GOOD AND BAD BEATS Changes in the musical notation of rhythm in the Baroque as an expression of baroque values PHILIP RICE CR-681 Baroque Performance Practice Westminster Choir College, Fall 2011 N MANY WAYS, the Baroque period represents a time when the most signiicant modernizations to practical musical methods took place— counterpoint reached a kind of maturity, tonal structures crystalized, instruments evolved to their modern forms, and some of the last updates to the notational system occurred. It is this last feature that will be the focus of this paper, chiely the changes that arose or matured in the notation of rhythm, and in particular how these modiications relected philosophical thought in the Baroque, and how they contrasted philosophy in the immediately preceding Renaissance. he author presents a hypothetical connection between the artistic values of baroque practitioners and the way rhythms and tempo were perceived, citing several of the most dramatic alterations to the notational system from the Renaissance, transitioning into the Baroque. I he Renaissance and Proportion he period immediately preceding the Baroque—that is, the Renaissance—by many opinions indeed has signiicant overlap with the Baroque. While some scholars insist that the Baroque had its beginnings in the 1500s, others argue that the Renaissance only began mid-seventeenth century. To understand the how and why of the notational changes that took place in the Baroque, an introductory understanding of tempo and rhythm in the Renaissance is necessary. he rhythmic notation of the late-Medieval, and certainly the whole Renaissance was a kind of proportional (sometimes called ‘mensural’) system which divided up a steady beat, called the tactus, into various fractions. he nature of this tactus is not fully understood by modern scholars, and this complicates tempo considerations for baroque music as it gradually fell into disuse in favor of more varied tempi. he tactus, was most likely a moderate pulse, something in the range of a 2 heartbeat of a person at rest (probably something like M.M. 60-70).1 From this relatively standard pulse, diferent proportions could be extrapolated, and thus diferent speeds of performance. he most common being ‘perfect,’ notated with O and ‘imperfect,’ represented by C.2 he ‘perfect’ proportion was to divide the full note-value (usually the ‘longa,’ or ‘brevis,’ today the breve or semibreve) into three equal parts, while the ‘imperfect’ was divided into two. his practice has obvious religious implications regarding the holy trinity, but it also has classical implications concerning prime numbers, the golden ratio, etc. he symbols O | and 3 | also existed, though their exact deinition is debated by today’s scholars. hey C probably mean perfect or imperfect time in exactly half diminution (this is, of course, supported by the evolution of the modern “cut time” signature). Likewise, . and C. were occasionally used, meaning exactly double augmentation of perfect O or imperfect time.4 his system became exceedingly complex as polyphonic music placed continual demands on notation to illustrate ever more complex and varied rhythms. As it became more and more usual to notate rhythms with many diferent proportions, two major alterations were made. First, the music might contain rapid changes between time-signatures to facilitate the execution of diferent patterns. In polyphonic music, this became very complicated, with pieces sometimes containing elaborate schemes of alternation between diferent proportional systems, which might be necessarily inconsistent between parts to assist reading of complicated or otherwise impossible-to-notate rhythms. 5 1 Howard Mayer Brown and Claus Bockmaier, “Tactus,” in New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, (London: Macmillan, 2001), vol. 24, 917. 2 he symbol for imperfect time, which evolved into the modern “common time” symbol is not the Latin character “C,” which many take to abbreviate the word “common,” but instead is an incomplete circle, intended to show imperfection. 3 For more information (and a very interesting read) on what these symbols may or may not have meant to various composers, see Rob C. Wegman, “Diferent Strokes for Diferent Folks? On Tempo and Diminution in Fifteenth-Century Music,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Autumn, 2000), 461-505. 4 his is not by any means an exhaustive list of meter indications in the mensural system. According to Robert Donington, the proportional system also had “half circles with two, three, or even more upright strokes. here were other half-circles similar, but reversed to open toward the right, again as a sign of sub-division. here were also various numerals, alone or in combination, such as our own 3/4, 4/4, etc.—but considerably more proliic and, to say the least of it, less selfexplanatory.” Robert Donington, Tempo and Rhythm in Bach’s Organ Music, (London: Hinrichsen, 1960), 20. 5 Curt Sachs, Rhythm and Tempo: A Study in Music History, (New York: Norton, 1953), 237. 3 Numbers were added after the perfect or imperfect symbol to further indicate the subdivisions, which were not always consistently perfect or imperfect. For example, O3 meant “perfect longs, imperfect breves, and imperfect maxims”6 To put this into modern words, it would be as if for a particular section of music, all whole notes contained three half notes, all half notes contained three quarter notes, and all quarter notes contained two eighth notes. Surprisingly, it is the imperfect system which ultimately won out, with duple becoming the default division, and triple being largely replaced by the ‘triplet.’ Secondly, continually shorter and shorter note values were being invented, at irst with diferent colored note-heads, later with lags. his apparently created a lot of anxiety for performers; a treatise of Georg Mufat warned performers not to be “terriied by the sight of the sixteenth note”7 By the end of the Renaissance, the systems of proportional rhythm had become so complex that modern readings become nearly unintelligible. Robert Donnington puts it quite plainly in his text on tempo and rhythm in Bach’s music, “the diiculties of such a system strike us today as highly formidable.”8 Even contemporaries had trouble grasping it all, and by the dawn of the Baroque, homas Morley eloquently said of the proportional system, “here is a [system] in deede contayning more than ever I meane to beate my brayns about.”9 Changing ‘Values’ After his humorous quip, Morley immediately goes on to say something of much more signiicance, which speaks to the changing attitudes of his time: “As for musick, the principal thing we seek in it, is to delight the eare, which cannot so perfectly be done in these hard proportions, as otherwise, therefore proceede to the rest of your musicke… Although there be no proportion so harde but might be made in musicke, but the hardness of singing them, hath caused them to be left out.”10 he Baroque signaled a change in attitude toward a more emotive and expressive approach to music—musicians of the Baroque sought to prove something to an audience through a kind of emotive rhetoric. Unlike the later 6 Sachs, 208 Georg Mufat, Florilegium Secundum, (Passau: 1698), reprinted in Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Oesterreich, Vol. II, 2, p. 24, quoted in Sachs, 214. 8 Donnington, 20. 9 homas Morley, A plaine and easie introduction to practicall musicke, (London: 1597), 33, quoted in Sachs, 270. 10 Ibid., 33, 27 (Sachs, 270) 7 4 Romantics who produced art for the sheer pleasure of basking in the emotion itself, baroque philosophy demanded that this emotional approach be a kind of argumentative proof-of-concept. his stood in sharp contrast with renaissance (and likewise, classical) philosophy, which strove to achieve fulillment in a kind of Platonic ‘ideal form’ which theoretically existed, but might only be communicative with humans through a visceral response to the beauty of perfection. Baroque music, on the other hand, was meant to be understood— intimately—if not, then no rhetorical goal could be met. In the Renaissance, the idea of ‘tempo’ did not exist. he tactus was a ‘tempo’ of sorts, and any notes moving faster or slower than the tactus had to have a directly proportional relationship to it. As more and more note-values were added, and as pressures of the new baroque attitude required more and more afects to be available to musicians, the need for varied tempi began to emerge. It is known that the tactus had begun to develop some plasticity in the Renaissance, due to the increasingly miniscule subdivisions that were developing around that time. In this case, the tactus might be slowed slightly (perhaps no more than 20 bpm) to accommodate very rapid passages that might otherwise be excessively diicult to realize using the standard tactus.11 By the time baroque composers were tackling the job of creating a wide palette of afects, the need for ininitely diverse tempi had reached critical mass. One only needs to glance over the scores to Monteverdi’s works (largely notated in the old proportional system) to see that the wealth of tempo changes necessary to create the many assorted emotional environments—for which Monteverdi was famous—is troublesome in performance.12 Modern editions preserving the character of the original notation while updating it to current typographical standards require an overabundance of metric modulations, often moving between duple and triple subdivisions, frequently happening repeatedly in a single piece. Baroque thought, concerned with emotional truth—not so much mathematic or universal truth—had no use for a single unifying pulse. Instead, the artistic requirement of the time was to create many efective musical designs that each could generate a consistently predictable and useful response in a listener. he most obvious way for rhythmic features to contribute to this end was to modify the tempo, which meant the elimination of the tactus as a universal standard. As more music required a speciic afect, composers began using words at the beginning of the score to inform the performer of a desired mood (and thus the 11 12 Sachs, 201 See Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers for a good example. 5 appropriate increased or decreased rate of tactus). he Italians were the irst to do this, and these ‘mood-indicating’ words survive today, albeit attached with strict metronomic equivalents that they didn’t carry at their inception; adagio (leisurely), allegro (cheerful), and andante (meaning simply “to go”) are a few. he desire to escape the strict limitations of the tactus was expressly manifest as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century: Monteverdi, who largely still favored the proportional system, occasionally rejected it in favor of more expressive methods. In his eighth book of madrigals, he writes at the beginning of the Lamento della Ninfa “cantato a tempo del afetto del animo, e non a quello de la mano,” or, “sung in the tempo of the afection of the spirit, and not that of the hand.”13 In the presence of all these new terms, one term was reserved for cases in which the composer wished to indicate that the old tactus should be used: tempo giusto or sometimes ordinario (the realization of which is today, of course, anything but ordinary, and thus somewhat debatable). In the presence of tempo giusto, the note values are oftentimes longer, hearkening back to the older ‘longa’ and ‘brevis’—a time before the newer, shorter note values had become commonplace. Harmonically and contrapuntally, these examples are also usually in a style more analogous to renaissance or late medieval archetypes, sometimes referred to as the stile antico, or “ancient style.”14 he contrasting style, called moderno, was characterized by metrical units which could be four or more times smaller than the old tactus. Not only had the subdivisions become iner, but the tactus itself had diminished. Ido Abravaya explains it by describing various metrical “strata,” saying of Bach’s music, “in 16th century vocal styles [the semiminim ( q ) ] represented the fast, melizmatic-lowing stratum, in Bach’s stile antico pieces, notated alla breve, it stood for the middle stratum, […] but in alla semibreve 13 Monteverdi explains that this freely emotive singing is only for the second part of the madrigal. his second part is presented in score, rather than in parts, an unusual feature early 17th century published vocal music (ostensibly to facilitate singing in a free rhythmic style without loosing track of the other parts). But for the irst part of the madrigal (a trio, Non avea Febo ancora), he writes “si sono cosi separatamente poste, perche si cantano al tempo de la mano,” or “[the parts] are so placed separately, because they sing in the time of the hand.” Claudio Monteverdi, Madrigali: Guerrieri, et Amorosi, Libro Ottavo (he Eighth Book of Madrigals [1638]), (Cremona: Fondazione Claudio Monteverdi, 2004), 524. 14 he stile antico and the use of “tempo giusto” or “tempo ordinario” can be found at least as late as Handel (probably as late as sacred works of Mozart, arguably even Beethoven and Brahms). Several examples can be found in Messiah, e.g. #30 (“Lift up your heads”), marked “A tempo ordinario”, but not in the stile antico, and #22 (“And with his stripes”), which is most deinitely in the stile antico, but is instead marked “Alla breve, moderato,” which almost certainly means the same thing as Tempo guisto. 6 pieces, the same function was given to the fusa ( e ).”15 With the eighth-note now relegated to the position of primary subdivision, the quarter note becomes the new tactus—this is undeniably the standard of today (how often must we remind ourselves, “the half note gets the beat,” when performing in cut-time? Such notion has grown to be an exception to the rule in modern performance practice). In Die Kunst der Fuge, Bach’s manuscript is replete with sixteenth notes and “cut-time” signatures. In the irst printed edition, many of these semiquavers have been augmented to eighth-notes, and the meters doubled. Abravaya thinks this is because Bach wanted to “give the work an ‘old style’ look, in conformity with works of didactical nature.”16 Apparently there was also a belief that as time progressed, music was actually getting faster, and Albert Schweitzer thinks that Bach’s tendency near the end of his life to use longer note values in his published music was an indication that in his old age he wanted to have is music played more slowly. 17 Supporting the notion that tempos were accelerating with the years, Quantz says, “what in former times was considered to be quite fast would have been played almost twice as slow as in the present day. […] he large number of quick notes in the instrumental pieces of earlier German composers thus looked much more diicult and hazardous than they sounded.”18 While this statement is probably at least a mild exaggeration, it shows plainly that practitioners in the Baroque believed that they had not simply reorganized the system of note values, but had actually increased the speed of the music. his makes perfect sense to people who understood the Renaissance as a time when a greatly varied number of tempos was unnecessary; for those ‘classicists’ of yesteryear, a kind of moderato would have been suicient to express mathematical and aesthetic truths. But to a baroque musician who needed as many afective options as possible, speeding things up was one sure way to broaden the emotional palette. Common sense dictates that it is unlikely that an objective deinition of “fast” was actually changing, rather that the terminology associated with it was progressively shifting to make room for more rhythmic possibilities. his trend didn’t stop in the Baroque; a look at Mozart’s piano sonatas reveals that by the late-eighteenth century, generalized diminution had run amok, and it was not uncommon for supposedly “slow” movements to be littered with 15 Ido Abravaya, On Bach’s Rhythm and Tempo, (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2006), 34. Abravaya, 39. 17 Ibid., 38 18 Johann Joachim Quantz, On Playing the Flute, 1752, trans. Edward R. Reilly (Boston, Northeastern, 2001), 285. 16 7 hemidemisemiquavers, or even 128th-notes.19 he fact that these very fast note values are generally found in ‘slow’ pieces is due to a kind of whiplash efect that demanded excessively fast notes be played with a slower tempo, since at some point it would become impossible to perform them at tactus speed. Of this phenomenon Johannn Phillip Kirnberger, a student of Bach, says “…pieces using 16ths and 32nds as the fastest note value have a slower beat movement than those using primarily 8ths with a few 16ths.”20 If this logic is to be followed, then the tactus must have indeed sped up, since pieces with half-notes and quarter-notes as the fastest value would ostensibly be performed at lightning-fast tempo! So, it seems that not only was the tactus slowing down in one direction to make room for smaller note values, it was also speeding up in the other direction to compensate. Fate of the Tactus For a period of years in the seventeenth century, examples can be found in which the tactus completely vanishes—perhaps most notably the unmeasured preludes of Louis Couperin et al. (irst appearing around 1650). hese pieces abandoned a steady beat altogether in favor of a rhapsodic, free-lowing rhythm which rejected the need for an internal pulse with an almost romantic fervor. hese pieces not only lacked meter, but also note value, being written with featureless noteheads, devoid of all rhythmically deining indications. his practice, while a quintessential example of baroque extremism, never caught on as a tradition, and by the mid-eighteenth century had disappeared. he baroque agenda could hardly be accomplished by the eradication of a feature, which is why the Baroque largely adopted an inclusive attitude. But the tactus we know today, which matured in the Baroque, is not the austere, grid-like backdrop of the Renaissance, instead it is lexible—furthermore the abstraction of the beat is itself assigned values which contain a kind of inequality. 21 his inequality survives today in our musical lexicon as the notion of “strong and weak” beats, which vary depending on the type of composition in which they are found. A sarabande, for example, may be 19 See Mozart’s K284, variation XI for a good laugh… Johann Phillip Kirnberger, Die Kunst des reinen Satzes in der Musik (1771), p. 106-107, quoted in Anthony Newman, Bach and the Baroque: A Performing Guide to Baroque Music with Special Emphasis on J.S. Bach, (New York: Pendragon, 1985), 25. 21 he reader need not be reminded of the abundance of inequality as a deining characteristic of the Baroque. he word ‘baroque’ itself is rooted in a term which denotes something which is misshapen. Rhythm in particular is almost never equal, as evidenced by performance practice standards of overdotting, notes enegales, etc. 20 8 performed with a strong second beat, lanked by weak irst and third beats, a minuet will almost certainly have a strong irst beat, followed by two weak ones, and so forth. his type of performance practice stands in antithetical opposition to the egalitarianism of renaissance polyphony, which relied on a transparent tactus to ensure that all voices were perfectly and plainly aligned.22 he baroque method, however, rejected this convention by imparting a kind of moral signiicance to the individual beats. his seems at irst outrageous, but upon further consideration it might just be yet another way that baroque musicians sought to redeine properties of music to accomplish a rhetorical end. Rather than referring to the beats simply as strong and weak, some texts read with a more shocking moral agenda—again, we hear from Kirnberger: “In meters in 4, the irst and third are long, also called “good beats,” and the second and fourth are short, also called “bad beats.” he irst is heavier than the third.”23 Here we ind three levels of moral signiicance, two beats assigned morally attractive properties, the irst of which outweighs the second, and two beats assigned ostensibly equal pejorative qualities—a highly unequal moral hierarchy that is assigned not to a tangibly articulated and perceptible feature like tempo or rhythm, but an entirely abstract feature, the beat itself. Perhaps most striking is that the majority of functional developments in the Baroque (both related to rhythm and otherwise) were able to withstand multiple pendulum-swings back to more function-oriented trends, both Classicism in the eighteenth century, and at least partly Modernism in the twentieth. In fact, eighteenth century classicists, supposedly interested in straightforward, proportion-based music (like that of the Renaissance) embraced the aforementioned inequality of beats wholeheartedly in periodic phrase structures of the style gallant etc. he fact that these changes have sustained into the modern day perhaps shows not only that they may be emergent properties of the logical quality of music, but that the potency of their exposition in baroque music was convincing enough to prove their argument—their enduring quality may actually be a testament to their rhetorical strength. 22 Sachs explains that the tactus in the Renaissance in fact never even relected the metrical design, and always contained two beats (up-down), whether found in imperfect or perfect time. Furthermore, the execution of the tactus contained no inequality between these two beats. He quotes Tomás de Santa María, El arte de tañer, (Valladolid: 1565), quoted from John Ward’s doctoral dissertation: “Both of them are struck with equality, that is, the low [beat] is not struck more forcefully than the high, nor vice versa.” Sachs, 218. 23 Kirnberger, 123, quoted in Newman, 28. 9 BIBLIOGRAPHY Abravaya, Ido. On Bach’s Rhythm and Tempo. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2006. Apel, Willi. he Notation of Polyphonic Music 900-1600. Cambridge, Mediaeval Academy of America, 1961. Boone, Graeme M. “Marking Mensural Time.” Music heory Spectrum Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 2000): 1-43. Donnington, Robert. Tempo and Rhythm in Bach’s Organ Music. London: Hinrichsen, 1960. Newman, Anthony. Bach and the Baroque: A Performing Guide to Baroque Music with Special Emphasis on J.S. Bach. New York: Pendragon, 1985. Quantz, Johann Joachim. On Playing the Flute. Trans. Edward R. Reilly. Boston: Northeastern, 2001. Sachs, Curt. Rhythm and Tempo: A Study in Music History. New York: Norton, 1953. Tanay, Dorit. Noting Music, Marking Culture: he Intellectual Context of Rhythmic Notation, 1250-1400. Holzgerlingen: Hänssler, 1999. Wegman, Rob C. “Diferent Strokes for Diferent Folks? On Tempo and Diminution in Fifteenth-Century Music.” Journal of the American Musicological Society Vol. 53, No. 3 (Autumn, 2000): 461-505. Williams, C.F. Abdy. he Story of Notation. London: Walter Scott, 1903.