Time, Rhythm and Meter
Without the boundaries of rhythmic structure – a fundamental equal and regular arrangement of pulse repetitivity, accent, phrase and duration – music would be impossible. In Old English the word "rhyme", derived from "rhythm", became associated and confused with rim – "number" – and modern musical use of terms like meter and measure also reflects the historical importance of music, along with astronomy, in the development of counting, arithmetic and the exact measurement of time and periodicity that is fundamental to physics.
Read more about this topic: Mathematics Of Music
Famous quotes containing the words rhythm and/or meter:
“It is one of the prodigious privileges of art that the horrific, artistically expressed, becomes beauty, and that sorrow, given rhythm and cadence, fills the spirit with a calm joy.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“His meter was bitter, and ironic and spectacular and inviting: so was life. There wasn’t much other life during those times than to what his pen paid the tribute of poetic tragic glamour and offered the reconciliation of the familiarities of tragedy.”
—Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948)