On Thu, 5 Mar 2009, Jonathan Wilkes wrote:
Unless you happen to be listening to Carter, Cowell, Ferneyhough, Johnston, Nancarrow, or anyone who has ever happened to use a quintuplet (Chopin, Elvin Jones, maybe Al Pacino in "Heat")
I didn't say that quintuplets don't happen!I mean that quintuplets are relatively rare, and they rarely are used that much in one piece. You could take a complete piece of 5/4 and write it 4/4 and it would have quintuplets all over, and so you could take a piece that is mostly made of quintuplets and disguise it as a 5/4 without quintuplets, but if it wasn't all made of quintuplets, then the result should have some kind of anti-quintuplets, that is, multiplying the note durations by 1.25 times instead of 0.8 times. But I've never seen this in one notational form or another. Independently of how it's written, I've never heard it either.
So, there is this asymmetry whereby you can find plenty of patterns of accretion of durations in multiples of 5, but not much splitting of durations in multiples of 5.
I'd be glad to get references to specific pieces that contain a lot of quintuplets. Of the five composers you named, I only heard Nancarrow, I only heard of Nancarrow, and then, I don't recall any quintuplets in it, but I didn't see the score and perhaps I couldn't grasp the rhythm of it just by ear (?).
It reminds me, I once applied in music composition at UQÀM, but when they sent me a letter telling me they wanted to test my piano skills with sheet music, I didn't reply, because I don't have any piano skills and can't read sheet music in realtime. The only instrument I was really ever proficient with was ScreamTracker, and boy did I abuse that thing. I made pieces in 21/8 time and whatnot. I found that notation much easier to deal with than classical notation... except for making quintuplets, that is.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801, Montréal, Québec
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