Cross rhythm

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Cross-rhythm , occasionally cross-rhythm or cross-rhythmic , is a special form of polyrhythmics and polymetrics .

Alternative terms from classical rhythm theory are a sustained, longer-lasting conflict rhythm . The hemiole is a special form of it, a sequence of different meters. Short-lasting polyrhythmics need not affect the underlying meter, while longer and more specifically constructed ones, such as cross-rhythm, attack the meter. In these cases, it is not possible to distinguish precisely between polyrhythmics and polymetrics.

According to Gerhard Kubik , the cross-rhythmic technique in polyrhythmics consists in the fact that in different, simultaneously sounding forms of a single meter, the main accent (focus) of one comes before or after the other, so that the impression of a crossing of rhythms is created. He translates cross rhythm with cross rhythm.

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The term was coined by Arthur Morris Jones in 1934 . It has different meanings.

  1. An identical rhythmic pattern is played and shifted against itself (for example played an eighth note later) that its accents no longer coincide, but alternate and "cross" in the score. That is the strict meaning.
  2. Rhythmic patterns in different meters are in a different position to one another when they are repeated, so that once accents coincide, but in the further course they are offset from one another. Here the adjectival of "cross rhythm" is often used.
  3. Different meters appearing one after the other create additive (composite) rhythmic patterns that differ from simultaneous patterns, so that they either have the accents in other places, or the patterns shift their accents against each other in the course of the process. Here too, the term "cross-rhythmic" is often used as an adjective. The accents of a pattern with 3 + 3 + 2 sixteenths can differ from that in eight (e.g. 4 + 4) sixteenths (this was the case with Béla Bartók's "Bulgarian" rhythms from Balkan folklore). If there are 3 and 2 bars in succession, the term hemiole is used. Two hemioli played against each other can create crossovers.

An example of a pattern built up in 3 + 3 + 2 meters, which occurs in different positions and stands against a 2/4 time (more precisely 4/8), is the Maple Leaf Rag . For 3 + 2 + 3, The Easy Winners is an example.

For example:

  1. The first two lines are shifted by a sixteenth, more precisely by a sixteenth and four eighth, but otherwise identical. That is why the beats always interlock.
  2. The first and the third and the second and the third line are in a ratio of 3: 2 to each other, which is why they interlock every now and then because they shift against each other.
  3. The third line is in interplay with a different (first or second line) rhythm in a different meter, i.e. with two (first and second line) other rhythms in interplay. In the summary of the upper two voices seem to appear sixteenths intervals that they alone do not have; Sixteenths are not played in any system, but result from the summary, and they are in the new metric interplay of 6: 2 with the third line. (With a little bit of compulsion, one could interpret the upper pattern as a 2 + 1 pattern, the lower one as a 2 + 2 pattern. The sixteenths thus arise both divisively through the shift and through the additive contrast of the patterns).

literature

  • Volker Schütz: Music in Black Africa. Workbook for music lessons in secondary schools. Oldershausen Institute for Didactics of Popular Music, Oldershausen 1992.
  • Arthur Morris Jones : African Rhythm. International African Institute, London 1954.
  • Alfons M. Duration: tradition of African wind orchestras and the origin of jazz . Academic Printing and Publishing Company, Graz 1985.
  • Music in the past and present . Material part.
  • Peter Benary: Rhythm and Metrics. A practical guide. Music publisher Hans Gerig, Bergisch Gladbach 1973.
  • Kofi Agawu: African Rhythm, a Northern Ewe Perspective . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1995.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Gerhard Kubik: To understand African music. Essays . 2nd Edition. LIT Verlag, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7800-7 , p. 85 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ↑ JH Kwabena Nketia : The music of Africa. Heinrichshofen, Wilhelmshaven 1979.
  3. ^ Gunther Schuller: Early Jazz.