I.1       a) The tempo is regular (the beats are steady)
I.2       d) The meter is irregular

The tempo (the speed of the beats) is very regular. The effect of this notorious passage from Igor Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring, 1913) comes from the absolute unpredictability of the meter. Stravinsky places accents unpredictably after 9, 2, 6, 3, 4, 5, and 3 notes, in effect destroying any sense of meter (the groupings of pulses).

We'll be studying The Rite of Spring in more detail at the end of the semester. If you'd like to hear more of this thrilling score, a longer excerpt is found on the textbook web site.

II.1       a) The tempo is regular
II.2       b) The meter is triple (try counting 1-2-3)
II.3       a), b), and c)

The first step in "solving" this one is recognizing that the passage consists of a single short, repeated rhythmic pattern. When this is the case, the key to the meter is figuring out how many beats the repeated pattern lasts.

The relative duration of the notes is one key to our perception of the meter: since the first note is longer than the other two, it seems to be stressed or emphasized. Such a rhythmic stress created because a note is relatively long in duration, is called an agogic accent. The performers highlight this feature by playing that long louder than the rest, creating a dynamic accent. Finally, the repeated rhythm takes three beats from start to finish, the most important factor of all.

The music is from a collection of dances by the German composer Michael Praetorius written in 1613.

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Return to Assignment #2 Questions.

IIIa       Duple (or quadruple if you're counting twice as fast)
            This is another dance by Michael Praetorius.
IIIb       Triple
            From Rossini's comic opera L'Itaiana in Algeri (1813)
IIIc       Triple
            A piece for harpsichord by the French composer Boismortier titled "The Flea." (These guys had a sense of humor!)
IIId       Quadruple.
            In fact, the accents come so regularly every four beats that it's hard to mistake this for duple. The piece is Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.
IIIe       Triple.
            A relatively easy one to hear, since the accompanying pizzicato notes (short, plucked notes in the strings) are so regular. The solo violin sometimes does things that don't quite "line up" with this background meter. The piece is the slow movement of Prokofiev's 2nd Violin Concerto, one of the most ravishing bits of violin writing from the 20th century. Highly recommended.
IIIf       Quintuple.
            A tricky one: from the Tchaikovsky 6th Symphony. A famous example of music organized groups of 5 beats.

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*End of Listening Assignment #2*

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