Metre (music)

In music, metre (Am. meter) refers to the regularly recurring patterns and accents such as bars and beats. Unlike rhythm, metric onsets are not necessarily sounded, but are nevertheless expected by the listener. A variety of systems exist throughout the world for organising and playing metrical music, such as the Indian system of tala and similar systems in Arabian and African music. Western music inherited the concept of metre from poetry (Scholes 1977; Latham 2002b) where it denotes: the number of lines in a verse; the number of syllables in each line; and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented (Scholes 1977; Latham 2002b). The first coherent system of rhythmic notation in modern Western music was based on rhythmic modes derived from the basic types of metrical unit in the quantitative meter of classical ancient Greek and Latin poetry (Hoppin 1978, 221). Later music for dances such as the pavane and galliard consisted of musical phrases to accompany a fixed sequence of basic steps with a defined tempo and time signature. The English word 'measure', originally an exact or just amount of time, came to denote either a poetic rhythm, a bar of music, or else an entire melodic verse or dance (Merriam-Webster 2015) involving sequences of notes, words, or movements that may last four, eight or sixteen bars. The term metre is not very precisely defined (Scholes 1977). Stewart MacPherson preferred to speak of 'time' and 'rhythmic shape' (MacPherson (1930, 3)), while Imogen Holst preferred 'measured rhythm' (Holst (1963, 17)). However, Justin London has written a book about musical metre, which 'involves our initial perception as well as subsequent anticipation of a series of beats that we abstract from the rhythm surface of the music as it unfolds in time' (London 2004, 4). This 'perception' and 'abstraction' of rhythmic bar is the foundation of human instinctive musical participation, as when we divide a series of identical clock-ticks into 'tick–tock–tick–tock' (Scholes 1977). 'Rhythms of recurrence' arise from the interaction of two levels of motion, the faster providing the pulse and the slower organizing the beats into repetitive groups (Yeston 1976, 50–52). In his book The Rhythms of Tonal Music, Joel Lester notes that, 'nce a metric hierarchy has been established, we, as listeners, will maintain that organization as long as minimal evidence is present' (Lester 1986, 77). 'Meter may be defined as a regular, recurring pattern of strong and weak beats. This recurring pattern of durations is identified at the beginning of a composition by a meter signature (time signature). ... Although meter is generally indicated by time signatures, it is important to realize that meter is not simply a matter of notation' (Benward and Saker 2003, 9). A definition of musical metre requires the possibility of identifying a repeating pattern of accented pulses — a 'pulse-group' — which corresponds to the foot in poetry. Frequently a pulse-group can be identified by taking the accented beat as the first pulse in the group and counting the pulses until the next accent (MacPherson 1930, 5; Scholes 1977). Frequently metres can be broken down into a pattern of duples and triples (MacPherson 1930, 5; Scholes 1977). The level of musical organisation implied by musical metre includes the most elementary levels of musical form (MacPherson 1930, 3). Metrical rhythm, measured rhythm, and free rhythm are general classes of rhythm and may be distinguished in all aspects of temporality (Cooper 1973, 30):