Music: An Appreciation, 10th Edition (Kamien)

Chapter 3: Rhythm

Interactive Chapter

ELEMENTS OF MUSIC: RHYTHM

Rhythm is basic to life. We see it in the cycle of night and day, the four seasons, the rise and fall of tides. More personally, we feel rhythm as we breathe. We find it in our heartbeats and our walking.

The essence of rhythm is a recurring pattern of tension and release, of expectation and fulfillment. This rhythmic alternation seems to pervade the flow of time. Time, as we live it, has fantastic diversity; each hour has sixty minutes, but how different one hour may seem from another!

Rhythm forms the lifeblood of music, too. In its widest sense, rhythm is the flow of music through time. Musical time is like lived time in its endless variety. It also seems to pass at varying speeds and intensities. Yet there is an essential difference between music and life. In music, a composer can control the passage of time. In life, such order eludes us. We delight in surrendering to a world of musical time that is ordered yet somehow related to our feelings and moods. We also enjoy letting the rhythm of music stimulate movement in our bodies, as when we dance.

Rhythm has several interrelated aspects, which we’ll consider in turn: beat, meter, accent and syncopation, and tempo.

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