On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 9:20 AM, Dave Phillips
<dlphillips@woh.rr.com> wrote:
On 02/14/2013 07:50 AM, Paul Davis wrote:
Bach, like more or less everyone who is a part of the "western tradition", did some incredible things with harmony, and had some modest accomplishments in the melodic area (*), but did essentially nothing with rhythm.
it would be hard to play less :)
Rhythm in Western music is not only the moment-to-moment movement of durational units and aggregations, it includes a macroformal component not often studied or understood by most listeners. Large-scale rhythm is a major formal factor in the design of large-form works.
certainly. but then we probably need a different term for that, or some clear qualifiers. western music rarely uses polyrhythm, and even i have read that (even) bach rarely departs from a fairly monotonous grid, even on those odd occasions when things are not in 4.
the fact that there can be a sweeping sense of time caused by varying tempo and emphasizing beat structure versus not doing so is wonderful, but you can do those things when playing polyrhythms and so forth too.
I note you refer to harmony and not counterpoint,
i always thought of counterpoint as where harmony and melody collided and gave birth to beauty.
yet surely Bach's genius shines most brightly in that domain. And anyone who's gone through species counterpoint knows the deep importance of rhythm in the practice.
no doubt, but does the left hand ever play in a non-integral relationship to the right hand? :)
It's a commonplace
keeps me in touch with the common man ...
True that. I'm spending a fair amount of these days listening to qawwali by Nusrat Khan and other singers in that tradition. Extraordinary stuff. Of course, it can be logically argued that it does essentially nothing with harmony, but that's not what I'm listening for in that music.
precisely my point. nobody would listen to carnatic or african music for stunning displays of harmonic invention either, and celtic folk traditions, despite the incredible melodic ornamentation that it can display, is hardly known for rhythmic wizardry :)