John Roeder, "Pulse Streams and Problems of Grouping and Metrical Dissonance in Bartók's 'With Drums and Pipes,'" Music Theory Online 7.1 (2001) | << Sect. 7b | Section 8a | Sect. 8b >> | |
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[8.1] Figure 5, which shows the transition to the closing block in this passage, provides further examples of how pulse streams organize the disparate accent structures of the different voices in the polyphony, and provide continuity between blocks. An audio version follows:
(Example VIII.1a) [click here
for suggestions
if the movie does not appear or play correctly]
[8.2] The beginning of the example shows the most salient slow pulse stream
after m. 56: a whole-note stream, labeled 14, that arises from the change from
one dyad to another in the descending sequence in the right hand. (In the audio
example, these long dyads are played by low flutes.) At m. 61, the rate of change
of this dyad accelerates, so that the changes start to come a dotted-half note
apart. The attack of the long D2 (m. 64) arrives a dotted-half after the last
change of dyad, thereby initiating a dotted-half stream, labeled 15, that replaces
stream 14. The low loud dyads in mm. 65-66, although they appear to be syncopated
against the notated meter, in fact align with and reinforce stream 15. The stream
even spills into the next block--the low dyad in the last measure of the example
is a dotted-half note from the last attack of stream 15 at the downbeat of the
previous bar.
[8.3] Against both pulses 14 and 15 are presented series of regularly changing
durations. These are not pulse streams, so they are shown as series of durations
on dotted horizontal lines in the example. (They are doubled by cymbals in the
audio example.) In mm. 57-60, the timespan between durationally accented F2s
in the left hand increases each time by a quarter note. In mm. 62-66 the timespan
between the onset of the eighth-note dyad decreases each time by an eighth.
<< Sect. 7b | Section 8a | Sect. 8b >> |
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