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: Music And Mathematics
Famous quotes containing the words rhythm and/or meter:
“Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)
“Much poetry seems to be aware of its situation in time and of its relation to the metronome, the clock, and the calendar. ... The season or month is there to be felt; the day is there to be seized. Poems beginning “When” are much more numerous than those beginning “Where” of “If.” As the meter is running, the recurrent message tapped out by the passing of measured time is mortality.”
—William Harmon (b. 1938)