Students,
Like the wikipedia article says, the song 'America' by Leonard Bernstein from the musical West Side Story is NOT a hemiola. That is when you play a simple and compound meter at the same time, like this:
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
America - West Side Story - NOT a Hemiola
Students,
Like the wikipedia article says, the song 'America' by Leonard Bernstein from the musical West Side Story is NOT a hemiola. That is when you play a simple and compound meter at the same time, like this:
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I would disagree that hemiolas require playing two different rhythmic patterns simultaneously, and that is not how it always appears in "classical" music.
ReplyDeleteThe hemiola's rhythm can occur All By Itself, but by going against the prevailing time signature there is a Feeling of "compound" rhythms built up in the listener--your body and brain expects the 3 + 3 rhythm they have been hearing, but the music suddenly shifts to a 2 + 2 + 2 rhythm instead. It is not necessary for other musical voices to sustain the prior, prevailing meter, and there are many cases where they do not.