation. When two notes are sounded, say on a piano, not only may the first, fundamental or prime tones beat, but partial tones of each of the primaries may beat also, and as the difference of pitch of two simultaneous sounds augments, the number of beats, both of prime tones and of harmonics, augments also. ”

“ In the
fusing of melody and words into an utterance of song—at last into a strophe—music worked potently, shaping the composition of the lines, moulding them to rhythm, insisting upon sonorousness in the words, promoting their assonance and at last compelling them to rhyme so as to meet the stress, or mark the ending, of the musical periods. Thus the exigencies of melody helped to evoke the finished verse, while the words reciprocating through their vocal capabilities and through the inspiration of their meaning, aided the evolution of the melodies. ”

“ But play the diatonic scale on the piano, or strike a random chord here and there, and though the thing means nothing, the ear is bound to take some pleasure in it. Musical sound gives us pleasure in and by and for itself, independently of our finding even the remotest mental connection between its parts. This connection may be great, or small, or practically non-existent; and the greater it is, of course, the more complicated becomes our pleasure; but it is not essential to our taking physiological delight in music considered purely as sound. ”

“ Rhythm, Melody, Harmony, and Timbre (or tone-color) .
179. Rhythm is the regular recurrence of accent. In music it is more specifically the regular recurrence of groups of accented and non-accented beats (or pulses) —according to some specified measure-system. Since rhythm implies continuity, there must usually be at least two such measure groups in order to make musical rhythm possible. (See p. 44, Sec. 97.)
180. A melody is a succession of single tones of various pitches so arranged that the effect of the whole will be unified, coherent, and pleasing to the ear. ”

“ The phenomenon of beats forms, also, the means by which practical tuners, unacquainted with theory, or the exact comparative magnitudes of intervals, adjust the notes of organs, piano-fortes, harps, &c., by the judgment of their ear, in the daily exercise of the tuning profession. ”

“ But in that wonderful drama, which the emancipation of the secular or popular principle in the music of the sixteenth century presents, the instrument appears as the second agent, with its greater freedom as contrasted with the human voice. Choral counterpoint penetrates into the music of the future in the two ways of the one-part song and of the instrumental polyphony, which form a quite natural whole. In proportion as vocal music became more individual and more full of soul, the absolute instrumental music gained in meaning. ”

“ Singing, dancing, and pantomime compose the means by which uncivilized man throughout the world gives expression to his controlling ideas. The needed uniformity in movement and accent is most easily effected by rhythmical beats; and as these beats are more distinctly heard, and also blend more agreeably with the tones of the voice if they are musical sounds, a rude form of instrumental music arises. ”

“ As the vocal aria was the result of the simple folk-song combined with the intense craving of song's master molders for individual expression, so instrumental music striving to walk alone, without support from words, gained vital elements through the discovery that various phases of mental disposition might be indicated by alternating dance tunes differing in rhythm and movement, according to Nature's own law of contrasts. ”

“ These irregular forms of rhythm are called syncopation. See also Ex. 6, second Phrase.
MELODY.—Any succession of single tones is a melody. If we strike the keys of the piano with two or more fingers of each hand simultaneously, we produce a body of tones, which—if they are so chosen that they blend harmoniously—is called a Chord; and a series of such chords is an illustration of what is known as Harmony. If, however, we play with one finger only, we produce a melody. The human voice, the flute, horn,—all instruments capable of emitting but one tone at a time,—produce melody. ”

“ The other sensuous influence of sound is one of the most powerful elements of music, and all musical utterance is involved with and inseparable from it. It consists of repetition, recurrence, periodicity.
Now this repetition may be one of rhythm, tone tint, texture, or colour, a repetition of figure or of pitch. We know that savages, in their incantation ceremonies, keep up a continuous drum beating or chant which, gradually increasing in violence, drives the hearers into such a state of frenzy that physical pain seems no longer to exist for them. ”

“ The 'chanson'—i.e., the dance tune, was played on the flute, and accompanied by the 'tabourin' or drum, which beats all the time. Every 'bar' of the music is called either a 'battement' of the drum, or a 'mesure' of the chanson. ”

“ Sustained tones are preferable as an accompaniment, because the singer himself can immediately hear the beats between the instrument and his voice, when he alters the pitch slightly.... When we require a delicate use of the muscles of any part of the human body, as, in this case, of the larynx, there must be some sure means of ascertaining whether success has been attained. Now the presence or absence of beats gives such a means of detecting success or failure when a voice is accompanied by sustained chords in just intonation. ”