The Music of Hindostan c13.s3.133

c13.s3.133

There is one case, however, which puts the thing in a nutshell. In 1893, when 5/4 rhythm was less familiar to Europe than it now is, Tschaikowsky felt it necessary in his Sixth Symphony to do two things. He kept the metre free from complications; the Scherzo is almost entirely based on the crotchet, and the Trio on the minim. He also kept the sections uniform; they are in four-bar rhythm throughout except in two places—at the return from the Trio to the Scherzo, and at the Coda—the very places in which, as we saw, liberty was allowed in the *āvard*. It was only there, in fact, that he felt his rhythm so securely established that he could play with it. But now that it no longer piques our curiosity to see how 5/4 is ‘beaten’, and that the problem of counting it accurately no longer provides us with a painful pleasure, the monotony of the sections comes back upon us with fatal force. But the four-bar section would not have this effect if, like the Hindus, we had a large assortment of variously characterized rhythms to fill it.