Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Science
Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Psychology, Experimental
In this sense those who interpret rhythm as fundamentally dependent on
the maintenance of certain temporal relations are correct. The
accentuation must be rhythmically renewed, but the sensory incentives
to such renewals are absolutely indifferent, and any given one of the
several varieties of change ordinarily incorporated into rhythm may be
absent from the series without affecting its perfection as a
rhythmical sequence. In piano playing the accentual points of a
passage may be given by notes struck in the bass register while
unaccented elements are supplied from the upper octaves; in orchestral
compositions a like opposition of heavy to light brasses, of cello to
violin, of cymbals to triangle, is employed to produce rhythmical
effects, the change being one in _timbre_, combined or uncombined
with pitch variations; and in all percussive instruments, such as the
drum and cymbals, the rhythmic impression depends solely on intensive
variations. The peculiar rhythmic function does not lie in these
elements, but in a process to which any one of them indifferently may
give rise. When that process is aroused, or that effect produced, the
rhythmic impression has been made, no matter what the mechanism may
have been.
The single objective condition, then, which is necessary to the
appearance of an impression of rhythm is the maintenance of specific
temporal relations among the elements of the series of sensations
which supports it. It is true that the subjective experience of rhythm
involves always two factors, periodicity and accentuation; the latter,
however, is very readily, and under certain conditions inevitably,
supplied by the apperceptive subject if the former be given, while if
the temporal conditions be not fulfilled (and the subject cannot
create them) no impression of rhythm is possible. The contributed
accent is always a temporally rhythmical one, and if the recurrence of
the elements of the objective series opposes the phases of subjective
accentuation the rhythm absolutely falls to the ground. Of the two
points of view, then, that is the more faithful to the facts which
asserts that rhythm is dependent upon the maintenance of fixed
temporal intervals. These two elements cannot be discriminated as
forming the objective and subjective conditions of rhythm
respectively. Both are involved in the subjective experience and both
find their realization in objective expressions, definable and
measurable.
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