John Howell wrote:
At 10:37 PM +0100 7/12/04, Owain Sutton wrote:
John Howell wrote:
At 9:47 PM +0100 7/11/04, Owain Sutton wrote:
Yep, 2/10. Or 7/24. I'm not getting into the explanation of what they mean right now....but...
Basically, I want to substitute different numbers for the '8' or '16' displayed, while keeping the function of the signature the same. Is there a way to do this?
Pardon me for stating the obvious, but those signatures are meaningless. We do not have a "10th" note or a "24th" note in our notational system, and the lower number is not simply a number. It is an identification of the note value indicated. There is no "four-four" time; it should be and is read as "four-quarter" time--four quarter notes per measure.
As you can clearly see, I'm not into complex or experimental 20th century notation at all. There may be a meaning for what you want to do. I just would never understand that meaning without a clear explanation, and neither would any other average musician.
John
Wow. I expected some hostility to the question, I've come to expect it - but an outpouring of vitriol like that was unexpected.
My appologies if you found my rather clear statements to be vitriolic. They were not intended as such and not written as such. If I touched a nerve, I'm sorry.
The whole history of Western music is full of changes, elaborations and adaptations of metrical structures. Why should we stop now?
Of course change is continuous, and of course it is inevitable. But as part of the continuing evolution of music itself and the notation that represents it, there is a time when any living musical style period reaches the end of its maturity and leads to experimental explorations that are of iterest to fewer and fewer musicians and fewer and fewer listeners. It's happened time after time, and always has led to a return to simplicity and to the beginning of what is later recognized as a new style period. The ultimate exploitation of the rhythmic complexities inherent in Franconian notation and its 14th century developers led to what has been labeled variously as the Mannerist School or the Ars Subtilior, certainly some of the most difficult music to sing before the mid-20th century. The predictable result was a return to less complex metric structures, to simplicity and to melody which marked the early Renaissance, with the beautiful flowing melodic lines of DuFay (presaged by Machaut) and the evolution of the equal-voiced imitative style that had developed by the end of the 15th century.
And why should composers content themselves with writing for 'average' musicians?
Perhaps because there are so very many of us? Wasn't it Schoenberg who wrote that there's still a lot of mileage left in the C major chord? I'd hazard a guess that 99.9% of music in the Western European and American tradition written in the past 20 years has been tonal, has used functional harmony, and has used clear metric patterns. That includes art music, educational music, worship music, popular music, jazz, and musical theater music.
And by the way, these forms of time signatures were spelt out by Henry Cowell, in "New Musical Resources". In 1919.
Yes, probably a good date for the beginning of the growth of rhythmic complexity. Just not my thing, but you're certainly welcome to it.
John
Well, thankyou for the reply - I cetainly retract the 'vitriol' from the precious statemnents...
I certainly do feel that music, like any other media, suffers more rapid changes in this century and the last than ever before. We also have greater opportunities for cultural indoctrination - which we all sucumb to, like it or not. Has anyone *not* seen a Hollywood movie? Wihthout wanting to get too Adornian, surely the past century has produced more eye-witnesses to horrific events than ever before? And if so, what is their take on that?
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