ABSTRACT
Our approach to rhythm is called divisive because we divide the music into standard units of time. As we mark the time by tapping a foot or clapping our hands, we are separating the music into easily comprehensible units of time and indicating when the next note or chord is likely to come. A Western rhythm marks time at an even pace with a recurrent main beat, generally with a major pulse every two, three, or four beats. What is most noticeable about the rhythm is that it serves to link the different notes to each other. We say, for instance, that a piece of music has a certain rhythm, and as we count out the beats, we will notice certain things. First, most of the instruments play their notes at the same time, and second, if we have a sequence of notes that runs into a phrase or a melody, the whole thing will start when we count “One.” It is this fact, that Western musicians count together from the same starting point, which enables a conductor to stand in front of more than a hundred men and women playing in an orchestra and keep them together with his baton. Rhythm is something we follow, and it is largely determined in reference to the melody or even actually defined as an aspect of the melody. Our approach to rhythm is obvious in most popular or folk music, but it is no less evident in a fugue in which the melody may start at different points. What is important is that the rhythm is counted evenly and stressed on the main beat, and we have the special word “syncopation” to refer to a shifting of the “normal” accents to produce an uneven or irregular rhythm. Even composers in the Western classical tradition who used complex rhythms, like Beethoven or Brahms, or twentieth-century composers who were influenced by African musical idioms, like Stravinsky, manifest this basic orientation. In the popular or folk idioms of Western music, the more “artistic” complexities rarely arise.
