Polyrhythm

78, Jan Swafford (1997, p. 456) says "In the first movement Brahms plays elaborate games with the phrasing, switching the stresses of the 64 meter back and forth between 3+3 and 2+2+2, or superimposing both in violin and piano.

These ideas gather at the climax at measure 235, with the layering of phrases making an effect that perhaps during the 19th century only Brahms could have conceived.

"[5] In "The Snow Is Dancing" from his Children's Corner suite, Debussy introduces a melody "on a static, repeated B-flat, cast in triplet-division cross rhythms which offset this stratum independently of the sixteenth notes comprising the two dancing-snowflake lines below it.

"[6] "In this section great attention to the exactitude of rhythms is demanded by the polyrhythmic superposition of pedals, ostinato, and melody.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music defines it as “The Regular shift of some beats in a metric pattern to points ahead of or behind their normal positions.” [9] The finale of Brahms Symphony No.

Here is the passage as notated in the score: Here is the same passage re-barred to clarify how the ear may actually experience the changing metres: “Polyrhythms run through Brahms’s music like an obsessive-compulsive streak...For Brahms, subdividing a measure of time into different units and layering different patterns on top of one another seemed to be almost a compulsion — as well as a compositional device and an engine of expression.

Playing cross-beats while fully grounded in the main beats, prepares one for maintaining a life-purpose while dealing with life's challenges.

From the African viewpoint, the rhythms represent the very fabric of life itself; they are an embodiment of the people, symbolizing interdependence in human relationships—Peñalosa (2009: 21).

[12]Eugene Novotney observes: "The 3:2 relationship (and [its] permutations) is the foundation of most typical polyrhythmic textures found in West African musics.

Victor Kofi Agawu succinctly 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.

This family of instruments are found in several forms indigenous to different regions of Africa and most often have equal tonal ranges for right and left hands.

The kalimba is a modern version of these instruments originated by the pioneer ethnomusicologist Hugh Tracey in the early 20th century which has over the years gained worldwide popularity.

[17][clarification needed]Another instrument, the Marovany from Madagascar is a double sided box zither which also employs this divided tonal structure.

Also, the fingers of each hand can play separate independent rhythmic patterns, and these can easily cross over each other from treble to bass and back, either smoothly or with varying amounts of syncopation.

In 1959, Mongo Santamaria recorded "Afro Blue", the first jazz standard built upon a typical African 6:4 cross-rhythm (two cycles of 3:2).

[citation needed] Trained in the Yoruba sakara style of drumming, Olatunji would have a major impact on Western popular music.

[citation needed] He went on to teach, collaborate and record with numerous jazz and rock artists, including Airto Moreira, Carlos Santana and Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead.

Afro-Cuban conguero, or conga player, Mongo Santamaría was another percussionist whose polyrhythmic virtuosity helped transform both jazz and popular music.

Santamaria fused Afro-Latin rhythms with R&B and jazz as a bandleader in the 1950s, and was featured in the 1994 album Buena Vista Social Club, which was the inspiration for the like-titled documentary released five years later.

The highly avant garde album produced by Frank Zappa, Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band found extensive use of polyrhythm and cross-rhythm.

[citation needed] Contemporary progressive metal bands such as Meshuggah, Gojira,[23] Periphery, Textures, TesseracT, Tool, Animals as Leaders, Between the Buried and Me and Dream Theater also incorporate polyrhythms in their music, and polyrhythms have also been increasingly heard in technical metal bands such as Ion Dissonance, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Necrophagist, Candiria, The Contortionist and Textures.

Henry Cowell and Conlon Nancarrow created music with yet more complex polytempo and using irrational numbers like π:e.[24] Peter Magadini's album Polyrhythm, with musicians Peter Magadini, George Duke, David Young, and Don Menza, features different polyrhythmic themes on each of the six songs.

[26] Talking Heads' Remain in Light used dense polyrhythms throughout the album, most notably on the song "The Great Curve".

[citation needed] Carbon Based Lifeforms have a song named "Polyrytmi", Finnish for "polyrhythm", on their album Interloper.

Japanese girl group Perfume made use of the technique in their single, appropriately titled "Polyrhythm", included on their second album Game.

[30] The outro of the song "Animals" from the album The 2nd Law by the band Muse uses 54 and 44 time signatures for the guitar and drums respectively.

Harpist and pop folk musician Joanna Newsom is known for the use of polyrhythms on her albums The Milk-Eyed Mender and Ys.

[citation needed] The piano arpeggios that constitute much of the soloist's material in the first movement often have anywhere from four to eleven notes per beat.

In the last movement, the piano's opening run, marked 'quasi glissando', fits 52 notes into the space of one measure, making for a glissando-like effect while keeping the mood of the music.

Other instances in this movement include a scale that juxtaposes ten notes in the right hand against four in the left, and one of the main themes in the piano, which imposes an eighth-note melody on a triplet harmony.