PROGRAM NOTES

In today's VINYL VIBRATIONS podcast, we explore Odd Meters. First, a quick primer on meter.  If you are a musician… bear with me if you will…Rhythm is the arrangement of sounds in time. ...Meter places time into groupings, called measures or bars. The meter signature, also known as the time signature, is noted as two numbers stacked one above the other….like a fraction. For example: 4/4. On top-----The number of beats in a bar or measure. And on bottom----the type of note that represents one beat, most commonly it is a quarter note. Two most common time signatures are

3/4 three-four for three quarternotes per measure
4/4 four-four ….for four quarternotes per measure

We find 3/4 time in the waltz, a simple 1-2-3 dance step, it's a simple signature comprised of 3 quarter notes.

 

And 4/4 time can be found throughout pop, rock, country, even the classics, its a simple "even" signature comprised of 4 quarter notes.

In today's podcast we will hear ODD METERS starting with…

1 "The Rite of Spring”.  Part II (The Sacrifice) "Sacrificial Dance", Igor Stravinsky
2 "Take Five", Dave Brubeck Quartet, album Time Out
3 "Toads of the Short Forest" Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, album Weasles Ripped My Flesh
4 "Money"  Pink Floyd, album  The Dark Side of the Moon
5 "Good Morning, Good Morning", album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - The Beatles
6 "Living in the Past", Jethro Tull, stand-alone single

M1 The Rite of Spring”.  Part II (The Sacrifice) Sacrificial Dance by Igor Stravinsky 

Experts have said that the ballet The Rite of Spring, composed in 1913, changed music forever. It is famous for causing a riot in 1913 at its premiere in Paris. This is because the music and dancing was so different than anything people had heard before. The energy, rhythms and colorful sounds are amazing, even a century later. Igor Stravinsky was one of the first to introduce odd meters into western classical music in his “The Rite of Spring”. Rite of Spring is an example of THE ABSENCE OF A PREDICTABLE METRE or REFUSAL TO ADHERE TO TRADITIONAL METRE. At the time, "traditional" meant Ballet dance with 3/4 metre, a demure orchestra supporting, building, mirroring, the dance choreography. Instead, Rite of Spring demonstrates the uses of pulses and rhythms in music and dance.  This is a complete departure from the norm.  Dancers beat the pulse of music with their feet and arms. Dancers gather and disperse like the rhythmic formations in the music. The rhythm is blatant and out front. To create further tension (and frustration to the 1913 audience), the dance rhythm breaks from the music rhythm, in the last movement - Sacrificial Dance.  The style of music is that there is no consistent downbeat. This arrangement was an outrage !! No consistent time ! Not done before. The Rite of Spring was premiered on Thursday, May 29, 1913 in Paris and was conducted by Pierre Monteux. The intensely rhythmic score and primitive stage performance shocked the audience ---as Nijinsky's choreography was a radical departure from classical ballet.  The audience began to boo loudly. There were loud arguments in the audience followed by shouts and fistfights in the aisles. Unrest turned into a riot. The Paris police arrived …but even so, chaos reigned for the remainder of the performance. Music critic Abigail Wagner described it well - "The1913 audience’s shock at hearing Rite was akin to that of someone who has only read verse in iambic pentameter, reading a prose novel for the first  time". This is the climactic final of The Rite of Spring, the closing episode of the Sacrificial Dance from The Rite of Spring”.   Igor Stravinsky 

M2 Take Five, Dave Brubeck Quartet Album Time Out. Recorded in New York at Columbia Records in 1959

American Jazz pianist born 1920. Brubeck had studied with the French composer Darius Milhaud, who in turn had been strongly influenced by Stravinsky,

Ver todos los episodios