Hemiola
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2009) |
Hemiola is the ration 3:2. The word hemiola derives from the Greek adjective ἡμιόλιος - hemiolios, meaning "one and a half". This term was used in a music-theoretic context by Aristoxenus.[1] (The noun ἡμιολία - hemiolia "one and a half (fem.)" was also used by the Greeks to refer to a galley powered by one and a half banks of oars.)
Contents |
[edit] Harmony
Hemiola is the ratio of the lengths of two strings, three-to-two (3:2), that together sound a perfect fifth.[2]
[edit] Rhythm
In rhythm, the hemiola refers to three beats of equal value in the time normally occupied by two beats.[3] The New Harvard Dictionary of Music states that in some contexts, a sesquialtera is equivalent to a hemiola.[4]
[edit] Sub-Saharan African rhythm
A repeating hemiola is known as polyrhythm, or more specifically, cross-rhythm. The most basic rhythmic cell of sub-Saharan Africa is the 3:2 cross-rhythm. Novotney observes: "The 3:2 relationship (and [its] permutations) is the foundation of most typical polyrhythmic textures found in West African musics."[5] Agawu states: "[The] resultant [3:2] rhythm holds the key to understanding . . . there is no independence here, because 2 and 3 belong to a single Gestalt."[6]
In the following example, a Ghanaian gyil plays a hemiola as the basis of an ostinato melody. The left hand (lower notes) sounds the two main beats, while the right hand (upper notes) sounds the three cross-beats.[7]
[edit] European music
From around the 15th century, the term hemiola came to mean the use of three breves in a bar when the prevailing metrical scheme had two dotted breves in each bar.[8] This usage was later extended to its modern sense of two bars in simple triple time articulated or phrased as if they were three bars in simple duple time. An example can be found in measures 64 and 65 of this excerpt from the first movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Piano Sonata, K. 332:
The effect can clearly be seen in the bottom staff, played by the left hand: the accented beats are those with two notes; hearing this passage one senses that "1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2, 1 2, 1 2" is the musical pulse.
Hemiola is found in many Renaissance pieces at areas of cadential repose such as the compositions of Josquin des Prez and Jacob Obrecht.
The Hemiola was a common practice to end minuets in French baroque music. It is still the common practice when French baroque music is interpreted in historically correct fashion. Often the term Hemiolia is used in this case.
In modern musical parlance, a hemiola is a metrical pattern in which two bars in simple triple time (3/2 or 3/4 for example) are articulated as if they were three bars in simple duple time (2/2 or 2/4). In the example below, the third and fourth bars constitute the hemiola.
The interplay of two groups of three notes with three groups of two notes gives a distinctive pattern of 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2.
In the modern sense, hemiolas often occur in certain dances, particularly the courante. Composers of classical music who have used the device particularly extensively include Arcangelo Corelli, George Friedrich Handel, Carl Maria von Weber and most famously in the music of Johannes Brahms (e.g. the opening of Symphony no 3). Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky frequently used hemiolas in his waltzes.
Were the metrical impulse to be not a three beat pattern changing to a two beat one (as in the Mozart example above), but one where a two-beat impulse changes to a three-beat one, the pattern of 2:3 would be known as sesquialtera. (Note, this does not specifically refer to the "sesquialtera" organ stop.)
The term "hemiola" could also be applied to patterns that are repeated, outside of the agogic stress of the written meter, creating either a temporary feeling of a meter change or one meter over another. This could be a 5-quarter-note ostinato, in a common-time piece, or any compound meter superimposed over a even one.[citation needed] See: Meter (music)#Polymeter.
[edit] Horizontal hemiola
Some musicians refer to the following figure as a horizontal hemiola.[9] The pattern consists of a triple beat scheme, followed by a duple beat scheme.
This figure is a common African bell pattern, used by the Hausa people of Nigeria, in Haitian vodou drumming, Cuban palo, and many other drumming systems. The figure is also used in various popular Latin American musics. The horizontal hemiola suggests metric modulation (3/4 changing to 6/8). This interpretational switch has been exploited, for example, by Leonard Bernstein, in the song "America" from West Side Story, as can be heard in the prominent motif (suggesting a duple beat scheme, followed by a triple beat scheme):
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Thesaurus Musicae Grecae (Greek)
- ^ New Harvard Dictionary of Music (1986) p 376. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- ^ New Harvard Dictionary of Music (1986) p. 376.
- ^ New Harvard Dictionary of Music (1986) p. 744.
- ^ Novotney, Eugene D. (1998). The Three Against Two Relationship as the Foundation of Timelines in West African Musics Urbana, IL: University of Illinois. Web. UnlockingClave.com. http://www.unlockingclave.com/free-download-32-thesis.html
- ^ Agawu, Kofi (2003: 92). Representing African Music: Postcolonial Notes, Queries, Positions New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415943906.
- ^ Peñalosa, David (2009). The Clave Matrix; Afro-Cuban Rhythm: Its Principles and African Origins p. 22.. Redway, CA: Bembe Inc. ISBN 1-886502-80-3.
- ^ "Tempo Relationships between Duple and Triple Time in the Sixteenth Century," Ruth I. DeFord. Early Music History, Vol. 14, 1995, pp. 1-51
- ^ Tenzer, Michael ed. (2006). Analytical Studies in World Music p. 102. Oxford University Press.
[edit] Further reading
- Brandel, Rose (1959). The African Hemiola Style, Ethnomusicology, 3(3):106-17, correction, 4(1):iv.
- Karolyi, Otto (1998). Traditional African & Oriental Music, Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-023107-2.
