On 29 Jun 2005 at 10:16, John Howell wrote: > At 12:43 PM +0100 6/29/05, Owain Sutton wrote: > >Johannes Gebauer wrote: > >>keith helgesen schrieb: > >> > >>>I would query your assertion that 6/4 "traditionally" is 2 X 3/4. > >>> > >>>>From my experience 6/4 is generally 3 X 2/4. > >> > >>Is it? I doubt that for most music written before 1900, after that I > >>guess things are a little more complex. > >> > >>I'd be interested to know about any piece in 6/4 before 1850 which > >>is clearly 3x2/4, do you know one? > > > >What's the earliest we can go back to? ;) > > There are mensural pieces, perhaps as early as the 13th century but > certainly by the 14th, for which the original notation and the > relations between tempus and prolatio have to be resolved when > transcribing into modern notation. By the 14th century it was quite > possible to indicate either interpretation. And there are dance > breaks in Act I of Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" which go like the wind when > the exact interpretation of both mensuration signs and proportion > signs is observed.
Well, from the 150 years on either side of 1600, 3/2 was a meter that, as a convention, constantly slipped back and forth between 3 beats and 2 beats (the "I want to live in America" effect). And it's also something that doesn't not happen together in all the parts at the same time (some parts might be in 3, others in 2), but that's an obvious thing in a time when the musical style was basically polymetric, with independent parts each having their own metrical context whose strong beats did not necessarily line up with the other parts. The 3/2 vs. 6/4 thing was characteristic of dance music, but also part of the fundamental musical style, as seen in the prevalence of the cadential hemiola (which outlasted the conventional "I want to live in America" affect well into the late Baroque). Of course, the music wasn't originally notated with either 3/2 or 6/4 as time signature -- those are transcriptions into modern time signatures. Some of the polyphonic fantasies in the viol repertory can tie you up into knots finding a modern meter that makes the music come out looking sensibly. Last Spring my consort played a 4-part Byrd fantasy from an edition that started in 3/2, had a few passages in 6/4, and at the end even went into 5/2 for a while (all on one line): http://www.dfenton.com/Collegium/HomeChurchTheatre/08 Byrd - Fantasy à4.mp3 (last year we replaced two members of the consort with new, inexperienced players, so we barely got through that performance!) It was a mistake, in my opinion, because it never comes out right in all the parts, since the points of imitation, each of which has its own metrical implications, can come in on any beat or half beat of any meter you choose. I think in these contexts, meters should be chosen so that the metrical framework of the cadential passages of each section come out right. The use of 5/2 didn't actually help that very much, but it was a better edition in other respects in comparison to the two alternatives. All that said, I don't even know of any modern music (post-1850) that treats 6/4 as 3 beats -- to me that is nonsensical overcomplication where 3/2 would be the choice that is simpler (well, d'oh, it has a THREE in the time signature). -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
