saying a musician -- or the audience for that matter -- can't
distinguish a triplet (even if "partial") from the related
non-triplet 8th value at the start of the piece is to seriously
doubt the capacity of your musicians and audience.
Well, sorry, Jef, but until and unless an audible pulse manifests
itself, it *isn't* possible to hear that the triplets at the
beginning of a piece are, in fact, triplets. It's only when the
pulse comes in that we can retroactively say, "Oh -- those were
*triplets!*
i can agree only partly. of course you're right that a triplet as
such migt not be perceived but the triplet relation is certainly
perceptible.
set up a document with two 13/4 measures and apply tempi to each
measure so that m2 is in what would be triplet relation to m1 and
regardless of the fact that there is no accent to indicate beat
groupings that could be interpreted as tuplets and i'm pretty sure
that pretty much any trained musician can hear the relation. even
without metric groupings, there is a tendency to perceive tuplet
relations and for the ear to group according to the relation. likely
because of experience and nothing innate. if you don't know what a
triplet is, you can't group it out of a series of non-accented pulses.
i'm not sure i'm explaining this clearly...
m1 q=60
m2 q=90
you can clearly hear that there m2 is in triplet relation to m1.
do the same inverted and you perceive that m1 is in triplet relation
to m2. so yes, without perception of a pulse -- even though there
are no beat groupings via accents (DAA-daa DAA-daa DA-da-da DA-da-da
/ DA-da-da DAA-daa) -- the relation is perceptible. the same is
possible with 4:3 relations and 5:2 / 5:4 relations and as the
relations become more distant they become more difficult to perceive.
why this happens is principally (of course not exclusively) due to
training: indian classical musicians learn beat patterns in 5 and 7
very early on and don't see them as difficult, whereas it is not
uncommon to find western classical musicians even today who sometimes
struggle with these.
by extension, returning to the ferneyhough example, even though the
"quintuplet" in m1 is "incomplete" one should in principal be able to
hear the relation, assuming the listener knows what a quintuplet is.
now... we wouldn't expect ferneyhough, nor a whole range of
composers, to write only in fixed pulses, so the perception is
somewhat challenged to another degree, since the values are often
further subdivided. but as i mentioned in an earlier email, as far
as i know, F is not interested in exposing tuplet relations, but is
using these relations as different degrees of "pressure" on similar
musical materials.
so perception of the values in m1 as having a quintuplet relation to
m2 may not even be a point of what he wrote.
and the way he uses /10 or /6 time sigs is really no different than
someone going between 6/8 and 2/4 and maybe throwing in a 3/16 meter
at some point (the underlying 16th always at the same tempo). the
use of these meters allows for (in this example) 2 durational values
to be used in m1 that have a 5:4 relation to m2.
the musician can count in using the non-existent 3/5 if needed, but
this is really only a crutch, because at the beginning of the piece
is the only place you would be able to do it!
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