:: The Musician's Guide to Theory and Analysis ::

WebFacts

Chapter 5 WebFacts

WebFacts 2
Composers and performers from the Baroque (1600-1750) and part of the Classical (1750-1830) eras did not think of meter in exactly the way we do now. Before the 1770s, writers characterized meters as "duple" or "triple," but they meant something different: all meters with a top number of 2 or 12 were considered duple, since they were commonly divided by two, and all with 3 or 9 on the top were triple, since they divided by three. Meters with a 6 as the top number were sometimes considered duple, sometimes triple, and those with 4 on the top were a separate category altogether.

In the 1770s, Johann Philipp Kirnberger used the terms "simple" and "compound," but (again) with slightly different meanings from the ones we use today. He wrote that simple meters can have the beat divided into two or three subdivisions (for example,

divides two beats into two eighth notes per beat;

divides two beats into three eighth notes per beat). What makes both of these meters "simple" for Kirnberger is that they each have one main accent-on the downbeat of the measure. Compound meters, in contrast, are made of several measures of simple meter put together, or "compounded" (for example, compound

is two

measures put together;

is two measures of

combined). Compound meters have an accent on beats 1 and 3. Kirnberger actually describes two types of

-one with a strong beat only on the downbeat of the measure (simple

) and the other with accents on beats 1 and 3 (compound

). Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's father, commented that

is more suitable for a quick melody than

because the latter "cannot be beaten quickly without moving the spectators to laughter" (Leopold Mozart, Gründliche Violinschule [1756], English translation by Editha Knocker [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948; reprinted 1985], p. 32). From his remarks, he presumably conducted

in 4.

WebFacts 3
A hemiola occurs in compound time when the "normal" three-part division of the beat is temporarily regrouped (over two beats) into twos. Performers often bring out the metric ambiguity of the hemiola by accenting the temporary regrouping. (See WebFacts 5 in Chapter 2 for an example of a hemiola in simple time.)