The Music of Hindostan c13.s3.161

c13.s3.161

The modern use of these unusual rhythms is again different. The constant changes of time—some half dozen perhaps, 7/8, 5/8, 2/4, 7/8, 1/8, 3/4, &c., occurring in not more than twice six bars—are part of the striving of the last twenty years after realism and away from formalism. Composers aim at substituting the rhetorical accent of prose for the metrical accent of verse, at imitating in instrumental music the broken accents of the speaking voice. As such their music has nothing in common with the systems we have been discussing where metrical law prevails. They appear to defy law; and they are justified, but only by success in the particular instance. Thus, of two such instances, we may say that Cyril Scott’s Sonata, Op. 66, is less convincing rhythmically than Stravinsky’s Petrouchka. For the latter has large tracts of uniform time which enable the vagaries to be felt as contrast, whereas in the former there is no such contrast—because it is all contrast.