Timeline for Just how specific is the term "hemiola"?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
19 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 22, 2021 at 23:52 | vote | accept | Richard | ||
| Jan 11, 2021 at 5:08 | answer | added | Aaron | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jan 7, 2021 at 21:56 | answer | added | guidot | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 11:27 | comment | added | Scott Wallace | Interesting discussion to be sure. I would agree with Richard that there's a difference in feel between three notes in the time of two depending on the subdivisions. I would call the example from the Ramones song triplets, because the quarter notes in the first measure are not subdivided in threes (i.e. 12/8 rhythm) but into eighths, so you can't get the triplet rhythm in the second bar by simply regrouping existing note values. This is also how I've always heard the term "hemiola" used, as the regrouping of existing note values (typically eighths) from 2-2-2 to 3-3, or vice versa. | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 10:22 | comment | added | Tim | My Oxford Companion to Music doesn't even contain the term! I'm happy with 'triplets', as that's what they are. | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 3:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackMusic/status/1346652743503638528 | ||
| Jan 6, 2021 at 1:51 | comment | added | Michael Curtis | here books.google.com/books?id=hueMBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA88 and here mtosmt.org/issues/mto.96.2.3/mto.96.2.3.willner.html, I only skimmed the text, searching high and low for hemiola in 4/4 :-) | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 1:25 | comment | added | Richard | @Michael Curtis My thoughts exactly. The text suggests possibilities that the examples usually don't. As for the "cadential hemiola," I like it. (Where did you hear it?) I see this a fair amount in Corelli: a hemiola approaching a cadence, much like the modern idea of changing the harmonic rhythm at the end of a phrase. | |
| Jan 6, 2021 at 0:46 | comment | added | Michael Curtis | I saw the term cadential hemiola several times in Baroque examples, but don't really understand the meaning. Possibly a useful distinction for terminology. | |
| Jan 5, 2021 at 23:44 | answer | added | ttw | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jan 5, 2021 at 23:28 | comment | added | Michael Curtis | It's funny: the textual part of the definitions seem to be more general, basically saying 3:2, but the notation examples are all triple/compound. | |
| Jan 5, 2021 at 22:53 | comment | added | Aaron | Related question: Is there a name for a 3-3-2-2-2 rhythm?. My answer there quotes the Oxford Companion to Music, which defines hemiola as being interchange between triple and duple meters (in either direction). | |
| Jan 5, 2021 at 22:38 | comment | added | Aaron | @leftaroundabout It would just be a semantic difference: whether "hemiola" describes a notational or experiential shift in rhythm. | |
| Jan 5, 2021 at 22:28 | comment | added | phoog | Update: the 1880 Grove only mentions the perfect fifth and triplets. It says "three minims, sung against two, are called Hemiolia major; three crotchets (semiminims) against two, Hemiolia minor." I note that in 3/4 time, the regrouping of two measures into three groups of two beats may perhaps be seen as "the same as" three minims against two if you reach back into mensural concepts of perfection and imperfection, but otherwise it would be instructive to find out when the term began to be applied to the pre-cadential regrouping so common in triple meters in the Baroque period. | |
| Jan 5, 2021 at 22:16 | comment | added | phoog | In my experience hemiola is used to describe regrouping of two groups of three into three groups of two as in your second definition. (I like to say that it is a musical manifestation of the commutative property of multiplication.) But the Oxford English Dictionary says that its plain meaning is simply "one and a half," that is, a synonym of sesquialtera. Both words were used both for the rhythmic proportion and to denote the pitch interval we know as the perfect fifth. The history of its use in later music theory is not covered other than to refer the reader to the 1880 Grove dictionary. | |
| Jan 5, 2021 at 22:10 | comment | added | Richard | @Aaron It depends on the predominant subdivision of the 2/4. In your stated example, where we've had eighth-note triplets (thus a predominant triple subdivision), it would be a hemiola. But if we've only had eighth notes leading into it, I'd argue it's just a triplet. | |
| Jan 5, 2021 at 22:08 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | @Aaron why not? It's not much different from the other way around, when you rewrite from 2/4 to 6/8, the quavers stop being triplets. | |
| Jan 5, 2021 at 21:59 | comment | added | Aaron | Great question! But are you intending to suggest that by rewriting your 6/8 measure in 2/4, where the first measure was eighth-note triplets and the second measure was a quarter-note triplet, the second measure would no longer be a hemiola? | |
| Jan 5, 2021 at 21:44 | history | asked | Richard | CC BY-SA 4.0 |