Cadence

“ Using the word cadence in an unusually extended sense, as {422} comprehending all variations of voice, we may say that cadence is the commentary of the emotions upon the propositions of the intellect. ”

“ Analyze, again, Schumann, Jugend Album (op. 68) , No. 6, locating every cadence and defining its quality,—as perfect cadence or semicadence. Also Nos. 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 33, 14, 15, 16, 3,—and others. As a curious illustration of the difficulty which may sometimes attend the analysis of phrases and cadences, the student may glance at No. 31 (Kriegslied, D major) ; a more baffling example will rarely be found, for the piece abounds in irregular phrase-dimensions, and cadences that are disguised to the verge of unrecognizability ”

“ I have often remarked, that when the long roll has beat, the men in repairing to their several parades, have insensibly preserved the regular step, without knowing that they did so: nature, in fact, and instinct go together. If marching according to time and measure be considered in a mere superficial manner, the cadence step will undoubtedly appear of little importance; but if it be considered as an essential requisite to quicken or slacken the movement of troops who are going into action, it must be found an important object. ”

“ Thus every cadence which can be used satisfactorily to end a movement must of necessity be a Perfect cadence. Every cadence which is broken away from at the very moment when it seemed to promise a conclusion is obviously an Interrupted cadence; and every cadence which without producing the effect of interruption leaves the mind unsatisfied and expecting something more should be called an Imperfect cadence. ”

“ The process of extension or expansion, by means of which the phrase usually assumes a somewhat irregular length, consists mainly in the varied repetition of the figures or motives that it contains; and the continuity of the whole, as extension of the one phrase, is maintained by suppressing the cadence—suspending all cadential interruption—during the lengthening process. ”

“ The second section—which tends to define clearly the complementary key of the movement, whether Dominant or Relative major to the original—usually starts with a new subject somewhat contrasted with the features of the first section, and may be followed by a further accessory subject, or derivative continuation, or other form of prolongation, and so passes to the frequent repetition of the cadence of the complementary key, with either brilliant passages, or occasionally a definite fresh feature or subject which constitutes the Cadence episode of the first part. ”

“ Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line. ”

“ Step by step, cycle upon cycle, brute force submitted to reason; culture and refinement, mental acquisition and spiritual attainment characterized an evolutionary race of human beings in which each developing cycle was founded upon the decadence of the prehistoric. ”

“ Let a sensible Student avoid this Example, and with this Example the Abuses, the Defects, and every other Thing that is mean and common, as well in the Cadences as elsewhere.
§ 17. If, the inventing particular Cadences without injuring the Time, has been one of the worthy Employments of the Ancients (so call'd) let a Student revive the Use of it; endeavouring to imitate them in their Skill of somewhat anticipating the Time; and remember, that Those, who understand the Art of Gracing, do not wait to admire the Beauty of it in a Silence of the Bass. ”

“ Although men do not go to the stake for the cadences, the phrases of our Authorised Version, it remains true that these cadences, these phrases, have for three hundred years exercised a most powerful effect upon their emotions. ”

“ And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stillness, and the cold, and dark. ”

“ Now, in this section of the rocks which we have as they are stratified, formed in layers one above the other, we come to the idea of time. I was going along this morning, with a basket and one of these stones in my hand, and a man’s attention was attracted, and he asked how long since those animals were alive. I said a million of years. He looked rather astonished, and expressed himself that I could not know. The idea of such great amounts of time strikes any one like the vast areas of space. At the first step in geology we have got to expand our notions of time. ”

“ The early centuries, like the cycles of the astronomer, pass through our mind rather as one continuous period; the later centuries, like the cycles of the geologist, arrest our thoughts by a succession of minor periods, and hence the idea of duration is more vividly suggested by the diversified events of the one series, than by the comparatively unbroken continuity of the other. ”

“ In a word, the movement of the inorganic world is obvious and palpable, and might be likened to the minute-hand of a clock, the progress of which can be seen and heard, whereas the fluctuations of the living creation are nearly invisible, and resemble the motion of the hour-hand of a timepiece. ”

“ The idea of duration equal to an annual revolution of the sun, is as easily applicable in our thoughts to duration, where no sun or motion was, as the idea of a foot or yard, taken from bodies here, can be applied in our thoughts to duration, where no sun or motion was, as the idea of a foot or yard, taken from bodies here, can be applied in our thoughts to distances beyond the confines of the world, where are no bodies at all. ”

“ Those that conceive it as some phenomenon, or some period, of Movement treat it, severally, either as a standard of measure or as something inevitably accompanying Movement, abstract or definite.
8 Movement Time cannot be- whether a definite act of moving is meant or a united total made up of all such acts- since movement, in either sense, takes place in Time. And, of course, if there is any movement not in Time, the identification with Time becomes all the less tenable.
In a word, Movement must be distinct from the medium in which it takes place. ”

“ As a matter of fact, this word 'duration' possessed a divine significance for the ancients, for the fulfilment which includes the period of life of any creature, outside of which no natural development can fall, has been called its duration. ”

“ Celerity of motion and brevity of duration are discovered to be its chief characteristics. Time is therefore depicted as flying,—fast, noiselessly, and uninterruptedly. It is a river, speeding on with imperceptible but resistless pace to the ocean of eternity. ”

“ Truly it is hard for us to realize what a part time has played in the earth's history,—just time, duration,—so slowly, oh, so slowly, have the great changes been brought about! The turning of mud and silt into rock in the bottom of the old seas seems to have been merely a question of time. ”

“ I prefer also the word expansion to space, because space is often applied to distance of fleeting successive parts, which never exist together, as well as to those which are permanent. In both these (viz. expansion and duration) the mind has this common idea of continued lengths, capable of greater or less quantities. For a man has as clear an idea of the difference of the length of an hour and a day, as of an inch and a foot. ”

“ The revolutions of the sun and moon, the properest measures of time for mankind. The diurnal and annual revolutions of the sun, as having been, from the beginning of nature, constant, regular, and universally observable by all mankind, and supposed equal to one another, have been with reason made use of for the measure of duration. ”

“ Expansion not bounded by matter. The mind, having got the idea of the length of any part of expansion, let it be a span, or a pace, or what length you will, can, as has been said, repeat that idea, and so, adding it to the former, enlarge its idea of length, and make it equal to two spans, or two paces ; and so, as often as it will, till it equals the distance of any parts of the earth one from another, and increase thus till it amounts to the distance of the sun or remotest star. ”

“ We may measure duration by the succession of thoughts in the mind, as we measure length by inches or feet, but the notion or idea of duration must be antecedent to the mensuration of it, as the notion of length is antecedent to its being measured....Reason, from the contemplation of finite extended things, leads us necessarily to the belief of an immensity that contains them. In like manner, memory gives us the conception and belief of finite intervals of duration. ”

“ But we have another system of chronology derived from a wholly different system of ideas; it too relates to periods of vast duration, and, like our great tidal periods, extends to times anterior to human history, or even to the duration of human life on this globe. The facts of geology open up to us a majestic chronology, the epochs of which are familiar to us by the succession of strata forming the crust of the earth, and by the succession of living beings whose remains these strata have preserved. ”

“ Time and place are taken for so much of either as are set out by the existence and motion of bodies. Time and place, taken thus for determinate distinguishable portions of those infinite abysses of space and duration, set out or supposed to be distinguished from the rest, by marks and known boundaries, have each of them a twofold acceptation. ”

“ Know, that the world consists of a certain number of stages between the world of spirits and the future world. The first stage is the cradle, and the last is the grave, and every period between these is also a stage. Each month represents a league, each hour a mile, and each breath a step. It is always flowing on like running water. ”

“ The motion of the sun, which the world used so long and so confidently for an exact measure of duration, has, as I said, been found in its several parts unequal. And though men have, of late, made use of a pendulum, as a more steady and regular motion than that of the sun, or, (to speak more truly) , of the earth ”

“ Succession or repetition gives us Number- dyad, triad, etc.- and the extent traversed is a matter of Magnitude; thus we have Quantity of Movement- in the form of number, dyad, triad, decade, or in the form of extent apprehended in what we may call the amount of the Movement: but, the idea of Time we have not. ”

“ Away to the north are those wine-red moors, the eternal hills, which the hand of Time seems unable to alter. What do we know of Time? What are our three score years and ten, what indeed the whole history of our race, compared with the ages which have passed since those hills were formed? ”

“ In examining the circumstances of the descent of a body, the time of the fall and the velocity at each instant of that time are not the only things to be attended to. The spaces through which it falls in given intervals of time, counted either from the commencement of its fall, or from any proposed epoch of the descent, are equally important objects of enquiry. ”

“ For who of us can measure even Time, that the gnat measures as well as we, or the eagle, or the ancient yew, or the mountain whose granite brows are white with ages—much less Eternity, wherein Time is but a vanishing pulse? ”

“ As each and all of these letters are extremely powerful, the appearance of several inharmonious factors in a name is certain to bring discomforts and trials as the life is drawn under the influence of such disadvantageous Cycles. In fact, the influence of the Cycle in which the individual is now living, is the next fact to be considered in the reading of the name: after which we may pass by easy stages to the question of fortunate days and months, color vibration, musical harmony. ”

“ We measure time by cycle ages, and the gate to every age we deem a mile stone in the journey of the race.
13. An age has passed; the gate unto another age flies open at the touch of time. This is the preparation age of soul, the kingdom of Immanuel, of God in man ”

“ We reach the notion of space through our external perception of extension by the senses of sight and touch. So also we derive the notion of time from our perception of motion or change, and mainly from our consciousness of change and succession in our own conscious states. The concept of time involves immediately two other concepts, that of duration, and that of succession. Duration, or continuance in existence, is of two kinds, permanent and successive. Permanent duration is the duration of an immutable being, formally and in so far as it is immutable. ”

“ Greatest length of time, therefore, in this case, is only another name for greatest number of successions.
It has been already seen, that there is nothing in which we are so deeply interested, as an accurate knowledge of the antecedents and consequents, in the midst of which we exist. Of the different innumerable trains of antecedents and consequents which it is important for us carefully to mark, it is observed, that some succeed more quickly, some less. While the long pendulum of an eight-day clock is performing one oscillation, the short pendulum of a table-clock performs two or three. ”

“ To observe the succession at once is to have present with perfect clearness all the time-elements of the rhythm or of the phrase just as they are, — the succession, the tempo, the intervals, the pauses, — and yet, without losing any of their variety, to view them at once as one present musical idea. ”