ABSTRACT
Imagine a steady heartbeat going boom, boom, boom, boom, . . . or a grandfather clock ticking tick, tick, tick, tick, . . . without end. It is natural for most people to consider these sequences to be examples of the simplest kinds of rhythms. ey certainly satisfy several of the denitions of rhythm given in Chapter 1, such as those of Baccheios the Elder, Nichomacus, Didymus, Parncutt, Wade, and Wright. However, some music theorists and musicologists* would say that this isochronous sequence is not a rhythm at all because it contains no discernible audible pattern, by which they mean that in such a sequence there are no contrasting features. As H. Riviere asserts, “A succession of sounds of equal duration, with invariable intensity and identical timbre, do not constitute a rhythmic event.”† A more appropriate term for such a sequence is arguably a pulsation. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that in the context of human behavior, musical pulsation (periodic production) is a uniquely human trait that appears to have evolved specically for music.‡ Furthermore, other musicologists express a contrary view; the folklorist Alan Lomax refers to pulsations as “one beat” rhythms.§ In this book, pulsations are considered to be bona de members of the family of rhythms.
