Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society: Complex Time Relations in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education, 12) 9811605653, 9789811605659

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Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12 Series Editors: Aaron Koh · Victoria Carrington

Richard Andrews

Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society Complex Time Relations in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education Volume 12

Series Editors Aaron Koh, Faculty of Education, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong Victoria Carrington, School of Education, University of Tasmania, Launceston, TAS, Australia

We live in a time where the complex nature and implications of social, political and cultural issues for individuals and groups is increasingly clear. While this may lead some to focus on smaller and smaller units of analysis in the hope that by understanding the parts we may begin to understand the whole, this book series is premised on the strongly held view that researchers, practitioners and policy makers interested in education will increasingly need to integrate knowledge gained from a range of disciplinary and theoretical sources in order to frame and address these complex issues. A transdisciplinary approach takes account the uncertainty of knowledge and the complexity of social and cultural issues relevant to education. It acknowledges that there will be unresolved tensions and that these should be seen as productive. With this in mind, the reflexive and critical nature of cultural studies and its focus on the processes and currents that construct our daily lives has made it a central point of reference for many working in the contemporary social sciences and education. This book series seeks to foreground transdisciplinary and cultural studies influenced scholarship with a view to building conversations, ideas and sustainable networks of knowledge that may prove crucial to the ongoing development and relevance of the field of educational studies. The series will place a premium on manuscripts that critically engage with key educational issues from a position that draws from cultural studies or demonstrates a transdisciplinary approach. This can take the form of reports of new empirical research, critical discussions and/or theoretical pieces. In addition, the series editors are particularly keen to accept work that takes as its focus issues that draw from the wider Asia Pacific region but that may have relevance more globally, however all proposals that reflect the diversity of contemporary educational research will be considered. Series Editors: Aaron Koh (The Chinese University of Hong Kong) Victoria Carrington (University of Tasmania) Editorial Board: Angel Lin (Simon Fraser University, Canada), Angelia Poon (National Institute of Education, Singapore), Anna Hickey-Moody (RMIT, Australia),Barbara Comber (University of South Australia, Australia), Catherine Beavis (Deakin University, Australia), Cameron McCarthy (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA), Chen Kuan-Hsing (National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan), C.  J. W.-L.  Wee (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), Daniel Goh (National University of Singapore, Singapore), Jackie Marsh (University of Sheffield, UK), Jane Kenway (Monash University, Australia), Jennifer A Sandlin (Arizona State University, Tempe, USA), Jennifer Rowsell (University of Bristol, UK), Jo-Anne Dillabough, (University of Cambridge, UK), Megan Watkins (University of Western Sydney, Australia), Mary Lou Rasmussen (Australia National University, Australia), Terence Chong (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore) Book proposals for this series may be submitted to Associate Editor: Lay Peng Ang E-mail: [email protected] More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11200

Richard Andrews

Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society Complex Time Relations in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Richard Andrews University of Edinburgh Scotland, UK

ISSN 2345-7708     ISSN 2345-7716 (electronic) Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education ISBN 978-981-16-0565-9    ISBN 978-981-16-0566-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6 © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

To all my Asian students, past and present, from whom I have learned so much.

Preface

Studies in rhythm are now prevalent, having undergone a revival in the first part of the twenty-first century after a period in the 1920s when rhythm surfaced in the arts and education as a key principle in a well-rounded education. In many societies and cultures worldwide, rhythms play a key part: from individual, physical sensations through defining aspects of everyday life to the arts, humanities and social sciences. Rhythm remains resistant to words. It is hard to describe or account for rhythmic patterns and variations. It is even more difficult to account for a number of different rhythms operating at the same time: so-called multi-levelled rhythms or the more general term, polyrhythmicity. This book builds on the narrow foundations of previous theorists in the field, but on the much broader ground of felt, realised and imagined experience. One of the barriers to constructing a theory of polyrhythmicity is the adherence to the ‘beat’ that forms the basis of many prosodies. It is the contention of the present book that ‘beat’ is just one emphatic dimension of rhythmic patterning, and one that can manifest itself in varying degrees (not just in the binary conception of strong and weak beats). Underlying the notion of beat is a more subtle, nuanced set of relations that sets up different rhythms. The subtitle of the book – complex time relations – suggests that rhythmic phrases are the result of relative time relations. The other major barrier to the advance of studies in polyrhythmicity is that of ‘metre’, which is closely associated with ‘beat’ and the notion of the metrical foot as the unit of rhythm, consisting of strong and weak beats. Metre implies regularity  – even regularity with variation  – but it is not the kind of rhythm that is the principal focus of the present book. I have used a previous book, A Prosody of Free Verse, to explore additive rhythms: rhythms that build on each other, defining themselves in relation to each other. From this perspective, regular, metrical beats have a place, but they are not the metronome via which all rhythms can define themselves. Within polyrhythmicity, a regular metre is merely a specific pattern within an overall firmament of rhythmic possibility.

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The present book, though basing itself on poetry, ranges through other art forms like the novel, film, music and dance. It explores rhythms as they manifest themselves in medicine, social life and in work places. It explores theories of rhythm and proposes a new model for creating, understanding and appreciating rhythmic variation. Importantly, in the present international series on cultural studies and transdisciplinarity in education, it explores not only what happens when one genre, mode or discipline interacts with another, but also how different cultures interact with each in a hybrid mix. The final barrier it seeks to overcome, then, is narrow nationalistic or culturally bound traits. It sees more virtue in what one culture can learn from another in terms of polyrhythmicity. The positive new idea to emerge from the book is that multiple rhythms can be accounted for via the genre of fugue in music: a model which can be applied to the other arts and which operates via point and counterpoint. From a different angle and background, African, Indian and South-East Asian percussive music is seen as a rich source of complex rhythmic relations where the rhythmic shape is the music, rather than being an underpinning continuo. Finally, the book aims to provide a model for the further analysis of polyrhythmic relations, as well as to suggest some implications for education. It is a start, and I hope my students and fellow academics will take the field a great deal further. Scotland, UK 2020

Richard Andrews

Acknowledgements

This book has been in the making for many decades, from my earliest interest in rhythm as an undergraduate student in the early 1970s. This is where I was given the opportunity to study both literature and linguistics as part of a degree in ‘English Language and Literature’, and where the E.M. Forster invocation to ‘only connect’ kicked in – not least with the music of the time, and with my discovery of Stravinsky in relation to jazz and various forms of jazz fusion. This, in turn, led me backwards in time to Bach and the Baroque fugue, and to explore the rhythmic correspondences with narrative forms like the novel and film. I draw particularly on the work of Richard Cureton and Jonathan Culler, both of whose work was presented at the conference led by Erik Redling and Burkhard Meyer-Sickendieck at the Free University of Berlin in 2018. I also discuss extensively the work of Rosalía Rodríguez-Vázquez in Chap. 5 and acknowledge the value that her research has contributed to the field of supra-segmental phonology, even if I have differed in my approach to the problem of multi-layered rhythms in speech, poetry and music. I also wish to acknowledge the work of African musicologists like Kofi Agawu and Simha Arom upon whose pioneering work in African polyphony and polyrhythms I have built. In a reverse of the usual colonial direction, I have adapted the models of polyrhythms from their work for the analysis of western and oriental novels, poems and music. In particular, I wish to acknowledge the short but insightful article by Simha Arom entitled ‘Everything is measured, but nobody counts: Musical time organisation in Central Africa’, which has provided a starting point for a new model of polyrhythmic relations. Arom’s work on polyphony and polyrhythms in the speech and music of the Central African Republic is also acknowledged. Perhaps my greatest debt is to the poetry and commentary of Don Paterson, especially in The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre, the discussion of which forms a key part of the present book, not least with regard to his assertion that prosody has to take into account semantics as well as musical form. The work also draws on my experience in Asia. First, from reading Chinese classical poetry at university alongside the western canon, and more specifically through engagement via Ezra Pound’s edition of Fenollosa’s The Chinese Character as a

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Medium for Poetry. A subsequent period of living in Hong Kong in the 1980s, with initial forays to mainland China, Japan and Malaysia, extended my experience yet further, breaking down dualistic conceptions of ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ approaches to rhythm. This initial experience has prompted a series of visits to China over the last 30 years including working with Chinese and Singaporean academics like Chen Guohua, Jose Lai, Joanna Lee, Maggie Chan and many Masters and doctoral students, from whom I have learned much. Thanks to librarians at the University of East Anglia, especially Lucy Fleming and to the library of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at UEA for its collection on ethnomusiciology and for providing a place to work. To colleagues at UEA who have given me time to research and write, especially Terry Haydn and Kajsa Berg. I also wish to thank colleagues at the University of Edinburgh, where I moved during the writing of this book: Dorothy Miell, for suggesting that I take a long weekend once a month to continue the writing of the book (though I never did quite achieve that wonderful idea); Grant Jarvie, for introducing me to colleagues in the Academy of Sport; and Gillian Richardson, Pauline Patel and Alice Hamilton Beer and other members of that team for first-class professional and administrative support. Throughout, Victoria Carrington and Aaron Koh, as editors of the series, have been supportive in the best intellectual sense. Theo van Leeuwen’s work as a jazz musician and theorist has been influential. I dedicated my previous book on multimodality, poetry and poetics to Gunther Kress, and he remains a continued inspiration after his death in 2019. I am particularly grateful for his interests in the dimensions of rhetoric, poetics and rhythms I have pursued in relation to his grander project of multimodality. Many thanks also to Terry Locke and other reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments on the manuscript. I am grateful to Nicky Stanley and Dave Golding for their hospitality in Théoule in February 2019, and in particular for visits to the Musée National Fernand Léger in Biot where I encountered an exhibition of the work of Stéphane Couturier (6 October 2018 to 4 March 2019), as discussed in Chap. 9. Also at the Musée National Fernand Léger was a full screening of ‘Ballet Méchanique’, discussed in Chap. 4. I am also grateful to Liz Grant at the University of Edinburgh for her enthusiastic support and suggestion for further exploration of African drumming in its social context and to Michael Crawley, ESRC postdoctoral research fellow in social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, for sending me copies of his research on the social and cultural context of running in Ethiopia. I also wish to thank Grace Andrews, Owen Horsley and Orlando James for permission to discuss We Three in Chap. 9. As the three also refers to them as a remarkable trio playing the roles of producer, screenplay writers, director and editor of this award-winning film, it is good to celebrate that work in these pages. ‘Reversible poem composed in the Imperial Garden’ is reproduced with permission from The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press (Métail, pp 86–87). Images from the work of Richard Serra are reproduced from Richard Serra Drawing: a Retrospective by Bernice Rose, Michelle White and Gary Garrels (The Menil Collection, Houston and distributed by Yale University Press, 2011). The author and

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publisher are grateful for the right to reproduce these under the US Copyright Law, section 107. An earlier version of Chap. 12 appeared in the May 2019 issue of Education and Democracy. I am grateful to Claire Hogarth and Kris Rutten as well as the editors and publishers of the Swedish-based journal for permission to adapt my article ‘The importance of rhetoric and argumentation in schools and universities’, which itself was first presented as a paper at the conference ‘Rhetorical Education and the Democratic Mission of the School’ at Orebro University in October 2017. Unattributed poems are my own. The book was composed in Beverley, Yorkshire, at the Universities of East Anglia and Edinburgh, and at Keene Valley Library in upstate New York, where the librarian, Karen Glass, was particularly helpful in leading me to the work of Kwame Alexander and Jason Reynolds. The work is based on funded research time from the Universities of East Anglia and Edinburgh. I am grateful to both universities for allowing me the pockets of space and release from administrative duties to spend time on writing and research. The book is dedicated to all the Asian students I have worked with in my career in higher education: Maggie Chan, C.B. Sharma, Joanna Lee, Sabrina Huang, Zhao Yuan, Kang-bi Ellis, Chew Kheng Suan, Hazel Chiu, Ching Lai, Sharon Chu, Ling Xue, Sun-young Choi, Tetsuko Watanabe, Howon Kang, Xinyu Luo, Hongrui Zhang, Fangyi Guan, Xi Liu, Nuodi Zhang, Mei-Hua Yang, Selamat Husni Hasibuan, Dan Li, Yangyi Zhou, Hongxi Du, Beatrice Lok, Jianna Wang, Yuxin Li, Caixia Zhang, Yuxiang Huang, Yuwen Zhang, Yini Zeng, Yurou Wei and Masumi Hiratsuka. Above all, my thanks to Dodi Beardshaw for giving me time to work on this book when we could have had more time walking on the beach.

Contents

1 Introduction����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 1.1 The Problem(s)��������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 1.2 Do We Need a Theory of Rhythm?������������������������������������������������    2 1.3 What Is Unrhythmic?����������������������������������������������������������������������    4 1.4 Polyrhythmicity������������������������������������������������������������������������������    5 1.5 Two Axes of Rhythm����������������������������������������������������������������������    6 1.6 Rhythm as Metaphor? ��������������������������������������������������������������������    6 1.7 Rhythm and Rhetoric����������������������������������������������������������������������    8 1.8 The Relation Between Fugue, Rhythm and the Social Sciences������������������������������������������������������������������   11 1.9 Overview of the Book ��������������������������������������������������������������������   12 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   14 2 The Nature of Multiple Rhythms and Polyrhythms ����������������������������   17 2.1 Clock Time, Metronomic Time and Rhythm����������������������������������   17 2.2 Circadian Rhythms��������������������������������������������������������������������������   18 2.3 Rhythms of Migration��������������������������������������������������������������������   19 2.4 Rhythms of Anticipation ����������������������������������������������������������������   19 2.5 Towards a Prosody of Free Verse����������������������������������������������������   20 2.6 The Constante Rhythmique and the Cadence����������������������������������   24 2.7 Polyrhythms and Fugue������������������������������������������������������������������   25 2.8 Musical Analogies��������������������������������������������������������������������������   26 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   28 3 Polyrhythmicity in Time: An International Perspective����������������������   31 3.1 A Philosophical View of Time��������������������������������������������������������   31 3.2 Lefebvre and Social Time ��������������������������������������������������������������   33 3.3 Rhythm in Space and Time ������������������������������������������������������������   34 3.4 Space and Time in Asian Cultures��������������������������������������������������   37 3.5 Prose Writing and Rhythmicity������������������������������������������������������   38 3.6 Time Zones ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   41 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   42 xiii

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4 Polyrhythmicity in Music������������������������������������������������������������������������   43 4.1 Rhythm’s Role in Music ����������������������������������������������������������������   43 4.2 Arrhythmic Music��������������������������������������������������������������������������   44 4.3 Fugue����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   46 4.4 African Polyrhythmicity ����������������������������������������������������������������   49 4.5 More on the Poetics of African Rhythm ����������������������������������������   51 4.6 Rhythm as the Spaces Between Words and Between Sounds��������   52 4.7 Rhythm as a Principal Driver in Music������������������������������������������   52 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   54 5 Polyrhythmicity in Conversation and Speech Prosodies����������������������   55 5.1 African Speech and Music��������������������������������������������������������������   55 5.2 Rhythms in Speech, Poetry and Vocal Music ��������������������������������   55 5.3 Some Examples������������������������������������������������������������������������������   57 5.4 Further Discussion on Speech, Poetry and Music��������������������������   59 5.5 Northern Ewe Music ����������������������������������������������������������������������   62 5.6 Rhythm and Performance ��������������������������������������������������������������   63 5.7 Polyphony and Polyrhythm������������������������������������������������������������   64 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   68 6 Polyrhythmicity in Poetry ����������������������������������������������������������������������   69 6.1 Types of Rhythm����������������������������������������������������������������������������   69 6.2 Rhythm as the Source of the Poem ������������������������������������������������   71 6.3 Rhythm and Metre��������������������������������������������������������������������������   72 6.4 Polyrhythmicity and the Lyric Mode����������������������������������������������   74 6.5 Temporal Poetics and Poetry����������������������������������������������������������   76 6.6 Pound’s Cantos as Fugue����������������������������������������������������������������   77 6.7 Don Paterson’s The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre��������������������������������   83 6.8 Lombardo’s Translation of Iliad ����������������������������������������������������   86 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   87 7 Polyrhythmicity in the Novel������������������������������������������������������������������   89 7.1 Frye and Large-Scale Rhythms������������������������������������������������������   89 7.2 Time Relations in Narratology��������������������������������������������������������   91 7.3 Beyond Bakhtin������������������������������������������������������������������������������   94 7.4 An Example: The Great Gatsby������������������������������������������������������   96 7.5 Narration as a Human Paradigm? ��������������������������������������������������   99 7.6 ‘Difficult Rhythm’��������������������������������������������������������������������������  100 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  101 8 Polyrhythmicity in Social Situations������������������������������������������������������  103 8.1 Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  103 8.2 Chronosociology ����������������������������������������������������������������������������  104 8.3 Sociology of Rhythm����������������������������������������������������������������������  106 8.4 Symphonic Rhythms����������������������������������������������������������������������  107

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8.5 Dissonance Between Global Time and Local Rhythms������������������  108 8.6 Reflections on Workload Management ������������������������������������������  108 8.7 Work and Rhythm ��������������������������������������������������������������������������  109 8.8 Rhythm and Running����������������������������������������������������������������������  111 8.9 Changes of Rhythm in Soccer/Football������������������������������������������  111 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  113 9 Polyrhythmicity in Contemporary Hybrid Culture�����������������������������  115 9.1 Stéphane Couturier��������������������������������������������������������������������������  115 9.2 Contemporary Rap Culture and Fugue ������������������������������������������  116 9.3 Diptychs, Triptychs and Polyptiques����������������������������������������������  117 9.4 We Three: Complex Time Relations in a Short Film����������������������  121 9.5 Lightweight Structures and Rhythms����������������������������������������������  124 9.6 ‘Mi vida es una fuga’����������������������������������������������������������������������  125 9.7 Framing and Multi-levelled Rhythms in the Social Sciences����������������������������������������������������������������������  125 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  126 10 Polyrhythmicity in the Asia-Pacific Region ������������������������������������������  127 10.1 Postcolonial Issues��������������������������������������������������������������������������  127 10.2 Fenollosa Revisited ������������������������������������������������������������������������  128 10.3 Reversible Poems����������������������������������������������������������������������������  129 10.4 Freer Verse in the Chinese Style ����������������������������������������������������  130 10.5 Asian Dance Rhythms��������������������������������������������������������������������  134 10.6 Indian rāg����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  135 10.7 Percussion in the Music of Southeast Asia ������������������������������������  136 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  138 11 Researching Polyrhythmicity������������������������������������������������������������������  139 11.1 Timing��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  139 11.2 Researching Polyrhythmicity����������������������������������������������������������  140 11.3 Some Further Terms for Analysis ��������������������������������������������������  141 11.4 Rhythmanalysis������������������������������������������������������������������������������  142 11.5 Existing Models for Analysis����������������������������������������������������������  143 11.6 A New Model for Polyrhythmic Analysis��������������������������������������  146 11.7 Macro-level Rhythmicity����������������������������������������������������������������  147 11.8 Mezzo-level Rhythmicity����������������������������������������������������������������  149 11.9 Micro-level Rhythmicity����������������������������������������������������������������  149 References��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  151 12 Polyrhythmicity in Learning and Education����������������������������������������  153 12.1 Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  153 12.2 Polyrhythmicity Within a Theory of Rhetoric��������������������������������  154 12.3 The Basis of a New Approach to Rhetoric��������������������������������������  156 12.4 Curriculum and Pedagogic Design ������������������������������������������������  157

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Contents

12.5 Composition and Framing��������������������������������������������������������������  159 12.6 Text��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  160 12.7 Argumentation��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  161 12.8 How Can Rhetoric, Polyrhythmicity and Argumentation Be Better Embedded Within the School Curriculum?��������������������  162 12.9 Conclusion��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  165 Bibliography����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  165 Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  167

About the Author

Richard Andrews is professor of education at the University of Edinburgh. He has previously held chairs at the Universities of York, UCL Institute of Education and East Anglia. He is the author of books on argumentation, research methods, poetics, rhetoric and writing development, including Argumentation in Higher Education, A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric, A Prosody of Free Verse and Multimodality, Poetry and Poetics. He is co-series editor, with Vicki Wienand, of the Cambridge School Shakespeare and of its recent Chinese edition.  

xvii

List of Figures

Fig. 9.1 Richard Serra, Untitled, 1973 paintstick on paper, 93 × 26.25 inches, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany�������������  119 Fig. 9.2 Richard Serra, Exchange, 199 charcoal on paper, sheet 11 × 15 inches����������������������������������������������������������������������  120 Fig. 11.1

The Bobangi song periods from Arom (1993: 56)������������������������  145

xix

List of Tables

Table 5.1 The difference in units of analysis in rhythm between Rodríguez-Vázquez (2010) and the present book�����������   60 Table 6.1

Comparative table of rhythm and metre����������������������������������������   73

Table 11.1 Macro-, mezzo- and micro-rhythmicity����������������������������������������  151

xxi

Chapter 1

Introduction

Abstract  Rhythm is an under-represented field of operation and analysis in music, language and literature; and that although it is difficult to articulate, it needs to be brought to the surface so that the appreciation and understanding of the arts can be enhanced. Furthermore, an understanding of the way that complex rhythms work in relation to each other will shed light on the operation of rhythm in everyday life: from the natural world to engagement and decision-making in personal, social and professional contexts. The key concepts of ‘polyrhythmicity’, ‘time’ and ‘rhythm’ will be defined. The chapter then goes on to discuss rhythm as metaphor and rhythm within a theory of rhetoric, suggesting that rhythm is pervasive in the way we operate in the world, but not always evident. The rhetorical context for a study in polyrhythmicity is undertaken via a look at Byzantine oratory and its relation to argumentation. Keywords  Rhythm · Time relations · Polyrhythmicity · Fugue · Argumentation

1.1  The Problem(s) Rhythm is a felt presence, most obviously in music and dance, and less so in poetry. It becomes more subliminal in the other arts and genres (e.g. the novel, painting, photography, film), and in these arts it is almost metaphorically conceived: the rhythm is perceived because it is like rhythm in music and dance. At whatever level (the actual, literal or metaphoric), it is hard to articulate and describe in words because of its physical, non-verbal nature. Nevertheless, it is worth trying to account for rhythm in the arts and in society, as rhythm affects our experience: it is a fundamental element in the creation and reception of highly framed encounters, as in the arts; and it also manifests itself in less tightly framed schemata in the social sciences. The problem is intensified when we consider that in the arts and in society, there is often more than one rhythm at play. This is the case in music, when even in the simplest form of (say) percussive composition, the beats stand not only in relation to each other, but usually to some underlying regularity. It is the same in poetry, where the rhythmic shape of the line is characterized not only by the internal © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Andrews, Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6_1

1

2

1 Introduction

prosodic relations of the line itself but also in relation to accompanying lines and – with the exception of free verse – in relation to an underlying metre. Rhythm could be said to be about relative time relations. Polyrhythmicity is about complex, multi-­ levelled and relative time relations. There are at least two further aspects of the problem that can be summarized thus: rhythm is not tempo; and rhythm is not metre. Rhythm is often conflated with tempo, but tempo is merely about relative speed of delivery. It can be acknowledged that in a whole work of music, changes in tempi indicate an overall rhythmic structure to the piece; but in themselves, markings of tempo in a musical score suggest to the conductor and players that a change of pace is necessary. A more difficult problem is the association of rhythm with metre, in poetry as well as in music. Metre is based on regularity and beat. For many prosodists it is the basis and sine qua non of rhythm. I have argued elsewhere (Andrews 2017, 2018) that metre cannot account for the range of rhythms, especially in free verse where additive rhythm is the guiding temporal framework and where the line rather than the ‘metrical foot’ is the unit of rhythm. These two problems will be discussed in more detail in Chaps. 4 and 6 respectively. Finally, there are two other problems that need to be addressed. The first is that in different types of art – again, most noticeably in music, dance and poetry – there is a range of forms and genres, each of which foreground or background rhythm to varying degrees. Related to this problem is the second: the fact that different cultures around the world position rhythm in different places. For some it is foregrounded, and for others it is all but invisible/absent. It is the particular challenge for the present book not only to address the transdisciplinary function of rhythm in the arts and social sciences but also to make links between rhythm across disciplines and in different cultural contexts. In summary, in this overture to the book, there are various aspects of rhythm that need to be addressed. Before we do so, the question needs to be asked as to whether a theory of rhythm is required for such a proposed exploration. In this opening chapter, the question is proposed in the next section. It is answered in Chap. 2.

1.2  Do We Need a Theory of Rhythm? Prosodists, musicians, composers and others are engaged in, and interested in, rhythm. Many think that there is no need for a theory of rhythm, and part of the function of the present book will be to work towards that theory via examples. But it is also helpful to have a provisional theory of rhythm in order to begin to chart the territory. In A Prosody of Free Verse (Andrews 2017), there was no underlying or overarching theory of rhythm per se, rather an emphasis on additive rhythm as opposed to metrical rhythm. It would be appropriate, in the present book, to take the emphasis and map out a provisional theory of rhythm before embarking on an exploration of the territory in the arts and social sciences. Like Cureton (1992) I take the position that metre and metricality (based on countable, measurable beats) are a sub-section of rhythm. It follows that metre

1.2  Do We Need a Theory of Rhythm?

3

cannot provide a theory of rhythm. Cureton’s scope in that book was to generate a theory of rhythmic phrasing. The ambition of the present book is to build on that foundation and go further, generating a theory of polyrhythmicity of multiple rhythms that apply not only to rhythmic phrasing in verse but to music, dance and the social sciences. A first step is to justify why a theory is needed at all. It is needed because without such a theory, we will not be able to see the nature of the complex time relations in a work of art or a social encounter without theory. Theorizing provides high- or low-­ level explanatory power; it links previously unconnected phenomena in a field; its elegance and simplicity make it both understandable and communicable. Thus far, theory follows in the wake of Cureton (and his more recent work on temporal poetics in verse), but the present book sees theory differently: as a generating framework for composers as well as ‘a formal description of the rhythmic intuitions of the experienced reader’ (1992: xii). In other words, the theory of polyrhythmicity attempted in the current book is about production as well as reception. The current book does not subscribe to the distinction between ‘versification’ in the text itself and verse rhythm in the mind/ear of the reader that Cureton adopts from Brogan (1981); nor does it limit itself to verse in English or, more narrowly, English verse. Cureton helpfully sets out 15 theoretical approaches to rhythmic phrasing: those of foot-substitution prosodists; temporalists; phrasalists; prose rhythmists; free verse prosodists; Slavic metrists; intonationalists; the work on Barbara Herrnstein Smith on poetic closure; generative metrists; the work of Reuven Tsur; the work of Derek Attridge on ‘beat’; metrical phonologists; that of David Gil and associates; grammetrics; and Henri Meschonnic’s critique of the narrow base of rhythmic theory. Of these, because of the larger purpose of the present book, temporalism, free verse prosodies and the broader philosophical basis for rhythmic enquiry are the three that offer most to an emerging theory of polyrhythmicity. This is because of the ‘higher’ or, more accurately, the more general theory that is being proposed. Temporalists operate with a notion of ‘measure’ that is closer to the line than to the metrical foot. They accept that the measure must start with a pulse but offer a range of unifying features (alliteration, accents, tone colour, shape, cadence) that help to define the measure. The closest analogy is with musical as opposed to linguistic phrasing. Free verse prosodists come in for criticism by Cureton because they seem able to identify what free verse is not, but not what it is, and that their focus on visual form does not fully address the complexities of free verse rhythm. My own views of these shortcomings are that they are a result of a lack of distinction between various types of free verse and of a negative attitude to free verse: vers libre (truly free verse), vers libéré (verse liberated from metrical norms) and prosaic free verse are at least three types of ‘free verse’, and each operates via different rhythmic structuring. Thirdly, Meschonnic (1982), as Cureton (1992: 68) summarizes, sees rhythm as: not just sound; it involves all of discourse. It is not just binary, periodic and repetitive; it can be asymmetrical, aperiodic and varied. It is not just a product of langue; it ‘overflows’ linguistic description. It is not just a realization of meter; it is a positive organization – a form, a matrix, a pattern. It is not just a feature of versification; it pervades all literary genres…

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1 Introduction

Culler (2015) also cites Meschonnic ‘whose voluminous writings on the subject criticize all existing approaches to rhythm as excessively narrow’ (2015: 161). Meschonnic suggests that rhythm produces ‘a specific semantics, distinct from lexical meaning’ (1982: 216–17). This semantics constitutes a significance. In this respect, Meschonnic’s conception is similar to that of Saussure’s distinction between parole and langue: the latter being a shadowy set of Platonic forms that are posited as the elements of a higher-level world of theoretical possibility. Without following Meschonnic’s vaguer suggestions of rhythm’s forms, or his suggestion that rhythm is the basis of historical change, it can be said that his work, along with that of the temporalists and free verse prosodists, points towards a more generous theory of rhythm than that of those who take a linguistic or metrical approach to the problem. A better approach is to follow Pound’s notion that the rhythm of a poem carries its emotional import, whereas the words (the lexical dimension) carry the intellectual ‘meaning’. The problem remains this: how to account for the temporal as well as the architectural features of rhythm? To spell out the problem more explicitly: how to combine the complex time relations that lend themselves to sequential analysis on the one hand, with those polyrhythmic relations that are layered, fugal and present at any one moment of a rhythmic composition (and reception of that composition). Cureton (1992) comes close with his notion of rhythmic shape via a theory of ‘grouping’, though this grouping derives from the structural analysis of written language that was developed in transformational grammars. It is no surprise then that the contribution of transformational grammars to cognitive science is borrowed by Cureton to account for the ‘vertical’ dimension of rhythmic phrasing in language and that the verticality of the conception is seen to provide a position from which ‘rhythm creates time, not time rhythm’ (1992: 427). Rhythm is to be understood as relative time relations. Its nature is informed by how we conceive of, and perceive, time. Part of the argument of the present book is an assumption that rhythm is not the same as metre – that their very difference creates at least two levels of time relations: the first, and larger category, is driven by pulse and flow and the second by metrication, measurement, fixed temporal intervals, regularity of pattern and beat. Rhythmists see time relations as relative; metrists seek metronomic regularity, albeit with variation.

1.3  What Is Unrhythmic? Hopsch and Lilja (2017) ask an important question in any consideration of rhythm or polyrhythmicity: what is ‘unrhythmic’? Their suggestion is that it is something that ‘lacks a demarcation or structure’ (2017: 414). That definition, however, could apply to any number of phenomena that are not time-related. It would suggest that rhythm can be defined purely by framing and a-rhythmicity by lack of framing. The definition is too loose and too broad to be helpful, despite its proximity to the etymological Greek source of ‘measured flow’, which itself is closer to our current

1.4 Polyrhythmicity

5

conceptions of rhythm. But measurement itself is not enough. We could say that a repetitious, metronomic beat (as in the workings of a metronome or in some music that uses such regularity) is not rhythmic. So too, very differently, is a miasmic ‘wall’ of sound, like the drone that underpins (and often starts and finishes) Indian music, signifying the universal sense of the past and future being immersed in the present moment. For Hopsch and Lilja, the unifying schema that informs how we perceive rhythm is balance, based on a notion that the human body resolves issues of tension and movement through balance, and thus, in its relation to direction, forms ‘a prototype for our discussion of aesthetic rhythm’ (2017:415). They use this conception of rhythm to move from considerations of a time-based artefact (a poem by Seamus Heaney) to those of sculpture and other forms of visual art; but also reverse the logical process of analogy between the two art forms by suggesting that the poem can be seen as having the same properties as those perceived and felt in bodily rhythms: breathing, walking, sex, pulse, dancing etc. Although physicality is central to rhythmic perception, such a close analogy between bodily rhythms and those in art and society are not used in the present book. There is further discussion of arrhythmic music in Chap. 4.

1.4  Polyrhythmicity The vertical and horizontal axes of rhythm give us a framework to begin to chart the nature of polyrhythmicity. On the vertical axis, as in a musical score, we are able to place multi-levelled rhythms that are, at any one point in time, playing simultaneously. On the horizontal level, there is a different kind of relativity: one that is determined by sequential time relations. Polyrhythmicity, as a term, captures this complexity. ‘Poly’ means ‘many-­ faceted’. ‘Rhythm’ is derived from the Greek ‘rhuthmos’ meaning ‘flow’. Cureton cites Beneveniste (1971) who suggests that in earlier etymological usage, ‘rhuthmos was […] not “measured movement” but “form”, in general (“proportioned figure”, “arrangement”, “disposition”, “the characteristic arrangement of parts in a whole”)’ (Cureton 1992: 68) or form ‘as improvised, momentary, changeable’ (Beneveniste 1971: 286). We can see in these two ‘sources’ of the use of rhuthmos the framework that we need in order to account for the complexity of rhythm: on the one hand the now conventional notion of horizontal flow; on the other, the more architectural, sculptural, momentary dimension. I have added the generalizing suffix ‘-city’ to the term in order to suggest that the function of the present book is to work towards a theory of rhythm. Polyrhythmicity, then, might be given the working definition of the phenomenon of multi-faceted rhythms. I have elided the hyphen that could have appeared in ‘polyrhythmicity’ to suggest that we are dealing with a compound phenomenon that exists: that we experience through music, literature, dance and the visual arts but also in the day-to-day engagement of social life.

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1 Introduction

1.5  Two Axes of Rhythm Paterson (2018) explores rhythm in a major section of his book, The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre. Various aspects of rhythmic relations are discussed in more detail in Chap. 6 of the present book, but here in the Introduction the basic principle is worth setting out in relation to Jakobson’s syntagmatic/paradigmatic axes. Paterson states that what Jakobson means by the poetic function projecting the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination is that the paradigmatic axis, the parallel rule of correspondence between things which governs our alternate choices, comparisons, lyric echoes, metaphors and so on, is developed along the axis of the syntagm, i.e. the serial rules whereby we combine words with other words along poetic sentences. In poetry we both find and ‘project’ a whole host of effects where the similarity between sequential elements is crucial to our experience of them as ‘poetic’. These ‘effects of equivalence’ might include rhyme, consonance, metricality, syntactic parallelism, and so on. (2018: 346–7)

Furthermore, In poetry we see a high degree of connection, integration and a consequent interchangeability of form and content, leaving us with a horizontal structure with vertical depth, where the melodies of surface-sense are underpinned by complex and shifting harmonies of semantic resonance, association and correspondence. And, if Jakobson’s rule is true, it would certainly be no surprise to see an increase not only in the mere horizontal, tap-along presence of metrical rhythm, but also deep involvement of that rhythm in the vertical and recursive structuring of the very spaces it encloses. (2018: 347)

This more subtle, two-dimensional (what it leaves out is the third dimension of physicality) account of rhythm’s function and effects in poetry is in contrast to the work of one-dimensional prosodists: An effort to remove messy intent and affect from the study of metre has led to a failure to read stress and rhythm as a sufficiently complex and subjective phenomenon. This is compounded by attempts to notate it in binary or ternary forms nowhere near sophisticated enough to represent accurately ‘what’s going on’, or the variety of legitimate alternative scansions. (2018: 348)

1.6  Rhythm as Metaphor? Wiskus (2013) in her study of Merleau-Ponty’s approach to the arts, The Rhythm of Thought, conceives of rhythm at a macro- and almost ethereal level. It is conceived of as a ‘something’ not contained in the individual notes or the melodies of music, but in the spaces in between what is composed and heard. For Wiskus, rhythm operates at a high general level, marking the oscillation between the past and the present: Merleau-Ponty writes that there is a “double movement: the past recuperated by the present and contracted in it, but also the present anticipated by the past which remains operative in the present.” [Husserl at Limits 31/37] Like the music phrase (on a local level), which flows

1.6  Rhythm as Metaphor?

7

according to a pattern of notes held in relation, or like the musical form (on a broader level), which evokes repetition, variation, and development, this “double movement” is the work of rhythm. (Wiskus, 2013: 110)

She emphasizes that this rhythmic structure operates not only horizontally as a bond between a series of temporal events, ‘but on multiple levels, vertically’ (ibid.). Thus the conception of a vertical dimension to rhythm accords with the present book’s notion that although rhythm in itself is primarily a horizontal driver in music, polyrhythmicity is multi-levelled and could be conceived as operating in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. My own conception is that in such a model, rhythm subsumes melody in that all melodies are rhythmic to some degree (they operate laterally in time), while not all rhythms are melodic. One could conclude from this position that rhythmic shape is the fundamental element in a time-based art like music. The present book does not, however, subscribe to the idea that rhythm is constituted within the spaces and silences between notes and thus has qualities of transcendence. Wiskus’ notion that ‘through rhythm, what is “invisible” coheres with the present: the invisibility of the past and the invisibility of the future. […] A clairvoyance is at work. This dimensional present offers a sort of resonance through which certain events dissipate and others are brought into accord, amplified. It is a “rhythmicized time” that achieves a certain depth of simultaneity’ (op.cit. 111). Such a conception (‘a sort of resonance’, ‘and others’, ‘a certain depth’) conveys a vagueness that allows a mystic interpretation of rhythm. It can be acknowledged that what is taking place in a highly rhythmic or polyrhythmic moment (especially in ritual) can transport the participants into a transcendent state; but the aim of the present book is to chart the polyrhythmic dimensions in the arts, humanities and social sciences rather than to assume transcendent and undefinable space where argumentation dissipates into being. Further evidence of the transcendent argument appears in statements like: Rhythm is a structure that binds past and present, subject and object, ideal and sensible; it holds together the “inside of the outside and the outside of the inside” [Merleau-Ponty, op.cit] through which a common vision arises as expression. (Wiskus 2013: 120)

Thus ‘rhythm lies at the origin of all art’ (2013: 123). Such a degree of generality lends itself to the conclusion that rhythm, through its articulation of silences, creates an ‘ontological vibration’ (Merleau-Ponty, Visible/Invisible, 115/152–3) that shapes experience and the arts and that the arts in particular bring this vibration into focus. That an artistic idea, especially in the time-based arts like poetry and music, should express itself first as a rhythm is testified by Mallarmé and Eliot.

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1 Introduction

1.7  Rhythm and Rhetoric Valiavitcharska (2013) in his study of Byzantine oratorical rhythm explores the relationship between rhythm and argumentation. He argues that the history of rhetoric became dominated by argumentation and that, in turn, rhythm, which was more associated with the emotional effects of rhetoric, became sidelined. And yet the power of rhythm to transport is affirmed: rhythm ‘carries the judgement away. It takes us hostage and invites us to surrender, to assent, to go along with it. In other words it is – or could be – the ultimate rhetorical tool’ (2013: 1). These ‘immediate, intuitive, and emotional responses [are] evoked by sheer structures of sound’ (2013 : 7). There is a detailed account of Byzantine prose rhythms that does not concern us in the present book; they largely focus on the shift from syllabic rhythms in classical Greek to a more stress-based mode in Byzantine writing in the sixth century. Worth noting, however, is the suggestion that ‘the Byzantine literary commentators seem more interested in explicating the intricacies of classical prosody and rhythms – which are based on syllabic quantities – than in grappling with the principles of the evolving medieval reality of the stress accent’ (2013: 15). It is as if they are more interested in literary stylistics than in their own version of contemporary rhetoric. Valiavitcharska (2013: 6) also suggests that the social and political dimension of rhetoric and of rhythm’s function (that of ‘rhetorical transport’) is different in the modern period from that in the classical and medieval periods: …the divergence between the modern approach, which values argument and content, and the classical and medieval approach, which delights equally in the variety of language effects and in the power of its thought, stems also from a fundamental difference in ontological sensibility. For us moderns, being tends to be being-alone; together is incidental and temporary; successful communication can happen at times but it is not a given – from which stems our anxiety about sharing meaning and self-expression. For the ancients, being is being-together; successful communication is an unproblematic possibility – but its intended effect is not; shared experience is always there – but its outcome is not; hence the interest in producing results, without the ontological unease.

Valiavitcharska (2013) also refers to Asianic oratory: ‘[It] may have been frowned upon by its opponents as perversely florid and flauntingly rhythmical, but it was popular with large, mixed crowds […] Byzantine homilectics borrows the Asianic penchant for figures of two kinds: of accumulation and redundancy and of balance and antithesis, both strong rhythmic markers’ (2013: 18). What is pertinent to the present book is that the study of Byzantine oratorical rhythms from a rhetorical perspective has a direct bearing on poetics: The unfortunate outcome of detaching metrics from rhythmics is that rhythmic theory becomes limited to the sphere of music, with only tangential relevance to literature. Consequently, the difference between poetic and prose rhythm has been traditionally described as a difference between regularly repeated quantitative sequences (for poetry) and a mixture of various feet (for prose). Good prose rhythm, in this view, means simply a combination of poetic feet which avoids the impression of regularity. Yet the problems with this attitude are immediately apparent: on the one hand, it allows no organizing principle by

1.7  Rhythm and Rhetoric

9

means of which to account for meaningful differences in oratorical rhythm; on the other hand, it ignores a long and clearly defined ancient tradition of distinguishing between prose and poetry on rhythmic (not metric) grounds and discussing prose within the framework of rhythmic theory. (2013: 28)

For the present book, the detachment of rhythmics from metrics is not ‘unfortunate’. Indeed, a focus on rhythmics rather than metrics allows closer association between poetry and music, a sharper and more calibrated delineation from prose and application of rhythmic theory to fields outside the arts. That applicability is evident in Valiavitcharska’s writing, which seems to be implied by the statement that ‘The Byzantines felt that rhythm in prose was generated by clause length, word composition, and closing cadence, and was measured out not by a sequence of metra but by the individual word, with its own length, stress, and contextual relation to other words in the utterance’ (2013: 50). Rhythm cannot be heard or seen without taking into account the whole work. The framing of a work of art, or of a social encounter, is critical to the interpretation of the rhythmic time relations within it. Thus microscopic analyses of rhythms or metres and metrical variations cannot be valid without a sense of the bigger picture. Hence divisions like rhythm and metre, or investigations of prose rhythms, have to be seen within the wider context. It also has to be determined whether the larger work and its framing is conceived within an overall harmony of individual rhythms or whether the framing is such that some degrees of discordance, or dysrhythmic relations, are intended. Furthermore, if we accept that rhythm is manifested in the whole work as well as in degrees of detail, we position polyrhythmicity within a rhetorical framework. As Valiavitcharska suggests, ‘Rhythm […] is not a simple embellishment, a suitable form, or a fitting vehicle for a particular type of argumentative tenor. It realizes and drives the argument as much as it is driven and realized by it’ (2013: 115). With regard to Asianic oratory, the following examples and discussion from Valiavitcharska (2013: 70) provide a basis from which we can determine the focus of the present book: Take heed, therefore, beloved, how Old and new, eternal and transient, Perishable and imperishable, mortal and immortal Is the mystery of Pascha. It is old according to the Law, but new according to the Word, Transient according to the type, eternal according to grace, Perishable as far as the slaying of the sheep, imperishable through the life of the Lord, Mortal on account of the earthly tomb, immortal on account of the resurrection from the dead. The Law is old, the Word is new, The type is transient, grace is eternal, The sheep is perishable, the Lord is imperishable, Slain as a lamb, yet risen as God.

Valiavitcharska comments: ‘This is, perhaps, a more extreme example of the use of the Asianic style. For all its ostentation and artificiality (as the Atticists would say), it achieves two important goals: it presents complex theological ideas in an

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1 Introduction

easily comprehensible form, while retaining high rhetorical standards and employing memorable rhythms. The passage is built entirely on the principles of paradox and antithesis: the events of the Resurrection, which coincided with the feast of the Passover, are old in so far as they observed the law, but new in that they are the promise delivered by Christ […] At the same time, the paradoxical expression of these ideas creates a sense of mystery, which is the main theme of the homily. The clauses “strike the listener” (as Cicero would say) with short, self-contained, and syntactically identical phrases, which create a rhythm based on the autonomy of the individual words and clauses. This autonomy is further emphasized by the persistent rhyme, both internal and end-of-line, which marks out cola boundaries and synchronizes parallel ideas: the rhyme between φθαρτὸν διὰ τὴν τοῦ προβάτου σφαγήν and θνητὸν διὰ τὴν  ταφήν, for example, emphasizes that these two phrases are meant to be contemplated together. As a result, the rhythm is greatly amplified by the pause at the end of each clause’. Here we see how oratory and poetry are closely allied by rhythm. The rhythm of the piece is additive. There is no metrical regularity to it. Rather, it operates by building momentum, line by line. In the first ‘sentence’ (according to English syntactic rules, in translation), the qualities listed in the first three lines build towards the emphatic point of the opening (‘the mystery of Pascha’). The second sentence elaborates on the first, taking each of the qualities that were listed and itself constituting a section or stanza. The elaboration is further emphasized by the length of the lines: expository, non-cryptic, illustrative. The third and last sentence returns to the more condensed style of the first, using four dualities in four consecutive lines. In effect, the overall rhythmic construction could be seen more clearly if we re-set the piece into stanzas/strophes/sections: Take heed, therefore, beloved, how Old and new, eternal and transient, Perishable and imperishable, mortal and immortal Is the mystery of Pascha. It is old according to the Law, but new according to the Word, Transient according to the type, eternal according to grace, Perishable as far as the slaying of the sheep, imperishable through the life of the Lord, Mortal on account of the earthly tomb, immortal on account of the resurrection from the dead. The Law is old, the Word is new, The type is transient, grace is eternal, The sheep is perishable, the Lord is imperishable, Slain as a lamb, yet risen as God.

Now we see a three-part structure with four lines in each part. There is architectural shape as well as forward rhythmic momentum. What is missing in translation is the rhyming that, according to Valiavitcharska, further emphasizes the rhythmic structure. But what is evident, even in translation, is that the rhythmic nature of each of the lines in relation to each other cannot be seen without the overall stanzaic structure of the speech/poem nor without the sense overall of a rhetorical statement that uses repetition at line, stanza and whole work levels to establish its impact.

1.8  The Relation Between Fugue, Rhythm and the Social Sciences

11

1.8  T  he Relation Between Fugue, Rhythm and the Social Sciences Cureton (1992: 153–55) gives an account of how prosodists have failed to develop a detailed and/or profound connection between musical theory and prosody, even though they have suggested it exists. Conversely, he notes that music theorists have failed to draw on advances in poetic rhythm to account for musical time relations. In an attempt to describe the relations between music theory and poetic rhythm more concretely, he addresses three approaches: First, Western tonal music, concluding with the conventional conceptions of metre (time signatures), e.g. duple metre, triple metre, compound metres etc. The tension between rhythm and meter is experienced in music as well as in poetry and largely manifests itself in the rhythmic shape of the measure moving outside the conventional beat-related time signatures. One of the examples of such disruption is syncopation, which accentuates the offbeat. Second, he refers to the work of Schenker (1932, 1935) who, in short, rejected the linear patterning of musical rhythm in favour of a more architectural, ‘vertical’ conception (see the discussion of the vertical and horizontal axes of rhythm in the previous section) and who, without stating it as such, has pointed towards the fugue as the key structural form that will bring music and poetic theory more closely together. Third, Cureton cites the work of Cooper and Meyer (1960) and Meyer (e.g. 1967). Again, to summarize, this strand of prosodic and musical analysis emphasizes not so much the technical categorization of rhythmic units, but the interpretation of rhythmic nuances from the point of view of the reader/listener. Rhythm (and polyrhythmicity), from Meyer’s point of view, requires an overarching receptivity to the whole rhythmic shape of a work, integrating time relations, melody and other music features. As suggested above, I will take fugue as an organizing structural musical genre and as a principle for bringing together the horizontal and vertical dimensions of rhythm in music and poetry as well as in the other arts and in the social sciences. In Chap. 4, this principle will be explored in more depth. I take the exploration of fugue as a logical next step in the field of what Cureton calls ‘temporal poetics’ and what I have termed ‘polyrhythmicity’. Fugue is an appropriate structural metaphor for a number of reasons. As Apel (1970) points out, fugue’s main characteristics are its contrapuntal style ‘with a texture consisting of a number of individual voices, usually three or four’ (1970: 335) and the fact that it is based on a short melody, called the ‘subject’ or ‘theme’. The subject is shadowed throughout the piece by the ‘countersubject’, often in the form of motifs. Other key elements are the ‘exposition’ in which the theme is announced at least once in each voice, and the ‘episode’, a passage that does not convey the subject. These episodes are lighter in weight but work with the expositions to determine the overall structure of the fugue. We can substitute ‘voice’ for rhythmic pattern in order to use fugue as a metaphor for the nature of multi-levelled rhythms or ‘polyrhythmicity’.

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1 Introduction

What is striking, at this early stages of the exposition and analysis in the present book, is that Apel’s definition of the characteristics of fugue are similar to large-­ scale narrative structures in novels or plays and also to arguments in private and public discourse. Fugal procedure (1970: 336) is a means of resolving difference through lighter or shadowed counterpoint in relation to the main theme. Its structural rhythmicity mirrors that of the function of argument in democratic societies where argument is used to reach consensus and therefore provide a basis for action. In arguing for fugue as a structural metaphor for polyrhythmicity, the present book aligns itself more with baroque, classical and neo-classical embracing of form, rather than with Romantic and iconoclastic approaches to music. Chapters 4 to 7, at the heart of the present book, set out the polyrhythmic relations of music, conversation, poetry and the novel in more detail. The connections between rhythm in the arts, humanities and social sciences are further explored in Blasing (2007), who suggests that rhythm is crucial in language development for the child. As Culler notes (2015: 169), quoting Blasing (2007: 53, 58): Children learn by imitating speech rhythms: “training in vocal rhythmization, in the prosody of human speech…precedes speech, which could not happen without it”. Rhythm therefore has a fundamental, somatic aspect, bodily but social rather than individual: “the rhythmic body is the socially-constructed body; rhythmization is socialization”.

Furthermore, …the notion of rhythm encompasses both the regularity of a musical beat or higher-level forms of symmetry and various forms of irregularity – from the syncopation that is tied in with beats to higher level asymmetrical structure where different forms of prominence (phonological, prosodic, syntactical) create different temporal experiences. (Culler 2015: 140)

Although Culler is referring to literary production, specifically the lyric poem, the general principle is clearer: rhythm is a larger category than metre. It is associated with social ritual as well as with the everyday encounters that take place in society. To place rhythm in a yet wider context, it can be said that it is the realization of cultural (verbal, visual, musical etc.) patterning in the domain of time relations. Periodicity is another term that could be used to denote such patterning.

1.9  Overview of the Book The book as a whole explores the nature of polyrhythmicity in the arts, humanities and social sciences. It also takes an international perspective, sharpening the focus on the particular nature of European approaches to rhythm by comparison with African and Asian theories and practices. In Chap. 2, the nature of multiple and polyrhythms is discussed, with a conventional starting point being clock and metronomic time as a point of reference. This basis forms a point of departure into different types of rhythm, including circadian

1.9  Overview of the Book

13

and multi-levelled rhythms. Following reference back to previous work on prosodies of free verse, the chapter then begins the more complex task of discussing how polyrhythms relate to each other as it embarks on a journey towards a theory of polyrhythmic relations. The next chapter takes a step back to consider philosophical approaches to the understanding of time – not so much in astrophysical as in cultural terms. As such, and with an eye on the social science dimension of the book, it discusses the work of Lefebvre and social time and then moves on to Hegelian notions of space and time before addressing notions of space and time in Asian cultures. After a brief look at prose writing and rhythmicity, it ends with a more practical focus on time zones and their impact on everyday global relations. The core of the book begins with a chapter on rhythm’s role in music, with a glancing look at arrhythmic music in order to focus more clearly on the central theme of polyrhythmicity. It then moves to a consideration of fugue as a key formal principle in musical composition that will apply to polyrhythmicity in the arts, humanities and social sciences. From that point, the theory moves towards African exploration of rhythms and the poetics of African music, before moving more generally to a view of rhythms as the spaces between words and sounds, and as the principal driver in music of all kinds. As a bridge between the chapter of rhythms in music and those in poetry and the novel, Chap. 5 looks at polyrhythmicity in conversation and speech prosodies. Again, it begins with a consideration of the relations of words and music in African contexts, then on to rhythms in speech, poetry and vocal music. Further examples of the relationship between speech and rhythm are provided before a return to northern Ewe music and a landmark study by Agawu (1995). The end of this chapter turns its attention to rhythm and performance and to the relationship between polyphony and polyrhythms. One of the longest chapters in the book is that on poetry (Chap. 6), building on previous work on additive rhythms in free verse. After classifying and discussing types of rhythm in poetry, it looks at the idea of rhythm as a driving force in poetic composition, at the relationship of rhythm and metre and at polyrhythmicity in the lyric mode. It then reconsiders the work on temporal poetics before more in-depth analysis of sections of Pound’s Cantos (pioneering examples of additive rhythm and polyrhythmicity). The chapter ends with a consideration of the important dimension to rhythm and metre – meaning and semantics – based on the work of Don Paterson. An under-researched aspect of rhythm inheres in the composition and construction of the novel. Because narrative – and more specifically the novel – arranges time, the large-scale rhythms of the novel form are examined, with a particular focus on time relations in narratology. The discussion in Chap. 7 moves beyond Bakhtin and dialogism through detailed consideration of a single novel and then moves back out to more general aspects of narration as a human paradigm and to notions of ‘difficult rhythm’. After the central chapters on the arts and humanities, Chap. 8 turns to polyrhythmicity in social situations. Through the lens of chronosociology, it explores the sociology of rhythm, symphonic rhythms and the dissonance between global and

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1 Introduction

local rhythms. It then turns to specific fields in which rhythm plays a part: workload management, sports and sports politics. Throughout the consideration of social applications of polyrhythmic theory, the aesthetic dimension, brought over from the previous four chapters, plays a key part. Chapter 9 shifts the chronosociological focus of the previous chapter towards contemporary culture: first on the work of French artist Stéphane Couturier, then on to contemporary rap and fugue, and thence on to complex time relations in a short film. Throughout, the emphasis is on polyptical structures and also lightweight structures and rhythms. Given that much of polyrhythmic presence in social life is ‘felt’ but ‘invisible’, the chapter ends with a more explicit account of the function of framing and multi-levelled rhythms in the social sciences. Although the book is written from a principally European perspective, it embraces also the different perspectives offered by African and Asian practices in rhythm. Chapter 10 begins with a recognition of postcolonial issues in the field and focuses on the work of Ernest Fenollosa on the Chinese character as a medium for poetry, on reversible poems and on freer verse in the Chinese style. It also looks at Asian dance rhythms, Indian rāg and percussion in the music of Southeast Asia. Chapter 11 is designed for those interested in researching the field and thus has a more methodological bent. It looks at timing and at general issues regarding research into polyrhythmicity. Terms for analysis are proposed, and reference is made to rhythmanalysis and to other existing models for analysis. A new model for analysis is proposed, with macro-, mezzo- and micro-levels. The book ends in Chap. 12, with a consideration of the pedagogical and curricular implications within a theory of contemporary rhetoric and poetics. Whereas most approaches to rhythm in education, like eurythmics, have put forward an entire educational system based on rhythm, the present book ends with a look at composition, framing and argumentation in relation to polyrhythmicity. It asks the question at the end of how rhetoric, polyrhythmicity and argumentation can be better embedded within the school curriculum and its pedagogies.

References Agawu, K. (1995). African rhythm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Andrews, R. (2017). A prosody of free verse: Explorations in rhythm. New York: Routledge. Andrews, R. (2018). What is free verse prosody? Keynote lecture at Beyond metrical prosody: New rhythms in US and German (post-) modern poetry. Berlin: Free University of Berlin. 17–19 May 2018. Apel, W. (1970). Harvard dictionary of music (2nd ed.). London: Heinemann Educational. Beneveniste, E. (1971). The notion of ‘rhythm’ in its linguistic expression. In Problems in general linguistics (M. E. Meek, Trans.). Coral Gables: University of Miami Press. Blasing, M. (2007). Lyric poetry: The pain and pleasures of words. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brogan, T.  V. F. (1981). English versification, 1570–1980. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

References

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Cooper, G., & Meyer, L.  B. (1960). The rhythmic structure of music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Culler, J. (2015). Theory of the lyric. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cureton, R. D. (1992). Rhythmic phrasing in English verse. Harlow: Longman. Hopsch, L., & Lilja, E. (2017). Embodied rhythm in space and time: A poem and a sculpture. Style, 51(4), 413–441. Meschonnic, H. (1982). Critique du rythme: Anthropologie historique du langage. Paris: Verdier. Meyer, L. B. (1967). Music, the arts, and ideas. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Paterson, D. (2018). The poem: Lyric, sign, metre. London: Faber and Faber. Schenker, H. (1932). Five graphic music analyses. New York: Dover. Schenker, H. (1935). Free composition (E. Oster, Trans. and Ed.). New York: Longman. Valiavitcharska, V. (2013). Rhetoric and rhythm in Byzantium: The sound of persuasion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wiskus, J. (2013). The rhythm of thought: Art, literature and music after Merleau-Ponty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 2

The Nature of Multiple Rhythms and Polyrhythms

Abstract  Most rhythms are conceived of as singular and regular, driven by a recognizable beat. The present book suggests that such a perception of rhythm is over-­ simplistic and is framed by an over-dependence on metricality or clock time. Generally, we do not see, nor are we attuned to, relative rhythmic relations. In a multi-layered or polyrhythmic sound world, rhythms are more complex. One is laid upon another, so that the experience of multiple rhythms is a matter of attuning oneself to different levels of time arrangement. Conventional time might be represented by a regular beat; an irregular pulse-based rhythm might be added and then a further rhythmic pattern captured in melody or some other aspect of a musical composition. In this chapter, ‘polyrhythmicity’ is explored in more depth, with reference to circadian rhythms and additive rhythms in free verse. The chapter then works towards a theory of rhythmic relations. Keywords  Polyrhythmicity · Circadian rhythms · Multiple rhythms · Free verse · Theory

2.1  Clock Time, Metronomic Time and Rhythm Landes (2000) noted that the invention of the oscillating measure to track the flow of time was a key moment in ‘Western’ conceptions of time. The binary (now digital) measurement or characterization of a phenomenon that, without clocks, can be experienced as ‘flow’ (cf. the etymological origin of ‘rhythm’) seems to run counter to metronomic time. Yet both co-exist in a polyrhythmic state. This is not the moment to explore further the emergence of metrical or ‘clock’ time. It is simply necessary to note that clock time is a given in Western and global culture.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Andrews, Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6_2

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2.2  Circadian Rhythms Research into biological rhythms is extensive. Foster and Kreitzman (2004, 2009) have studied circadian rhythms in their efforts to establish a different cyclical pattern underlying human and other natural behaviour. Essentially, they identify an inner clock that does not always align with external time as defined by atomic and worldwide ‘24 hour clock time’. Even within humans, there are variations in how this relationship is manifested and managed, possibly also between genders too. There is a ‘range of entrainment’ (Foster and Kreitzman 2004: 83) in which the circadian rhythms can stretch from 22 to 27 hours, but irregularities in the balance between circadian rhythms and the 24  hour clock can occur. Holistic or ‘felt’ or ‘natural’ time can be over-valorized, over-favoured. It would be a chaotic world if individuals operated only by holistic time: social patterns would change, and most social interactions would be impossible or hard to manage. And yet finding a balance between individual holistic endogenous time and social time is a key to wellbeing, efficiency, action and the consensus that enables society to operate. That balance can also be characterized as the search for equilibrium in biological phenomena or within a system that has a multi-levelled or polyrhythmic nature. Foster and Kreitzman identify infradian rhythms as those with a period of longer than a day and ultradian as those with a period of less than a day. In accounting for the range of environmental rhythmic cycles, they cite Fraser (1987) who calculated that the ratio of the fastest to the slowest oscillations in an organism can be 10 to the 24th: 1 ‘and as an octave is a frequency range of 2:1, then “the instruments of the living orchestra extend across 78 octaves”’ (Foster and Kreitzman 2004: 39), i.e. a piano with a keyboard six metres long. In other words, orchestration of living rhythmic cycles is complex. Relations to harmony will be considered in Chap. 4. The most comprehensive recent study of circadian rhythms in science is Young (2005). For example, views range from a need to get beyond the narrow notion of a biological clock to a broader notion of a rhythm system that varies not only with time but also with location and with what the objects of the study are actually doing in those locations (in the case of fruit flies, see Hall 2005). In human terms, Ptacek et al. (2005) suggest that ‘there are many challenges to characterizing human behavioural phenotypes’ (2005: 249) but that advances in identifying the genetic basis of human behaviour can help in moving towards such characterization. Merrow and Roenneberg (2005), in a departure from mostly shorter studies of circadian rhythms in humans, suggest studies that include surveying of human behaviour over a year with sleep logs as they experience different photoperiods. ‘Clock components discovered so far are predominantly involved in handling sensory input’ (2005: 263), and that biochemical analysis of input to core and output and back to input again requires further research. Rudic, Curtis, Cheng and Fitzgerald (2005), on the other hand, suggest circadian rhythms ‘allow for the appropriate temporal synchronization of physiology and behaviour, optimizing the efficiency of biological systems’ (2005: 524). Their interest is in ‘peripheral clocks’, which affect to one degree or another the central master clock in the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nuclei.

2.4  Rhythms of Anticipation

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Johnson (2005) argues that the notion that circadian rhythms enhance fitness (‘a measure of reproductive success and the passing on of genes’ 2005: 820) is questioned by the camp of evolutionary biologists. ‘It is difficult to imagine that circadian clocks are not adaptive. The new generation of studies on the adaptive significance of clock systems encourages the view that circadian clocks were adaptive in the past and retain their value to the present day [that would seem a principle of evolutionary biology]. Nevertheless, from the perspective of a rigorous evolutionary biologist, we have not yet conclusively demonstrated that some common manifestations of the circadian system (e.g. anticipation, locomotor activity, temporal separation, leaf movements) have adaptive value’ (2005: 833–4). Tauber and Kyriacou (2005) take a broader sweep, linking chronobiology to population and evolutionary patterns, arguing again for a wider aperture in studies of circadian rhythms on human behaviour.

2.3  Rhythms of Migration The connection between biological rhythms and polyrhythmicity in the social sciences can be made via an analogy between animal/bird migration and human migration patterns. The study of animal or bird migration is well established (driven by the need for the best food sources, for survival and for reproduction and triggered by a change in the seasons); we know less about human migration, except that originally, in early human life, it was prompted by the search for seasonal variation in food (see Foster and Kreitzman 2009, 120ff. and specifically 144–6, who nevertheless admit that research into the physiological processes underpinning circannual rhythmicity is still in its early stages – partly because of the difficulty of undertaking research over a number of years). Human migration now is affected by climate change, particularly the accessibility to water supplies, and also by social, economic or political change. Chapter 8 explores polyrhythmicity in social situations in more depth.

2.4  Rhythms of Anticipation As Foster and Kreitzman (2004: 133) point out, anticipation is key to success. Rhythmic anticipation is akin to contrapuntal impetus and can be surprised by changes in rhythmic pattern. The anticipation can be linked to both circadian (daily) and circannual (yearly) rhythms, which themselves interact to allow anticipation of the best moments for action. Circannual rhythms are the focus of Foster and Kreitzman (2009), who provide a comprehensive review of research in the field. There are three main areas in which chronobiological research impacts on polyrhythmicity as far as the present book is concerned: one is related to migration; another is contemporary and future work patterns; a third is related to learning and

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the economics of attention. Again, these will be addressed in Chaps. 8 and 12. There are other areas or related interests, like patterns of gestation and childbirth. The focus on the three main areas of socio-political action is intended to stay close to polyrhythmic patterns in music and the arts, in order to maintain controls on analogy as a means of scientific enquiry. Furthermore, there is continued debate as to whether humans are photoperiodic, ‘let alone that the photoperiodic response is the main factor in modern human birth seasonality’ (Foster and Kreitzman 2009: 157). In terms of the role of anticipation in rhythmic studies, it is clear that in a number of fields (e.g. movement in football, the hitting of a note in a musical composition a nanosecond before expected), it is an art. The expected intervention is shared by the performer and audience, but the nanosecond of intervention before the expected moment captures the essence of rhythmic patterning by drawing attention to itself – often with successful outcomes.

2.5  Towards a Prosody of Free Verse In A Prosody of Free Verse: Explorations in Rhythm (2017), I explored the need for, and the possibility of, a new prosody for free verse. This possibility used musical and choreographic principles to begin the process of charting what such a prosody would look like. One of the key distinctions made was that between vers libéré and vers libre, a distinction not made in the English term ‘free verse’. The French terms, deriving from discussion of poetic practices in the late nineteenth century, distinguished between verse that was liberated from strict metrical measures on the one hand and verse that was entirely free of such metricality on the other. It is a useful distinction to make, not least because those who suggest that there is a ‘ghost of metre’ in all free verse can only be referring to vers libéré. The very nature of free verse in its true vers libre sense suggests that we are beyond metrical prosody. Because there is a continuum from metrical verse through vers libéré to vers libre, it is best to talk about a spectrum of possibilities rather than a set of discrete categories. Cureton (1992) is right that to make any headway in the quest for a prosody of free verse, we need a theory of rhythm. That discussion was missing from A Prosody of Free Verse which devoted just one section of a chapter to the question. That previous discussion suggested the following: A working definition of rhythm is the measured flow of movement in verse, music, or by, analogy, in other genres, modes and art forms (Milne 1957). A narrower and more specific definition from Lanier (1907: 40) is “when the ear exactly coordinates a series of sounds and silences with primary reference to their duration.” Lanier’s scientific conception of six levels of rhythm, from the syllable through “individual groups of verse sounds” or ‘measures’, phrases, lines, stanzas and the whole poem, is architecturally helpful in that it shows how rhythm operates relative to all the levels described. (Andrews 2017: 7)

Behind these working definitions is a more comprehensive theoretical definition of rhythm as relative time relations within the overall aesthetic architecture of the

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poem or work itself (whether that poem is as long as an epic or as short as a haiku). Such a generous conception of rhythm allows for free verse and metrical verse to be accommodated under the same heading; it takes into account temporal structure, say in an epic poem, novel, play or film; it situates each level of rhythmic definition (the whole work; sections, stanzas or strophes; the lines; rhythmic phrasing within lines; syllabic rhythmic relations) within a greater whole; and it allows metrical rhythms to sit alongside and operate in relation to freer rhythms. But what is free verse? What are its elements? If we are to take the whole poem, however long, into account in relation to the architectural structures of free verse (e.g. The Cantos, ‘The Waste Land’, The Odyssey), then fugue and counterpoint will be useful analogies with musical composition. Although they are organizing principles in multi-levelled rhythmic works, the application of fugue and counterpoint is not only relevant to the structure of long free verse poems. It is at the level of the line that we need to turn in order to define the particular characteristics of free verse, as opposed to the syllable or foot of classical metrical prosodies. First, the line as unit of rhythm is driven by pulse, not regular beat. The pulse provides the momentum from the start of the line. What follows is the measure or cadence or the shape of the line. The difference between a measure and a cadence is that a ‘measure’ is the general unit of rhythm and a ‘cadence’ is a rhythmically patterned phrase that might be repeated in the poem or the verse paragraph. Second, the measure in free verse is the line, not the metrical foot. This means that the cadences of free verse can be as long or short as a line can be: for example, long for Whitman and shorter for William Carlos Williams. There can be variation between the lengths of lines, for effect: it becomes a malleable device in the poet’s hands. To give a short example from Brecht’s ‘Ein Neues Haus’ (1976): Immer noch                   Liegt auf dem Shrank mit den Manuskripten Mein Koffer.

                  Even now On top of the cupboard containing my manuscripts My suitcase lies. Third, one could say that free verse prosody, in general, gets closer to the speaking voice and further away from the singing voice. It draws on the subtleties, nuances, twists and turns of the speaking voice – and in different languages. There is a sub-field of speech linguistics that is devoted to speech prosody, including intonation, that is addressed in Chap. 5. In terms of stress or emphasis (avoiding the term ‘beat’ to distinguish the discussion from beat-based prosodies), there can be many more degrees of stress than in metrical verse, which tends to reduce beats to two or three levels (strong, middling and weak).

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There are a number of more limited and tightly focused technical terms that could be used in the analysis of free verse: ‘spring’, ‘fall’ (from dance choreography), ‘syncopation’, ‘boundary’ (a break or change in rhythmic pattern) and ‘turn’. These will constitute an emerging taxonomy of free verse prosody, and although many of these features are shared with conventionally metrical verse, there are others deriving from musical or choreographic notation that are distinctive to liberated or free verse. It is worth spending a moment on turn. To repeat the definition of poetry by an 11-year-old that I quoted in The Problem with Poetry (1992) ‘poetry is writing that does not go up to the right-hand edge of the page’ (the exception is prose poetry). When you have a line ending within a poem that is metrically based, you know when that turn at the end of a line is going to take place, and that rhythmic turn is often reinforced by rhyme. If the visual turn is intended to be slipped over to the next line, we have the French term ‘enjambement’. In free verse, the line ending is significant in a different way. There is usually no rhyme to indicate or reinforce the turn. There is no metre to help us to anticipate it. Punctuation can be used to regulate the rhythm, and there is also the visual clue (which, if you are listening to the poem rather than reading it, can be hard to pick up). Instead, we have a stronger relationship between the semantic and the rhythmic. If the line is the unit of rhythm in free verse, it works in very close relationship to the sense or meaning of the poem. At every turn, the free verse poet has to decide why and when to take it. The same principle applies to free verse that approximates the prose poem or which has lines of poetry that extend for several lines on the printed page, post-Whitman. So far I have emphasized the relationship between music and free verse, but there is a visual dimension too. This is from William Carlos Williams’ ‘Sunday in the Park’ from the Paterson (Williams 1949) sequence:                Sunday in the park, limited by the escarpment, eastward: to the west abutting on the old road: recreation with a view! The binoculars chained to anchored stanchions along the east wall –    beyond which, a hawk                 soars! Here the music is awkward; it’s more prosaic but also more visual. One could almost say there is no music here. The layout indicates how the poem is to be received – and it is not entirely clear that this poem is best read out. The line endings seem more arbitrary; punctuation is used to segment the visual, not the aural; and there is a gestural placing of the words, as in the last two lines. This is a different William Carlos Williams mode from the one Cureton analyses comprehensively in Rhythmic Phrasing in English Verse where there is a unity in line length – in the measure – in relation to which the words, spoken and read, can be relatively positioned. Here, in the short extract from ‘Sunday in the Park’, the basic measure is

2.5  Towards a Prosody of Free Verse

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there still, but the dislocations are stronger, the visual dimension more evident, the freedoms within the frame of the poetic page more pronounced. Further reference to the ‘drop line’ is made in Chap. 6 of the present book. The point is that a free verse prosody has to be in the service of the poem itself, not least because the number of variations in free verse, in its attempt to free form into closer alignment with meaning, is limitless. The issue of free verse form is relevant also to translation. Here is Günter Kunert’s poem, ‘Film – verkehrt eingespannt/Film put in backwards’ (1972), both in the original German and in translation into English: Als ich erwachte Erwachte ich im atemlosen Schwarz Der Kiste. Ich hörte: Die Erde tat sich Auf zu meinem Häupten. Erdschollen Flogen flatternd zur Schaufel zurück. Die teure Schnachtel mit mir dem teuren Verblichenen stieg schnell empor. Der Deckel klappte hoch und ich Erhob mich und fühlte gleich…

When I woke I woke in the breathless black Of the box.      I heard: the earth Was opening over me. Clods Fluttered back      To the shovel. The Dear box, with me the dear      Departed, gently rose. The lid flew up and I Stood, feeling…

First, it can be categorically stated that this is not prose. Second, in both German and English versions, the fact that the poems do not go up to the right-hand edge of the page signifies that the line is the unit of rhythm. If we re-set the poems as prose, we would lose this rhythmic structuring, which asks us to attend more closely to the rhythm and to the words than we would if it were prose. The frame we are being asked to look at is one of intensity, concentration, resonance. It is not speech, and neither is it prose. Third, we can see that the layout of the two versions is different. The German version establishes a regular line length, a measure, a seriousness afforded by the seeming flatness of tone and cadence (at least to the English ear). The English version seems more ironic, dark but slightly more humorous (‘The/Dear box, with me the dear/Departed’), more jerky, more syncopated. Just as with the short quotation from Brecht, the translation operates with a different syntax, and that syntax partly determines the rhythmic shape of the lines. (It raises the question as to whether there

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could ever be a notation of the rhythm of any poems in translation, because the notation would differ from version to version. There certainly isn’t a score that accompanies a poem when it is translated from one language to another.) The pulse at the start of each line is important, despite the enjambements. It is stronger in the German than in the English version. It gives the line impetus, a starting point, a conceptual and emotional drive. In terms of emphasis, there is subtlety in both versions. After the slightly ironic ‘the dear/Departed’ we have ‘gently rose’ and then a more staccato monosyllabic sequence: ‘The lid flew up and I/Stood, feeling’. This is about rhythmic variation, not about tempo. We could read the poems at different tempi and the effect would be different, but the internal rhythmic relations would not necessarily change (unless the tempo was so fast as to obliterate rhythmic relations). What is of minute rhythmic interest is the difference between the effect of the line ending and start and that of the comma in the three words ‘I/Stood, feeling’. The function of the line break is cinematographic; that of the comma, an emotional one. A series of monosyllabic words is followed by one of two syllables; we linger over the word ‘feeling’ longer than we linger over the previous words. What this brief exploration of a few poems and a few extracts from music lead me to conclude, at least provisionally, is that, in summary, free verse prosody is made up of a number of elements: pulse; the line as unit of rhythm; turns at the end of lines; larger-scale structuration in the form of verse paragraphs, stanzas or sections; a range of degrees of emphasis; relative time relations; syntax; the presence, however, abstracted, of the voice or voices embodied in the poem; closer association between meaning and form that in conventional verse; and a visual scoring that can complement and/or work against the development of the rhythms in the poem.

2.6  The Constante Rhythmique and the Cadence Free verse rhythms are additive rather than regular or divisive; they build upon each other to establish some form of cadential norm in the poem. By ‘cadential’ I mean that a cadence emerges in which melody and rhythm are fused. In these cases of fusion, cadence is the shape of the phrase and of the line as unit of rhythm. It is not necessarily ‘a piece of melody or harmony that seems to resolve tensions and is thus usually found at the end of a phrase, or section, or piece’ (Makin 2003: 97) but rather a signature shape that emerges as the touchstone of the poem or section of a poem: what I have called ‘the effect of a touchstone phrase, line or cluster of lines within the poem as a whole’ that provide(s) rhythmic definition. To develop this idea further, the cadence is close to the idea of a constante rhythmique. The constante rhythmique is similar to a cadence but with the capability of operating at phrase, line, cluster (strophe or verse paragraph) or whole poem level, thus providing architectural structure – especially with longer free verse poems. As Makin (2003: op cit) suggests, ‘The constant may impose itself from the beginning of the strophe; at other times it makes itself felt only during the end of the

2.7  Polyrhythms and Fugue

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poetic paragraph’. What is more, two unequal constantes rhythmiques can combine in the same poem or section of a poem, thus providing a multi-levelled rhythmic identity or polyrhythmic character. The difficulty of working towards a notation for free verse – a free verse prosody – is that the combination of all these elements suggests a number of implications for free verse: one, that it is libéré or libre, not only from the iambic pentameter and other forms of metrical patterning, but that free verse is freed also from any kind of prosody. Two, that free verse reminds us that poetry on the page or in performance has implied or explicit multimodality and that this multimodality has myriad sides to it and, although we could subject it to taxonomic categorization, is almost resistant to systematization. As soon as you systematize it, it escapes. Three, that free verse poems are even more open to interpretation than tightly metrical poems or poems that operate with the ghost of metre somewhere in the background.

2.7  Polyrhythms and Fugue Rather than see ‘a ghost of metre’ behind free verse, there is an interim ground where metres and freer verse rhythms interact in poetry as well as in music. I also want to mention the potential of fugue that might help us as we navigate beyond metrical prosody. Polyrhythms in music are defined as ‘the simultaneous use of strikingly contrasted rhythms in different parts of the musical fabric’ (Apel 1970: 687), so that all contrapuntal or polyphonic music can be defined as ‘polyrhythmic’. However, vocal music of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Europe, although embraced by this definition, emphasizes harmonies rather than rhythms (the closest twentieth-century analogy would be Stockhausen’s Stimmung). Generally, suggests Apel (1970: 688), ‘the term is restricted to cases in which rhythmic variety is introduced as a special effect that is often called “cross rhythm”’. Two types of cross-rhythm are ‘contrasting rhythms within the same scheme of accents (meter)’ (ibid.) which I would see in poetry as the spoken rhythms of the language providing variation in relation to underlying metres, as in so-called blank verse, and ‘contrasting rhythms involving a conflict of meter or accents’ (ibid.) for which Apel gives the example of Paul Hindemith’s Klaviermusik, op.37, where a bass part is in 3/8 metre but underpins a 4/8 rhythm for the right hand. The second of these cross-rhythms is not so easily evident in the line of poetry itself, but on a larger scale in the fugue-like arrangement of sections within a poem, as in ‘The Waste Land’, or in many smaller-scale poetic compositions which use verse paragraphs and/or sections to build their overall rhythmic structure. I explore this question of whether polyrhythms could provide the basis for free verse prosody in A Prosody of Free Verse (2017), in a discussion of the work of Theo van Leeuwen. Further exploration as to whether fugue could provide a basis for a prosody of free verse is also worth exploring.

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Fugue has characteristics that are analogous to free verse poetic compositions, especially those of a longer nature. As Apel (1970: 335) states ‘In each voice the space between one statement of the subject and the next is filled in by a freely invented counterpoint, which, however, is usually unified by the use of recurrent motifs. These motifs are derived either from the subject itself, or, more usually, from its continuation, which forms the counterpoint to the first imitation (second statement) of the subject, near the beginning of the fugue. Frequently, but not always, this continuation takes a rather definite form, almost equal to the subject in individuality and importance. In such cases it is called countersubject and reappears throughout the fugue in a manner similar to the main subject, though less rigidly’. Fugues are composed of ‘expositions’ and ‘episodes’: Expositions carry the main burden of the theme; episodes punctuate these and are often lighter in weight. Keyboard, as opposed to vocal, fugues owe their development largely to German composers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, prefiguring and informing the work of Bach. See further discussion of fugue and its relation to polyrhythmicity in Chap. 4 of the present book.

2.8  Musical Analogies Anyone who has listened to Stravinsky’s early work, to jazz, to African drumming, to Indian rāg, to Latin American jazz fusion, will recognize that they do not operate within a metrical framework or in relation to metre. Their additive rhythms do not sit easily within conventional time signatures. Typically, in jazz, there is no score. A cadence will be played twice – enough to get a sense of pattern – and then there is departure, an excursion. An example is any version of John Coltrane’s ‘My Favourite Things’. First, there are steps into the rhythmic base from the piano; then Coltrane gives us the melody he will be working with – twice. From then on (after about a minute), he improvises immediately for 30 seconds; returns to the main melody twice, each time providing more variation; and then moves into improvisation. The ‘single’ version of ‘My Favourite Things’ is a compact 5 minutes and 30  seconds. Other recorded live and studio versions are much longer, much more improvised, much freer, which reminds us that performance, in relation to studio recording in music, can bring further variation to rhythmic identity (and not just in relation to tempo). Piano, drums and bass provide a continuo, sometimes emerging to the foreground. A more contemporary artist, Brad Mehldau, reverses the whole drums and bass convention and starts with the bass as the lead instrument in ‘Day is Done’. The theme is played three times from the bass at the start, in different styles, with the piano and drums providing the percussive continuo – a more jagged continuo than Coltrane’s 50 years previously, though the drums are fairly consistent in the opening 2 or 3 minutes. After this opening, with the piano providing one more recourse to the theme, the composition/performance goes off on its excursion, with the left hand

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of the pianist providing the rhythmic counterpoint to the right hand in a style that is distinctive for Mehldau; and gradually the drums are freed from their metronomic-­ like foundation and play a different role. Sometimes both hands on the piano take over the rhythmic drive in unison. The last minute and a half of the track is an exploration – a game of rhythmic wind-down. Another contemporary pianist whose work illustrates the complexities of free/additive jazz rhythms is Yohan Kim where, although he plays to a metronomic continuity background line, it is clear that the jazz improvisation is additive. At times, these artists use polyrhythmic patterning. Some of the rhythms are regular (metrical), some are not. We could say, however, that there is the ‘ghost of metre’ or a foundation of metronomic beat behind some of these compositions: this would be to acknowledge the complex orchestration, time relations and multi-­ layered time patterning that is going on. In all of these compositions, melody is subjugated to or finds a new balance with rhythm, as does harmony (or disharmony) to time relations. On a horizontal axis, the axis of time relations, there is invention and drive; and on the vertical axis, the axis of harmony, tone, degrees of emphasis and orchestration, there is yet further complexity. These examples use regular metrical rhythms from time to time, not always in the instruments you would expect, in order to set off or provide a counterpoint to the freer and more relative time relations they are exploring. If we make an analogy with poetry, they are in vers libéré mode. This is partly because they are interested in shaping rhythmic flow; in its arrangements in time; in the relativity of utterances, driven by pulses; and in bringing rhythm closer to meaning, so that it expresses meaning in concert with words or melody. Musicians see rhythm not necessarily as ‘drums and bass’ but as a pervasive, ‘horizontal’ and/or multi-layered element in music that might include what we conventionally separate as rhythm and melody and that, at times, the two might be working in unison  – or even contrapuntally. Furthermore, as mentioned above, tempo or pace is not the issue: whether the composition (a poem or a piece of music) is performed more or less quickly does not affect the relative time relations in the work. Musicians are interested in rhythm, because as Stravinsky says, ‘the phenomenon of music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time’ (1962: 54). Carlos Santana’s ‘Flame Sky’ from the 1973 album Welcome is an example of how to take the argument yet further. After just 5 seconds of introduction, the guitar carries the rhythmic shape of the piece for half of the 11 minutes. There is an electric piano or organ continuo, more like the drone of Indian rāg, and the extensive percussive entourage becomes an accompaniment to the guitar: it does not provide a rhythmic basis, but responds to the melodic-cum-rhythmic shaping of the guitar itself. It is a piece that is beyond the categories of rock, jazz fusion or Latin American jazz fusion, and it stands as a challenge as to how we would account for this kind of music in notation or, by analogy with words, in a prosody of free verse.

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Furthermore, performance rhythms have been studied, bringing together a number of factors: circadian rhythms, preference for early-waking/early-sleeping or late-waking/late-sleeping patterns; the nature of the task (combination of cognitive and physical demands); and whether it is light-related or not; body temperature; length of sleep; and clock time. The number of variables suggests that we all have slightly different chronotypes or time signatures. Such polyrhythmic complexity suggests that those who succeed best at managing the day’s activities and sleep patterns have understood the relationship between polyrhythmicity and time management. Ultimately, it comes down to balance: not just work-life balance, but coordination and orchestration of the various rhythms which determine consciousness, attention and performance.

References Andrews, R. (1992). The problem with poetry. Buckingham: Open University Press. Andrews, R. (2017). A prosody of free verse: Explorations in rhythm. New York: Routledge. Brecht, B. (1976). ‘Ein Neues Haus’/‘A New House’ in Poems 1913–1956, edited by John Willett and Ralph Manheim, with the cooperation of Erich Fried. London: Eyre Methuen, 416. Original German text published in Arbeitsjournal, 7 May 1949. Cureton, R. (1992). Rhythmic phrasing in English verse. Harlow: Longman. Foster, R., & Kreitzman, L. (2004). Rhythms of life: The biological clocks that control the daily lives of every living thing. London: Profile Books Ltd.. Foster, R., & Kreitzman, L. (2009). Seasons of life: The biological rhythms that living things need to thrive and survive. London: Profile Books Ltd.. Fraser, J. T. (1987). Time: The familiar stranger. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Hall, J. C. (2005). Systems approaches to biological rhythms in Drosophila. In M. W. Young (Ed.), Circadian rhythms (vol 393 of Methods in enzymology) (pp.  4–185). San Diego: Elsevier Academic Press. Johnson, C. H. (2005). Testing the adaptive value of Circadian systems. In M. W. Young (Ed.), Circadian rhythms (vol 393 of Methods in enzymology) (pp. 818–837). San Diego: Elsevier Academic Press. Kunert, G. (1972). Film  – verkehrt eingespannt/Film put in backwards. In M.  Hamburger (Ed.), East German poetry: An anthology. Manchester: Carcanet Press. Poem translated by Christopher Middleton. Landes, D. (2000). Revolution in time. New York: Viking. Lanier, S. (1907). The science of English verse. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Makin, P. (Ed.). (2003). Basil bunting on poetry. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Merrow, M., & Roenneberg, T. (2005). Enhanced phenotyping of complex traits with a circadian clock model. In M. W. Young (Ed.), Circadian rhythms (vol 393 of Methods in enzymology) (pp. 251–265). San Diego: Elsevier Academic Press. Milne, B.  L. (1957). English speech rhythm in theory and practice. London: Macmillan and Co Ltd.. Ptacek, L.  J., Jones, C.  R., & Fu, Y.-H. (2005). Genetic approaches to human behaviour. In M. W. Young (Ed.), Circadian rhythms (vol 393 of Methods in enzymology) (pp. 239–250). San Diego: Elsevier Academic Press. Rudic, R. D., Curtis, A. M., Cheng, Y. and Fitzgerald, G. (2005). Peripheral clocks and the regulation of cardiovascular and metabolic function. In: Young, M.W. (ed.) Circadian rhythms (vol 393 of Methods in enzymology). San Diego: Elsevier Academic Press, 524–539. Stravinsky, I. (1962). Autobiography (p. 54). New York: W. W. Norton.

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Tauber, E., & Kyriacou, C. P. (2005). Molecular evolution and population genetics of circadian clock genes. In M. W. Young (Ed.), Circadian rhythms (vol 393 of Methods in enzymology) (pp. 797–817). San Diego: Elsevier Academic Press. Williams, W. C. (1949). Paterson. New York: New Directions. Young, M. W. (Ed.). (2005). Circadian rhythms (vol 393 of Methods in enzymology). San Diego: Elsevier Academic Press.

Chapter 3

Polyrhythmicity in Time: An International Perspective

Abstract  Throughout the book, the focus is on international examples. First, the Western concept of time is discussed and compared to other models that are not based on a past-present-future linear principle. Second, conceptions of time relations in the East are explored. Once the range of models of time is described, the place and function of rhythm in different cultures and societies are discussed. Such an international and diverse perspective allows the book not only to compare different rhythmic principles but also to see how these different modes have been influential in cross-cultural ways. In some cultures, rhythm is foregrounded in the arts and everyday life; in others, perhaps because of lesser emphasis on physicality, rhythm is subsumed. The chapter takes into account philosophical views of time; rhythms in relation to space and time; the work of Lefebvre on social time; prose writing; and the practicalities of time zones in relation to everyday life. Keywords  Time · Space · Prose · Time zones · Social time · International

3.1  A Philosophical View of Time Before considering relative time relations, it is necessary to consider the nature of time itself. There are a number of assumptions and presuppositions behind the concept of time. First, that there is sequence in the perceptions of human and natural relations. Second that such sequencing can be logical, causal or quasi-causal. Third, that such sequencing can be measured in some way. Fourth, that the measurement can be carried out in a number of different ways. Fifth, that relations between units or elements of time can be described. As the fifth consideration is the subject of the present book, there is a need to work through the first four issues before arriving at an established starting point. Even before that, a preliminary starting point would be to ask: what is non-time? It can best be described as ‘eternity’ or the ‘eternal present’. In such a state, there is no sequencing. All experience and consciousness are absorbed into the present © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Andrews, Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6_3

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moment. That moment is generally conceived to be a still point (if there was movement, there would be time relations). In musical terms, although the sound begins and ends at points in time, the drone in Indian rāg or the opening of ‘Eternal caravan of reincarnation’ in Santana’s album Caravanserai aims to represent such presence outside time. Usually the sound is in a single tone, though there can be variation without accent or beat that ‘colours’ the tonal effect. Once there is more than one note, and once one follows another, there is sequence and therefore time relations. Issues of duration and accent apply. A sequence signifies; if a sequence between two notes is reversed, a different sequence is created. The sequence may be a perceived ‘constructed’ sequence, and/or it may be one that occurs in the natural world. Sequences are of any length, and the more variation in duration, accent and tone (in sound) and/or in movement (physical, emotional, spiritual), the more complex the sequence becomes. Sequencing can be logical, causal or quasi-causal. Such logic and causality can be readily identified in the natural world but also applies to ideas, the relations between phenomena and, for example, in narratives where the principle of post hoc ergo propter hoc applies. The latter principle might be described as quasi-causal because the actions and events that follow in narrative are just one of a possible range of actions or events. In ‘purer’ causal connections, variables are eliminated so that a single causal connection is made between two entities. The third assumption outlined above suggests that such sequencing can be measured in some way. It is at this stage that differences in types of measurement begin to differentiate between cultures. Global clock time, predicated on a longitudinal line that runs through Greenwich (Greenwich mean time), provides a global (not universal) system via which days, hours, minutes, seconds and sub-divisions of seconds are calibrated and held in relation to each other. But not all cultures operate via global clock time nor position themselves in relation to Greenwich mean time. Fourthly, as a necessary preface to further discussion of temporal relations in the present book, different time systems have different kinds of measurement, and once these are operating in concert with each other, polyrhythmicity obtains. Such polyrhythmicity might be multi-levelled, in that ‘at the same time’ or during the same time duration a number of different rhythms might be at play. Equally, polyrhythmicity might itself be sequential in that one kind of rhythmic shape might be followed by a different one, either bar-to-bar within conventional musical notation or over larger structures in a composition or perceived unity. Both multi-levelled rhythms and sequential rhythms might be operating in the same work or natural (or perceived) phenomenon, in which case description will be complex. It is the contention of the present book that there has been, to date, no comprehensive account of polyrhythmicity. In music, in the West at least, more emphasis has been put on melodic, tonal and harmonic relations than on temporal relations, where it has become conventional that a single notational system will provide the necessary analytical framework.

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3.2  Lefebvre and Social Time In 2004, Lefebvre could write, ‘there is not yet a general theory of rhythms’ (2004: 79), yet he sets out the beginnings of such a theory by distinguishing arrhythmia from polyrhythmia from isorhythmia from eurrhythmia. The first and third of these indicate a lack of rhythmic coordination and a coincidence of rhythms, respectively. The second and fourth categories indicate multiple and different rhythms operating simultaneously, and a greater harmonic coincidence of rhythms, respectively. It is the second of these (polyrhythmia) that is the focus and subject of the present book. At the same time, the book attempts to build on Lefebvre’s work and generate a theory of polyrhythmicity. Overall, Lefebvre’s work suggests a eurhythmic approach: one in which rhythms are coordinated and indeed harmonic, rather like the European medieval notion of the ‘music of the spheres’. Further discussion of Lefebvre’s categories occurs in Chaps. 8 and 11 of the present book. The challenge of the present book is to generate a theory of polyrhythmicity, allowing for the fact that polyrhythmicity, by its very nature, allows a number of different rhythms to be operating at the same time, not always in a synchronized way. Thus the generation of theory requires an overarching concept to unify the fields of polyrhythmicity and an openness at the borders of the theory which ‘allows’ other new rhythms to be embraced. Such a theory of polyrhythmicity will, in the end, be a unifying one because theory needs to explain the maximum number of cases. But perhaps the additive rhythms of the twentieth century, and the increasing awareness of the disjunctions of urban life, both of which disrupt the eurythmic sense of order and conventional notions of harmony, require even a new form of theory. The challenge is thus further defined: How could a theory of polyrhythmicity be generated without reflecting the potential disjunction of rhythms? Should it be a theory that admits unrepresentativeness? Would that in itself negate the whole notion of what a theory does? Lefebvre (2004) and especially Lefebvre and Régulier (1985) in ‘The Rhythmanalytical Project’ base their notions of rhythm on ‘the concrete modalities of social time’ (2004: 73). Social time is a combination of metronomic/clock time, biological time and the patterns that emerge in informal and formal social settings. As I write, the world is in the first throes of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. ‘Social time’ has been disrupted by lockdowns and edicts from government to minimize social gatherings in order to check and moderate the spread of the virus. Schools, cafés, hotels, non-essential shops and other public events and facilities have closed down. Gatherings of more than two people (except in families who live in the same house or flat) are prohibited. The instruction is to ‘stay at home’ except for daily exercise and essential trips. Advice and instruction change almost daily, and so rhythms have to change. Currently, in the near-to-lockdown phase, domestic rhythms dominate, and those who are now working from home need to manage the working day alongside the domestic day. Individuals in the family who were used to following their own social rhythms now have to accommodate others’ rhythms.

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As a result we become more conscious of the social rhythms we have been used to: ‘we are only conscious of most of our rhythms when we begin to suffer from some irregularity’ (2004: 77). In the present situation, social irregularity causes us to become aware of the usual social patterns and to some extent replicate them in the confines of the household. So, whereas at work, some of the time is spent in social engagement (discussion at a photocopier, a chat over a cup of coffee), the encouragement in home-working is to continue that degree of socializing remotely, if at all possible. The rhythms become more ‘relaxed’, more expansive, because there is not the office-regulated timetable to observe, though scheduled online meetings still take place. Lefebvre and Régulier (in Lefebvre 2004: 89) characterize the ‘normal’ nature of polyrhythmic social behaviour: Every more or less animate body and a fortiori every gathering of bodies is consequently polyrhythmic, which is to say composed of diverse rhythms, with each part, each organ or function having its own in a perpetual interaction that constitutes a set [ensemble] or a whole [un tout]. This last word does not signify a closed totality, but on the contrary an open totality. Such sets are always in a ‘metastable’ equilibrium, which is to say always compromised and most often recovered, except of course in cases of serious disruption or catastrophe.

But even in cases of disruption and catastrophe, as in the COVID-19 crisis of 2020, new polyrhythmic patterns emerge. For example, as a personal anecdote: I spend the working day (9–5 pm – a self-imposed discipline that ironically replicates the classic work pattern, except that usually in the office I work a longer day from 7:45 am to 6:00 or 6:30 pm) at my computer, alternating between the longer rhythms of composing this book on the one hand and the shorter more staccato rhythms of answering emails and phone calls. Occasionally, to keep myself fit and stimulated, I get up from my desk and make a cup of coffee. Unusually, I take a lunch break. At the end of the day, I take a walk with my wife to get our ‘daily exercise’. I have a better work-life balance than when I was working in the office. More specifically, one could say that I have a better polyrhythmic balance, unskewed by the demands of the office workplace. I suspect that, if and when the virus subsides and ‘normal’ work and life patterns resume, workers will have learnt more about the efficiency of their own work patterns and even more will spend at least some of the week, if not all, in working from home.

3.3  Rhythm in Space and Time Space and time are not philosophical categories as such as in Hegel, but part of a conception of nature. These dimensions or perspectives determine the ways in which perception takes place. This position is different from that of Newton’s notion that space and time are objective entities and separate from the mind and from that of Kant for whom space and time are subjective types of intuition. If these two views form the polar opposites in terms of objectivity and subjectivity (the latter

3.3  Rhythm in Space and Time

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associated with transcendental idealism), Hegel takes a more qualified view based on a dialectical approach. Through the tension of these antinomies, a new conception can be formed. Similarly, if we take intuition not to be an a-rational impulse and insight, as in the generally adopted notion, but rather the product of high-speed rationality, then the domains of space and time can be seen differently. Such a view would enable us to move beyond antimonies of the objective and subjective into a new territory of perception that is grounded in and formed by experience in the real world yet at the same time is informed by an a priori ‘natural’ sense of space and time. First, let us establish that intuition is high-speed rationality. It is common to say that intuition is instinctive, sudden, illuminating: almost like an other-worldly, transcendental sense about the nature of some phenomenon or situation. For example, a potential partner might suddenly become no longer a possibility if intuition or ‘gut feeling’ dictates that he and/or she is no longer an appropriate choice. (Theoretically, for Hegel, intuition would be a sub-category of non-transcendental spirit – like Wordsworth’s ‘a sense of something far more deeply interfused’ in nature.) And yet that ‘intuitive’ sense is probably based on a number of small accretive perceptions that have been invisible or unacknowledged to date. Or take an example of a doctor or nurse faced with a critical decision at speed in an accident and emergency unit. Each of them might have an immediate and ‘intuitive’ sense of what is the best course of action to deal with the patient, but their intuition will have been informed by training, knowledge and experience. They are able to run through the scenarios that are possible at high speed, choosing the one course of action that is the most appropriate in that critical situation. It may seem an intuitive decision but is based on high-speed rationality. How do the notion of an objective/subjective nexus and high-speed rationality apply to the issue of space and time; and how, in turn, does such an approach help us to see how rhythm works in relation to conceptions of space and time? In terms of space, a conflation of the subjective and objective would dissolve the distinction between the body and the landscape/context within which it exists and moves. We exist as physical entities in the world. Those physical entities (our bodies) interact with each other and with the spaces we are afforded, whether those spaces are limited to a tight and local community or extend internationally and globally. In relation to the way we perceive and position ourselves to the built world, for example, we move in relation to streets, buildings and other aspects of the urban environment. At the other extreme, we have a different relationship to wilderness or vast open spaces, usually found in the natural world. We make choices, where possible, about how to move through these worlds. In terms of time, we constantly operate between the measured regularities of the digital clock on the one hand and felt or experienced time on the other, as discussed above in relation to ‘social time’. That each of these types of experience of time – objective and subjective – cannot be denied is true, but the actual day-to-day experience takes place in the dynamic tension between these two polar types. How then are space and time related to each other in the tempo-spatial or spatio-­ temporal nexus? In a key concept that underpins rhythmic relations, the nexus has

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as it centre the complete attention between a person and an object or idea in the moment. In such a moment there is no distinction between subject and object, and the interstices of space and time intersect absolutely. The act of such engagement is one of total absorption. Such moments are often labelled as creative and/or spiritual; there is an element of fusion taking place, and the normal metaphors that shape our notions of space (a journey) or time (e.g. clock time) are dissolved. However, in most operations in the world, such a high degree of attention is absent, and there is a disjunct or at least a different relationship between space and time. Space and time as abstractions become grounded in the particularities of spaces and times; both space and time become subject to measurement and to complex interrelations with polyrhythmicity. ‘Space’ and ‘time’ are therefore best seen as abstractions. They are dimensions of experience, realized, grounded and brought together (because they are seen as apart) in the actualities of spaces and times. As a sub-section of this nexus, rhythm operates in the seemingly complex field of felt abstraction. That is to say, complex time relations operate to move us – physically and emotionally – spurred by a perceived sense of the underlying patterns of experience. Mostly, rhythm works on the unconscious, because it does not manifest itself in the ostensible semantic content of words nor in the notes and harmonies of music. The aim of the present book is to attune the reader to the way in which these rhythms operate to shape and determine our responses. In terms of space again, rhythms work largely metaphorically. There is the sense of rhythmic movement in the design of a building and the way people move through it once it is complete. Landscape can also be felt rhythmically in terms of the relations between mountains, hills, sea, moorland, river systems, plains and deserts. The movement of the seasons impacts directly on landscape, and does the migration of birds and other wildlife, but the phenomenon of the seasons borders into time relations. From the perspective of time, rhythm is both metaphor and ground. Because sounds, music and words are all abstractions from actual experience to first- or second-order symbolic experience, the patterns that are made are used to interpret experience by shaping the sensibility. Rhythm is conceived in the present book as operating primarily on a horizontal axis in time, with harmonies, metaphors and other elements working vertically. Both ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ are themselves metaphorical abstractions, designed to help understand the way in which complex time relations operate in the arts and social sciences. But rhythms add a further dimension: although they are abstract attempts to measure complex time relations in one sense, they are also part of the fabric of lived experience operating at the interface of the objective and subjective, the material and immaterial, the felt and reasoned worlds.

3.4  Space and Time in Asian Cultures

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3.4  Space and Time in Asian Cultures It is one thing to explore philosophical notions of space and time in the European tradition, but Santos (2000) reminds us that the approach should be international rather than postcolonial. It is not so much that Hegelian notions are central to the argument of the present book, but that they provide one perspective on the implications of theories of space and time for studies on rhythmicity. It is also important not to homogenize Asian culture as having one theoretical or practical position, idealized in order to compare and contrast with the predominant Western theories. Santos (2000: 142) makes a general point with regard to space: In Asian theatre, the body can be considered as the central space by which an entire symbolic language is articulated. In the same token, such language contains its own vocabularies that can express not only multiple emotional and ideational nuances, but also the relationship of the body and spirit to both physical and metaphysical environments.

This perception chimes with the notion that there is more verticality (symbolization, metonymy) in Asian conceptions of space and therefore less rhythmic movement. This does not mean that there is no movement, but that movement is circumscribed and formalized in relation to its symbolic function. Santos gives the example of classical dances from Kerala, India, and of the simplicity of the stage sets in Peking Opera where the movements of the actors are the principal focus of attention. Similarly, in Japanese Noh theatre, the polyrhythmic formal movements of the actors and dialogue are intended to transport the audience to moments of satori or insight/enlightenment. Related to notions of stillness in spatial terms is the ubiquity of the single-tone drone in Asian music: a still point, suggesting eternity, which acts as the touchstone of compositions in Indian rāg or the relative hierarchical patterning of Javanese gamelan which suggests stillness. Like the ‘ground’ in European music, the single-­ tone drone provides the still point in relation to which rhythmic variation is referenced, though the ground moves in European music. From that reference point, Santos (2000: 137) lists the types of time that are as prevalent in Asian music as in European, including: concepts of unmeasured time, quantified time, linear and non-linear time, cyclic time, spatial and durational time […] reflected in the almost infinite variety of elements such as timbre, durations of sounds, rhythms, pulses, and concepts of organizational hierarchies and non-hierarchies.

Santos refers to Maceda’s (1986) study of Southeast Asian rhythm where a ‘repetitive constancy’ is identified ‘that practically negates a concept of time based on pulse divisions, phrases and periods’ (Santos 2000: 139). It is simplistic to assume that European music moves in a linear (causal logic, as in post hoc ergo propter hoc) fashion and that Asian music operates according to a non-linear aesthetic. There are counterexamples in the European tradition, like Stockhausen’s Stimmung which relies on rhythmic and tonal pulse for its fundamental structure, rather than on a beginning-middle-end narrative template. Perhaps the

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best way to describe the different emphases of European and Asian rhythms is to do so via the matrix expounded in Chap. 11: whereas European music tends to take a horizontal route through the matrix, at all times taking its bearing from vertical patterning, Asian music tends to concentrate on the pattern as a whole therefore seeming to emphasize the vertical more than the horizontal. Both cultures borrow from each, as evidenced above. Stock (2005) focuses on dance to explore the space-time relationship, as ‘dance consists of the body moving through time and space’ (2005: 2). In particular, it is the intervals and spaces between marked elements of physicality in space and time that are significant, just as the words in an actor’s delivery are significant in that they provide a scaffold via which the experience is communicated. This is also where rhythm operates: in the non-verbal, physical space between movements. This is partly what makes it so difficult to describe rhythm: it requires a language that is not language or a musical or dance vocabulary that is not music or dance. Such metaphysical considerations are particularly prevalent in Asian art forms because of the underlying spiritual dimension that is revealed by the articulation of the artwork. The special place of rhythm and polyrhythmicity in the study of the arts, humanities and social sciences is exactly this paradox of the physicality and non-physicality of rhythm. That exploration of the relationship between stillness and movement is captured well in Stock’s description (2005: 8) of the work of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre from Taiwan: Lin Hwai-Min (1999) [the choreographer] states that ‘we use meditation to centre the body and mind’, creating movements of ‘active meditation’. In preparing for this work he describes each choreographic session beginning with two hours of meditation followed by closed eyes tai chi movement into improvisation and finally the formation of movement sequences for the choreography.

Stock goes on to explore the fusion of time and space in Asian culture via the Japanese concept of ma: the ‘between’ spaces that exist at the interface of space and time and for which art forms of different kinds provide gateways to the state on being/not being. It is as if the marshalling of rhythms acts as a means to an end: articulations of the inexpressible, ultimately engineering release into states of relative enlightenment in moments of stillness. It is at this point, however, that we turn back from the metaphysical to the actual lineaments of rhythm and the interrelated levels of complex time relations in polyrhythmicity.

3.5  Prose Writing and Rhythmicity Giovanni Pontiero’s translation of José Saramago’s Objecto Quase as The Lives of Things (2012), although fictional, conveys a further dimension to the arrangement of time. Translation, as a phenomenon in which rhythms in one language are changed as they move into another language, is not the issue here (it has been prefigured in Chap. 2 and is discussed in Chap. 6). Rather, it is the prose style of the

3.5  Prose Writing and Rhythmicity

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writer, also apparent in some of the work of James Joyce, Gabriel García Márquez and others, that is the focus of attention. Saramago’s short story, ‘The Chair’, which appears in The Lives of Things, is an extraordinary account of the collapse of a chair, symbolizing the fragile and ultimately irredeemable collapse of dictatorship and indeed of the physical human body. It is the particular nature of the syntax that is significant in terms of polyrhythmicity. Here is an example: One could say that the chair about to topple is perfect. But times change, tastes and values change, what once seemed perfect is no longer judged to be so, for reasons beyond our control, yet which would not be reasons had times not changed. Or time. (2012: 2)

The story captures, over 25 or so pages, a teetering moment of collapse. In that moment, the past is invoked as well as the future (the imminent collapse). The effect is filmic and yet still. At the same time, the story is reflective, meditative: deeply physical (in that it describes the dry rot eating at the chair and causing the collapse) and metaphysical, through symbolism and allegory. In the three sentences quoted above, two start with a conjunction (‘but’, ‘or’) and, as such, are incomplete sentences from a strictly and formally grammatical perspective. They add to the impression that the story is a representation of ‘thinking aloud’. In other words, it does not follow the narrative convention of third-person narration of events. Neither does the middle sentence, which in formal grammatical terms is a run-on sentence or sentence consisting of comma splices. What we are experiencing, as readers, is a construction in additive rhythm, with contrapuntal effect and pauses (commas, full stops) that mark shorter and longer micro-silences between the words. This effect is accentuated further by the third sentence, ‘Or time’. This utterance (I consider it a sentence from a more freely grammatical perspective, like the first sentence of Bleak House, because it starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop) is not only about time; it also signifies that the temporal sequence of the sentences, highlighted by this succinct statement, is to be acknowledged itself. The expression therefore embodies the substance and the intended effect. One could say that the prose is poetic, but that would miss the point that this is polyrhythmic prose, like much of contemporary ‘poetry’. See also Chap. 6. The phenomenon of polyrhythmic prose is emphasized further by the sentence that follows the three above: How much time need not concern us, nor need we describe or simply specify the style of furniture which would identify the chair as being one of many, especially since as a chair it naturally belongs to a simple sub-group or collateral branch, altogether different in size and function, from these sturdy patriarchs, known as tables, sideboards, wardrobes, display-­ cabinets for silver and crockery, or beds from which it is obviously much more difficult, if not impossible, to fall, for it is while getting out of bed that one is in danger of breaking a leg or while getting into bed that one can slip on the mat, when in fact the breaking of a leg was not precisely caused by slipping on the mat. (2012: 2–3)

There are a number of points to make about the nature of polyrhythmic prose and the organization of narrative time in this sentence. First, and most obviously, a sentence of 125 words follows a sequence of sentences of 11, 33 and 2 words. There is no immediate balance of sentence length, no sense that the sentence is merely the

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vehicle for the content. Rather, there is additive rhythm of an extreme kind: the sequence 11, 33, 2, 125 has no mathematical significance. It cannot be quantified into a pattern. Second, within the 125-word sentence itself, there is periodic structure. One could break the sentence into a number of shorter sentences: How much time need not concern us, nor need we describe or simply specify the style of furniture which would identify the chair as being one of many. As a chair it naturally belongs to a simple sub-group or collateral branch. [As such it differs from] these sturdy patriarchs, known as tables, sideboards, wardrobes, display cabinets for silver and crockery, or beds. It is obviously much more difficult, if not impossible, to fall [from these]. It is while getting out of bed that one is in danger of breaking a leg or while getting into bed that one can slip. [However] the breaking of a leg was not precisely caused by slipping on the mat.

Such a re-setting might make the sense more accessible, at least immediately, and it also reveals the quasi-logical nature of the development of thought in the piece. However, it loses the additive rhythmic nature of the expression which we have seen above to be analogous to the development of the ideas. What joins these statements and propositions into a single sentence is a set of conjunctions, prepositions and relative clauses: ‘since’, ‘different from’, ‘from which’, ‘for’, ‘when in fact’. These have the effect of extending the rhythmic measure (the sentence) by breaking it up into a series of sub-measures via articulation (in the sense of joining rather than expressing). Thus articulation becomes a key feature in the composition of the sentences and in turn of the sentences and paragraphs within the work as a whole. They also have the effect of suspending closure. Indeed, the story as a whole closes with a seemingly diversionary and light (humorous, underpinning the story as a whole, despite its serious message) tactic: Let us go to the window. What do you think of this month of September? We have not had such weather in a long time.

Third, the prose style uses lists to build rhythmic momentum at a micro-level within the phrases or sub-measures: ‘tables, sideboards, wardrobes, display-­cabinets for silver and crockery, or beds’. While grammatically of one class – nouns – and at the same time ‘objects’, such a list punctuates the overall rhythm of the sentence and its sub-phrases and clauses with staccato insistence. Fourth, the four sentences taken from near the beginning of the short story establish, as in free verse, a pattern of rhythmic expectation. It is not unreasonable to say that because the story captures a teetering moment in time, we should see the various additive rhythmic variations as part of a polyrhythmic whole. Such an expectation is established in the first few sentences of the story:

3.6  Time Zones

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The chair started to fall, to come crashing down, to topple, but not, strictly speaking, to come to bits. Strictly speaking, to come to bits means bits fall off. Now no one speaks of the chair having bits, and if it had bits, such as arms on each side, then you would refer to the arms of the chair falling off rather than coming to bits. (2012: 1)

This rhythmic complexity is more than a matter of style, disconnected from the substance and intention of the piece. Rather, it is part of an integrated whole in which the rhythmic movement and pattern is part of the compositional and reading experience. One could almost (but not quite) say that it is the polyrhythmic arrangement of time relations that is the central feature of the story, with the abstract content of the words themselves being secondary to the overall effect. But one should not go that far: clearly, the rhythmic form and semantic ‘content’ are wedded. Another way to characterize the genre would be to say that these statements are variations on a theme.

3.6  Time Zones This chapter started with a consideration of a philosophical view of time. It ends in similar vein, but with a focus on a practical and worldwide issue: time zones and their relation to rhythmicity. Imagine a world without times zones. If it were the same time across the globe, the majority of countries would not align clock time with diurnal time. If, for example, Beijing were taken as the city where, on average, the length of the day across the year was matched to the 24 h clock (this is the case across China where there are no time zones), then countries west of Beijing would experience a disjunct between diurnal time and clock time. London, which is generally 7 h ‘behind’ Beijing with the present arrangement of time zones, would experience dawn at around lunchtime in summer and later in winter (I am putting aside minor hourly variations like British Summer Time and Greenwich Mean Time). New York, which is generally 12 or so hours behind Beijing, would have its day turned completely on its head. Night would become ‘day’ and day would become ‘night’. In practice, time zones allow a broadly reasonable alignment of clock time and diurnal time across the world. Given that diurnal time is significant in determining circadian rhythms, there are at least three rhythmic systems running through day-to-­ day worldwide experience: clock time (determined by time zones), diurnal time and circadian time. Even with asynchronous communication systems, the variation in experience – especially if we also factor in individual preferences in terms of the quality of attention – is a significant polyrhythmic issue in global interaction, manifesting itself in political decision-making, sports performance, economic relativity, synchronous online learning and individual and personal relations.

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References Lefebvre, H. (2004). Rhythmanalysis. London: Continuum. Lefebvre, H., & Régulier, C. (1985). Le projet rhythmanalytique. Communications, 41, 191–199. Lin, H.- M. (1999). Songs of the wanderers. [videorecording] an RM Associates/NPS-Television co-production. Taiwan: Public Television Service Foundation and Bayerischer Rundfunk and Schweizer Fernsehen-DRS.  Text by Guido Johannes Joerg, Chatsworth, CA: Image Entertainment. Maceda, J. (1986). A concept of time in the music of South-East Asia: A preliminary account. Ethnomusicology, 30(1), 11–53. Santos, R. P. (2000). A concept of time and space in Asian artistic expression. Accessed via: https:// publications.iai.spk-­berlin.de/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/Document_derivate_00000597/ BIA_156_135_146.pdf on 2 June 2000 Saramago, J. (2012). The lives of things (G. Pontiero, Trans.). London: Verso. Stock, C.  F. (2005). The interval between…The space between…: Concepts of time and space in Asian art and performance. In U.  Sarkar Munsi (Ed.), Time and space in Asian context: Contemporary dance in Asia (pp. 17–38). Kolkata: World Dance Alliance.

Chapter 4

Polyrhythmicity in Music

Abstract  This chapter will set the ground for a study of polyrhythmicity with analysis of examples of multiple rhythms in the music of the Asia-Pacific region, Africa (traditional and contemporary) and India, Latin American jazz/soul/rock and Western classical music. In particular, the emphasis on percussion will be explored. However, there is more to rhythm than percussion, which marks time relations within a limited and specific tonal range. Rhythm manifests itself also in variations on repetition, in melodic cadences and in large-scale rhythmic patterns within a work. Through an analysis of micro-, mezzo- and macro- levels at which rhythm operates, a picture of how polyrhythmicity works is drawn, with particular reference to fugue. The chapter also addresses forms of notation for rhythm beyond the conventional music notations. There is a focus on the multiple rhythms of African music, suggesting that rhythm is the principal driver in music composition, not only within Africa, but internationally. Keywords  Rhythm · Fugue · Cross-rhythms · Melody

4.1  Rhythm’s Role in Music While rhythm might be seen as a fundamental in music, or as the ‘origin’ of music, it operates across the whole range of the musical and compositional landscape. In other words, it is not merely located in the percussion section of an orchestra or in the ‘drums and bass’ of blues or jazz. Rhythm is pervasive when there are time relations at stake. To give an initial example, and building on those in Chap. 2, Marta Altesa’s bass guitar cover version of Jamiroquai’s ‘Time Won’t Wait’ (see youtube. com) has a regular and frequent continuo of drumming that is also reflected in the beat of her foot and that could be seen as nearest to repetitive metronomic time. The bass guitar itself plays a complex riff. There are three levels: above this, a ‘rhythm guitar’ provides a more regular marker of the pace and beat of the song. The strings provide a background against which the backing group comes in and punctuates the lyrics or joins the lead singer in a harmonic. The lead singer provides the top line © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Andrews, Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6_4

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cadence that runs along the top of the composition. At times the bass guitar takes the lead; at times it provides the ‘ground’; and it also contributes to the harmonic character of the piece. In another example, from Santana’s album ‘Caravanserai’, the opening track (‘Eternal Caravan of Reincarnation’) is non-rhythmic. A cicada-like repetitive sound is overlaid by a single saxophone. The impression is of stillness, timelessness (a depiction of a caravan crossing a desert). Repetition does not equate to rhythm. But then the bass guitar comes in with a syncopated riff; percussive bells; a range of offbeat rhythms are established; cymbals. A lead guitar and electric piano begin to provide melody. All establish a complex rhythmic movement (a movement from non-time into time) that leads straight into the next track, ‘Waves Within’: more complex percussive rhythms laying down a basis for the lead guitar to take a more prominent role. Again, the lead melodic line contributes to the polyrhythmic nature of the composition. At times the lead instrument coincides with the rhythmic patterning that is taking place; at other times it moves away. In perhaps the key track on the album, ‘Song of the Wind’, the composition begins with a timeless moment, then the lead guitar, then the percussive and bassline coming in, as it were, to underpin the lead melody. Here we have a more conventional case of a drums and bass continuo that provides the foundation for the lead guitar’s expansive journey. Throughout, the percussion section and the bass guitar, sometimes supported by organ, electric piano and rhythm guitar, establish complex polyrhythmic patterns. In Stravinsky’s second part of the opening of ‘Rite of Spring’ (Augurs of spring: danses des adolescents’), the strings initially provide the baseline rhythm: a repetitive, insistent pulse that seems metronomic but is segmented into sections that break up the regularity so that it does not settle into a pattern. As soon as the pattern is established, it is broken, disrupted. Add to this the layers of orchestration. After just over a minute, these reach a crescendo, and the rhythmic pulse is picked up by violins at a higher register; then, the oboe, flute and the whole orchestra reach another crescendo, and the movement is to freer rhythms. In the score, sometimes there is no time signature, just variation in tempi; at another point, there are six different time signatures within eight bars. Time and rhythm are driving the music rather than providing the foundation for it. The point to be drawn from these examples is that rhythm not only provides the continuo or foundation of a piece of music. It also pervades any composition in which there are time relations. The exceptions to this rule are few and far between in Western music. An example of such an exception is Stockhausen’s ‘Stimmung’ (1968), already mentioned in Chap. 2.

4.2  Arrhythmic Music ‘Stimmung’ was notable for its timelessness, its polyphonic array of voices. There is pulse, but a different kind of rhythm, because the sounds do not arrange themselves in relation to linear time. It may also be because there is a limited vertical

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range of sonic representation: there is harmony and disharmony without the horizontal drive or cadence. Instead, there is a suspension of time and a foregrounding of ‘phase shifting’, a more generalized and abstract structural patterning to the piece. Stockhausen writes: You will hear my work Stimmung, which is nothing for seventy-five minutes but one chord – with the partials of natural harmonics on a fundamental, the fundamental itself isn’t there, the second, third, fourth, fifth, seventh, and the ninth harmonics, and nothing but that. And then the timbral changes of these fundamentals […] You see, that’s a real composition with timbres where the timbres are rhythmetized the way we formally rhythmetize pitches. (Cott 1974: 38)

Although there is no direct quotation in Stimmung from Eastern sources, there are characteristics of Eastern music, in the use of mantras, of periodic transformations within an overall static framework and of a conception of time that is more circular than linear. Stockhausen himself claims ‘rhymetization of timbres’: tonal variation in the 51 sections of the piece. In one sense, there is rhythm in these variations, taking place over the duration of the performance in which the singers have a degree of freedom to work with a framework set by the composer. But the rhythmic possibilities are constrained by the framework and by their embodiment in timbre. The tension in the piece is that its theme is magical and/or spiritual transformation through repetition of resonant names. As rhythm is seen as fundamental and pervasive in Western music, there is no research on arhythms in music. Analogies with arrhythmia in medical science are loose (arrhythmia refers to a group of disorders where heartbeat rhythm is irregular, too slow or too fast). Different kinds of arhythm in music, however, are works in which minimalist (or sometimes operatic) repetition stands as a key element in a composition. Repetition is key in one sense, at a very general level. Different elements of a musical composition can be repeated, whether they are large-scale structures, melodic phrases, riffs, rhythmic patterns and/or motifs. The relationship between repetition and variation is a basic structural phenomenon, not only in music but also in social relations, schemata and literary composition. But repetition at the level of rhythmic patterning is a very basic kind of rhythmicity, much used in minimalist music or in-house, garage or disco music if there is a drum machine or synthesized bassline. Its relentlessness can be used for effect or as a counterpoint to more subtle variation in rhythm. Sometimes it is used deliberately to create a flat, soulless, mechanistic effect. Strictly speaking, exact repetition cannot exist, as the repeated work or sub-­ section of a work takes place in a different time and place. Having acknowledged that repetition has a context, and that the context is always changing, repetition can be seen as a way of managing the flux and imposing order upon seeming chaos. From the perspective of the present book, however, it is only the most fundamental of elements in rhythm which denote relative relations and movement in time within the work. Such banal conceptions of time relations are not the same as the absence of time, which is key to the definition and shape of rhythm. The absence and presence of time relations are explored in the work of Heidegger.

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4.3  Fugue Fugue was mentioned in the opening two chapters of the book as a key structural metaphor or technique for composition for exploring polyrhythmicity, not only in music but also in other art forms and in social relations. While fugue in its core sense refers to a polyphony of voices which interrelate contrapuntally to create a musical argument, usually in three sections (exposition, development, recapitulation or conclusion, possibly punctuated by episodes and completed with a coda), it provides a framework for improvisation rather than a formal straitjacket. Tangian (2008) defines a rhythmic fugue as ‘one whose tone onsets result in a regular pulse train with no simultaneous onsets at a time’, suggesting that such a fugue ‘tiles the time, providing a covering of a regular pulse train by a few disjoint rhythmic patterns’. The geometric tiling metaphor aligns this particular view of rhythmic fugal patterning with minimalist works set within a framework ‘with no beat overlaps’, i.e. with an emphasis on repetition and transformation from tile to tile, but no overall rhythmic direction or horizontal movement. Part of the problem with this conception of fugal rhythm is its dependence on computational/digital principles of 0 or 1 values, even though the aim of the paper is to create a computational method for tiling musical works. The problem, as far as the development of theory of polyrhythmicity goes, lies in binary codes, which allow minimal variation; it is as if, for rhythmic purposes, one only had a stick and a drum, with no tonal variation and a limited repertoire of time relations. So the notion of a ‘pulse train’ – a sequence of 0 and 1 values, for example, 1011101 – is limited. Tangian, however, suggests that introducing fugal multi-level patterning can produce more variation and depth in rhythmic notation, if, for example, the above sequence is overlaid with 0010100, thus making the overall effect and addition of the two voices or patterns 1021201. Nowell-Smith (2012) examines Heidegger’s resistance to literary notions of prosody and rhythmicity to musical conceptions of fugue. Behind this position is the assumption that poetry and other forms of literature present themselves first as a rhythmic or at least sonic phrase or structure which is then embodied in words. Heidegger sees rhythm not so much as flow, as more concerned with articulating, impressing and forming. That is to say rhythm gives form to time relations rather than being associated with a Heraclitan formlessness; it is closely allied to the human experience of being in the world. Articulation is a key characteristic here, not so much in the sense of expressiveness, but perhaps primarily in the sense of being able to make junctions between phenomena: to join them together. To put it differently, ‘Rhuthmos is not flux, instability, but rather that which structures a being’s appearance within time, that which allows it to enter into presence as an intelligible “such-and-such” that we can encounter in an “open” region’ (Nowell-Smith 2012: 44). Perhaps the clearest account of the nature of fugue is given by Nowell-Smith as his argument develops (2012: 45–6):

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In a fugue, one motif (the subject) is developed polyphonically, undergoing a series of inversions and modulations, changes of register and timbre, but always guided and bounded by a strict forward motion. Each time the subject returns in a new melodic strand (a voice), undergoing inversions and modulations, it is at once linked to and differentiated from every other voice within the polyphony; moreover, each voice, as it enters into the fugue’s polyphonic fabric, advertises its own entry into audibility and at the same time advertises it as an entry out of absence. It is notable in this regard that the subjects of most of Bach’s fugues took extended upbeats as their starting point, as though to perform its movement from silence towards the cadence would signal its ‘arrival’. And, within the fugue’s broader structure, the subject’s movement from absence into presence, and its recurrence in differing forms, cuts against [i.e. counterpoints] the forward propulsion of the fugue as a whole, so as to create a highly wrought temporal frame.

More broadly, in a study on nineteenth-century keyboard music, Chapin (2010) characterizes fugue as not only a technical application of the manipulation of ‘harmony, melody, rhythm, themes…’ (2010: 187) but also a manifestation of individualistic, Romantic mood. Chapin sees Schumann as questioning ‘how the fugue articulates time and how time works in the interpretive process’ (ibid.). This is particularly interesting in that fugue, as a form, was thought to transcend time and to suggest universality and the eternal. What we see in the move to linear time in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is a move away from cyclical time: a move towards narrative and thus to a different logic, a different understanding of causality, and away from a dependence on rationality, order and argument. The difference between the role of rhythm in baroque fugue and Romantic fugue is best captured in Dalhaus (1962: 500): in Bach, ‘individual musical Gestalten do not present themselves with their own individual rhythmic impulse, as in the works of Haydn or Mozart, but rather meld unnoticeably into a rhythm established firmly in the first measure and never brought out of balance by anything that subsequently occurs’. In Chapin’s gloss, ‘harmonic and metric foundations of the fugue support each other’ (2010: 193): …the fugue is perhaps unique in the degree to which the ideal of harmony informs the thematic material and the principles by which that thematic material is deployed. Harmony receives programmatic and demonstrative treatment in the fugue itself, in its characteristic mode of presentation, and in its various recombinations with itself.

Fugue in words is conceived of as ‘less a structure of repeated and overlapping ideas than a means by which the disjunction between the world and our view of it can be articulated by a fictitious [sic] writer’ (Pollard 2018: 624). This insight (‘fictitious’ must have been intended to be ‘fiction’) has as a key term ‘disjunction’. It is as if fugue provides the structure via which a disjunctive consciousness and sensibility can be expressed in art: a degree of order, providing a framework for the articulation of chaos. Such disjunction is developed further in Greenberg (2018), who suggests that whereas fugue had been associated conventionally with cosmic and social order in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, it ‘came to represent chaos rather than order, maintaining both cosmic and social interpretations […and serving] as a metaphor for chaos as a redemptive or generating force’ (2018: 74). For the purposes of the argument in the present book, the etymological origin of ‘fugue’ best fits with

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the Middle High German vuoge meaning ‘joint’, rather than with ‘flight’ from the Latin fuga, not least because of the articulating powers of fugue. Greenberg’s argument is interesting, citing Chapin’s (2014) notion that fugue intertwines themes that ‘point toward the fundamental cultural value of counterpoint, as a sign of order and tradition’ (2014: 323). Fugue thus expresses values of order, design, mathematical rigour, preplanning and ‘universality’ along with a sense of tradition. That these values and the tradition were ‘broken’ in the early twentieth century, not only in music but also in visual art, poetry and fiction are perhaps not so much a reaction to fugue as the adaptation of fugal structures to capture rhythmic complexity, disjuncture and fragmentation. Rather than characterize fugue-as-­chaos, it might be more productive to see fugue as a framework for the expression of disjuncture and fragmentation, driven by a principle of counterpoint but reaching a new equilibrium and balance via artistic perception of deeper unifying structures. The latter view is in accord with Greenberg’s review of ‘chaos’ in the eighteenth-­century fugue, which he characterizes more accurately as ‘unity in diversity: the capacious generosity of fugue to accommodate a diverse range of sounds and emotions’. Interestingly, he cites a 13 May 1787 entry in Goethe’s diary that recounts a multilingual encounter between a group of Germans and a group of Italians, resulting in a ‘strange…ItalianGerman fugue’ in which ‘the chaplain and verger [were] psalmodizing in the first tongue, Kniep and the consul in the second [with] each party engrossed in its subject and ignoring its rival’ (2018: 79) in a verbal fugue within a social context. In summary, the view of the present book is to see ‘chaos’ as a contrapuntal force in art, music and literature in the early twentieth century (from the perspective of the early twenty-first century), working within the framework of fugue to establish a new order, a new aesthetic. However fragmentary a work of art purports to be, the very nature of art, by framing the chaos within structural principles, argues against the notion of ‘fugue-as-chaos’. Greenberg invokes Huxley, Kandinsky, Milhaud and Schoenberg in support of his argument for fugue-as-chaos, seeing their work as an expression of the force of chaos manifesting itself at a time of revolution and challenging of the old orders; but the emphasis is on chaos as a redemptive force, and ‘fugue’ is used metaphorically. A key dimension of the argument about the nature and application of fugue is the role played by harmony. Greenberg notes: Whereas traditional harmony had hitherto been the ‘ordering’ feature of fugue, that is, the unifying element that justified the diversity of independent voices, the rejection of traditional tonality in new music rendered fugal writing suitable to assume meanings in accordance with new, chaotic, conceptions of human society and modern scientific ideas. (2018: 97)

The question arises: if harmony no longer provides the unifying ‘ordering’ feature, what does? The answer lies in multi-levelled rhythmic shaping, or relative time relations on a horizontal axis, rather than in the ‘vertical’, hierarchical and harmonic structures. In the history of the arts, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries might in due course be seen as moving towards the levelling of the harmonic principle and a concomitant exploration of relative time relations.

4.4  African Polyrhythmicity

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4.4  African Polyrhythmicity Aduonum (1990: 1) notes that it is song text that ‘gives rise to the various forms of rhythms such as syncopations, accented and unaccented rhythms, cross rhythms, free rhythms and rhythmic polyphony’ in African music. Rhythmic polyphony is interesting in that it manifests itself in ‘texts used in dramatic scenes or when they emerge from heated arguments between two people or groups of people from the same community’ (ibid.). The tonal dimension of rhythm is rarely considered, but the tonal variation in drums, for example, is a dimension that must be taken into account in rhythm studies and particularly in fugal, polyrhythmic compositions where rhythms play a part in an overall social exchange. So too the syllabic nature of a rhythmic song system that is based on words. As Aduonum further notes (1990:2), ‘African rhythms are not mere abstract rhythms which are written down before the text is added; rather, the text and its implied rhythm are composed as one entity’. If, as has been suggested and expressed by Aduonum (1990:3), ‘rhythm is to African cultures, what harmony is to Western cultures’, it is worth exploring what that generalization means. Both cultures use time relations (rhythmic relations) and tonal and melodic relations (harmonic relations) as a framework upon which musical compositions place themselves. These two approaches can be characterized as being on ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ axes respectively. It is rare that music is either purely rhythmic or purely harmonic: a purely percussive piece is rarely atonal; similarly, a harmonic ‘tone poem’ or symphonic poem (e.g. Sibelius’ ‘Finlandia’ or Debussy’s ‘Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune’) is not without temporal relations – inevitably, as the compositions are time-based. The combination of melody and rhythm is often seen in ostinato patterns of recurring melodic/rhythmic phrases, or traces of melody are heard in pitch variations that mark more clearly the rhythmic patterning that is intended. In an African drumming ensemble ‘the drums are assigned specific texts which correspond to the rhythm which each drummer plays. Each drummer plays the rhythm of his [sic] text over and over again resulting in an ostinato pattern’ (1990: 3). Because the drum expresses the text, and because the text carries semantic meaning and is central to the response of the audience, the drum speaks, as in the following example (ibid.): Kurotwiamansa firi kwan nyken si kra Ne nyonko ne whan? Onni onyonko ka osonson ho Agofo mma mo nkeka moho

When the leopard emerges to attack Who is his friend? He does not have any friend except the earth worm. Performers, get going.

When there is a combination of duple and triple rhythms, the characteristic complexity of African rhythmic compositions becomes clear and is described as pulse structures of ‘two against three’ (so-called hemiola in linear structures), i.e. two

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beats on one drum are mirrored by three beats on another (or one beat against two, three against four and so on) in the same time span. Aduonum quotes Jones (1961: 26–7) who suggests: In African music there is practically always a clash of rhythms: this is a cardinal principle. Even a song which appears to be monorhythmic will on investigation turn out to be constructed of two independent but strictly related rhythmic patterns, one inherent in the melody and one belonging to the accompaniment.

Such a ‘clash’ is particularly evident if the tension is in the rhythmic dimension. If, as in much Western (including popular) music, drums and bass provide the rhythmic drive while voice and/or other instruments provide the melodic patterning, the divide between rhythm and melody is clearer, and the rhythmic ground of the composition seems less varied, less subtle, less sophisticated than in African polyrhythmic compositions, in which offbeat phrasing (i.e. a high degree of syncopation) as well as on-beat phrasing is common. The ‘independent melodic life’ (Peters 1975: 112–3) of African rhythm is characterized by complicated cross-rhythms ‘and dynamic shades produced by using the fingers in alternation with the palm’ (ibid.). Such polyphony has given rise to the term ‘polyrhythmicity’ in the present book to describe and account for the multi-levelled relations between different rhythms and types of rhythm. Because African rhythms derive from conversation and speech, the dialogic nature both reflects and informs social relations. We can see directly the relation between text and rhythm in song as indicated at the beginning of this section but can also see non-verbal percussive rhythmic variation as a version of complex conversational ritual and daily life. There is another analogy with Western poetry that can be useful in understanding polyrhythmic patterns in music. The difference between regular metrical divisive rhythm on the one hand and additive rhythms on the other, as reflected in the distinction between metrical verse and free verse, is also prevalent in African musical rhythms, so the ‘two against three’ principle outlined above can be applied in either of the rhythmic structures. Additive rhythms are characteristic of African percussive compositions, sometimes in combination with regular, divisive rhythms. Thus a complex polyrhythmicity obtains. Such polyrhythmicity or multi-levelled, multi-­linear structures operate via a principle of grading. As Nketia (1975: 133) points out: The rhythms to be combined in this manner must be graded in density or complexity in relation to the role of each part as accompanying, response or lead instrument.

Such grading, combined with spacing in which rhythmic phrasing interlocks ‘so that they start at different but specified points in time’ (1975: 134), contributes to the density of the rhythmic whole. Nketia summarizes the position thus (1975: 136): The crucial point in polyrhythmic procedures […] is the spacing or placement of rhythmic patterns that are related to one another at different points in time so as to produce the anticipated integrated rhythmic structure. In this connection, […] offbeat phrasing will be seen as the favorite procedure in polyrhythmic organization.

4.5  More on the Poetics of African Rhythm

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4.5  More on the Poetics of African Rhythm African rhythms are embedded into social structures and practices; they do not sit in abstract relation to these practices. A catalogue of instruments (Museo Luigi Pigorini 1980: 21) suggested that: La ritmica-metrica Africana è un contrasegno squisitamente africano per questo coacervo di ritmo, metro e accentuazione, entro cui so svolgono tutte le possibili combinazioni: eterofonia ed unison; accompagnamento, poliritmia, contrappunto; metri semplici, complessi, irregolari, regolari, simmetrici, asimettrici

The relationship between musical rhythm, beat and speaking is managed by timbre, duration, intensity and complementarity. What the ethnography of African music can tell us about polyrhythmicity is that any of the instruments listed in this catalogue – and the human speaking or singing voice too – can contribute to the overall rhythmic texture of the composition and performance. Indeed, the music is socially grounded and also rhythmic in its very nature. What we see and hear as melody in European music is integrated into a rhythmic nexus in African music, so that both the horizontal/temporal drive of the music is the determinant of the vertical, tonal, harmonic dimension. This is not ‘primitive’ music because of its context or its horizontality. As suggested above, African music is close to speech: it therefore has the characteristic of direct communication (see also Bebey 1975). It thus binds further the connection between personal expression on the one hand and social engagement, ritual and spirituality on the other. Nor is the rhythmic nature of African music without tonality. Polyphony is important, as is dialogue. Arom (1993: 56) provides a detailed account of polyrhythmic complexity: Periods – or macroperiods – provide the metrical underlying framework on which rhythmic events occur; as far as periods are concerned we are always dealing with whole numbers, often even ones, as periods are often divisible into two halves. Periods may be transformed by devices such as chaining, amplification and superposition, while a constant pulse – most often inaudible – provides the basic unit of time…

Metricality provides only the framework within which the rhythms are established and develop. These are distributed relatively, in additive as opposed to metrical patterning, and appear to be driven by aesthetic principles such as: Contrametricality (produced by off-beat stressed rhythmic events), rhythmic oddity (resulting from uneven distribution of a period…), polyrhythm (induced by the superposition of two or more conflicting rhythmic figures), asymmetrical expansion (corresponding to the insertion of binary quantities in configurations bounded by tertiary ones, or the opposite). (ibid.)

A fuller discussion of the potential of Arom’s model as a basis for the description and analysis of polyrhythmicity beyond the African tradition is explored in Chap. 11. Finally, the dialogic principle is evident in a number of aspects of rhythmic expression: first, as already noted, between speech and music; second, between the rhythms of music and dance; third, in the dialogue and relationship between performers and audience; fourth, in the relationship between the rhythmic arts and

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everyday life. Specifically, the African dialogic tradition manifests itself in Brazilian traditional and popular music, particularly in challenge singing, where two voices vie with each other or respond to each other. The influences are a combination of African, Arab and Portuguese musical traditions. See Fryer (2000) for a detailed exposition of the connection.

4.6  R  hythm as the Spaces Between Words and Between Sounds Wiskus (2013: 9) suggests that: rhythm consists precisely in what is not heard. Despite our common notion of rhythm as a series of definite, articulated sounds, the musician knows rhythm in quite a different way: as the interval between articulated sounds. It is the relationship of the second articulation to the first that creates a rhythm […] Rhythm can be instituted only retroactively; it turns back from the second note to the first in order to recover the interval of silence between the two, even as it then lays forth a new structure that would support the articulation of an unfurling melody. Rhythm promises an ongoing, dynamic process that works by looking both forward and retrospectively.

The idea is that such a conception of rhythm applies to spoken language, to written language (especially in poetry where rhythm is a distinctive feature of the genre), to song (the relationship between words and music) and to music more generally. The present book questions whether rhythm is being used as an actual descriptor of time relations or as a metaphorical placeholder for what is happening within speech, writing, song, poetry and music at a more generalized level. For example, a poet will pause momentarily in a reading of one of his or her poems in order to mark off the space of the poem from that of everyday discourse. To some extent, Wiskus’ argument holds in that the momentary silence acts as a tuning fork, a space which says ‘now we are entering a different frame where language [or musical composition] will be foregrounded and where your deeper attention is invited’. Whether it can continue to hold in the detailed composition or reception of language/music – in the actual temporal relations within the work – is less evident, and so leads the present book to conclude that rhythm is seen by Wiskus and Merleau-Ponty as a metaphor for generalized time relations.

4.7  Rhythm as a Principal Driver in Music If, as suggested at the start of this chapter, rhythm is located not only in the basslines of a composition, but pervades the whole composition, how is that pervasiveness manifested? Wiskus (2013) develops her argument – that it is the spaces between sounds that mark the rhythmic shape and identity of a composition – in an analysis of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’une faune:

4.7  Rhythm as a Principal Driver in Music

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…what is operative is Debussy’s expressive use of silence. The silence that precedes the piece becomes a part of the piece – it, and not the sound of the flute, serves as the first event in the initiation of the rhythm. (2013: 40)

Wiskus (2013: 52) also argues that the silence at the end of a piece takes us back to the silence at the beginning, thus establishing a looped or circular rhythm that enfolds the composition and thus the listener/audience. From a less transcendent point of view, we could say that the silence that precedes the first note is there in any musical composition or indeed in any novel or poem and that, via the act of framing in separating the work from the everyday discourse, the silence acts as a ‘beat’ that starts the work off in a syncopated fashion. If the first word or first note of a composition is syncopated, the whole work develops in order to resolve that offbeat. It could be said, too, that at the end of a work – in the moment before the applause in a live performance or in the moment of reflection at the end of a novel or poem – the silence resonates. From the point of view of the present book, such silences are only part of the rhythm by implication. What is more pertinent to the present argument is that a musical score exhibits, by its very layout on the page, multi-levelled rhythmic relations. In conventional scores, the metrical ground of the composition is laid out in the time signatures. In a polyrhythmic sense, all the parts are coincident, and all, through the tonal and melodic shape on the phrases, work together to create the overall polyrhythmic nature of the piece. From consideration of Wiskus’ thesis and by further analysis of the work above, at least four types of rhythm can be identified. First, in the macro-rhythms of the piece in relation to the silences at either end (which may also manifest themselves during the piece). This is the level at which the past and present fuse into a multi-levelled ‘take’ on experience. Second, via the conventional lower tonal resonances of instruments that provide the ‘ground’ upon which the melody sits. In jazz or rock or blues, in Latin American jazz fusion or similar modes, percussion and bass guitars or double bass plays a key role in providing such ‘ground’. In the baroque period, the continuo was provided by a harpsichord or other (sets of) instruments. Third, in large-scale structural moves within the composition as a whole, for example, in the movements in a symphony. Fourth, at a more detailed level, in the phrasing of each of the instruments that, because of its placing in time, has relative relations to other phrases by the same instrument as well as to the other instruments in the ensemble. All these levels could be seen under the canopy of ‘rhythmicized time’ (Wiskus 2013: 102) which is proposed as the essence of musical form. And yet rhythmicized time does not quite capture the focus of the present book in the shaping of felt and actual physical experience into musical, poetic, narrative and/or social time.

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References Aduonum, K. (1990, November 1–4). Text and rhythm in African music. Paper presented at 33rd annual meeting of the African Studies Association, Baltimore MD. Arom, S. (1993). Everything is measured but nobody counts: Musical time organization in Central Africa. In E. A. Dagan (Ed.), Drums: the heartbeat of Africa (pp. 56–57). Montreal: Galerie Amrad African Art Publications. Bebey, F. (1975). African music: A people’s art. London: Harrap. Chapin, K. (2010). Time and the keyboard fugue. In 19th century music, 34:2, 186–207. Chapin, K. (2014). The learned style. In D.  Mirka (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of topic theory (pp. 301–329). New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cott, J. (1974). Stockhausen: Conversations with the composer. London: Robson. Dalhaus, C. (1962). Innere dynamik in Bachs fugen. In Neue zeitschrift für musik (p. 123). Mainz: B. Schott’s Söhne. Fryer, P. (2000). Rhythms of resistance: African musical heritage in Brazil. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, published by the University Press of New England. Greenberg, Y. (2018, February). ‘Ordo ab chao’: The fugue as chaos in the early twentieth century. In Music & letters, 99:1, 74–103. Jones, A. M. (1961). African rhythm. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible (A. Lingis, Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. (Originally published as Le visible et l’invisible, ed. Claude Lefort. Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1964). Merleau-Ponty, M. (2002). Husserl at the limits of phenomenology (L. Lawlor, Trans.). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Museo Luigi Pigorini. (1980). Oggetti e ritmi: strumenti musicali dell’Africa. Roma: De Luca Editore. Nketia, J. H. K. (1975). The music of Africa. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd.. Nowell-Smith, D. (2012). The art of fugue: Heidegger on rhythm. Gatherings: the Heidegger Circle Annual, 2, 41–64. Peters, G. B. (1975). The drummer man. Wilmette: Kemper-Peters Publications. Pollard, P. (2018, October). Review of André Gide, ou l’art de la fugue: musique et littérature. Sous la direction de Greta Komur-Thilloy et Pierre Thilloy. Paris: Classiques Garnier (2017). In: French studies, 72:4, 622-623. Tangian, A. (2008). Constructing rhythmic fugues. Düsseldorf: Hans-Böckler Stiftung. Wiskus, J. (2013). The rhythm of thought: Art, literature and music after Merleau-Ponty. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 5

Polyrhythmicity in Conversation and Speech Prosodies

Abstract  There is a considerable body of work on speech prosody. This chapter reviews that research and also addresses the more dialogic nature of conversational speech rhythms and turn-taking. Rhythms in speech, poetry and vocal music are examined, with reference (as in Chap. 4) to African speech, music and dance performance. Examples are used to demonstrate how speech becomes poetry and how both are underpinned by rhythmic patterning. Furthermore, there is discussion of the relationship of polyphony and polyrhythm. A comparison between speech and music is made; but the chapter also presages the following chapters on polyrhythmicity in poetry and the novel. Keywords  Conversation · Speech prosody · Rhythm · Dance · Performance · Poetry

5.1  African Speech and Music In the previous chapter it was noted that spoken or written text was significant in shaping rhythmic structures in African music: ‘African traditions deliberately treat songs as though they were speech utterances’ (Nketia 1975: 177). The combination of speech and song in the same composition brings into play the prosodic feature of everyday speech, or recitative, with the formal structures of divisively regular song patterns. Repetition or repetition of syntactic/musical phrases in ostinato style is common. What ‘appears in songs as additive rhythm may in fact be a speech phenomenon’ (1975: 182).

5.2  Rhythms in Speech, Poetry and Vocal Music Rodríguez-Vázquez (2010) posits a close association – even a layered correlation – between rhythms in speech, poetry and music, with each informing the other. She quotes Couper-Kuhlen (1993) early on in order to establish the analogies: © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Andrews, Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6_5

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5  Polyrhythmicity in Conversation and Speech Prosodies The fact that speech, verse, and music all have hierarchically organised metrical structure implies […] a common cognitive origin. Not only are the principles of organisation surprisingly similar for all three faculties, but they also allow for the same play-off between abstract construct or underlying structure and actual realisation. (1993: 112, quoted in Rodríguez-Vázquez (2010: 16))

There are two caveats to be made before a further discussion of speech prosodies alongside those of poetry and music. The first is that the over-dependence on ‘metrical structure’ in Couper-Kuhlen’s claim conflates rhythm with metre. As explored in Andrews (2017) and elsewhere, metre is a sub-section of rhythm studies in poetry and signifies regularity, with variations on that regular syllabic or ictus-based metre being as notable as the metres themselves. Nor should we assume that all rhythms in poetry have the ‘ghost of metre’ behind them. Free verse (vers libre) as opposed to liberated verse (vers libéré) is based on additive rhythms that have no metrical reference. Therefore, it is sensible to maintain the semantic distinction between rhythm and metre. That distinction is lost in a conception like metrical phonology if it takes it as given that, to adapt from Rodríguez-Vázquez (2010: 29), the notion that the distribution of stress in the words and phrases of speech is ‘metrically conditioned’. If a general theory of speech prosody founds itself on those grounds, it will not account for nor provide a suitable framework for the analysis of the range of rhythms in everyday speech. The second is that the current project on polyrhythmicity is not one that is based on ‘a common cognitive origin’. The current book assumes that the perception of rhythm is a negotiation between the composer (in speech, verse or music) and the audience (whether that is a single person or an audience to a speech, in a poetry reading or in a concert hall). Thus the notion that rhythms are only as perceived by the listener (a notion that leads to reader response theory, cognition and studies of feeling) is not one that is subscribed to in the present work. Nevertheless, Couper-Kuhlen’s formulation provides a foundation for Rodríguez-­ Vázquez’s thesis and is worth exploring further. Rodríguez-Vázquez analyses speech and poetry in both English and Spanish, distinguishing between the largely stress-­ based nature of rhythms in English and the syllable-based rhythms of Spanish. Early on, she points out helpfully that the difference between the two is not that of a simple binary opposition; rather, English and Spanish stand on a spectrum of possibilities which includes Japanese and French at the syllabic end of the spectrum, Spanish in the middle with Greek, and Portuguese towards the stress-based end of the spectrum. English is distinctly at the stress-based end. Across the length of the spectrum, syllable-based prosodic rhythms are informed (secondarily, in different degrees) by stresses; and conversely, stress-based prosodies are syllabically informed. Her analysis of the types of languages sheds light on the difference between stress-based languages and those languages ‘which use pitch [or tone] movements in order to signal prominence’ (2010): 31). To paraphrase, stress-based languages use emphasis ‘to mark syllable prominence and, in some cases, highlight boundaries between words’ (ibid.). As well as stresses that mark a particular syllable in a word, there are secondary stresses (and further degrees of stress), particularly in

5.3  Some Examples

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English (a highly stress-based language at one end of the spectrum outlined above), but these do not affect the general principle of one stress per word. Differently, tone-­ based languages such as Cantonese and Mandarin, ‘show a wider range of patterns for di-syllabic words, from high-high, high-low, to low-high, low-low’ (ibid.) and more subtle variations than those four moves. These can operate at word level and syllable level. Japanese, mentioned above on the stress-syllable spectrum, is characterized also by its use of tonal variation. It has to be acknowledged that there is more than one feature of language that determines its place on a spectrum such as that described above. These include ‘vowel quality, consonant quality and quantity, syllable duration, compensatory shortening, syllable structure, relationship between syllable structure and stress, nature of stress, position of stress, intonation and tone’ (2010: 110). To these we can add: degrees of stress, variation in tones and indeed, as Paterson (2018) suggests and is discussed in Chap. 6, what we might call semantic stress. Intonation is also mentioned as a suprasegmental phonological feature that tends to be used to shape a whole utterance. It is as if intonation were the overriding driver of whole utterances, in turn informing the placement of stresses within words. In terms of the current focus on polyrhythmicity: Suprasegmental phonology analyses the phonological features that occur within a time span greater than that of a single significant sound or phoneme. The suprasegmental or prosodic features by means of which stress is manifested – loudness, duration and pitch – may indeed occur at the level of the syllable, the word, the phrase or even the complete sentence, and may thus discriminate between different meanings for the same stretch of speech. (2010: 43)

This perception has implications for the exploration of the degrees of coincidence between speech, poetry and music where the focus is not so much on syllables and words, but on larger structures of language such as phrases, sentences, lines of poetry and cadences. Rodríguez-Vázquez suggests that the relationship between speech prosody, verse and music is different for a syllable-based language than for a principally stress-based language: While in the first type of languages we will observe a natural counterpoint or dialogue between speech prosody and musical rhythm, in the second type this counterpoint will tend to be considered arhythmic. In other words, the present work establishes a difference in kind in relation to the dialogue between prosody and music for each of the two types of languages. (2010: 19)

5.3  Some Examples To take some examples of the coincidence of speech and poetic rhythms, consider this range: from the recitation of stations at a major railway station in Scotland to a poetic rendering of those names and from dialogic speech to the poeticization of such speech. The aim is to gauge the degree of rhythmic coincidence and how different genres, partly through their intonation and function, create different dynamics in rhythm.

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I often pass through Waverley Station. The announcer of the departures has what seems to me as an Englishman a ‘pure’ Edinburgh accent. It is clearly articulated, so the stresses are readily identifiable. They are read/recited, rather than being ‘natural’ speech (and note: they are not on the same rail line. I have included a selection in no particular order): Háymarket, Linlíthgow, Glásgow Quéen Stréet, Milngárvie,1 Kirkcáldy, Markínch, Cúpar, Léuchars, Drem, Dunbár, Shotts

These could be rendered into poetic form in a number of ways. First, via stations that are on the same track: Háymarket, Linlíthgow, Glásgow Quéen Stréet, Milngárvie Kirkcáldy, Markínch, Cúpar, Léuchars Drem, Dunbár Shotts

Second, in relation to where the stress falls in the names: Linlíthgow, Milngárvie, Kirkcáldy [penultimate syllable] Háymarket, Glásgow, Cúpar, Léuchars [first syllable] Drem, Shotts [only syllable] Dunbár, Markínch [final syllable]

Third, in one variation of metrical patterning: Linlíthgow, Milngárvie, Kirkcáldy and Shotts Háymarket, Glásgow, Cúpar and Drem

and so on, with increasing emphasis on rhyme to accentuate the regular rhythm (metre). As the metrical framework imposes itself, the stress in each of the names is emphasized yet further. This transformation aligns with the notion that poetic expression highlights features of the language, bringing some of them into sharper focus. Such transformation is typical of the movement from speech to poetry. The framing of poetic utterance makes us look at and listen to the words in a different way to everyday speech, which is largely transactional and functional. Here is an extract from Bertolt Brecht’s poem, ‘A Worker’s Speech to a Doctor’: We know what makes us ill When we’re ill word says You’re the one to make us well For ten years, so we hear You learned how to heal in elegant schools Built at the people’s expense And to get your knowledge Dispensed a fortune That means you can make us well. Can you make us well?

Imagine this as a transcript of speech. It’s unpunctuated (one convention of poetic writing). But it falls into paragraphs, each of which is made up of one or two sentences (in speech they are more like utterances, not always taking the form of  Milngarvie is pronounced ‘Mulgai’ so in speech would take a different stress pattern.

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grammatically ‘correct’ sentence structure). Poetically, Brecht divides the statements into sections or strophes of different lengths. These accentuate the pauses between the strophes so that we become more aware of the structure and rhythm of the speech. While Brecht uses no rhyme to accentuate the rhythms of the lines, he does repeat ‘us well’ at the end of each strophe, so that we can sense that the structure and patterning of the poem are strophic rather than sentential. Clearly, Brecht, as in many of his poems, is using the directness and colloquial nature of speech to convert it into poetry that is equally direct and untrammelled by metaphor, implication or circumlocution. Thus we can say that there is a suprasegmentality to poetry. There are larger structures at play than the utterance or sentence. The framing that poetry brings to speech works with the raw material of speech. It selects from it, condenses and at the same time it preserves the rhythms of speech. Drawing on that energy, it highlights the characteristics of those rhythms that we might not ordinarily notice and which nevertheless shape and direct our responses. The suprasegmental and rhythmic elements of poetry are line endings; stanzas, strophes and sections; assonance and alliteration; rhyming, to accentuate rhythms; metre, variations on metres and additive rhythms (as in free verse); ‘vertical’ features like metaphor and metonymy that build a more chord-like, harmonic tonality to the work; a sharper sense of space (white space around the poem, adding to its framing); and time (time-limited compositions that also inhere in the present and therefore suspend time). And yet all the time, the closer poetry links to the vocabulary and rhythms of everyday speech, the more vital it stays, especially if it highlights that vitality and colloquial nature with words that sharpen our awareness of the nature of that language. To say that poetry is a highly framed natural language is to reinforce the connection between the two genres. The emphasis throughout is on the framing, which is both an act of composition by the author and also a signal to the reader or audience that they are to attend to the words more closely than usual. The importance of framing in building a theory of polyrhythmicity is discussed further in Chap. 12.

5.4  Further Discussion on Speech, Poetry and Music The main working theory of Rodríguez-Vázquez (2010) is that three tiers of rhythmic structure are posited: linguistic prominence and grouping; verse metre and grouping; and musical rhythm and metre. This approach has already been discussed above in relation to its over-dependence on metricality. There now needs to be further discussion of the theory underpinning this conception of the three levels of coincidence and indeed of the possibilities of correlation. Rodríguez-Vázquez uses optimality theory as an underpinning foundation to the study of the relationship between the three tiers. Her work is a significant contribution to the field of segmental phonology. But metre and phonology are limited in their application to the longer rhythmical phrasing in speech, poetry and music. Instead of the unit of analysis being a relatively short one, like the word in speech,

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Table 5.1  The difference in units of analysis in rhythm between Rodríguez-Vázquez (2010) and the present book Rodríguez-Vázquez (2010) Syllable Accent or stress conceived in binary terms Word Foot Utterance

The present book Word, including syllable count Accent or stress on a graded scale Clusters of words (or notes), in either phrases or clauses The line or cadence as unit of rhythm The whole work

the foot in poetry or the bar in music, polyrhythmicity requires a longer unit. In simple terms, in order to embrace the rhythms of free verse as well as metrical and quasi-metrical poetry (and the rhythms that work together to form a whole work), we need a theory that positions itself and its units of analysis as the utterance in speech, the line in poetry, and the musical phrase or cadence in music. The difference is captured in Table 5.1: As well as a step up in ‘size’ of unit analysis, the current proposal is less linguistically based than rhetorically based. It assumes engagement between the composer and his or her audience, whether that composition is in speech, poetry or music. It takes into account the whole conversational exchange, the whole poem and the whole work of music because it cannot conceive of internal rhythmic relations without considering the frame within which the rhythms operate. The importance of framing – discussed in Chaps. 9 and 12 and elsewhere in the present book – separates the everyday world from the more aesthetically framed world of poetry and music, in which one is asked to attend to a more highlighted rhythmic structure and identity. It is partly this enhanced rhythmic attention that characterizes the nature of the (art)work. There is also a tendency in the model for the present book to fuse speech and writing. Such fusion is a weakness in the model, as speech and writing move to different rhythms. This problem is also encountered in the work of Rodríguez-Vázquez, where spoken patterns in English and Spanish are represented in writing. Such transduction from one mode to another loses much in the translation, and thus one of the areas for future research is to differentiate between speech and writing in rhythmic analysis. This question is addressed in Chap. 11. The other limitation within the work of Rodríguez-Vázquez, as far as the present book is concerned, is the use of folksong to explore the relationship between speech, poetry and music. As Rodríguez-Vázquez (2010: 227) points out, ‘in English the link between verse prosody and musical metre [in folk songs] is stronger than in Spanish’. But the very choice of folksong, while appropriate for a detailed empirical analysis in the dissertation on which her book is based, is limited in terms of the rhythmic variations that are likely to take place between speech (and its representation in writing), poetry (in all its forms, including the non-metrical) and music (given the wide range of rhythmic foregrounding in all types of music). Albeit that the ‘matching of lyrics and music responds to some intuitive understanding of

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text-­tune alignment’ (ibid.). Such intuitive understanding, as intuition is based on high-­speed rationality, needs to be explicated further. Finally, in response to the excellent work of Rodríguez-Vázquez, a further comment on the difference between Spanish and English is required. Rodríguez-Vázquez (2010: 266) suggests that: The importance of stress-placement as a determining factor in text-setting well-formedness is systematically diminished in a language such as Spanish, which uses the syllable as the main unit of linguistic rhythm, while it is enhanced in a language such as English, which uses the foot delimited by the placement of stress as the main rhythmic unit.

This conclusion can be tested against this extract from the English translation of Pablo Neruda’s ‘Explico Algunas Cosas’/‘I’m Explaining a Few Things’. First, the Spanish: Preguntaréis: Y dónde están las lilas? Y la metafísica cubierta de amapolas? Y la lluvia que a menudo golpeaba sus palabras llenándolas de agujeros y pájaros?

Most obviously, the Spanish indicates where the stresses fall in ordinary discourse, as part of the nature and shape of the word: preguntaréis, dónde, están, metafísica, llenándolas, pájaros. But there is also poetic stress within each line, based on the semantic weight of the words and following the natural intonation of the words in the language: lílas, amápolas, llúvia, golpeába, palábras, agujéros. We could thus say that the rhythm of the lines is partly driven by the natural stresses in words of the language, partly by the semantic significance of the words and partly (in the case of the third line) by the end-of-line positioning of a key word: golpeaba. The English translation by Nathaniel Tarn: You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs? and the poppy-petalled metaphysics? and the rain repeatedly spattering its words and drilling them full of apertures and birds?

First, it should be said that Tarn’s translation captures the colloquial nature of the Spanish. It is direct, uncompromising, like the spoken voice. The poem is a direct challenge to the reader. Here is the Tarn version indicating the primary stresses in each line: You are going to ásk: and where are the lílacs? and the póppy-pétalled metaphysics? [emphasis on the í of phy] and the ráin repéatedly spáttering its words and drílling them full of ápertures and bírds?

What are the differences, taking into account the two different languages? The compound adjective ‘poppy-petalled’ uses the device of alliteration, deriving from Anglo-Saxon verse but not there in the Spanish. The same is the case in the noun followed by an adverb which precedes the present participle verb in line 3: ‘rain repeatedly spattering’ prefiguring the gunfire that follows later in the poem. We

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could say that the increased emphasis on the verbs – spattering, drilling – indicates a heavier, more emphatic beat than in the Spanish. But what appears to be the case overall, when we compare the original Spanish to the Tarn translation, is a surprising coincidence of rhythmic emphasis – the accentual-syllabic approach, rather than a purely syllabic or beat-based approach. In other words, both versions stand in the middle of the spectrum of rhythmic identification that we discussed earlier.

5.5  Northern Ewe Music Agawu (1995) makes the point that ‘African rhythm’ has not only been seen as an agglomerate; it is has also mostly been associated with drumming. The assumption has been that rhythms inhere in the limited repertoire of the melodic or tonal range and are therefore analysable purely in terms of ‘beat’. Furthermore, he expounds the different lenses with which rhythm is perceived: ‘rhythm as polysemous metaphor, rhythm as a fluid temporal process’ on the one hand and ‘rhythm as technical concept, rhythm as a precise, quantifiable process’ on the other (1995: 3). The connecting string is composed of words and music: in short, in the Ewe context, song. The absence of a single word for ‘rhythm’ in [the] Ewe [language] suggests that rhythm refers to a binding together of different dimensional processes, a joining rather than a separating, an across-the-dimensions instead of a within-the-dimension phenomenon. (1995: 7)

Song, as stylized and highly modulated speech, sits between gesture and the tonal free rhythms of speech at one end of the spectrum and instrumental music (e.g. drum rhythm) and dance at the other end of the spectrum. We can see from this formulation that the conception of rhythm is multimodal. Gesture is a basic human act of communication, requiring movement. It is non-verbal, and yet it can still be framed in rhythmic sequence and suggest the arrangement of time in relative relations. When it is verbalized into speech, it adds a whole range of differentiated concepts and meanings (and then breaks these down again back into gesture through ‘sign language’). Song brings together speech and music, enhancing and highlighting the salient features of communication and combining them with the non-verbal music world of sound. Drumbeats and dance, in their own ways, move the meanings into different territories: those of ‘pure’ rhythmic beat and (to return to gesture) the significant movements embodied in dance. All these modes of expression can come together, but it is useful to differentiate them in order to see how rhythm manifests itself in different modes. Whereas Agawu (1995) sees this range in terms of gesture, the multimodal approach takes a wider aperture – beyond linguistics, beyond gestural studies. Agawu (1995) describes the composition of the purely musical rhythms generated by the northern Ewe people. Typically, a performing ensemble is made up of eight distinct layers. These are (reading from top to bottom) rattle, castanet, double-pronged bell, lead singer, chorus, small drum, big drum and hourglass drum. These

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may be grouped according to musical function into three sub-groups. The first is the fixed-­ pattern sub-group, which consists of instruments that play an unchanging pattern throughout: rattle, castanet, and bell. […] The second is the vocal sub-group, which consists of lead singer and chorus, and the third is the variable-pattern sub-group, which includes the small and big drums and the hourglass drum. The three-fold division of the ensemble is undermined only by the small drum which, although it belongs timbrally to the more active variation-pattern sub-group, plays an unchanging pattern […] however the small drum plays against the metronomic sense established by the fixed-pattern sub-group. (Agawu 1995: 109 – Ewe terms excluded)

Such multi-level rhythms, combined with the tonal variation in the two-pronged bell and in song, provide for a complex and rich rhythmic texture. The particular rhythmic expressiveness that is searched for in the present book, within a context of polyrhythmicity, is the free form, embodied by the variable-pattern sub-group: the rhythms that are not pinned down to metre. Aesthetically and culturally, these rhythms come to the fore when the background rhythms move further into the background, for example, when a dancer puts down her fixed-pattern instrument and enters the dance with freer gestural movements. The metrical regular beat may still be felt as a trace, as a ‘ghost of metre’, but the actual rhythm is untethered, taking its form from relative time relations and individual expressiveness. It is as if the freer rhythms exist on a higher plane, impelled by the more regular rhythms to a pattern that is both more ethereal and more physical. The theorization of rhythm at this higher level is avoided if the emphasis turns to performance variations, like the significance of masks or costumes. To concentrate on the higher levels of rhythms in previously uncharted verbal territory is to suggest that they exist in a multimodal (but non-verbal) realm of physicality and time: at the boundaries of the physical, before transmutation into higher levels of consciousness or being. This transduction between modes becomes a key part of theoretical apparatus in polyrhythmicity, as well as between levels of rhythmic variation. Nevertheless, it is worth considering how multiple rhythms manifest themselves in performance, because such consideration might lead to a more comprehensive theory.

5.6  Rhythm and Performance As Agawu (1995) says, it is the ‘polyvalent nature of performance that makes theorization difficult’ (1995: 112). As well as what is included in the previous paragraph, performance may embrace stage sets, make-up, heightened language and a higher degree of intensity of communication. All these derive from the fact that performance is a highly framed cultural phenomenon. The framing is evident in a number of ways. First, there is entry to the performance via ticketing, invitation, ritual or some other means. Second, the performance is limited and framed in time: it will take place at a particular time, for a specific period of time. Third, it is framed by space: the performance space can be as simple as a line marked in the earth or

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sand, or it could be a grand amphitheatre or contemporary concert hall or theatre. On occasions, even entry to the audience space in a performance is highly monitored, so that a certain code of dress is required. All these framings work towards a sense that the experience of performance is one of greater intensity than that of everyday life. Even if the artwork itself is mundane, for example a ‘kitchen-sink drama’, the very framing in performance as an artwork gives it heightened significance. In polyrhythmic terms, a performance carries out the everyday rhythms of experience into a different world. For a start, rhythm is made more apparent. It has relative time relations with everyday experience, as well as having internal patterns that are an integral part of the artwork. Take a Shakespeare play for example. Once we are in the audience for such a performance, we are subject to different rhythmic rules. The play is divided into five acts, each act into a number of scenes. As well as the overall structural rhythms as indicated by the acts (including a potential interval where we temporarily stand outside the work, though still within the confines of the theatre space), some of the scenes will operate at a different rhythmic pace than others; be longer or shorter than others; have a different number of characters (from one to a whole army or crowd); and suggest a different emotional rhythm (the degree to which we are engaged by the language, action, lighting, costumes etc.) Thus the polyrhythmic nature of performance can be theorized via the vehicle of framing. Without using this term, Agawu (1995) describes what a polyrhythmic theory of performance would entail: The energy, dynamism and drive [of performance] derive principally from a convergence of the rhythmic processes in several competing, as well as complementary, temporal dimensions and at different structural levels […] These local-level rhythms map into larger periodicities, producing the dances whose succession constitutes the performance. And, in hierarchic fashion, the succession of dances, in turn, maps out its own global periodicity. (1995: 114)

5.7  Polyphony and Polyrhythm The classic work in the field is Simha’s (1991) study of the oral tradition and the music of the Central African Republic. The sociocultural genesis of the musical tradition is set out in some detail and, although it applies to Chap. 8 of the present book, is not discussed here. Rather, the focus is on conversation and speech prosodies in relation to musical rhythms. Nevertheless, the integration of speech and music, as well as other modes within the Central African Republic’s culture, is marked: the distinction between the two is less closely observed than in European culture. Music is functional in that it both expresses individual emotion and formal ritualistic social gatherings; it is both individual and collective. The key definition is as follows:

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Music is a succession of sounds capable of giving rise to a segmentation of time during which it flows in isochronous units. In other words, there can only be music inasmuch as it is measured, and ‘danceable’. Thus, rhythmic speech, such as is often used in magic formulae, is considered to be music. […] Whatever is a part of the musical domain necessarily entails a strict division, whether physical or virtual, of time, into regular pulsation. (1991: 11)

Simha quotes Senghor (1964: 238) in suggesting that in the tone languages of Central Africa ‘each syllable has its own pitch, intensity and duration’ and that each word ‘may be given a musical notation’. This close and indivisible relationship of word and music creates a synergy in which music supports the language and vice versa. There is no ‘melody’ as such that is separate from words or from the music. It seems, therefore, that the musical characteristic of Central African speech, although tonal, is driven primarily by rhythmic relations. Or, to put it another way, as Pound suggested, the words carry the meaning, and the music (and dance) drives the feeling. Structurally, a model for accounting for polyrhythmic relations is set out in Chap. 11 of the present book. It is, however, based on principles that are identified by Simha. These are a cyclic structure that is based on repetition and variation. The narrative structure, while sharing a forward movement, is cyclical. It can therefore be described as a system or framework, with both vertical and horizontal dimensions, within which each musical composition can be identified: The periodic structure is dependent on an extremely strict division of time into segments of equal duration, each segment possessing its own internal organisation within the framework of the piece to which it belongs. The formal structure is thus isoperiodic. The periodic unit is like the basic material of the musical structure, or a kind of mould. Each periodic unit constitutes a musical unit, that can, in turn, be subdivided into two or more melodic and/or rhythmic units. (1991: 18)

It must be stressed, however, that this seemingly metrical and regularized framework is only a framework. It is an abstraction behind the music in European composition and, although it can be realized in multi-part African percussion, for example, is subject to the variations of speech. Improvisation, which Simha sees ‘as the driving force behind melodic and rhythmic variations’ (1991: 19), is also ‘always subordinate to the musical structure in which it appears, in respect of mode, metre and rhythm’ (ibid.). This subordination of improvisation or the freer melodic/rhythm cadence, as identified by Simha, is where there is a clear distinction in types of poetic expression, from the formal and metrical at one end of the spectrum, through liberated quasi-metrical rhythms in verse in which there is still ‘the ghost of metre’, to free rhythms at the other end of the spectrum which have no reference to repetition, regularity or metre. Because the nature of Central African Republic languages is syllabic and not stress-based, the words do not provide the basic polyrhythmic structures in song. Rather, they are shaped by these rhythms, with the oral content being characterized by intensity, phonetic factors in terms of ‘openness’ and sonority and ‘emotional, prosodic and semantic factors’ (1991: 20). In a sense, we could say that the syllabic nature of speech rides on the top of the multi-layered rhythms of its

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accompaniment; except that the two are more intimately related. Within the repertoire of instruments, from the more tonal which tend to express or underpin speech rhythms to the untoned ‘purely’ rhythmic percussive group that drives the more abstract rhythms, the complex layering of rhythms is presented. However, such a conception must be qualified: even in the seemingly untoned percussive instruments, there is tonal variation (as in the ‘speaking drum’); and even in the syllabically driven speech forms, there is temporal arrangement. Consequently, even in a language that is unstressed and syllabic in nature, rhythmic shaping in song, music and dance is integrated. In this section, the question of pulse plays a key role. Elsewhere (Andrews 2017) I have identified pulse as the driving force in the nature of rhythmic units (in that case, the line in free verse) rather than basing a prosody on metrical ‘feet’ which are predicated on a unit of rhythm that has stronger and weaker beats. Pulse starts the unit of rhythm, which then takes on a cadential trajectory.2 Similarly, Simha suggests that ‘African music is […] based, not on measures in the sense of classical music teaching [which are predicated on strong and weak beats] but on pulsations, i.e., on a sequence of isochronous temporal units which can be materialised as a beat’ (1991: 180). Pulse, or pulsation, defines the starting point for the cadence or measure; it is as if ‘beat’ were not conceived vertically in terms of degrees of stress, but horizontally in the shape of the phrase following the pulse. In such a conception, there can be no easy taxonomy of rhythmic shapes. What we have seen in African polyrhythmic percussive music is a multi-layered approach to building a polyrhythmic sound landscape; what we see in European and some American free verse is a system based on additive rhythms. It is the combinations of the two approaches, freeing the fused system from the confines of small metrical units such as feet or the flatness of syllabification into one that embraces larger and smaller rhythmic units on a number of interrelated levels: some regular and repetitive, others more seemingly improvised and without clear regularity. The discussion of pulse raises the question of other terms used in the field of polyrhythmics. Again, Simha (1991) is illuminating: We have seen that the Indoeuropean languages which gave rise to Vedic poetry and later to Greek poetry had pitch accents and no stress. Their versification, […] an intermediate stage between the unmeasured flow of speech and strictly proportional musical rhythm, was based only on the quantitative contrast of long and short syllables and not on dynamic intensity. (1991: 200)

Part of the point is that the language (terminology, diction) used to describe rhythms in different cultures is different, thus providing a distinctive lens through which to interpret rhythm. There will be further discussion of the terminology of polyrhythmics in Chap. 10 when we consider polyrhythmicity in the Asia-Pacific region. For the purposes of the present chapter on differences between African and

2  See Simha’s quotation from Honegger (1976) II: 133 on p. 194 that ‘cadential organisation is not all there is to musical rhythm. It is merely the foundation on which musical rhythm (motifs, phrases, periods, form) can be freely built’.

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European terminology, Simha’s section on ‘Towards a precise terminology’ in Book V of his 1991 edition is the best source of insight, and I will not repeat much here. I agree that the terms ‘metre’, ‘tactus’ and ‘beat’ are inappropriate, other than in a background or historical sense, for a study of polyrhythmicity in the twenty-first century, largely because of their multiple associations and particularly with regulated time or the over-simplicities of ‘beat’. The other term I would like to exclude from the set of core terminology is ‘tempo’, as it refers merely to the speed of delivery. Only when tempi are varied within a work do they attain rhythmic significance. In a sense, then, although these relegated terms are useful, the principal focus in a study of polyrhythmicity and indeed of rhythm per se needs to be couched in the following terms: • Pulse, which determines the starting point for a rhythmical phrase. –– Isochronous or repeated pulse at regular intervals. –– Constant, as the only invariable rhythmic element in a piece. –– Intrinsic, individual and distinctive to the work itself, often closely associated with the. meaning (semantics) of the utterance. –– Pulses are often either binary or ternary, with combinations of these two principal patterns possible. –– Both pulses and measures may be ‘marked’ by tonal or accentual variation or, for example, by rhyme or half-rhyme in poetry. • Measure, which determines the length of the phrase –– In a sub-section of a line or phrase, this would be equivalent to metrical feet. –– At the level of the line or phrase, the term ‘cadence’ is more appropriate. –– The measure may also extend beyond the line/phrase to a longer rhythmical unit, as in ‘prose poems’ or extended strophes and stanzas/paragraphs that form sub-sections of complete works. –– The measure might also be termed the ‘figure’ in some systems of analysis, but in the present book that term is reserved for figurative language, i.e. multi-­ levelled but not in a rhythmic sense. • Levels of interaction –– In polyrhythmicity or multi-levelled rhythmicity, one set of pulses and measures would sit in relation to further sets in the same composition; an example would be ‘cross-rhythms’. –– Elsewhere in the present book, this dimension has been described as vertical relations, or complex time relations, as opposed to the horizontality of pulse and measure. Finally, it can be said, in agreement with Simha, that: The Central African forms of polyphony are […] the exact opposite of Western polyphony […] which had a melodic origin and was invested with rhythm primarily because the words had to be fitted to the music. In Central Africa, rhythm was at the source, and is still the quintessence and ultimate result […] The important point is to realise that this music, which is perceptually polyphonic, is actually polyrhythmic in essence. (1991: 658–9)

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If, however, polyphonic and polyrhythmic approaches to music are two dimensions of the same phenomenon, the rest of the present book, and in particular Chaps. 6, 7, 10 and 11, will go further in exploring the nature of that interface in an attempt to find a new synthesis to describe and analyse intercultural rhythmicity.

References Agawu, K. (1995). African rhythm. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Andrews, R. (2017). A prosody of free verse: Explorations in rhythm. New York: Routledge. Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1993). English speech rhythm: Form and function in everyday verbal interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Honegger, M. (Ed.). (1976). Science de la musique: forms, technique, instruments. Paris: Bordas, 2 volumes. Nketia, J. H. K. (1975). The music of Africa. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd.. Paterson, D. (2018). The poem: Lyric, sign, metre. London: Faber and Faber. Rodríguez-Vázquez, R. (2010). The rhythm of speech, verse and vocal music: A new theory (Linguistics Insights/Studies in Language and Communication). Bern: Peter Lang. Simha, A. (1991). African polyphony and polyrhythm: Musical structure and methodology. Translated from the French by Martin Thom, Barbara Tuckett and Raymond Boyd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 6

Polyrhythmicity in Poetry

Abstract Whereas A Prosody of Free Verse broke new ground in understanding the rhythmic patterning in free verse, Polyrhythmicity explores how multiple rhythms work in poetry. Most conventionally, a poet will take a formal verse form with a regular metrical pattern, and both conform to the pattern as well as breaking the pattern to create variation or to highlight sense. But much poetry operates between the polyrhythmic nature of the spoken voice (see Chap. 5), formal metres, syllabic patterns and free verse. It always embodies rhythm to a certain degree and takes its cue from musical patterning and specifically from song (see Chaps. 4 and 5). This chapter will explore how multiple rhythms work in American, Scottish, Chinese and other Asian poetry and how these different rhythms reflect the relationship between feeling and sense; between the written word and the spoken word; and between the ethereal and the physical. Consideration is given to polyrhythmicity in the lyric mode and the work of Ezra Pound and Don Paterson on the theory and practice of rhythm in poetry. Keywords  Rhythm · Metre · Pulse · Cadence · Form · Modulation

6.1  Types of Rhythm Frye (1957: 271) has an intriguing classification of types of poetic rhythm: the semantic rhythm of prose; the metrical rhythm of epos (through which Frye sees myth and romance expressing themselves in a ‘high mimetic’; elsewhere he defines epos as ‘works in which the radical of presentation is oral address’ (1957: 248)); and the oracular rhythm of the lyric. As there are many examples of exceptions in each of prose, the epic and the lyric, it is better to think of these defining categories as categories of ‘voice’ rather than social or literary ‘function’, hence, the prosaic voice; the epic voice; and the oracular voice. The close association of a type of rhythm with each of these high generic modes or forms does not seem to hold. The prosaic voice, it could be said, does not foreground rhythm. There are many ‘free form’ poems, especially in the American tradition, which are expressed in a © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Andrews, Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6_6

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prosaic voice. Unless you hear them and the poet intones in oracular style, you would not know they are poems. Equally, you would need to see these poems on a page to know that they are intended to be poems – signalled by their layout, with the lines not reaching the right-hand edge of the page in a consistent manner. The prosaic voice is there in prose poems. Rhythm only plays a part in these compositions as it would in prose: there are larger-scale rhythms at play, largely imperceptible to the ear but there in a structural sense. A better label for these rhythms than the ‘semantic’ (as all framed linguistic meaning is semantic) is large-scale structural rhythms. It is odd, to the modern ear, to yoke together the epic voice with metre. Metre may have been a foundational rhythmical pattern for epic narratives up to the end of the nineteenth century, but the epics of the twentieth century to the present are fragmented: a concatenation of different voices. The function that metre played in pre-­ twentieth-­century long poems was to provide a substratum of order, a mnemonic discipline whereby the poet could remember his or her narrative. Putting aside the epic association, the relationship between rhythm and metre is clear: rhythm is the higher-order category that describes time relations; metre is a measure based on beat and regularity, however far from the norm the metrical rhythm departs. It is the oracular rhythm that is interesting as far as the association with lyric goes. As suggested above, these are not rhythms as much as they are types of ‘voice’. Recordings of twentieth century poets convey an oracular sense, and they are delivered in oracular tone. The effect is to distance poetry from the everyday voice; to make it monolithic; and to make it sound as if it is derived from the ‘oracle’. Thus the rhythms that are associated with this voice cannot be said to be conversational or dialogic. Tonally they are flat and high. Rhythmically they are incantatory. Frye’s large sweep, as part of a historical theory of genres, is illuminating in some respects. His insight that ‘with the Romantic movement a sense that the “true voice of feeling” was unpredictable and irregular in its rhythm begins to increase’ (1957: 272) is helpful in our developing sense of how fugal forms enable multi-­ levelled rhythms to operate, despite the move away from the traditional genres of long poetic works. Indeed, it could be said that twentieth-century fugal forms enable a richer set of rhythms to operate in relation to each other, not just in Stravinsky’s large-scale (and small-scale – cf. The Soldier’s Tale) works but in art and literature. Furthermore, Frye is right to say that ‘the aim of “free” verse is not simply revolt against metre and epos conventions, but the articulation of an independent rhythm equally distinct from metre and from prose’ (1957: 272). The one poetic rhythm that is absent from Frye’s classification is that of dialogic rhythms, though he subsumes these (without mentioning them) within a category of incantation. These approximate the speaking voice, though they might be delivered in incantatory style. They are present in the to-ing and fro-ing of gospel; in some poems from African and Oceanic cultures; in the delivery of Yeats, Eliot, Hughes and others; and in other poetic forms and genres. Even if there are not two or more people involved in the dialogue, the dialogic nature of the exchange can be internal within a single voice.

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6.2  Rhythm as the Source of the Poem Culler (2015) cites a number of poets who maintain that the genesis of some of their poems is rhythmic rather than verbal: Valéry, Eliot and Yeats. First, there is a rhythmic pulse or pattern. This then finds words to give it semantic and intellectual shape. The work comes into being through rhythm, and that rhythm stays there throughout the composition, at macro-, mezzo- and/or micro-levels, giving shape to the artwork and to the experience of hearing or reading the work. An example is ‘Before the Fall’: Your head above the water beaver-like you swim towards me on New Pond. Behind, the ledges and cliffs of the upper pond where your parents’ ashes lie scattered; now part of the landscape. Sun on your face, effortlessly you glide towards me out of the wilderness. You’re water-borne, sleek, aquine, amphibian a sliver of humanity below the surface. Pre-Eden, glorious, before guilt set in, before everything felt the downward trend. Now we lie together on the shore: you with your eyes to the water mine staring up into the hills.

This poem, composed in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York, did not occur to the writer in terms of content nor in terms of an exercise in writing tercets. First, it emerged as the first line only: ‘Your head above the water’. It is an example of ‘shaping at the point of utterance’. A metrical perspective would suggest that this first line is an iambic trimeter, with an extra unstressed syllable. Such a starting point is only seen in retrospect and does not fit the rest of the poem. Such metrification could be construed as retro-metricality. In fact, the pulse and shape of that first line is a polyrhythmic concurrence of a conversational phrase, a rhythm, a semantic concept and an address (albeit oblique). To enrich its origin further, it echoes the phrase ‘head above water’, with all its connotations of managing, surviving and competence. The second stage of rhythmic formation in the making of the poem is that of the stanzas. They turn out to be tercets, each of them self-contained like haiku. In the first stanza (again, a retro-fit to stanzaic form), the rhythmic impulse of the first line is fore-shortened in the second to a compressed simile, frozen in time. Then the third line returns to a more free-flowing descriptive narrative: ‘you swim towards

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me on New Pond’. The rhythmic shape of the first stanza is not like any of the following stanzas, but it sets the pattern for the rest of the poem. The third stage of composition involves the decision as to how long the poem is going to be. This poem turns out to be an 18-line, 6-tercet poem: a good length for a short lyric. It was never going to be the start of a novel, a short story or an epic poem. Its macro-structural shape is, again, partly determined by sense, by rhythmic propriety, by the frame of the poem on the page and also by the framing of the experience in two bookends: ‘you swim towards me’ and ‘Now we lie together’. The rhythmic evolution and structuring in this poem is therefore not only micro-, then mezzo-, then macro- in the sonic sense. It is also determined by concept; visual shape; metaphor; the balance of the words, phrases, lines and stanzas within the whole; and the overall unity of the poem. Culler’s (2015: 140) statement about rhythm, quoted in Chap. 1 of the present book, is another way of reflecting that complexity. So, too, Frye (1957) talks of the ‘rhythmical initiative, though in a free verse poem it would be […] a sense of the oscillations of rhythm within an area which gradually becomes defined as the containing form’ (1957: 275). Frye takes the notion further: This phenomenon is not confined to poetry: in Beethoven’s notebooks, too, we often see how he knows that he wants a cadence at a certain bar before he has worked out any melodic sequence to reach it. One can see a similar evolution in children, who start with rhythmical babble and fill in the appropriate words as they go along. (1957: 275–6)

The notion that prosody (accounts of rhythm in language) can describe the genesis of a poem as well as its formal rhythmic patterning in text or performance is taken a stage further. As Nowell-Smith (2012: 60) puts it in exploring fugal rhythms in poetry, ‘[prosody] is dynamized, not only that it ceases to be the mere patterning of accents and syllables, but also in that more precise sense in which Heidegger translates dynamis: it sets thinking on its way’.

6.3  Rhythm and Metre The difference between rhythm and metre has been the subject of much debate in the world of poetic prosody. Much of the confusion has been the result of a conflation of the senses of rhythm and metre, so that one stands in for the other. The difference, however, is worth maintaining. Scott states (1986: 33-5): Rhythm and metre actualize two completely different principles […] metre is linguistic, objective, quantitative, mono-dimensional, repeatable/discontinuous; rhythm, on the other hand, is paralinguistic, subjective, heterogeneous, qualitative, multi-dimensional, and irreversible.

While accepting that these two phenomena might be a realization of different principles (if we take ‘principles’ to mean organizing principles, rather than value-­ laden), the present book sees rhythm and metre not as two entirely different phenomena but as related at different levels: rhythm being the overarching category and

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metre one particular realization of that category. Metre, therefore, is a sub-category of rhythm. Later in this section, I will propose that the two are related and distinguishable and will present this relationship in a comparative table. First, Scott’s characterization needs to be critiqued. Of the characteristics of rhythm that are proposed, it could be said that rhythm is both paralinguistic and (sometimes) linguistic; that it is subjective (in the response of the reader/listener, dancer) but also has ‘objective’ reality; and that it is heterogeneous but also homogenous, in that can provide the unifying emotional structure of a work of art or social engagement. It is qualitative but can also be subject to measurement and thus quantitative analysis. It is certainly multi-dimensional, and although it could be said to be irreversible in the sense that a rhythm has a temporal sequence, that sequence could literally be reversed to create a different rhythm. Equally, as far as metre is concerned, Scott’s characteristics are not watertight. Metre can be musical as well as linguistic; and it is not always objectively described in terms of response of the audience/reader or dancer. It is quantitative (a feature of its derivation from measurement) but not mono-dimensional, as I will demonstrate in my account of its role in polyrhythmicity. It is repeatable, and it is not clear by what is meant by ‘discontinuous’ – there could be a suggestion here that unlike the flow of rhythm, metre is segmented or segmentable. A different way to describe the relationship between rhythm and metre is to present them in a comparative table, accepting that these two phenomena work alongside/with and against each other in a polyrhythmic composition (Table 6.1). Table 6.1  Comparative table of rhythm and metre Level or type of operation Whole work Parts of the work

Rhythm Structural – macro-level Structural/arrangement – mezzo-level

The line

Shape and cadence

Effect on the physical/aural Shape of the line Reversibility Operational axes In still images In moving image modes In musical modes

Critical

Metre Foundational Not applicable, unless there is metrical variation by section Number of beats and arrangement of feet Metronomic

Flow Signature directionality Horizontal and vertical Evident metaphorically Evident

Measurable n/a Vertical only n/a n/a

In verbal modes The field of expertise

Evident in shape and cadence, as well as Evident only in time signatures at other macro- and mezzo-levels Evident in poetry, prose and other genres Evident only in poetry Prosodists, choreographers, artists, Metrists composers

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Metre’s contribution to an understanding of rhythm (or, more broadly, a theory of rhythm) can only be partial. It has a more limited range of reference. Rhythm, on the other hand, provides the sine qua non of metre; it informs its categorizations and classifications; it gives metre purpose. The fact that the larger purpose is non-­ linguistic, but about temporal relations felt physically, emotionally as well as intellectually, makes rhythm into something both tangible and intangible: a plane of operation that shapes aesthetic and social patterning. The discussion in this section has attempted to show that rhythm and metre are part of the same arrangement of temporal relations. They work together to form a polyrhythmic identity for a work of art or a social engagement. Metre is not always present, but when it is, it provides a foundation for rhythmic variation. They are complementary rather than oppositional. Different schools of prosodists have undertaken work in their own fields of metre or rhythm to describe temporal relations. The suggestion now is that they work more closely together, accept the multi-­ levelled nature of most rhythmic phenomena and move on to describe the more complex architecture of rhythm in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

6.4  Polyrhythmicity and the Lyric Mode Culler (2015) makes the point that the rhythm (I would suggest ‘rhythms’) of lyric form is different from those of epic or narrative poetry and explores Frye’s (1957) distinction. The basic distinction made by Frye is that the longer forms favour conventional metrical structures which help to scaffold the story and that in lyric poetry ‘thinking about lyric rhythms involves hearing differently, attending to sorts of patterning that might not compel attention in narrative poetry’ (Culler 2015: 133). Such associative rhythmic awareness is, however, not confined to the lyric. The associative pleasures of rhythmic complexity  – ‘paranomasia, sound-links, ambiguous sense-links, and memory-links’ (Frye 1957: 272)  – are also possible in epic and longer narrative poetry. Admittedly, they slow down the narrative, horizontal drive of longer poems, but there are many examples in The Iliad or Paradise Lost or The Prelude of lyrical passages that demonstrate the associative pleasures of lyrical rhythmic complexity. Perhaps it is clear to say that the lyric mode is more suggestive of polyrhythmic complexity and richness because rhythm is foregrounded at the expense of narrative. Part of the answer to the polyrhythmic propensities of the lyric mode lies in this very foregroundedness. If we take the lyric to be a frame in which sonorousness, ‘voice’, a song-like tendency, explosive compression (of meanings), choreographic intensity and expressiveness are evident, then the rhythmic dimension of such compositions works in miniature: we weigh up the form against the meaning. Furthermore, assonance and alliteration, rhyme; metre and rhythm; and the visual setting of the poem – all these tools – work to create the composition and its effects. In a longer work, other factors come into play which do not diminish the powers of micro-complexity but which put them into context and perspective. So, explosive

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compression becomes more expansive; ‘voice’ becomes ‘voices’; sonorousness becomes part of the fabric of the poem rather than its detailed patterning. Above all, the horizontal drive of narrative adds another axis to the ‘verticality’ of the lyric, so that narrative, sequential time (post hoc ergo propter hoc) comes more to the fore. In The Prelude (1805 version; 1969), the autobiographical drive of the narrative is strong and continues for 13 ‘books’, each consisting of substantial strophes on sections and instances of a poet’s life and development. The metre is iambic pentameter, the verse blank and unrhymed, the tone reflective and at times philosophical. Although the lyric autobiographical mode pervades the poem, both geographically and thematically, it is the vignettes of metaphorical intensity that suggest lyricism more emphatically. In Book First, after what is prefatory scene-­ setting and establishment of the voice and its audience, ‘I made a choice/Of one sweet Vale whither my steps should turn…’ and                Thus long I lay  Chear’d by the genial pillow of the earth  Beneath my head, sooth’d by a sense of touch  From the warm ground, that balanced me, else lost  Entirely, seeing nought, nought hearing, save  When here and there, about the grove of Oaks  Where was my bed, an acorn from the trees  Fell audibly, and with a startling sound.

This passage sits at the end of the fourth of 24 strophes/paragraphs in Book First. It thus has a position in a larger structure of paragraphs and Books. Its lyrical presence comes from a resonant image: ‘an acorn from the trees/Fell audibly, and with a startling sound’. The rhythmic intensity of that moment is like a touchstone of consciousness in the poem, reinforced by its presence at the end of a paragraph and followed by a pause, indicated by a line break and the start of a new paragraph which returns to the narrative, reflective mode:    Thus occupied in mind, I linger’d here  Contented, nor rose up until the sun  Had almost touch’d the horizon, bidding then  A farewell to the City left behind…

The point being made here is that the particular rhythmic significance of the end of the fourth paragraph comes not from its metrical/rhythmic identity, which is not much different to other lines in the poem, but from its Latinate syntax and positioning in Book First as a whole. Furthermore, its resonance comes from the semantic and literary associations: ‘Fell audibly’ gives embodiment to the poem and refers, however subtly and unconsciously, to Christian mythology of the Fall, to Milton and perhaps Newton. This sudden foregrounding of the image (and sound) of an acorn falling audibly brings the poet’s (and reader’s) consciousness into sharp focus, into the present. Wordsworth repeats this device – the arresting of reflective time with a sharp moment of anecdotal and/or imagistic presence – throughout the poem, so that there is a macro-rhythm to The Prelude itself: one of a rhythmic to-ing and

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fro-­ing between narrative, horizontal time of past, present and future on the one hand and the moments of illumination on the other. The mezzo-rhythms are determined by the paragraph structure of each Book and how these more intensely imagined moments are framed within that structure. And the micro-rhythms are brought about by the tension between the metrical ground of the verse and the syntax of the speaking voice.

6.5  Temporal Poetics and Poetry Cureton (2016, 2017) sets out a succinct account of his theory of temporal poetics and applies this to two cases: Elizabeth Bishop’s poem (1983) ‘The Map’ and Wallace Stevens’ poem ‘Domination of Black’. As Cureton notes, ‘the prosodic tradition has always been primarily interested in the voice, how it moves rhythmically from syllable to syllable, stress to stress’ (2016: 38), and the present book agrees with him that such a conception of how rhythm works in poetry is too narrow and that ‘the movement of the voice (what linguists and musical theorists call rhythmic grouping) is not at all one-dimensional, regular and minimal but multileveled, variable and complex’ (ibid.). Cureton sets out his theory of temporal poetics thus in terms of the major components of rhythm: Metre creates cyclical time, which is associated with sensation, perception and physical ecstasy. Rhythmic grouping creates centroidal time, which is associated with the centered self and emotional expression. Prolongation creates linear time, which is associated with volition and action. And theme creates relative time, which is associated with thought, imagination and memory. (2016: 39)

The interrelationship between these four components, both complementary and conflicted, constitutes a ‘temporal paradigm’ which is set out in table form and linked to major literary genres, ‘master’ tropes and the four major modes of emplotment. These analogies reinforce the architecturally comprehensive edifice that Cureton builds – and further builds in relation to quadratic organization of our sensibilities in relation to natural (but not social) phenomena. Such a comprehensive panopticon of temporal form in poetry is ambitious and, despite its unwieldy scale and complexity, is used to account for the complex time relations in the two cases of poems by Bishop and Stevens. Before turning to Bishop’s poem, it is also worth noting that Cureton (2017: 529) likes to work ‘with eleven considerations: preferred position of prominent events, curve of energy, relational scope, structural volatility, event-event relation, subject-subject relation, subject-event relation, semiotic relation, temporal figure, clock-time orientation, and cognitive process’. In the case of the Bishop poem, his conclusion, after exhaustive analysis, is that the ‘final two lines are so metrically ambiguous that they each can be read in five different ways […] Clearly, at this point, metre is so loose as to become something else, little more than an occasion for metrical variation and blurring, and therefore a

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more relativistic pattern’ (2016: 62–3). With regard to whether countries can choose the colour in which they are depicted on maps What suits the character or the native waters best. Topgraphy displays no favorites; North’s as near as West.

Cureton’s approach is to start from a metrical base and then look for variations – so that there is always the ghost of metre behind the analysis. While we might end up with the same position – that the poem treads a fine line between metricality and a loose prosaic feel – the starting point from a free verse and polyrhythmic point of view is the overall formal shape of the poem, not the metrical foot. The poem falls into three main sections or strophes (not stanzas) of 8, 11 and 8 lines each. Its structural symmetry is a key framing device. Within that macro-structure, the first three lines establish the rhythmic tone: Land lies in water; it is shadowed green. Shadows, or are they shallows, at its edges showing the line of long sea-weeded ledges

The punctuated, deliberate first two lines give way to a more expansive third. Repetition of words, assonance and alliteration (playing as they do on the sounds of words), visual and aural association (‘lies’, ‘line’) and rhyme all make for a rich, sonorous texture of sonic as well as visual reference. The poem does move in its three strophes to an even looser line structure towards the end, but it does so within its formal three-strophe symmetrical frame and thus sets up the tensions that are so resonant in polyrhythmicity. One of these tensions is semantic: the poem begins with particularities (‘land’, ‘water’) and ends with an argumentational statement that backwashes through the poem  – ‘More delicate than the historians’ are the map-makers’ colors’. The poem as a whole is an exercise in playing with rhythmic invention as well as a subtle reflection on looking at a map.

6.6  Pound’s Cantos as Fugue To rehearse the key elements of fugue, these are the addition of different voices at different times in the composition (polyphony); the use of inversion and counterpoint to create balance and harmony in disjuncture; an architectural scope to the work, with various elements combining to create greater whole; forward motion, driven by successive pulses; absences and presences (an abstract notion, but suggested by the function of silence or, at most, implication, in a poetic work); and recurrence of different forms. In this section, Pound’s (1964) Cantos are explored to suggest how fugue can provide the polyrhythmic framework to help us understand how a long twentiethcentury poetic work is constructed. Canto 1 (1964: 7) begins with a long strophe in which Odyssean content meshes with Anglo-Saxon rhythms:

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6  Polyrhythmicity in Poetry And then went down to the ship, Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly seas, and We set up mast and sail on that swart ship, Bore sheep aboard her, and our bodies also Heavy with weeping, so winds from sternward Bore us out onward with bellying canvas, Circe’s this craft, the trim-coifed goddess.

Compare this to Wilson’s (2018: 279) translation of The Odyssey: We reached the sea and first of all we launched the ship into the sparkling salty water, set up the mast and sails, and brought the sheep on board with us. We were still grieving, weeping, in floods of tears. But beautiful, dread Circe, the goddess who can speak in human tongues, set us a wind to fill our sails…

Pound’s recreation of the opening of Book 11 of The Odyssey adopts the Anglo-­ Saxon rhythms of The Seafarer, complete with caesura in the middle of some of the lines. The effect is more driven than Wilson’s, by virtue of the emphatic pulse at the beginning of each line; there is more licence with the language and the ‘translation’, and at the same time there is a new poetic being created. That poetic does not mind repeating a word, both at the start of lines: ‘Bore sheep aboard her…’ and ‘Bore us out onward…’. Indeed, the sound is repeated again in ‘aboard’, as if reflecting the starting of the regular rhythm of the oars. There is disjuncture: lines 4–6 in the quotation above seem to change perspective and focus after the caesura. This disjuncture is marked by a comma in lines 4–5, but three is much more than a mere rhythmic pause taking place; there is also a change in perspective. It is as if the rhythm is dictating the direction of the verse. The subject matter – the ostensible focus of the poet’s eye – shifts from ‘sheep’ to ‘bodies’ to ‘winds’. The virtue of Wilson’s translation is that it maintains a balance between loyalty to the original text, narrative engagement and accessible language. The lower-case start of each line moves the language away from the conventionally poetic format to a more prosaic recounting of the story, thus rendering it more accessible (but without creating rhythmic flow). There is more of a tendency to the colloquial and sometimes into cliché: ‘first of all we launched’ and ‘in floods of tears’. There is none of the intra-rhythmic shifting of the weight that Pound brings about with his single sentence (Wilson has two) linked by the conjunction ‘and’ in three places and ‘so’ in another. Already, even in these short extracts of much longer poems, we can see some features of fugue at work. There are two types of forward motion: Pound’s is poetic, musical, driven by heavier beats, and Wilson’s is lighter, more prosaic, more conservative syntactically and more focussed on telling the tale limpidly. Pound’s is the more contrapuntal: it actually starts the whole poem on an offbeat. Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey moves with a consistent forward motion through the narrative. Pound’s Cantos move very differently and more in the way of fugue. First, at the highest level, the poem is architectural. It does not tell a story but rather builds an edifice. It is poem made of fragments: more ambitious and more

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multi-voiced than ‘The Waste Land’. The fragments are given unity through a number of themes, which include the corrosive effect of usury; the presence and impulse of light; the breakdown of human aspiration and achievement; and the layering of history. There is counterpoint and inversion, marked by sudden shifts in tone, perspective, voice and style. Canto 1, with its Odyssean reference, is followed by the start of Canto II (1964: 10): Hang it all, Robert Browning, There can be but the one ‘Sordello’. But Sordello, and my Sordello? Lo Sordels si fo di Mantovana. So-shu churned in the sea.

The poem suddenly moves into a more colloquial, dialogic, conversational and rhetorical vein. There is more than one language at play. Browning’s nineteenth-­ century poem is set alongside Italian and Chinese cultural references. This is almost a process of association, except that the association is meaningful, cultural and layered. One of the keys to reading The Cantos is to accept that we are not reading a sequential narrative but rather a mosaic-like compilation. The metaphor for the structure is architectural, spatial. It disrupts sequential time in order to better illuminate correspondences between cultural moments and artefacts. At the level of the whole work, the structure suggests fugue even more clearly. The elements we still need to account for to cement the analogy are polyphony; inversion; modulation; recurrence of different forms; counterpoint; architectural form; and the more abstract notion of presence and absence. Polyphony is evident in the range of voices that exist in the text. Cryptically, in Canto XXVIII (1964: 143), there is a passage that demonstrates polyphony and which is typical of the fabric of the poem as a whole:  ‘Ce sont les vieux Marsouins!’  He made it, feitz Marcebrus, the words and the music,  Uniform out for Peace Day  And that lie about the Tibetan temple  (happens by the way to be true.  they do carry you up on their shoulders) but  Bad for his medical practice.  ‘Retreat?’ said Dr. Wymans, ‘It was marvellous…  Gallipoli…  Secret. Turks knew nothing about it.  Uh! Helped me to get my wounded aboard.’

The third person monologue which provides the ground for the poem sometimes shades into first person mode (as in the parenthesis on the quotation above) but is punctuated also with quotations – in this case, in French and English. The multi-­ voiced nature of the text is partly reflective of the fragmentation of sensibility and of the ‘poetic voice’. It is also indicative of polyphonic variation, multiple perspectives, diversity and polyrhythmicity.

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Inversion is less easy to identify in poetry. In the following extract from Canto CXIII (1970: 17), inversion takes the form of sudden contrast rather than contrapuntal structure:       No man can see his own end.  The Gods have not returned. “They have never left us.”      They have not returned.  Cloud’s processional and the air moves with their living.

These four lines are mirrored in the structure and composition of the poem as a whole, where despair, corruption and emptiness are highlighted by sections of limpid beauty. Notice also the rhythmic variation within the four lines, and the comparison with the rhythms in the extracts from Cantos I, II and XXVII above, as well as the interjected half-line, ‘They have never left us’, as if a voice comes in from a chorus and the repetition of ‘have not returned’. Often, in The Cantos, the overall structure of the poem is evident and mirrored in scaled-down form in a small cluster of lines. The third of the polyphonic elements that works both on a micro- and macro-­ scale is modulation. Modulation marks a change of key within a composition. As Apel notes (1970: 536), ‘Such changes are amongst the most common devices of harmonic variety and are found in practically every work of some length. For an effective modulation, the initial as well as the new key should be established by a cadence’. Here is an example, from Canto LXXXI (1970: 557), which requires a longer quotation to demonstrate the structural shift with the canto:     Pull down thy vanity  Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,  A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,  Half black half white  Nor knowst’ou wing from tail  Pull down thy vanity       How mean thy hates  Fostered in falsity,       Pull down thy vanity,  Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity,  Pull down thy vanity,       I say pull down.   But to have done instead of not doing       this is not vanity  To have, with decency, knocked  That a Blunt should open       To have gathered from the air a live tradition  or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame  This is not vanity.     Here error is all in the not done,   all in the diffidence that faltered.

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The modular shift is marked most obviously by a line break. The first strophe is iambic in rhythm in dimeters, trimeters, tetrameters and pentameters, syncopated by the half lines. The second is a freer form of rhythm: looser, more prosaic and less oracle-like in voice and tone. It picks up the refrain from the first strophe, ‘pull down thy vanity’, and inverts it to ‘this is not vanity’. It uses the lower-case beginning to lines two, six and nine to increase the flow, whereas the first strophe uses no such device. The first strophe’s longest line (line two) has ten syllables, whereas the second strophe has a least four lines of the same length or longer. This second stanza is thus more expansive. We cannot talk about harmonic key shifts in poetry as would be possible in music, but there is a definable cadence in the first strophe that both begins and ends the passage; and in the second strophe, the opening line begins on an offbeat in a more colloquial voice and continues its effect throughout the strophe while echoing the cadence of the previous strophe. We can see such modular gear changes not only between strophes within a canto but also between cantos. This canto to canto modularity has already been noted between cantos I and II but is evident in the moves between each of the 117 cantos. Recurrence of different forms is identifiable across the poem as a whole. For example, there are different forms of vers libéré and vers libre throughout (again, Cantos I and II provide the basis for such variation). There is the alternating indented line, providing structural syncopation, as in Canto II (1964: 11):  The ship landed in Scios     men wanting spring water

sometimes with a more accentuated run-on without the capital letter to start the indented line; sometimes with a capital, to arrest the rhythmic flow. This indented pattern appears frequently throughout the poem, for example, in Cantos III, IV, V and VI, and right up to the end as in ‘Notes for Canto CXVII et seq.’ (1970: 32):   That I lost my center    fighting the world1.

There is repetition of the Chinese style, sometimes in translation from Chinese classical poetry and sometimes in a westernized version of the classic Chinese form. Canto XLIX, for example, starts in such a form:  For the seven lakes, and by no man these verses:  Rain; empty river; a voyage;  Fire from frozen cloud, heavy rain the twilight   Under the cabin roof was one lantern.

1  I am grateful to Terry Locke for a perception about the ‘drop line’ as instanced here and in William Carlos Williams’ notion and practice of the ‘triadic line break’. He suggests that rather than indicating a ‘turn’ in free verse, the drop line suggests an additive extension, rhythmically, both spatially and in time.

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and continues in such mode for four strophes of different lengths before expanding into a brief discourse on poor management of the economy and then reverting to the simple, descriptive, elliptical, Buddhist-like (Taoist) mode. Throughout the poem, either in Chinese style or adopting that style to evoke a similar mood, there are passages that are striking in their beauty. Mostly they signify an aesthetic dimension, a place of peacefulness, beauty and order, in contrast to the more expansive diatribes or accounts of usury in the West. Forward motion has been discussed above in relation to Cantos I and II, but what of architectural design? In order to see this, there is a need to step back and consider the structure of the poem as a whole. In one sense, The Cantos are a loose sequence of 117 ‘songs’ suggesting the fragmentation of civilization and of consciousness. In another sense, they are a coherent edifice, part crumbling, part still intact, shot through with light. In this latter sense, they can be read in any order. The effect is more of collage and kaleidoscope than of narrative, symphony or other more cohesive and inclusive structures. The architecture of The Cantos is of grand design, intended as a map or metaphor for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In musical terms, it is a large work in 117 movements. In verbal terms, it is cacophonous in parts, full of improvisatory excursions, but ultimately coherent without being cohesive. Counterpoint is a principle writ large in the scheme. It has already been identified within and between lines and in the modulatory shifts between strophes. But as well as being a structural presence, it is also deep in the fabric of the voices that make up the poem: sometimes serene, sometimes aggressively challenging, sometimes declarative. Finally, what of the fugal elements of absence and presence which are the more elusive of the features? Ostensibly, in the surface text of the poem as a whole, there are moments, often at the end of cantos, where the language stops and there is a silent cliff-edge of expectation, of absence. Canto I (1964: 9) ends like this (‘So that:’) and may be seen as being picked up at the start of Canto XVII (1964: 80): ‘So that the vines burst from my fingers’. Canto II (1964: 14) ends with a short line, ‘And…’. Canto III (1964, 20) ends with ‘And we sit here…/there in the arena…’. Throughout, then, there is sense of incompletion. There can be no final word. One song leads to another or to others. One could say that the final line of The Cantos as a whole (though it comes at the end of ‘Notes for Canto CXVII et seq.’) – ‘To be men not destroyers’ – is the touchstone of the poem as a whole, as a humanist cry of appeal and hope. However, the overall structure of the poem argues against such a singularly thematic reading. One could say, more confidently, that the presence of many voices, the fugal complexity, the multi-levelled rhythms and the wide range of referencing and allusion in the poem invite the reader to provide the unifying themes of the poem, via their very absence. But such is true to any poem in any language or indeed to any work of art.

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6.7  Don Paterson’s The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre The Scottish poet, Don Paterson, has collected a series of essays on the poem in his 2018 collection, The Poem: Lyric, Sign, Metre (Paterson, 2018). The longest section of the book is devoted to ‘Metre: the Rhythm of the Poem’ and forms a treatise on rhythm and metre ‘from the ground up’ (2018: 350). Paterson’s deliberations on the question of rhythm are worthy of considered reflection, not least as his writing on the topic is informed by his practice as a poet as well as his insights as a critic and scholar. In terms of the focus of the current book on polyrhythmicity, a key insight is that sense as well as the perception of sound rhythms needs to be taken into account: Prosody describes a relationship between metre and sense-making, one in which they are taken to be inextricably connected. This symbiosis has consequences: because sense is infinitely multiple, being non-intrinsic and residing nowhere, it is ultimately subjective; this means that in its real-world performance, stress is not accurately quantifiable, as its relative strength from one syllable to the next depends on the local subjective interpretation of a fundamentally unstable sense. (2018: 343)

If prosodies are incomplete without the dimension of sense, then a more complete and subtle description of how rhythm works within a poem must take into account the level(s) of sense and contextual meaning that are implied and received. To explicate this notion further, it would seem that the ideas/feelings nexus in the poem has a rhythmic shape (or shapes) of its own, unquantifiable and yet operating in sequence and in time. Such a notion presents problems for prosodists who analyse the temporal relations as manifested in the words on the page or in the air. It would have to be accepted, then, that either prosody itself is limited in its interpretive capacity or that it must re-define itself to take into account the level(s) of sense in the poem and the ways in which it/they can change the nature of the perceived metrical/rhythmic whole. Furthermore, as Paterson suggests, the richer system ‘must also take into account the dynamic dimension of both the poet’s rewriting and the reader’s rereading, both of which further destabilise the stress pattern’ (ibid.) Paterson further develops the idea of ‘sense stress’: Sense stress is a prosody which […] operates at the level of phrase and sentence, and is performative: it describes the expressive way we stress written words while vocally performing them to make it clear to a listener that we have comprehended their full meaning, or that we wish to communicate a particular sense. It will also convey what we feel about what we are reading – in other words, it has an emotional as well as a semantic component. (2018: 356)

There is an interesting issue to unpack further here. Performativity is considered to be the vocal/oral delivery of a poem, as opposed to its presence in printed words on a page or in words on a screen. The wider reader-response sense of performativity is that a transaction takes place between the writer, text and reader, whereas Paterson appears to be distinguishing between the written/read and the spoken/ heard versions of the poem. If the basis of his conception of sense stress is performative in the sense that it is manifested vocally, then we can see that it is the

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performed poem that is the basis of the richer theory of prosody. From this perspective, the written poem, like that of a play, is a mere script or score. Whichever way we look at performativity (the nature and potential of performance, as well as the actual occasions of performance), the notion that ‘sense stress is primarily intonational in its properties, and ‘sits above’ a basic metrical scansion’ (2018: 356) is an exciting one and provides the extra level of composition and interpretation that polyrhythmicity requires. The rhythmic nature and experience of a poem will combine all these levels and not be confirmed to the metrical framework that might be suggested at one level of operation. However, Paterson explicates the tension between ‘the metre and lexical stress’ in a further short essay: My rough procedure is as follows. The metre is ‘decided upon’, and then indicated by marking strong positions with a/, and marking the position or medial point of the weak placeholders with an x or -x-; the metre is then compared to the actual line’s lexical stress; points of disagreement are registered; and then a sense-stress scansion is conducted. The result is a blueprint for performance which can and should be open to a variety of competent interpretations. (2018: 382)

Such an approach can work well for metrical verse; it will work less well for free verse where there is no ‘ghost of metre’ behind the lines and where additive rhythmic stress is more closely aligned to the lineaments of sense. Whereas Paterson is excellent on variations in duple and triple metre within a poem, and on variations to metre within the line as inflected by sense, the insights may not apply so well to vers libre as opposed to vers libéré. There is at least one further dimension that Paterson sheds light on: the paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations in poetry. The terms are borrowed from European/ American linguistics, where ‘vertical’ relationships (e.g. a noun can be replaced with another noun) operate on one axis and ‘horizontal’ relationships (e.g. syntactic) operate on another. Paterson (2018: 346–7) puts this more eloquently: the paradigmatic axis, the parallel rule of correspondence between things which governs our alternate choices, comparisons, lyric echoes, metaphors and so on, is developed along the axis of the syntagma, i.e. the serial rules whereby we combine words with other words along poetic sentences […] These ‘effects of equivalence’ might include rhyme, consonance, metricality, syntactic parallelism, and so on.

In poetry ‘we see horizontal structure with vertical depth’ and It would certainly be no surprise to see an increase not only in mere horizontal, tap-along presence of metrical rhythm, but also deep involvement of that rhythm in the vertical and recursive structuring of the very spaces it encloses. (2018: 347)

‘Space’ is a keyword here. The poem operates in a boxed ‘space’ on the page and in the air. Unlike written prose (with the exception of prose poems), it does not go up to the right-hand edge of the page but creates its own right-hand margin. In its written and printed forms, poetry invites closer attention than prose because (a) there is usually less of it;2 (b) its framing invites attunement to its individual words

 Except in epic and/or long poetry, where narrative bears the weight of structuration.

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as words, not just as clear windows on to experience; (c) its framing suggests the structure of feeling; and (d) we are expected to give each word more time and space in which to resonate (e.g. in re-readings, which happen more rarely in prose).3 On the question of re-reading, Paterson is also illuminating: an initial temporal reading in which the elements are absorbed in series, then a more spatial rereading, where – having been memorised – the elements can be reconnected in parallel. (2018: 450)

That ‘memorization’ need not be complete; indeed it is likely to desensitize the reader to the nuances of a multi-levelled reading of the poem. But that first reading does lay down a serial foundation for further layering of sense, correspondence and rhythm in subsequent readings. Paterson (2018) is also illuminating on the fact that ‘a number of successive lines will establish a convention’ (2018: 488). While not adopting all aspects of Paterson’s taxonomy of rhythm and metre (into ‘tight’, ‘loose’ and ‘light’ metres), the perception that ‘the first lines in the poem are especially important in announcing this convention: most poets who work in form intuitively understand that too much wild variation in the initial lines will mean that the frame will never be clearly projected’ (2018: 488). An analogy is evident in this respect between free jazz and free verse: both establish their own initial rhythmic template, whether they use conventional metres or create some new form of rhythmic phrasing. They key is that the pattern is repeated at least twice at the beginning of the composition. Once the pattern is established, variations on that pattern can be registered as variations rather than as confirmations of the template. It is to this extent that polyrhythmicity in poetry and jazz can acknowledge a ‘ghost’ behind the cadences and phrasing. However, this is not necessarily a ‘ghost of metre’ but a ghost of rhythmic patterning. ‘Ghost’ is, however, the wrong metaphor. The presence of the established rhythmic pattern does not hover like a ghost throughout the reading or performance of the piece. Rather, the pattern is that of a physical touchstone, a presence, a place to come back to for reference, for stability. This presence is one that considerations of form and expression have to take into account. Form provides a framework, a template. Any rigid adherence to form becomes mechanistic and ridiculous: almost a formal pastiche, and almost certainly uninteresting in terms of semantic expression (‘content’). The dynamic between form and content is therefore a live and negotiable one. Content is formless and uncommunicative without form; and form is empty without content. One last point in this section in relation to Paterson’s sense that beyond metrical reference there is little rhythmic shape: it is agreed that pure syllabics, for example, have little or no generative force as they lack the informing dimension of stress or beat. But ‘if successive lines are not heard to converge on something approximating

3  ‘In metrical English, more […] stress is introjected than in normal conversational English, and this gives a strong psychological impression that poetic language is relatively content-heavy, “dense with information”  – one of several factors that account for its famed “difficulty”’. (2018: 457)

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an even stress-distribution (i.e. if the metrical template can’t be projected), the result is soon perceived as free verse, unmetrical verse, or “doggerel”’. (2018: 508). There is a distinction to be made here between free verse that is rhythmically driven and free verse that is so loose as to approximate prose. Take these two short extracts from poems published in the London Review of Books in April 2020. The first poem, ‘The Reach of the Sea’ by Maureen N. McLane (2020), is in three sections: ‘Beach Rose’, ‘Have a Good Weekend’ and ‘Décharger’. Each section is written in prose. The beginning of the first section reads: A beach where dogs should be leashed but aren’t. Low tide strands the sea-weed and two dead seals no one can call to help. There’s no one to call for help.

There is no poetic rhythm to those opening lines, so no rhythmic template is established other than what we hear and read the text as prose. In effect, in genre terms, we read/hear the poem as a prose poem. Its poetic rhythms inhere in its tripartite structural shape at a higher level: the level of the paragraphs/stanza/strophe rather than of the line. By contrast, ‘Mayfly (Ephemera Danica)’ by Fiona Benson (2020) is based on what might be called staggered tercets. Like McLane’s poem, it is broadly structured into three sections (‘Subimago’, ‘Imago’ and ‘Spent’), but the opening lines are different:  Tomorrow’s dancer     on the water’s       sticky lip  hurrying out     of her husk –         a lush fluttering

This poem represents a different relationship with form. It is not a prose poem but rather a series of haikus. The opening stanzas establish a lightweight rhythm: not stress-based but suggestive of stress through their syllabic and visual shape. There is no regularity in the syllabic count; however the presence is more visual than phonemic or morphological. These opening stanzas establish the pattern for the entire poem.

6.8  Lombardo’s Translation of Iliad As well as the conventional analysis of the rhythms of the verse form, modified by the styles of different translators (on a spectrum from the poetic to the prosaic), Lombardo’s (1997) translation of Iliad uses rhythmic variation structurally to convey a difference in mood and also a metaphorical leap into analogy. For example, in Book 5 (1997: 87)

References

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 …Diomedes returned to the front.  He had been eager before to fight the Trojans  But now his fury was tripled.     A shepherd wounds a lion as he leaps a pen’s wall.     But far from being weakened, the lion     Gains in strength, and the unprotected flock     Is little more than a pile of bloody fleece     Before the angered lion leaps out again.  

So too Diomedes among the Trojans…

The rhythmic shift is not so much at the level of the line or the space/time between strophes but is doubly marked by the setting of the poem in print: first, by the indentation and second by the italicization. The move into metaphor – via an extended simile – marks a vertical shift into frames of reference; but the space/time shifts, even if they had not been metaphorical, have the same multi-rhythmic effect. Consider a different composition in which metaphor had not been used but the same rhythmic conventions had been observed:  …Diomedes returned to the front.  He had been eager before to fight the Trojans  But now his fury was tripled.     An ordinary soldier in the Grecian army     Might have felt the same passion     And held back from the fray, intensifies     His eagerness to join the action.     Frustration would have driven his anger  So too Diomedes among the Trojans…

The argument, to end this chapter, is that rhythmic variation is as powerful in affecting the emotional impact of writing in verse as are the conventional devices of metaphor and simile.

References Benson, F. (2020). Mayfly (ephemera danica). In London review of books, 42:8, 32 (16 April 2020). Bishop, E. (1983). The complete poems 1927–1979. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Culler, J. (2015). Theory of the lyric. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cureton, R. (2016). A reading in temporal poetics: Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘The map’. Style, 50(1), 37–64. Cureton, R. (2017). A reading in temporal poetics: Wallace Stevens’ ‘Domination of black’. Style, 51(4), 526–549. Frye, N. (1957). Anatomy of criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lombardo, S. (1997). The Iliad (S.  Lombardo, Trans.). New edition. Hackett Classics series. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co, Inc. McLane, M.N. (2020). ‘The reach of the sea’. In London review of books, 42:7, 30 (2 April 2020). Nowell-Smith, D. (2012). The art of fugue: Heidegger on rhythm. Gatherings: The Heidegger circle annual, 2, 41–64.

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Paterson, D. (2018). The poem: Lyric, sign, metre. London: Faber and Faber. Pound, E. (1964). The cantos of Ezra Pound. London: Faber and Faber. Pound, E. (1970). Drafts and fragments of cantos CX-CXVII. London: Faber and Faber. Scott, C. (1986). A question of syllables. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, E. (2018). The Odyssey – Homer (E. Wilson, Trans.). New York: W.W. Norton. Wordsworth, W. (1969). Wordsworth poetry & prose, selected by W.M. Merchant. London: Rupert Hart-Davis.

Chapter 7

Polyrhythmicity in the Novel

Abstract  Studies of time in the novel led to a burgeoning of narrative theory in the 1970s and 1980s. The principal drive of those studies was to reveal archetypal narrative patterns (starting with folk tales but applied to larger and more complex narratives in the novel) both in terms of the predictability of narrative development and also for structural insight. None of these studies addressed the rhythmic momentum of the novel form nor the multi-layered nature of the novel in terms of its arrangements of time. The present chapter shows how novels work differently from poems in their management of time: novels have the advantage of a larger, more social canvas on which to depict time relations. Poems tend to be concentrated, more concerned with the lyrical impulses of the present and closer to song and to embodying their expression. There are exceptions to the rule in both poetry and the novel, and these are explored too: the short poetic novel and the longer narrative or epic poem. Keywords  Narrative · Novel · Story · Time relations · Rhythm · Prose

7.1  Frye and Large-Scale Rhythms Frye’s (1957) setting of large-scale rhythmic patterns within rhetoric and a theory of genres is to be applauded for literary and socio-political purposes, but the conception of rhetoric is narrow: ‘ornamental speech and persuasive speech’ (1957: 245). What follows from this partial definition is a categorical association that ‘ornamental rhetoric is the lexis or verbal texture of poetry’ and that ‘most of the features characteristic of literary form, such as rhyme, alliteration, metre, antithetical balance, the use of exempla, are also rhetorical schemata’ (1957: 245). These assertions are accompanied by over-confidence: ‘there is little doubt that ornamental rhetoric…’. Actually, there is doubt. Reconfigurations of classical rhetoric need to be grounded in a more contemporary sense of rhetoric as the socio-political arts of discourse, whether they take literary form or not, and handled with a degree of tentativeness or scepticism because ‘we categorize at our peril’.

© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Andrews, Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6_7

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A fundamental example of mis-categorization is Frye’s use of the term ‘fiction’ as a meta-genre alongside drama, lyric and epic. All these three Greek-derived genres can be fictive as well as ‘real’. Pavel’s Fictional Worlds (1989) makes a better distinction, identifying fiction as degrees of possible worlds, removed from the ‘real world’ (which itself is one of the possible worlds that could be). If we were to add another meta-genre alongside the Greek trio of drama, epic and lyric, it would be to see them as modes rather than genres per se and thus to include the term ‘narrative’. Returning to the main theme of the present book, Frye sees rhythm as closely associated with his typology of genres. Epos is associated with a rhythm of recurrence; prose with a rhythm of continuity; drama with a rhythm of decorum; and lyric with a rhythm of association. It is important to consider these associations, as large-scale rhythms are key to our developing theory of polyrhythmicity and fugal form. In epos, ‘metre is an aspect of recurrence […] and recurrence is a structural principle of all art, whether temporal or spatial’ (1957: 251), and Frye sees and hears a four-beat line as the staple of English poetry, ‘corresponding to “common time” in music’ (1957: 255). Frye goes on: We are speaking now of epos or extended poetry in a continuous metre: the metre most closely analogous to such poetry is music in its more extended instrumental forms, in which the organizing rhythm has descended more directly from dance than from song. (ibid.)

The more succinct and incisive perception about poetry comes in a section on the ‘rhythm of continuity: prose’: In every poem we can hear at least two distinct rhythms. One is the recurring rhythm, which we have shown to be a complex of accent, metre, and sound-pattern. The other is the semantic rhythm of sense, or what is usually felt to be the prose rhythm. (1957: 263)

The remainder of the section on prose rhythm focuses only at the level of style: the balance between the rhythms of everyday spoken discourse and the constraints of written prose, as articulated by (Anglo-American male) writers throughout history. It does not address the larger rhythms in narrative fiction but merely characterizes the ‘continuous rhythms’ of prose as opposed to the ‘recurrent rhythms’ of poetry. For Frye, drama ‘is a mimesis of dialogue or conversation, and the rhetoric of conversation obviously has to be a very fluid one’ (1957: 269). This is another example of the authoritative literary-critical voice sliding from one category to another. It is a fluid one in Shakespeare; it is not so fluid in classical drama or in Racine, for example. The rhythm of association, linked with the lyric, is discussed in the previous chapter of the present book. What Frye offers us, some 60 or more years after the publication of Anatomy of Criticism, is a turning point in the history of genres. The offer is of a synthesis of classical and mid-twentieth century remodelling of the old categories at an abstract level that provides a framework for the analysis of multi-levelled rhythm in poetry and literature. Its narrow rhetorical conception, however, limits its application to a certain kind of Western canon and does not enable a connection between rhetoric as the socio-political arts of discourse and the rhythms of structural poetics. Rather, it sees art as ornament, as indirect speech between the artist and his or her audience.

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It unhelpfully opposes rhetoric as ornament from rhetoric as persuasion (one is a feature, the other a function, and both are sub-categories of rhetoric as a theoretical framework). A better foundation for an exploration of the function of multi-levelled rhythms in narrative is the work of the structural narratologists of the 1970s and the examination of actual stories and novels that embody complex time relations. In the rest of this present chapter, attention will turn to these theoretical and actual sources to shed light on polyrhythmicity in the literary arts.

7.2  Time Relations in Narratology Narratologists from the 1960s to the present have foregrounded narrative as a key organizing principle in reporting and even in the management and presentation of everyday life, as well as in fiction. The tradition of foregrounding literary narrative goes back at least to Bain (1867), who, in the tradition of rhetoric and belles-lettres, saw narrative composition as applying to ‘a succession of views, or to things changing from one phase to another, and to the stream of events’ (1867: 129). In a prescient passage (1867: 130), Bain describes how narrative has wide application: …even in many large operations, as in Government, there may be no more than a single thread to follow, the deliberations and dictates of one mind. But events of importance usually imply a mechanism and a set of arrangements, more or less complicated, and occupying a definite space; thus pre-disposing the means of Description. Such are – the movement of armies, and the occupation of new countries; the larger processes of industry; the busy life of cities; the workings of Nature on the great scale – the vicissitudes of the seasons, day and night, storms, tides and the flow of rivers; Geological changes; the evolution of vegetable and animal life. Narration, therefore, may have to put on the guise of a series of Descriptions.

In other words, in Bain’s taxonomy of meta-genres, narrative may subsume and incorporate description (but not necessarily evaluation), providing a larger mechanism for recording or presenting history, nature and civilization. In all cases of narrative, the principle of post hoc propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) obtains. Narrative, while appearing on the surface to relay a series of events or related phenomena, also fulfils the function of giving the narrative chain a causal or quasi-causal function. The arrangement of a narrative, whether in the form of a summary, a chronology, the linking of events or phenomena by a persona or narrative voice, presupposes some degree of causal connection. At the same time, and central to the thesis of the present book, narrative and narration exist in time. They re-arrange time. It would be hard to imagine a narrative existing in real time, except perhaps in 24 h live news coverage (an emerging narrative of events). By re-arranging time, narrative creates different time relations between its elements and thus sets up different rhythms, not only in relation to real time but also internally within the narrative (see the discussion of The Great Gatsby below).

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A seminal work on narrative morphology is Propp’s (1968) study of the morphology of the folktale. Following structuralist and formalist work on linguistics in France and Russia in the early 1920s (e.g. Saussure 1916), Propp brings two frames to bear on the analysis of folktales: the syntagmatic, tracing the horizontal, sequential pattern of folktales, and the paradigmatic, mapping the vertical, thematic patterns. The thematic dimension is of lesser interest than the syntagmatic as far as the present book is concerned, with the caveat that thematic analysis of tropes and patterns in folktales is seen to reflect patterns in social life via anthropological crossreferencing. It is the syntagmatic dimension that is more closely allied to temporal sequencing. Sequence, according to Propp, is fundamental: The sequence of events has its own laws. The short story too has similar laws, as do organic formations. Theft cannot take place before the door is forced. Insofar as the tale is concerned, it has its own entirely particular and specific laws. The sequence of elements…is strictly uniform. Freedom within this sequence is restricted by very narrow limits which can be exactly formulated. (1968: 10)

Although Propp’s work gave rise to a number of further studies in the second half of the twentieth century, it is of limited value in a developing theory of polyrhythmicity because of its rigid structuralist approach. It does not bring together the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic but rather sees these are formulae that have set patterns within which most (Russian) folktales operate. Because of its predominant thematic basis, it is, in the view of the present investigation, too culturally subjective to apply to a range of art forms and social situations or to the temporal relations that are accounted for in a polyrhythmic approach. Narrative, according to Labov and Waletzky (1997), writing a century later than Bain and 40 years after Propp, is evident in the oral versions of everyday experience told by ordinary people. From the perspective of their functional approach narrative will be considered as one verbal technique for recapitulating experience, in particular, a technique of reconstructing narrative units which match the temporal sequence of that experience…we will find that narrative which serves this function alone is abnormal: it may be considered empty or pointless narrative. Normally, narrative serves an additional function of personal interest determined by a stimulus in the social context in which narrative occurs. We therefore distinguish between two functions of narrative: (1) referential and (2) evaluative. (1967: 13)

A key question in Labov and Waletzky’s study is to determine the connection between the sequence of events to which the narrative refers and the sequence as recounted in the narrative. Again, as with Bain, the understanding is that narrative works to re-arrange temporal relations. As a form of artifice, it comes under the aegis of temporal poetics. Labov and Waletzky’s unit of analysis, unlike that of Propp’s (1968) taxonomy, is the clause. In such a taxonomy, ‘only independent clauses are relevant to temporal sequence. Subordinate clauses…may be placed anywhere in the narrative sequence without disturbing the temporal order of the semantic interpretation’ (1997: 21). Two such independent clauses ‘which are temporally ordered with respect to each other are said to be separated by temporal juncture’ (1997: 25). To further the definitional scope of their scheme, Labov and

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Waletzky suggest that ‘any sequence of clauses which contains at least one temporal juncture is a narrative’ (1997: 28). The notion of temporal juncture is important for the developing theory of polyrhythmicity. Juncture, or articulation (in the sense of joining of two parts), is key to the internal rhythmic phrase as well as to larger-scale fugal structures in rhythm. Furthermore, the developing theory moves beyond notions of ‘surface’ and ‘deep’ structures, as in the 1960s work of Chomsky, Labov, and others. They were concerned to show that syntactic and clausal forms in oral and written language were underpinned by deeper semantic and/or formal structures and ‘rules’. The tenor of the present book is to see the relation between at least two levels of description as complementary rather than hierarchical. Polyrhythmicity assumes that more than one rhythm is operating at the same time in many musical, fictive, dramatic and poetic works, as well as in social situations. Although, at any one time, one rhythm may be foregrounded, it does not follow that the work as a whole, or the social situation, is fixed. Critical studies in language have shown that power relations operate to give some elements of discourse a pre-eminent position in certain situations. Criticality can also be registered in the audience’s receptivity to a message. Because of narrative’s application in social situations as well as in fiction, oral storytelling, everyday discourse, historical accounts and other contexts, it provides an important framework via which to understand polyrhythmicity, alongside the musical principle of fugue. Whereas fugue consists of key elements such as polyphony, inversion, counterpoint, modulation, architectural structure and forward motion, the recurrence of different forms and the more abstract dualities of presence and absence, narrative provides a different and complementary set of operations. These include the orientation of person, place, time and behavioural situation; complication; evaluation; resolution; and coda (Labov and Waletzky 1997: 32–41). If we add the classical principle of narrative in terms of post hoc propter hoc, we add a causal dimension to narrative structures. It is crucial that fugue and narrative are brought together to shed light on temporal poetics and temporal relations in social situations. Researchers like Rumelhart (1975), Johnson and Mandler (1980), Bakhtin (1981) and Fisher (1987) have developed narrative theory in different ways, some developing further the Proppian line of structural accounts of narrative; others taking a more dialogic approach; and others claiming paradigmatic power for narrative. Rumelhart (1975) generates a number of syntactic grammar rules for narrative, with setting + episode as the basic structure. Already we can see an analogy with rhythmic pattern, in that setting is a static state of affairs, with episode establishing temporal relations. It is misleading, however, to call these syntactic relations, as the structuration is not at the level of the sentence but at a higher order in the description of language. The episode is divided into an event (or series of events) and reaction (either internal or overt), resulting in a change of state. Throughout, though not cited by Rumelhart, the suggestion is the classical post hoc propter hoc principle. Rumelhart himself admits that the grammar ‘has difficulty handling more complex multi-protagonist stories’ (1975: 234). Again, the analogy is with polyrhythmic structures in stories and the novel, where the top-down digraph tree-like structures

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depicted by Rumelhart do not account for the multiple perspectives and complex time relations in some narratives. Johnson and Mandler (1980) go some way to addressing the complexity but do so via the transformational grammar approach of underlying (‘deep’) and surface forms in stories. They thus use principles of sentence grammar projected on to the larger structures of narrative. It is a structural approach, based on Jakobson’s (1945) claim that ‘language patterns exhibit a consistent regularity. The languages of the whole world manifest a paucity and relative simplicity of structural types’ (1945: 640). These structures are transformed to account for the complexities of actual narrative patterns. Johnson and Mandler approach the problem from the perspective of cognitive psychology, suggesting that ‘one becomes familiar with the sonata form or the format of a folktale through listening to many symphonies [sic] or hearing many tales’ (1980: 52) which create patterns of expectation or conceptually driven processing. But the assumption that sentence structures can provide a template for narrative structures, and furthermore that narrative structures are more limited than sentence structures, thus allowing ‘a relatively small set of schemata to direct comprehension and retrieval in a top-down fashion’ (1980: 55) is hopeful rather than proven. Johnson and Mandler are aware of the tenuous connection between the two levels of discourse. For both Rumelhart (1975) and Johnson and Mandler (1980), digraph tree structures are used to convey the top-down connectedness of the elements of story structure. This is where their usefulness in accounting for polyrhythmicity in temporal relations in narrative is limited. There is insufficient space for consideration of horizontal and coincident (multi-levelled) temporal relations. The applicability of their approaches is also constrained by the acceptance of a Chomskyan distinction between competence and performance, necessitating a series of ‘transformations’ via which the deeper structures of language are translated into the surface manifestations of speech or writing.

7.3  Beyond Bakhtin A different approach to accounting for the rhythmic complexity of the novel is proposed by Bakhtin (1981). Although the approach is characterized as ‘structural’ (‘the basic structural characteristics of this most fluid of genres’ (1981: 11)), it is not the same kind of structuration as that of the transformational grammarians. Instead, the approach to the novel is based on three basic characteristics: 1. Its stylistic three-dimensionality, which is linked with the multi-languaged consciousness realized in the novel 2. The radical change it effects in the temporal coordinates of the literary image 3. The new zone opened by the novel for structuring literary images, namely, the zone of maximal contact with the present (with contemporary reality) in all its open-endedness (1981: 11)

Of these three characteristics, it is the second and third that most concern us in the developing theory of polyrhythmicity. Bakhtin explicates these two by

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comparison with the epic. He suggests that the epic valorizes and enshrines the past, creating an ideal world of honour and experience in which the present, contemporary world cannot but be seen as diminished. The novel, on the other hand, with its multiple voices and perspectives, its framing of past and future, its shifting narratorial positions and its attention to detail (inner/psychological and/or external), provides us with an opportunity to see the present through a complex refracting lens. We see ourselves more readily via the novelistic form; we are invested, either by putting ourselves in the role of the main protagonist, or through the eyes of another character, or perched on the shoulders of any of the characters – we are thus closer to the action than via the lens of epic, which shows the action as existing in the distant past. The multiple framing that the novel affords is both philosophical (possible worlds) and sociological. Interpreting Bakhtin’s notion of the ‘temporal coordinates of the literary image’, we can conceive of the novel as an arrangement of ‘images’ (characters, events) within a frame. The temporal coordinates define how long the action takes place, whether it is framed itself within a more extensive temporal context, how characters experience and navigate the temporal landscape and how the whole set of temporal relations applies to our own worlds, as well as having its own internal dynamics. Where the present book departs from Bakhtin’s theory is in his conception of the rhythm of poetic genres, which Bakhtin positions as different from the way the novel works. In a sense, he uses poetry to highlight the characteristics of the novel. Thus Bakhtin suggests that: the very rhythm of poetic genres does not promote any appreciable degree of stratification [i.e. social differentiation]. Rhythm, by creating an unmediated involvement between every aspect of the accentual system of the whole…destroys in embryo those social worlds of speech and of persons that are potentially embedded in the word: in any case, rhythm puts definite limits on them, does not let them unfold or materialize. Rhythm serves to concentrate even further the unity and hermetic quality of the surface of poetic style, and of the unitary language that this style posits. (1981: 298)

While the current chapter is not the place for a lengthy defence of the heteroglossic nature of poetry, it must be said that Bakhtin’s distinction between poetry and the novel is an inaccurate and unhelpful one. Poetry can just as well embody the many voices and languages of a polygot world (cf. Eliot, Pound) as the novel; it does not ‘destroy’ the social worlds of speech but rather condenses them into a tighter rhythmic design; and through the depiction of a range of voices, either in poetry as a whole or within a particular style of poetry, it can represent the immediacy of ‘voice’ and of ‘voices’ as well as a novel or play. Bakhtin appears to have built this part of his argument on a narrow foundation. The novelist does not take ‘a completely different path’ from the poet (1981: 298). Both welcome ‘the heteroglossia and language diversity of the literary and extraliterary language into [their] own work, not only weakening them but even intensifying them’ (ibid.) It is an odd lacuna in Bakhtin’s argument that he sees rhythm as internally unifying in poetry and therefore obliterating the diversity of heteroglossia and even the ‘socio-ideological horizons (big and little worlds) that open up behind heteroglot languages’ (ibid.) Such a position also has the effect of

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downplaying the rhythmic relations in the novel, which operate to manage the experience of time for the reader. Both poet and novelist can also incorporate ‘double-voicedness’ into their work, not only in a monologically and rhythmically constraining way in poetry but, as in the novel, in full recognition of the generative complexity of everyday discourse. Such acknowledgement of dialogism in poetry as well as in the novel not only connects the liveliness and richness of heteroglossia to the framing of all the verbal arts; it also admits rhythmic complexity to all these arts. One can characterize Bakhtin’s take on poetry to be one that sees poetry as a diction, a seemingly single-voiced selection of the language rich in symbolism and metaphor. This is a highly partial and limited view of the language of poetry. The premise is a flawed one: ‘If the central problem in poetic theory is the problem of the poetic symbol, then the central problem in prose theory is the problem of the double-voiced, internally dialogized word, in all its diverse types and variants’ (1981: 330). Neither ‘central problems’ are sufficiently valid to apply to a wide range of poetry or the novel; and the connecting ‘then’ is a non sequitur.

7.4  An Example: The Great Gatsby Novels, even though they are highly wrought art forms, are more naturally open to the elements of multi-levelled rhythms and of fugue than many other verbal art forms, with the exception of plays. They play with and manipulate time. They are polyphonic, on the whole. They use inversion, modulation, forward narrative motion, recurrence of motifs or of social patterning (and divergence from these patterns). They create possible worlds in which these and other elements combine. They use counterpoint (rhythmic, thematic and character-based) to modulate time. Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1950) is a superb example of such temporal poetics. We learn, at least on a second reading, that the narrator, Nick Carraway, starts the narration of the novel after the actual events that are recorded in the novel. Moreover, he is reflecting on his own past, way before the events that he is about to narrate: In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. (1950: 7)

The time frame of the narrator is different from the time frame in which the events of the story take place. The narrator sees the bigger picture; he learns from the events of the story that he is about to tell and is a sadder and wiser man as a result. His narrative frame is from childhood through to the middle years and beyond: at the end of the novel he contemplates ‘tomorrow’ and indeed death in due course, setting his life and the life of the main protagonist of the story, Jay Gatsby, into a wider humanist context. These two large-scale temporal rhythms  – that of Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby – provide the multi-levelled rhythms of the novel. Nick’s is more laid back,

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more circumspect, more distanced; Gatsby’s is more intense, more desperate, more compressed. This is not just a matter of tempo but of how the events are lined up in a rhythmic sequence. Such different rhythms are also reflected in the style of narration: Nick’s is punctuated with descriptive passages which provide either historical background or commentary or present description. Most of his narration is in the past tense, whereas the dialogue he reports is avowedly in the present: foregrounded, urgent. From the opening reflections on his own past on the context of his present job as a ‘bond man’ in New York and his rented house at West Egg on Long Island, the shift into the present world of the characters he describes takes place ‘on a warm windy evening’ (1950: 12) in summer when he ‘so happened…to drive over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all’. These are Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Here the novel moves into reported dialogue, and in a sense, a new rhythm of interaction begins through conversation. The conversation is staccato: brief interchanges, mostly social repartee but sometimes revealing a glimpse of depth, of emptiness. To indicate a pause in the narration, a break in time and a change of scene within the house, an asterisk is used, like a pause between movements in a musical composition or between strophes in a poem. At the end of the action as he drives away, the narrator reflects on his trip over to the larger mansions of East Egg, on his evening with the Buchanans and on the elusive Jay Gatsby who seems, at the end of the opening chapter, to be distilled in Nick’s imagination into ‘a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness’ (1950: 28). The beginning of the second chapter provides a counterpoint to the setting of the first. Halfway between West Egg and New York (Manhattan) is ‘a valley of ashes’ (1950: 29): a bleak area where the landscape and people that work and inhabit it are grey. The whole is presided over by ‘the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg’ (ibid.), an ironic quasi-god-like advertising sign. In due course, this landscape and two of the characters that reside it in – the Wilsons – prove the setting for a pivotal part of the story. These three locations – the Eggs, the valley of ashes and Manhattan – provide the three main settings for the action, within the wider context of the Midwest of the USA (where Nick, Daisy and Gatsby grew up) and Europe. These settings are not only geographical; they are also temporal settings, with the wider context providing the background of the past and the narrower settings in greater New York providing the setting for the summer of action that is re-told in the story. The story thus unfolds. Chaps. 3, 4, and 5 convey the action at Gatsby’s parties, including Nick’s perspectives on Gatsby through the eyes of Jordan Baker and Meyer Wolfsheim; Chap. 6 brings to a head the relationship between Gatsby and Daisy, including reference to their past. It has the arresting reflection from Nick: Through all he said, even through his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something – an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted like a dumb man’s, as though there was more struggling on them than a wisp of startled air. But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable forever. (1950: 118) [my italics]

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This ‘elusive rhythm’ is a rhythm of harmony, of perfection, of the spheres and the order they suggest – not quite heard, not communicable, but present in human relations. It’s a Platonic rhythm and might be seen as the primum mobile which triggers Nick’s need to tell the story and to reflect on it for his and our purposes. So, at the very least, there are three rhythms at play in the novel as framed by Nick: the elusive rhythm; the rhythm of narration, firmly framed within the past and the future; and the rhythms of the moments that make up the story and the plot of the novel. This chapter describes a fateful trip into Manhattan from East Egg. There is movement between description of the action and dialogue, on the one hand, and reflection from Nick on the circumstances of the trip. Matters come to a head in Manhattan between Gatsby and Tom when they confront each other and then spiral downwards as Myrtle Wilson is hit and killed by the car on the return to East Egg. The chapter is pivotal in terms of the plot and of the unfolding of the tragic romance. It is punctuated by asterisks, between filmic pauses in the narration as the perspectives are explored. The following chapter is largely third-person reportage of meetings with Gatsby and reflections by Nick. Again, asterisks are used to punctuate the narrative, providing time shifts and episodes. The action take place over an evening and the next day. The chapter is divided into seven sections. Those sections provide both chronological and simultaneous episodes, complete with past histories that inform the actions of the characters. Time and time relations become an aspect of character. Daisy, for example, seems oblivious to time, above it in her conservative bubble. Gatsby is consumed by the past. Wilson seems impelled to action (shooting Gatsby) on a short-circuited logic (a logic in time as well as space and action) that attributes blame to Gatsby rather than to Daisy for the murder of his wife, Myrtle. Nick continues on his trajectory, linking the past to the future for his own sake as well as that of reportage via the story that he tells. Chapter 9 starts with ‘After two years, I remember the rest of that day, and the night and the next day…’ (1950: 170). Memories of those days after the murder of Gatsby are recorded precisely: ‘I think it was on the third day that a telegram…arrived from a town in Minnesota’ (1970: 173), and on the day of the funeral ‘A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived…The minister looked several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it wasn’t any use. Nobody came’ (1970: 181). In the end, the narration moves back to Nick’s childhood in the Midwest and then to tying up loose ends in New York: cursory meetings with Jordan and with Tom. The final reflections are made at Nick’s departure from West Egg and from the scene of the story, throwing us back with him to a more distant past: I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes – a fresh, green breast of the new world…for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder. (1970: 187-8)

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Finally, in pursuit of ‘the orgastic future’: So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. (1970: 188)

What is striking about this novel is the conscious ways in which it plays with time and with our own conceptions of the unfolding narrative. The composition of the sentences, of the sections and of the chapters in the work as whole operates in a complex of time rhythms. Past, present and future are separate entities, but interlocked. Actions sometimes move fast within a particular time frame; at other times movement slows down to inaction. It could be said that the novel is as much about the human condition in multiple time frames as it is about the individual trajectories of the characters. There is both verticality in the composition of the novel and the more conventional horizontality of actions taking place in a chronological time frame. The tragedy of the story is in the disjuncture between different rhythms, only falling into harmonic relation at particular moments and then only fleetingly.

7.5  Narration as a Human Paradigm? Fisher (1984), from a rhetorical perspective, sees narrative as having a key role in the way people account for and recount their lives and also as a means to argue positions. In a rational universe, he therefore sees narrative as playing as significant a role as argument in the firmament of meta-genres, and in the operation of reason. Such ‘a conception of rationality based on narration’ (1987: 58) must therefore accept the temporality of reason and argument. To link this thesis more closely to that of the present book, the temporal time relations and complex cross-rhythms of narration are worthy of consideration in mapping not only the rhythmic structures of fiction but also of social relations. If, as Fisher suggests (and even if we do not accept the full version of his notion of narrative as a human paradigm), narrative patterns determine the shape and characters of argumentation, everyday discourse, dialogism and other framings of communication, then it follows that a fuller understanding of the rhythmic relations of narrative can contribute to our understanding of how communication works. None of the academic authors cited in this chapter have looked closely at the temporal relations within narrative. Bakhtin comes closest, but his analysis is skewed by his partiality with regard to poetry and poetics. The ideology underpinning the work of the structuralist narratologists is that of a theory of syntax; the ideology behind Bakhtin and Eagleton is neo-Marxist; and Fisher’s position is the natural end-point of decades of celebration of narrative form. None of these perspectives looks for an analogy between temporal relations in poetry or narrative with music; and only the neo-Marxist position sees a close link between everyday discourse and that of the arts. The position of the present book is to see narrative, particularly as it takes shape in the form of the novel, as a means to an end rather than as a human paradigm. That is to say, it is a device for managing time and one which, because of the complexity

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of most novels, manages a range of views of time, both for the characters within it and for the reader. Every narrative creates a frame; it is the result of an act of framing rather than the imposition of a pre-existing frame. The very act of framing separates a period of time from the flow of experience and certainly from the metronomic or circadian models of time. Once that framing has taken place, there is an interplay of different rhythmic relations within the frame.

7.6  ‘Difficult Rhythm’ Fillion (2010) explores the notion of ‘difficult rhythm’ in E.M. Forster’s work, suggesting that it constitutes the architecture of emotion that underpins the whole novel – a kind of resonance beyond the actual words. This might also be termed the ‘structure of feeling’, particularly important to an aesthetic or literary metaphysics that sees the writing and reading of large-scale narratives like novels as liberating. The liberation takes the form of an understanding and then release from the words themselves, and indeed from the real-world phenomena that they signify, to an ethereal level of consciousness. The transport to such a level is effected not by the words but by the spaces between words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters. Such a conception sees the novel as a verbal equivalent of the symphony: both require the orchestration of time in order to transcend time. Forster himself was critical of Proust’s A la Recherche du Temps Perdu because of its perceived chaotic structure. We can take this to be a critique of the lack of a clear chronological or even narrative line. But he considered the work redeemed by its internal rhythms which managed time. In Chap. 11 of the present book, the notion of ‘subjective time’ is critiqued for being too binary (in relation to ‘objective time’) and too simplistic a conception; but from the novel’s point of view, a work which traces or embodies the narrator’s or protagonists’s experiences in and of time is likely to be at the subjective end of the time spectrum. From Forster’s point of view, such rhythms were made up of repetition plus variation. For Forster, as for many verbal or musical artists, the aim of the art is to compose a work that does not directly describe the ethereal greater pattern or design that they wish to convey but which suggests it. Rhythm is not a metaphor for this indescribable otherness; rather, it is a scaffold or framework by which the other plane is reached. So that the effort is not seen as a mystical or arcane art, rhythm is proposed as the ‘architecture’ of the higher plane of existence and experience. Thus, in more general terms, multi-levelled rhythms which operate within the same time-frame, whether in African drumming and singing, in Europeans novels or in large-scale orchestral works, work towards a delineation of silence. Through their arrangements of time, they transcend time. The conception of time to which they aspire is not a singular grand design of a clockwork universe presided over by a single deity. Rather it depicts an overarching – or underpinning, according to your preferred metaphor – ontology that is made up of polyrhythmic relations, defining humankind’s relationship to time.

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References Bain, A. (1867). English composition and rhetoric: A manual. New York: Appleton. Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press. Fillion, M. (2010). Difficult rhythm: Music and the word in E.M.  Forster. Urbana/Chicago/ Springfield: University of Illinois Press. Fisher, W. (1984). Narration as a human communication paradigm: The case of public moral argument. Communication Monographs, 51(1), 1–22. Fisher, W. (1987). Human communication as narration: Toward a philosophy of reason, value and action (Studies in rhetoric and communications). Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Frye, N. (1957). Anatomy of criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Johnson, N. S., & Mandler, J. M. (1980). A tale of two structures: Underlying and surface forms in stories. Poetics, 9, 51–86. Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1997). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. Journal of Narrative & Life History, 7(1–4), 3–38. Pavel, T. G. (1989). Fictional worlds. Boston: Harvard University Press. Propp, V. (1968). Morphology of the folk tale. Translation the American Folklore Society and Indiana University, 1968  – Accessed December 2018 at http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/ propp.pdf Rumelhart, D. (1975). Notes for a schema for stories. In Language, thought and culture: Advances in the study of cognition (pp. 211–235). New York: Academic Press. Saussure, F. (1916). Cours de linguistique générale, eds. Charles Bally and Alert Sechehaye, with the assistance of Albert Riedlinger. Lausanne/Paris: Payot. Scott Fitzgerald, F. (1950). The Great Gatsby. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Chapter 8

Polyrhythmicity in Social Situations

Abstract  The principal theory drawn upon in this chapter is framing, deriving first from Bateson’s A Theory of Play and Fantasy: steps to an ecology of mind (1954) but gaining most traction through Goffman’s Frame Analysis (1974). Since then, framing as a rhetorical device (in contemporary rhetoric) or as a principle behind schemata in the social sciences has been a powerful means of looking at social relations as a well as at the social informing of composition and reception in the arts. Applying framing to poly- and multi-levelled rhythms in the arts and social situations provides a new means of understanding rhythm and its functions. As well as framing, other considerations in the social dimension of rhythm are addressed. These include chronosociology; symphonic rhythms; the dissonance between global and local rhythms; rhythms in work situations; and the application and use of rhythms in sport. Keywords  Framing · Rhythm · Social schemata · Workplace rhythms · Sport

8.1  Introduction A person wakes up from a sleep that has been based on 3 h cycles. He/she went to sleep at about 11 pm in chronological time, after a flight from London to Shanghai that took him/her across several times zones to a zone that was 7 h ahead of London time. In effect, 2 short days had ensued, followed by a habitual time for sleep at about 11 pm. On waking up from three cycles, each of them different but in unconscious state, the clock (Shanghai time) indicates it is 6 am. There is plenty of time until an appointed meeting at 9 am for breakfast ahead of a conference launch at 11 am. Shaking off jet-lag with a swim in the hotel pool, he/she listens to music in his/her room: the music is jazz fusion, heavily percussive, multilevelled in its own right. Breathing more steadily now after the morning exercise, the meditative state sets in for a concentrating of perceived time, of the Western notion of past, present and future, into maintaining, as much as possible, a state of being in the present. It is not entirely possible because of the distractions of thoughts, ambient sounds from the street and the residual sounds of the music that had been playing. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Andrews, Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6_8

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At breakfast, there are the ritual rhythms of the day beginning. The social ritual of breakfast, conversation with a colleague, the to-ing and fro-ing of semi-formal conversation…but there is another meeting at 9 am at a location that requires a subway ride across the city. Calculating back from 9 am, it requires a departure for the hotel at 8.15 am. On the Shanghai subway, thousands of people are moving in a range of direction to meet appointed work commitments or other social engagements… This is a global example of multiple periodicities in the carrying out of work and life, pre-COVID but also once COVID is controlled more fully. There are biological rhythms in the form of circadian patterns of sleep. These are disrupted by international flight travel, requiring the movement between different time zones as well as the rapid movement from 1 day to the next via a short night on a plane. Throughout the flight, arrival and engagement for the meeting the next morning, personal rhythms encounter societal rhythmic demands. All this is overseen by global clock time which enables the formal social encounters to take place.

8.2  Chronosociology Sociologists customarily think about social structures in a continuous present; they do not, on the whole, cover historical dimensions to social change. These divisions are reinforced by university departments of sociology and history, but time-related social patterns and practices exist and are a subject of study: chronosociology (see Young and Schuller 1988), the study of ‘the rhythms of social institutions and processes’ (1988: 13). Young and Schuller quote I.A. Richards on rhythm to support their idea that rhythm in society ‘is a matter of the interplay of between repetition and surprise’ (ibid.): Rhythm, and its specialized form, meter, depend upon repetition and expectancy. Equally where what is expected recurs and where it fails, all rhythmical and metrical effects spring from anticipation. As a rule, this anticipation is unconscious […] it is in the terms of the variation in these twists that rhythm is to be described…The texture of expectations, satisfactions, disappointments, surprisals, which the sequence of syllables brings about, is rhythm. (1925: 134–7)

The integration of smaller-duration daily rhythmic patterns into a larger structure – similar to the micro-rhythms that make up a polyrhythmic, fugal structure in music – is a sociological/historical phenomenon, complicated by the fact that different people perceive rhythms and rhythmic relations differently. This fugal conception of time assumes an overall coordination and harmony if the different rhythms are not seen to be disjunctive. But such harmony is not necessarily seen to be the driving force or primum mobile from a Marxist or neo-Marxist perspective. If time is a social construct, and if industrial clock time is seen to be a way in which society is premised upon work, then time becomes a commodity. As Giddens puts it (1981: 118–19):

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The underlying constitutive component of both goods and labour that permits their common existence as interchangeable commodities, according to Marx, is time […] Units of time are what make the value of commodities divisible and quantifiable. The quantification of time is thus the very foundation of the universalising character assumed by the exchange of commodities. In economic calculation, accounting, and so on, commodities are transformed into quantitative measures on paper. On paper, Marx says, this process proceeds by mere abstraction; but in the real exchange process, a real mediation is required, a means to accomplish this abstraction.

We have here a similar relationship to that between rhythm and metre. Metre is quantifiable, metronomic, divisible; rhythm is additive and requires mediation between musicians in a group and between the performance and the audience. Clock and metronomic or digital time is associated with capitalism, alienation and an abstraction via ‘temporal reduction’ from the drives, pleasures and patterns of personal life. In terms of polyrhythmicity, the strict distinction between metre and rhythm is a simple categorization that only provides two or at most three levels of rhythmic relations: that between regulated metrical time and rhythmic time and an in-­between state captured by the concept of vers libéré in poetics: verse liberated from the strictures of metre. Polyrhythmicity, however, does not subscribe to a Romantic or Marxist set of dualities. Its very nature is to explore varying levels of rhythm and how they interrelate. Chronosociology, or the sociology of time, is concerned with ‘the sociotemporal order, which regulates the life of social entities such as families, professional groups, religious communities, complex organisations, or even entire nations’ (Zerubavel 1981) rather than with archaeology, history, biology or geology, all of which address time in different disciplinary ways. Furthermore, sociologists of time address collectivities rather than the ways in which individuals perceive time. Nevertheless, the listing of these different approaches to time indicates that polyrhythmic studies of time relations are complex and multi-factoral. If the present book concentrates on the different perspectives of music, literature, communication and societal imperatives, it is to shed light on the interrelationships between these in order to understand better how polyrhythmicity works. Zerubavel (1981: 1) identifies four dimensions of social temporality: sequential structure, duration, temporal location (when events take place) and rate of recurrence. Of particular interest to the present book is his distinction between the ‘ground’ of expectation in terms of timing and the ‘figure’ of what actually happens to fulfil or defeat expectation. Such a perception is analogous to the relationship between metre and rhythm in poetics or ground and melody in music.

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8.3  Sociology of Rhythm Studies in the sociology of rhythm include Lyon (2017), who compares a study of Billingsgate fish market in London, represented through an audio-visual montage based on time-lapse photography and sound recordings on the one hand, with ‘a short ethnographic film about the everyday life of a fish market in Sardinia’ on the other. One must remember, however, that both locations are presented via media and modes that themselves have strong editorial influence and that the very editing or time compression (as in time-lapse photography), not only of the visual but also of the aural elements, may have also contributed to the senses of rhythm and rhythmic variation. Lyon refers to Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis (2004) as background theory to her studies. Part of Lefebvre’s contribution to studies of multiple rhythms is his insistence that as well as the spatio-temporal axes in which rhythms manifest themselves in contemporary urban existence, cognisance must be made of the physical presence of the receiver/perceiver of those rhythms. In other words, multiple rhythms do not exist outside us but are experienced and perceived as rhythms by our physical reception/perception of them in relation to our own rhythmic identities and consciousness. He also posits a number of different polyrhythmic relationships, including arrhythmia (dissonance between rhythms); polyrhythmia (the topic of the present book and simply the co-occurrence of two or more rhythms); eurhythmia (where the co-existence of rhythms is complementary); and isorhythmia (where rhythms are entirely coincident). As an example of polyrhythmicity in everyday life, consider the following self-­ reflexive account of a day: I woke at 2.30 am as my wife and I noticed that our 3-year old granddaughter, sleeping in the next room, had awoken, possibly with an unsettling dream. She seemed half-asleep as we took turns to sit by her bedside. Eventually, she fell back to sleep. We woke to an alarm clock at 6.45 am. My wife instantly got up to assist our daughter with her 3-month old baby who was ready for a morning feed. I got up a little more slowly, not so triggered by a baby’s cry but by the need to clear the kitchen and make it ready for breakfast as well as join a 7.45 am queue to secure an appointment at the local doctor’s surgery. Each of us (my wife, our daughter and her two children) both then started the day, each on our own tracks. Mine was divided into three sections: a morning in which I concentrated on the writing of this book (punctuated by a trip into town to pick up my daughter and her children); an afternoon in which I caught up with the asynchronous and staccato nature of emails in my inbox; and a late afternoon and evening ruled by the clock, in which I attended the doctor’s appointment and then drove 28 miles to catch an evening train to Edinburgh.

This brief account does not even include the different rhythmic patterns of the day for my wife, daughter and her children, which, though driven primarily by the non-metronomic but habitual demands of the children for feeding, play and sleeping, also included an accompanying car drive to the railway station and management of a gardening project at our house (for my wife) but an evening social occasion with a friend (for my daughter). What strikes me about the polyrhythmic nature of

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the day for each individual as well as for the group as a whole is the need for balance, coordination and orchestration. The balance is the aimed-for state of equilibrium that can occur when the various rhythms of the day work together (as in eurythmia, defined above) and do so without friction or tension. Attaining such balance is a matter of good management: predicting the moments of competing demands; interspersing periods of intense activity with those of a less intense nature; being aware of the polyrhythmic nature of everyday existence; and being able to manage these different rhythms. Coordination is a matter of working with others to ensure that individuals’ different experience of and perceptions of rhythmic insistence are complementary. Orchestration is the higher art, based on balance and coordination, but adding a dimension to activity so that each section of the day, and each demanding rhythm, is brought into a positive and harmonic relationship. In each of these aspects of managing the different and complex interrelating rhythms of the day, my own priority was to maximize the quality of attention, so that the overall economics of attention during the day was both determined by, and suited, the task that I was engaged with. I fully realize that this account is a personal one for a particular day and does not reflect a typical day in the life, nor a day for others in my family or beyond, where the complex external demands on time and concentration may be greater.

8.4  Symphonic Rhythms Adam (1998) suggests that ‘growing, healing and self-renewal’  – aspects of the natural world – ‘require a conceptual shift from structure to rhythm’ (1998: 215): Living beings, unlike machines, display rhythmicity not only within the organism but also in their interaction with the environment. While rhythmicity is displayed at every level of nature, it is, however, the coming together of a multitude of different rhythms into a whole ‘symphony’ that distinguishes living organisms from rhythmically oscillating molecules, for example.

In the example of the arrival in Shanghai, there is no such symphony of rhythms but rather a discordant or dysrhythmic concatenation. The difference in seeing the possibilities of symphonic rhythms and dysrhythmic ones is a difference in ontological approach to personal and societal perspectives. It would be possible to coordinate rhythms from a personal perspective to navigate through a complex day in the post-industrial world. To do so would require a perspective above that of rhythmic complexity: the overarching harmony or symphony of time relations. For living beings to attain such symphonic rhythmicity implies a degree of control over societal demands, and thus an elite position in which there can be such a degree of control. The prospect is unrealistic for most of us.

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8.5  Dissonance Between Global Time and Local Rhythms Although the distinction between globalized, regularized time (albeit in different times zones around the world which correspond to the movement of the Earth in relation to the sun) and localized personal and social rhythms is the major disjunct in time relations, this distinction depends on the cultural interpretation of past, present and future. The very formula of ‘past-present-future’ assumes a linear view of time: metaphorically, at any present moment, the past stretches behind us and the future in front of us. In other cultures and states of mind, the ‘eternal present’ subsumes the ‘past’ and ‘future’: the metaphor is less like a journey and more like a pattern of actual (remembered) experience and imagined (projected) experience. Such considerations belong to anthropological and cross-cultural investigation, but these overlap with sociological exploration of the distinction between habitual and conscious time patterns and rhythms in relation to societal demands (Gosden 1994). It is possible to see, within social groups where work time has not decreased in the latter half of the twentieth and first quarter of the twenty-first centuries, but where the demands of work have intensified through a combination of compliance matters, individualization of responsibility for navigating digital platforms, that the disjunct between personal rhythms and societal rhythms has increased. Such disjuncts may have resulted in increased concern for the mental health and wellbeing of workers who find it difficult to maintain a balanced work-life pattern under increasing work pressure.

8.6  Reflections on Workload Management The impossibility of perfect coordination of individual and institutional demands can be seen in the example of workload management systems. These systems attempt to quantify elements of work, attributing tariffs to different activities so that a numeric calculation of overall workload per individual can be arrived at for equity purposes and for the fair distribution of the work of an organization. In one of the higher education institutions in which I have worked, the best model of workload allocation calibrated teaching, teaching design, marking, supervision, research, administration, attendance at committees, consultancy time, professional development time and other facets of work to a tariff with units of hours or days (7.5 h = 1 day). This was a relatively fine-grained system, based on a thorough survey of all the roles and activities in the higher education institution in question. Other institutions have more broad-brush systems, increasingly dependent on collegiate consensus. Overall, there is a spectrum of such systems, from the extremely fine-grained to the very broad brush in which there is no numerical calculation of the division of work. There is no perfect system, because work tasks and individual interpretations and practices cannot be tightly calculated. The value of systems that find a balance

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between collegiate concerns, on the one hand, and fine-grained calculation of tariffs, on the other, is that they can provide a means to support managers in making equitable and reasonable judgements about workload.

8.7  Work and Rhythm In a 2016 article, Dobler argues that ‘anthropology has much to gain by taking rhythm seriously as an analytical category’ (2016: 864). He goes on: Rhythm facilitates and proves the acquisition of skills; it forms a link between the exigencies of ‘clock time’ and the experience of ‘task time’; and it mediates between plans and situated actions. Crucially, the possibility of finding one’s own work rhythm affects the experience of work as alienated or as an intrinsically fulfilling task. (ibid.)

Dobler suggests that ‘a focus on work rhythms could contribute to our understanding of work as an expression of agency’ (2016: 865) because rhythmization ‘facilitates learning, structures the logic of situated action, and […] enables spaces of autonomy to emerge during work’ (ibid.). It should be made clear at the outset that the rhythms Dobler is discussing are not those of mechanistic, industrial revolution de-humanization and over-metricality. Rather, they are closer to the organic, natural and freer rhythms of everyday physical and lived experience. Dobler bases his work on that of Bűcher (1896) who explored the questions of late nineteenth-­ century European society, including how people coped with the alienation of mechanistic, repetitive work (whether manual or clerical) and suggests that to accept such arduous work ‘we have to translate it into a meaningful activity’ (ibid.). At the risk of anthropological romanticism Rhythm, especially a steady rhythm expressed in work songs and dance-like working movements, is fundamental for this transformation. Working in a rhythmic manner allows us partly to forget the extraneous and alienated character of our work. It gives aesthetic meaning to the working process, diverts workers’ attention from necessity, and lets them experience work’s performative aspects instead. (ibid.)

Dobler provides a description of ‘the most obvious form of work rhythm’ which consists ‘in regular repetitions of the same movements, often supported by correspondingly periodic patterns of sound’ (2016: 870). His field study is of Namibian pounding of pearl millet in wooden mortars in which a ‘steady rhythm brings one’s bodily movements into a flow that makes it possible not to dwell on the strain: the worker’s attention is focused on the experience of the rhythm, not on the hardness of the labour’ (ibid.). There is a social dimension to the experience of rhythm: ‘when two women pound simultaneously, each at her own mortar, they rarely do so out of sync’. The social orchestration of work through rhythm thus provides a community and aesthetic function as well as a pragmatic work function. Furthermore, breaks in the cycle of pounding allow the workers to re-catch their breath/energy, refill the mortar and provide a punctuated rhythm during the working day, including breaks for lunch, all of which allows more agency and determination in the working day.

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So, too, does variation of work activities during the day, where – for example – the core activity of pounding can be made more bearable by alternating activities of a less strenuous nature. There is, however, a fine line between, say, the songs of migrant Catalan workers in French vineyards during the vendage, where songs fulfil those aspects of work described above through a raising of spirits as much as through rhythmic coincidence with the arduous work of grape-harvesting by hand and, on the other hand, a steady and repetitive rhythm that echoes mechanistic work processes and moves workers into a trance of complicity. In such cases, the rhythms that are required on factory lines or even in, say, cafes and restaurants where there is accompanying music may lift the spirits in ways that are not directly aligned to the rhythms of the work in hand. Such rhythms in the music may be tangential to the work. Another way in which rhythms might make work more bearable is to see the rhythms of the work itself as inhabiting the present tense and the economics of attention of the workers themselves during the working day. Work is present-­ oriented in order to generate the income to be able to be freer with one’s time in other parts of the day, week, year and beyond. Such a perspective would suggest that the freer rhythms of a more autonomous life are counterpointed to the tighter rhythms and professional codes and expectations of work. In terms of workload management and time management – even if imposed and under the constraints of timetabling, scheduling and meetings – there is scope for variation both within work and beyond it. In the gig economy and in professional work, work is no longer confined to set times within the working day. It may be pressured at some times more than others, but there is a chance to regulate it in relation to the economics of attention (when are best times to do particular kinds of work) and to ‘free time’. While rhythmization is most closely associated with physicality and manual work, it applies just as much to desk work, meetings and other aspects of professional and/or non-manual work. The advice to stand and move around at times during the day is a counter to the physically detrimental consequences of sitting or slouching at a computer. How individual workers manage their time – again within the constraints of socially determined time in the workplace  – allows a certain degree of autonomy and management of the daily and weekly rhythms of work. Dobler characterizes the wider range of work practices; thus [The] forward-moving logic of rhythm is intertwined with moments of retention: moments of diagnosis and analysis, of thinking and new planning, of conscious adaptations, and, crucially, of rest. Rhythms is one of the factors which shape our intentionality in engaging with the world, and an important part of the translation between plans and actions. (2016: 879)

Furthermore, ‘rhythm also structures our learning experiences’: Since our relation to work simultaneously is rooted in and expresses itself in rhythm, it paves the way for routinization of tasks, for the embodiment of skills, and for the gradual acquisition of mastery [sic]. Rhythm facilitates and expresses competence […] If we want to understand learning and skills, we should give more attention to what rhythm really is and how it structures human agency. (2016: 879)

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The theme of the relationship of rhythm to learning will be taken up in the final chapter of the present book.

8.8  Rhythm and Running Another aspect of the relationship between individual rhythms and social or collective rhythms is provided by Crawley in his doctoral work (2019) on running in Ethiopia. Whereas the common assumption is that Ethiopian long-distance runners are excellent in this activity because of their altitude training or running on different types of terrain as well as on athletic tracks, the research suggests that there is another factor that might be more important: the social dimension of running and the way that running is seen as a collective as well as individual act: Ethiopian runners spend much of their time developing a sense of rhythm and timing. The endless drills I watched in the morning were testament to this. Close your eyes and you hear a foot being planted firmly on the ground, a light scuff, a foot again, an on-beat, off-beat rhythm. It sounds like one person. Open your eyes and a line of twelve runners is doing the exercise in perfect time with each other […] Watch a group of Ethiopian athletes train […] and they are often in perfect sync with each other, the same efficient, clipped stride having been developed through countless hours of drills.

The runners follow a programme of conventional variations in stretching, running slowly, running fast and recovery breaks, all with varying degrees of intensity. There is also variation in the surfaces on which the running takes place: stone, asphalt, running track and soft ground. Managing the variations in space and time is an important aspect of developing leadership qualities too: Learning to lead is important because of the beliefs the runners share about energy. To ‘follow someone’s feet’ is to share their rhythm and to feed off their energy, and leading or pace-making is therefore often described as ‘bearing someone else’s burden’. […] Training is not an individualistic, survival-of-the-fittest pursuit but rather a communal endeavour.

8.9  Changes of Rhythm in Soccer/Football The social dimension of sport has gained more profile in the past years (see Jarvie 2017 for an introduction to the field). In particular, the contribution sport makes to social cohesion; to countering the prevailing individualism of contemporary society; and to health and wellbeing is all recognized. Furthermore, the way in which team sport reflects societal patterns in microcosm, and in the form of a game, is underplayed. Framing, mentioned elsewhere in this book, is highly evident in sport. Team games or matches are time-limited; moreover, they are bound by rules that need to be observed by the players and enforced and interpreted by referees or umpires. Like the arts, framing plays a key part in separating the activity of sport

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from everyday life. It also creates worlds which are informed by and reflect back on contemporary society. What has rhythm, and more specifically, multi-levelled rhythm got to do with sport? Taking the argument forward from the previous section on running, let us take three different approaches to rhythmic variation in soccer/football (henceforward, football). These approaches are embodied in the style of play of the Brazil national football team of the 1970s, of Barcelona’s tiki-taka style and of Arsenal’s contemporary style of play. Against a background of strong Brazilian support in the 1970 World Cup Final against Italy in Mexico City, the Brazilian team won the ball from the Italian forwards and passed it nonchalantly between players in the defence. It reached the midfielder Rivaldo, who upped the pace by beating two or three Italian players with body swerves. Then the ball was passed along the ‘corridor’ down the edge of the pitch to Jairzinho, who injected further pace by cutting inside, taking two Italians out and passing the ball to Pele. As pivotal players in the team, he controlled a fast ball and slowed the game with a short pass to his right where the full-back, Carlos Alberto, came in with momentum and shot the ball at speed into the net. The goal can be accessed via YouTube. What is extraordinary about this iconic goal is the control of the Brazilian players and especially their management of the change of pace in the game. It is not so much the change of pace in the game as a whole (high intensity and speed alternating with low-intensity ‘possession’ football) but the variation in pace over a short passage of play which is so striking. The rhythms at play are the background music of samba in the stands; the metronomic clock time of the confines of the match; and the relative quick-slow-slow-quick-quick-slowquick of the passage of play. Tiki-taka is a short-passing, highly fluent style initially developed by the Dutch national team and developed under a series of managers at Barcelona FC. It operates with a high defensive line, compressing the action into the opponent’s half of the field and breaking down the other side’s defensive wall through mesmeric exploitation of angles executed via short passes. The rhythmic variation comes from the contrast between ‘playing out from the back’ (including the goalkeeper’s contribution to passing) in a hypnotic series of passes that retain possession and bamboozle the opponent on the one hand and a sudden, unexpected (by the opponent) and incisive pass that opens up the defence and gives one of the attacking players a clear chance on goal. Again, examples are available on YouTube. Criticisms of the tiki-­ taka style included the fact that is the instrument of possession football, of ‘controlling the game’, sometimes at the expense of enjoyment for the spectators and even, at its extreme, resulting in an emphasis on possession rather than on scoring goals and winning. Rhythmic variation is probably least evident in the three styles discussed, particularly in extreme cases again where the ultimate aim is ‘walking the ball into the net’ with no variation of pace or rhythm. The third style has been developed under Arsène Wenger at Arsenal and continued under the present manager at time of writing, Mikel Arteta. Drawing on the two traditions mentioned above, the aim is to maintain possession, create unexpected angles and score goals with more intensity and generally a higher-paced ‘pressing’

References

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game. Long passes and short ones are included. Examples can also be found on YouTube. The points to be made in relation to the theme of this book are that the social patterning in football of these kinds is geometrically framed in terms of the exploitation of angles and that the movement in lines on the geometric framework is varied in pace, thus creating a highly sophisticated temporal-spatial rhythmic pattern.

References Adam, B. (1998). Social versus natural time: A traditional distinction re-examined. In M. Young & T. Schuller (Eds.), (1988) The rhythms of society (pp. 198–226). London: Routledge. Bateson, G. (1954). A theory of play and fantasy: Steps to an ecology of mind. In G. Bateson (Ed.), (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bűcher, K. (1896). Arbeit und rhythmus. Leipzig: Herzel. Crawley, M. (2019). ‘Get rhythm’: Following each other’s feet and shared energy from “Condition”: Energy, time and success amongst Ethiopian runners. PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh. Dobler, G. (2016). ‘Work and rhythm’ revisited: Rhythm and experience in northern Namibian peasant work. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 22, 864–883. Giddens, A. (1981). A contemporary critique of historical materialism. Volume 1: Power, property and the state. London: Macmillan. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gosden, C. (1994). Social being and time. Oxford: Blackwell. Jarvie, G. (2017). Sport, culture and society: An introduction (3rd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. Lefebvre, H. (2004). Rhythmanalysis. London: Continuum. Lyon, D. (2017, February 22). Grasping the everyday rhythms and atmospheres of a fish market. Talk given at the University of York. See https://www.york.ac.uk/social-­science/events/2017/ sociologyevents2017/sociology-­graspingtheeverydayrhythmsandatmospheresofafishmarket/ Richards, I. A. (1925). Principles of literary criticism. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner. Young, M., & Schuller, T. (Eds.). (1988). The rhythms of society. London: Routledge. Zerubavel, E. (1981). Hidden rhythms: Schedules and calendars in social life. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Chapter 9

Polyrhythmicity in Contemporary Hybrid Culture

Abstract How does polyrhythmicity operate in contemporary culture beyond music and literature? This chapter looks at photography, film and other forms of moving image that operate in time and therefore manage time. These cultural forms both reflect and are placed within a larger social context of how contemporary societies cope with relative time relations, in social, political and economic terms. Examples that are discussed include the work of Stéphane Couturier; rap; a short film; diptychs, triptychs and ‘polyptiques’; and the drawings of the sculptor Richard Serra. There is a reconsideration of the relevance of fugue to polyrhythmicity. Keywords  Rap · Fugue · Film · Structures · Arts · Social sciences · Hybridity

9.1  Stéphane Couturier Stéphane Couturier’s photographs derive from an interest in modernism and pay tribute to the work of Fernand Léger. As an exhibition in Biot in 2019 noted, ‘both artists share the same fascination for the profound changes of the city, a common interest in the labour world, industrial aesthetics and modern architecture’. The interesting aspect of Couturier’s work as far as the present book goes lies in its multi-layered depictions of space and places, reflecting the complex multi-rhythmic nature of contemporary city life. See http://www.artnet.com/artists/ st%C3%A9phane-­couturier/ for examples of his work. In architecture, architectural photography and in photography, rhythm is not just a metaphor transferred from music or sound relations into the visual, material world to describe suggested time relations. It is more of a dimension of time-space relationships in itself that provides a language to denote how spatial and visual considerations operate. There are various aspects to this spatial-temporal relationship. First, buildings are about how people gather and move through them. A time-­ compressed film of movement in any one day in a building like a workplace and/or gallery or outdoor space will convey the different relationships of individual and social gathering (and time directions), as well as the physical experience of moving © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Andrews, Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6_9

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(standing up, walking, sitting down) that constitutes the working day. Second, the actual design of the building, from small spaces to larger spaces, from throughways to sitting spaces and offices, from public space to private spaces, can be characterized in terms of rhythmic variation. This is where rhythm is not just a metaphor but an actual representation in a plan or finished building of different functions. Third, the use of buildings changes with time so that, in due course, the shape and design of the building change the actual working patterns and movement patterns of the people who use it. Couturier captures this multi-levelled design and experience of buildings and industrial workplaces in his photographs. They are more than collages. They reflect the spatial overlays of urban experience as well as the temporal dimension. A further development of the idea that rhythm plays a part in social and architectural space is evident in the rhetoric of public space. See, for example, Lamp (2013).

9.2  Contemporary Rap Culture and Fugue The idea of fugue as a key form in polyrhythmic compositions is evidenced in the work of two contemporary American writers: Kwame Alexander and Jason Reynolds. Alexander’s The Crossover (2014) is a new genre: a story told in a series of poems, not in the epic style as a continuous poetic narrative, but in different poetic styles. The whole is broken into six sections: warm-up; first, second, third and fourth quarters; and overtime. The basketball theme pervades the story and also provides the language and diction of the poems. For example, the opening poem, ‘Dribbling’, in a classic free verse mode, uses capitalization (of various sizes and emphases and sometimes to stress a syllable within a word), italics, the sliding of a word diagonally across a page and other graphical features  – in concrete poetry style – to indicate the movements of basketball. The style of the opening poem also suggests that this is poetry to be performed, to be read aloud, to be enjoyed for the very exuberance of the language. The second poem introduces Josh Bell, the narrator and principal protagonist. This time the poem falls into four roughly even sections (the line length is eight, seven, eight and ten, respectively). The mode is free verse, with occasional, sporadic rhyming in a free rap style. There is dialogue and quotation within the narrative, indicated by italics. Finally, there is a concluding two-line coda in the last section, like a conversational quip. Another poem in the opening warm-up sequence, ‘Five reasons I have locks’, sets out the reasons in reverse numerical order, with the most important one coming last: 1. ever since I watched the clip of Dad posterizing that seven-foot Croatian center on ESPN’s Best Dunks Ever;

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soaring through the air – his long twisted hair like wings carrying him high above the rim – I knew one day I’d need my own wings to fly. (2014: 14–15)

The free verse style is a short-line, phrasal or clausal approach, with lower case starts to the lines to encourage flow. There is enjambement, the use of short lines to highlight key phrases (‘one day’, ‘to fly’), and no ostensible end-of-line rhyming in this particular poem. The development of the poems through the book as a whole is fugal. There is point and counterpoint; layering of voices; rhythmic variation (evident in printed poetry through line length, section length); variation in the length and style of poems; a narrative drive, telling the story of the adulation, adoration and death of a father. There is a cast of characters: Mom, Dad, his twin brother and that brother’s girlfriend, as well as a host of minor characters. Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down (2017) is similar in that it tells a story through a sequence of poems. There is no other structure to the narrative, other than the playing out of the rules of neighbourhood street life in response to a shooting. Each of the poems is self-contained, but gives a different perspective on the action, often conveying a single thought. The titles of the poems often run into the first line, and the free verse style, though less varied than in The Crossover, is sufficiently varied to include long- and short-line style; question-and-answer; dialogue (again, the use of italics to indicate another voice); variation on a spectrum from continuous monologue to stanza-like verses. Both books use colloquial diction to convey the presence of the narrator’s voice. Both use performance on the page to convey thought in action. The fugal structure of both books indicates a different form of narrative: kaleidoscopic, multi-voiced, polyrhythmic. At the same time, the thematic narrative is clear, providing a strong spinal shape to the poem as a whole. There is positioning (point) and counterpoint; dialogue; a personal narratorial voice; and an informal street tone. Both books draw on filmic techniques: zooming in and out; variation in aperture; editorial segues.

9.3  Diptychs, Triptychs and Polyptiques Unless the framed images within two- or three-panelled works are intended to be seen and experienced simultaneously, there is a complex time relationship between the images. One is looked at before the other; there is a movement of the eye and of concentration between the images; once each image is taken in, the whole diptych or triptych is considered. It is not so much the nature of the eye movement that is at

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stake (studies in eye movement are not part of the present book) but the fact that diptychs and triptychs (and by implication all polyptiques) are time-based: there is a relationship between the separate images, and they cannot be considered in a single second. See further discussion of polyptiques in Andrews (2010). Polyptiques are multi-panelled works. These can include artworks, comic strips and story boards for films and animations. They are static works – in other words, not part of the firmament of moving image works like animations, films and videos – but they are time-based in that there is movement and a relationship between the panels. Complex time relations, and therefore rhythmic structure, are captured in the making and reception of these works. The drawings of the sculptor and artist Richard Serra afford insight into the rhythmic relationship of marks on paper. While Serra is renowned for his sculpture, he is also an outstanding practitioner in drawing. White (2011) in ‘Drawing as drawing’ explores the power of drawing in Serra’s work, not only as sketches towards a sculpture, but in itself. While we might make an argument that the drawing precedes the making of sculptures and thus could be seen as a part of temporal process towards the final work, White wishes us to see that the temporality is concurrent as well as sequential. Her chapter also asks us to consider that drawing (at least for Serra) stands as a medium that is based in time as well as in space: For while Serra’s drawings have a relationship to other media, in that we can understand them by comparing them to the ways that we consider sculpture or painting, and while they are intimately connected to the moment of their historical context, they find their strength in terms that go against a conventional art historical language. (2011: 14)

That strength is achieved by our seeing them not so much as a means to an end for a sculptor, nor merely as an inscription of space, but as marks made in time. The drawing itself as a product also needs to be seen as an act, a trace of the relationship between the artist and his/her temporal and spatial environment. Thus, as White suggests (2011: 15) ‘drawing is a temporal art’: It is an artist’s body coming into contact with a surface and making a mark. The drag of a pencil on paper, a graphite gesture swept across a surface, the mark of a block of paintstick pressed against a support – these are traces of touch, time-based indications of one’s physical movement across space. (ibid.)

Drawing, therefore, is temporal (as well as spatial) and thus will embody rhythmical patterning. Such rhythms can be manifested in a number of ways: First, through the actual moment(s) of composition in the dynamic between the body of the artist and the marks made (on paper with pencil or paintstick or charcoal or on other surfaces with other media). Second, in any series of drawings. Third, in relation to works in other media (e.g. sculpture, material design), either sequentially or concurrently. Fourth, in cases where drawing tells a story, as in comic strips or scrolls. An interesting analogy between drawing and garden design is made by White (2011: 20):

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What most impressed [Serra, about Zen gardens in Japan] was how the fluid design of the gardens lacked a fixed vantage point. Based on peripatetic vision – the act of ascertaining visual information through movement – he realized that they require viewers to move along ambulatory and undulating paths so that their frame of vision is constantly changing, transforming the act of seeing into one that is entirely temporal.

There is, in this analogy, a sense that although time-based, both drawing and the experience of Zen gardens are ways of moving from the time-based world into greater awareness of the present. Such compression of linear time into the present moment echoes the conflation of figure and ground in Serra’s drawings. As White puts it (2011: 21) ‘Serra has eliminated the divide between figure and ground, the bedrock, we could say, of the language of drawing’. At its simplest, Untitled 1973 (Fig. 9.1) (Rose et al. 2011: 111) is a vertical work in paintstick on paper. At the top and bottom of the paper are relatively small squares of black, angled slightly so that they are not in line with the edges of the paper. The squares appear to be at the same angle of tilt, but in the bottom left and towards the top right of the paper. There is thus a tension throughout the work: first, the paper itself is not uniform in that its right-hand edge curves slightly outwards. Second, the placing of the relatively small black squares at either end of the ‘ground’ of the paper is both symmetrical (roughly) and asymmetrical (in actuality); similarly, the tilt of the squares looks similar. The eye takes in first the whole quasi-symmetrical pattern of the work within its verticality. As the eye looks more closely, the asymmetries emerge, creating a dynamic tension within the work as well as between the work and the larger ground on which it is placed (as an image in a book or on the wall of a gallery). A similar work is Drawing for Documenta VI, 1976 in which a single black asymmetrical paintstick rectangular block is superimposed on a white rectangular ground (Rose et al. 2011: 133). Fig. 9.1  Richard Serra, Untitled, 1973 paintstick on paper, 93 × 26.25 inches, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

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Fig. 9.2  Richard Serra, Exchange, 199 charcoal on paper, sheet 11 × 15 inches

Another example of internal rhythms within a single work is Exchange (1996), a work of charcoal on paper. This consists of a series of three left-leaning black lines, each of which is met by a thinner line coming in from the left to create three tepee-­ like shapes. The first thinner line comes in about half-way up the paper; the second near the top of the left-leaning line; and the third does not meet, opening up a space between the lines at the top of the paper and suggesting that the meeting might take place beyond it. The rhythm of reading the work is very much left-to-right, and the trajectory is one of gradual opening of the lines. The spacing of these three ‘tepees’ is roughly equal, but the bases of the tepee increases in width as the eye moves from left to right (Fig. 9.2). The rhythmic relationship in two-panelled works can be seen in many pages of sketchbooks, with the open double-page spread of the sketchbook providing a space for point and counterpoint. The drawing on one page is ‘followed’ (we can never be sure of the sequence of composition, but the principle of post hoc ergo propter hoc obtains in the reading of the images) by another that either takes forward the ideas of the first image or complements it or stands in counterpoint to it. The double-page spread as a whole, therefore, presents a spatial and time-based dimension to the drawings in combination. As sketches towards sculpture, these are a fascinating step towards realization in three-dimensional form; as drawings in themselves, they are exercises in space and time. Examples of such diptychs are Basalt columns: Svartifoss, Iceland (1993), Double Torqued Ellipses: Guggenheim, Bilbao (2005) and Elevations for L’Allée de la Mormaire: France (1993). Even when there is no image on a facing page, the blankness of that page throws the other inscribed page into high relief, as in Promenade: Grand Palais, Paris (2008).

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Major polyptical works include A Drawing in Five Parts (2005) in which sets of curved black lines (again in paintstick on paper) are set in a horizontal arrayment of 5 drawings, each of 40 inches square; Untitled (14-part roller drawing) (1973) in ink on paper; and Drawings after Circuit (1972) which consists of 24 sheets of paintstick on paper. Each of these sketches and installation drawings forms part of a longer process for Serra. For a start, the weightedness of some of the works begins to approximate the sense of sculpture on paper: a heavily grained surface that speaks of the difference between the ground (paper) and the marks on it. Most significantly for the purposes of the present book is the exploration of multi-panelled form(s). While a sculptor works in space, and an artist who is sculpturally inclined will explore space in sketches and installations, the time-based nature of multi-panelled compositions is key to rhythmic definition in the visual arts. Throughout the series described above and in other works, the rhythmic tension operates at different levels: first, between the ground of the gallery wall or the blank page of a book or catalogue on the one hand and the actual frame of the artwork itself, indicated by the edge of the paper on which the art is created. Second, between the ground of the paper and the created frame of the image. Third, in internal spatial relations within the single image. Fourth, through the time-related dynamics of diptychs, triptychs and polyptiques. In works of this kind, the act of framings within framings (or to reify the product, frames within frames) provides a multi-levelled work. We are invited into each of these frames, each framed by the previous one; we are also invited to transgress the frames in our reading of the works, sometimes deliberately nudged to do this through the deliberations of the artist. When it comes to multi-panelled works, we have choice as readers/viewers to address the separate images in sequence (left to right, right to left, up/down), to move from the individual image to the whole multi-­panelled work and/or to move at will between the several images, creating our own rhythmic routes through the experience of looking. In all Serra’s work discussed above, it could be said that the rhythmic relations explored are additive as well as spatial.

9.4  We Three: Complex Time Relations in a Short Film Beyond still-image comic strip, storyboards or visual novels, film is the medium in which moving image and sound (music and words) come together in a highly multimodal genre. Moving image has become more ubiquitous as media like mobile phones and applications like YouTube make very short moving image sequences more readily available. In order to analyse how multi-levelled rhythms work in film, the short film We Three provides a good example. We Three: a story of motherhood, grief and ambition (2019) is an account of Lady Macbeth’s story and state of mind in the run-up to the start of Macbeth and a partial account of why she behaves as she does in the play. It is produced by Grace Andrews and directed by Owen Horsley, with Grace in the lead role with Orlando

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James as Macbeth. Screenplay is by Grace Andrews and Owen Horsley, editing by Orlando James and music by Trevor Kowalski, and the Director of Photography is Anastasia Vorortniuk. The film was released in July 2019 and within the first few months of its release on the web had won three awards. It can be seen via www. wethreefilm.com The film opens with a shot of bare late-winter trees swaying in a forest, with, after a few seconds, music of an ethereal, foreboding nature accompanying the moving images. We are then taken, via two brief shots of Macbeth in despairing, reflective mode and Lady Macbeth holding a knife, via flashback into the Macbeth’s family home – a spacious and elegant house in the forest – where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are playing with their son, who is about 1 year old. The scene is one of familial love and togetherness, though the voice-over from the start of Macbeth itself – ‘When shall we three meet again…’ – suggests, via quoting the witches, that all will not be well. The film then cuts with voice-over to a scene in the forest where Lady Macbeth is walking with the letter from Act I, Scene 5 (‘They met me in the day of success…’), and from there returns to family life with the child and warm embraces between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth. The opening two minutes could be construed as scene-setting: from the opening shot of the silent trees swaying in the forest via the accompanying music, the harmonious family scenes and then the catalytic letter that acts as the spring for the unfolding narrative. The next scene is critical. In the following two minutes, Lady Macbeth is sitting on a sofa while the baby plays. As she falls asleep, the baby wanders out of the room and out of sight and is next seen wandering in the woods outside the house. We return to the bleak images of the forest. Lady Macbeth wakes up, realizes the child is gone and runs in panic through the forest in search of the child. The scene is accompanied by voice-over from the play (‘The Weird Sisters, hand in hand…’) and brought to a frightening conclusion by Lady Macbeth coming across a baby’s dummy/toy hanging from a branch. This section of the film is characterized, especially on Lady Macbeth’s awakening, is framed by rapid editorial shifts, suggesting nightmare and panic. The pace of the film increases, and the rhythmic flow uses counterpoint between the domestic scenes and the scenes in the forest until the sighting of the baby’s toy. The realization that something terrible has happened, that the baby has been lost, slows to a shot of Lady Macbeth. The next phase of the film reverts back to the house, showing Lady Macbeth in despair. In the night, she digs up a tree from the forest (‘Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts…’) and ‘plants’ it in the house (the lines from later from Macbeth to the Doctor, when Lady Macbeth has lost all reason, come to mind: ‘Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased/Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow…’). She lies in a bath, gradually converting her despair into cruelty and murderous ambition. Macbeth returns from battle to host Duncan. This is the part of the film in which she persuades him to murder the King. He and Lady Macbeth converse intimately, plotting the murder of Duncan. Macbeth is troubled, pulled back from such action by conscience. She is determined, ruthless, and together they present the appearance of generous and welcoming hosts as Duncan’s entourage of cars, headlights

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beaming, draws up at night outside the house. This is the longest part of the film (three minutes or so) in which the pace slows, the editing is less frenetic, and the camera dwells on the faces of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as she persuades him to murder Duncan. It is also the part of the film in which the language from the play is most prominent. The final section of the film flashes back to the child; shows the passing of the knives between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth; shows her starting at the apparent sound of a child; and ends with a return to the images from the start of the film of the wintery trees swaying, without accompanying sound. Broadly speaking, the timing of the sections in this ten-minute film corresponds to the summarizing paragraphs above: two minutes for the opening scene-setting sequence; two minutes for the disappearance of the child; two minutes for the setting-­in of despair and its conversion to cruelty; three minutes for the return of Macbeth from the field and the persuasion by Lady Macbeth; and one minute for the conclusion of the film which suggests the murder will take place and which then returns to the opening sequence, in silence. The narrative structure is classic: the status quo, albeit underpinned by foreboding; the catalyst for action; the transformation within Lady Macbeth; the persuasion of Macbeth; and the concluding action – the uncoiling of the spring that was set in motion near the start. This narrative’s structure, rhythm and momentum are overlaid, as in most novels, by characterization that plumbs the depths visually of Macbeth and especially Lady Macbeth. She is the principal focus of the film and of the cinematography, in medium-range shots (running through the forest) and in close-ups (with Macbeth, on her own). We experience her transformation from loving mother to grief, despair and ambition. But there is further overlaying, both by quotations of the words of the play (directly spoken and via voice-over) and by the musical composition that sets the otherworldly, ethereal, sinister tone of the work. The narrative uses flashback to explore and define the motivation for how she acts. Thus, even in a ten-minute short film, the rhythmic complexity is evident. This is a multi-levelled, polyrhythmic work in which time relations are compressed. Past experiences are brought into close proximity with the ‘instant’, the present. The future is imagined via the letter from Macbeth that is read near the start of the film and which provides the spur for the killing of Duncan and the succession to the throne for the Macbeths. We do not see the consequences of the murder of Duncan, but the film sits in counterpoint to the play. The narrative is composed via flashback; tight intercutting and editing in the second and third sections of the film; the change of pace and rhythm in the first, fourth and fifth sections of the film which help to highlight the pace; and rapid editing shifts of the second and third sections. The polyrhythmic nature of the film and its composition creates in the audience what might be called the complex rhythmic structure of feeling and response: the engagement in the characters and action followed by a condensed middle (transformative) section and a quieter conclusion in which we are invited to consider the consequences of Lady Macbeth’s state of mind and actions. In this way, the film ends with a resonance that invites the audience to look back on the details of the

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action in its setting and to consider the ways forward – not only for Lady Macbeth but also for our own moral direction. In many ways, what is described above in the description and analysis of the film is evident in any well-told narrative. What is distinctive in filmic terms is the multi-­ levelled overlay of moving images, words and music, each with their own role to play in the emerging story. The design and sequencing of that multi-levelled experience in time creates the rhythmic complexity that is driven by the motivation of the film-makers and which determines the experiences of the audience.

9.5  Lightweight Structures and Rhythms Rhythm is conventionally associated with weight, earthiness and physicality. It is the ‘ground’ that enables the ‘figure’ to highlight itself in time. Contemporary culture, for all its emphasis on the body and on physicality (advertising imagery, concerns about body shape, wellbeing and health), is, however, also obsessed with fleeting temporality, lightness of being, riffing through life with minimum trace. This recognition of the temporary (as opposed to temporal) nature of existence manifests itself in pop-up theatres and shops, transitory installations and an embracing of the impermanence of conventional social structures and work patterns. The ‘gig’ culture is another example of such precarity. Farmers’ markets are another sign of the transitory nature of barter and exchange and, although once seen as a complement to the high street in market towns, are now seen as key presences in attracting people back into the high street and its squares in the face of online shopping. Such light practices suggest that multi-rhythmic experience in contemporary life is imperceptible but felt in the daily round. We may be unconsciously aware of the bodily, diurnal and circadian rhythms that determine our physical experience and even less aware of the lighter, more additive rhythms that operate in our social encounters. Lightweight rhythms manifest themselves in music as melody, which, although it is determined by pitch and tonal variations within harmonic or serial relationships, is still shaped in time and therefore has rhythmic identity. So too in the experience of contemporary life and culture, where at any one time, a number of rhythms will be at play and only one of them, if at all, may be discernible. Furthermore, lightweight structures and rhythms may divert us from the perception of the more fundamental rhythms that determine our feelings and actions. Eliot’s prescient lines in ‘Burnt Norton’ (Eliot 1963: 192–3):          Only a flicker Over the strained time-ridden faces Distracted from distraction by distraction Filled with fancies and empty of meaning Tumid apathy with no concentration

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suggest a listlessness, an inability to live in the present, a sense that life is elsewhere. It may well be that an awareness of the integration of heavier and lighter rhythmic structures in everyday life and in the experience of contemporary culture will help us focus, inhere in the present, and appreciate the past as well as look more positively on the future. This will not be done via a programmatic education in polyrhythmicity, but through an understanding of its application and presence in society and social patterning, conversation, dialogue and in the arts through learning that is sensitive to rhythm and its pervasive shaping of intellectual, emotion, spiritual and physical experience.

9.6  ‘Mi vida es una fuga’ Jorge Luis Borges’ short piece, ‘Borges y Yo’ (‘Borges and I/Myself’), expresses the strangeness and also the existential duplicity of the writer who sees his name in libraries, catalogues etc. as ‘other’ than his presence as a person. Usually, the phrase ‘my vida es una fuga’ is translated as ‘my life is a flight’ or ‘escape’. But ‘fuga’ in Spanish also means a ‘fugue’. Andrew Hurley’s translation in Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges (Borges 1999) uses the term thus: So my life is a point-counterpoint, a kind of fugue, and a falling away–and everything winds up being lost to me, and everything falls into oblivion, or into the hands of the other man.

This translation not only gives more dimension to the short piece by Borges. It also suggests, in relation to the present book, that ‘point-counterpoint’ can serve as a dialectic template for a life, whether that fugal relationship is one of life/death, speaking/listening, or one movement counterpointed to another. The thesis in the present book is that fugal structures provide a framework for rhythmic complexity and the multi- or polyrhythmic layering that operates in life and art.

9.7  F  raming and Multi-levelled Rhythms in the Social Sciences What is the relationship between polyrhythmicity and framing in the social sciences? In previous publications, I have attempted to draw out the importance of framing in literacy development (2010), rhetoric (2014) and multimodality and poetics (2018). To rehearse the basic argument: the act of framing (not frames in themselves) is a key operation in the making of meaning in the arts and in everyday social situations. Once negotiated or adopted, the resultant frames provide a space within which communicative practice take place using a ‘common language’. These frames can be transgressed, either to break the frame and suggest new modes of communication and understanding or for the purposes of protest and resistance. The

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frames are permeable and changeable, even though some frames reify themselves to become genres or social conventions. What is outside the frame and inside the frame is a matter for continual discussion and challenge – which comes back to the notion that framing as opposed to frames is the more interesting of the two inflections, as it acknowledges the shifting power relations that determine the frames we operate by and, finally, to acknowledge that artworks of whatever kind are highly framed. Polyrhythmicity challenges the theories of framing and frames because it is multi-levelled and even multi-dimensional. Whereas conventional metres and time signatures operate in the two-dimensional world of framed systems and notations, multi-levelled rhythms move beyond such systems into a three-dimensional world of actual lived experience. Perhaps the two axes of horizontal, syntagmatic relations in relation to vertical paradigmatic relations offer a way to account for polyrhythmicity, as discussed in the chapter on poetry. In conventional music scoring, the ‘parts’ can be represented simultaneously in a vertical relationship, whereas the individual serial rhythmic movements of each instrument can be represented horizontally, in time. Verticality offers a way of understanding that different rhythms can exist alongside each other.

References Alexander, K. (2014). The crossover. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Andrews, R. (2010). Re-framing literacy: Teaching and learning in English and the language arts. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. Andrews, R. (2014). A theory of contemporary rhetoric. Abingdon/New York: Routledge. Andrews, R. (2018). Multimodality, poetry and poetics (Routledge research in language and communication series). New York: Routledge. Borges, J. L. (1999). Collected fictions (H. Andrew, Trans.). London: Penguin. Couturier, S. (2019). Exhibition at Musée National Fernand Léger, Biot, 6 October 2018 to 4 March 2019. Eliot, T. S. (1963). ‘Burnt Norton’ from ‘Four quartets’. In Collected poems 1909–1962. London: Faber and Faber. Lamp, K. S. (2013). A city of marble: The rhetoric of Augustan Rome. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Reynolds, J. (2017). Long way down. New York: Atheneum. Rose, B., White, M., & Garrels, G. (2011). Richard Serra drawing: A retrospective. Houston/New Haven/London: The Menil Collection/Yale University Press. White, M. (2011). Drawing as drawing. In B.  Rose, M.  White, & G.  Garrels (Eds.), Richard Serra drawing: A retrospective. Houston/New Haven/London: The Menil Collection/Yale University Press.

Chapter 10

Polyrhythmicity in the Asia-Pacific Region

Abstract  This chapter brings together consideration of multi-levelled rhythmic patterning in the arts and social sciences in contemporary culture, focusing specifically on the Asia-Pacific region. The social science dimension will inhere in the use of framing theories to examine specific situations in South and East Asia and the AsiaPacific, in line with the intention of the book series as a whole; but it will also refer to other cultures and other parts of the world. Part of the intention of the book is therefore comparative: how do theories and practices of rhythm and of framing differ, and how are they similar? Polyrhythmicity is discussed from a postcolonial critical perspective, suggesting that new forms of rhythmicity should not be seen from a European/American perspective, but that the rhythms of Asia have much to contribute to a general understanding of rhythm in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Keywords  Chinese poetry · Postcolonial · Dance rhythms · Percussion · Indian rāg

10.1  Postcolonial Issues Any work purporting to take a ‘global’, ‘international’ or ‘postcolonial’ view on polyrhythmicity must take into account the question of international perspective. McCarthy and Dimitriadis (2000a, b) remind us that assumptions and frameworks for the discussion of any aesthetic construct are culturally dependent. The ‘Western’ (European/American) notion of rhythm as being the counterpoint of melody, for example, does not necessarily obtain in African or Asian music; nor do metrical patterns based on beat or syllabification that operate in Western poetry necessarily apply to the way rhythm functions in Asian poetry. Such consciousness of perspective lends not only a different perspective on the rhythms that operate but also a different way in which we can conceive of polyrhythmicity that sheds comparative light on ‘conventional’ Western conceptions. Thus the present work is transcultural as well as transdisciplinary. There is no notion © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Andrews, Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6_10

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of the ‘primitive’ or any other subjugating language that should be taken into account in the exploration of polyrhythmicity. In particular, McCarthy and Dimitriadis quote Ellison (1972: 234) on jazz, as an example of how, even within an American tradition, rhythms do not subscribe to conventional patterning or development: Each true jazz moment […] springs from a contest in which each artist challenges all the rest; each solo flight, or improvisation, represents […] a definition of his [sic] identity: as individual, as member of the collectivity and as a link in the chain of tradition. Thus, because jazz finds its very life in an endless improvisation upon traditional materials, the jazzman [sic] must lose his identity even as he finds it.

While questions of identity and identities are a matter for another book, the point is that improvisatory and additive rhythms, through breaking away from traditional metricality, establish new ground. However, whether or not forging new identities, the implications are that new forms of being and consciousness are explored in such music. These are not based on binary oppositions, but these new forms ‘rework the pivotal centre versus periphery distinction’ (2000a: 64), forging hybrid amalgamations that are layered, cross-cultural and cross-fertilizing by artists in dance, music and poetry and other art forms and social/linguistic practices. As McCarthy and Dimitriadis (2000a: 72) suggest, ‘following Bakhtin, these artists must situate their work alongside, in and against a profoundly heterogeneous world, a world that can and will speak back in equally profound and heterogeneous ways’.

10.2  Fenollosa Revisited Fenollosa’s (1936) The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry is a classic of the twentieth century. Although written sometime prior to his death in 1908, it was brought to the attention of the West via Ezra Pound’s advocacy in 1918 and then publication in the 1930s and subsequent reprints. What does this short but seminal text have to contribute to East-West thinking about polyrhythmicity? In order to answer this question, there is a need to address issues of the philosophy of language. Fenollosa makes an early point that ‘poetry […] like music is a time art’ (1936: 6). That is to say: like the novel, short story, film or theatre, the elements of the poem take place in a sequence that positions itself in time. It is both contextualized by time, in that there is silence before and after it; and the actual recitation or reading also takes time. The elements stand in relation to each other in time. He goes on to link the temporal sequencing in poetry to that of the natural world and to thought itself: the operations of nature are successive. The transferences of force from agent to object, which constitute natural phenomena, occupy time. Therefore, a reproduction of them in imagination requires the same temporal order. (1936: 7)

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In Fenollosa’s notion of how thought and the world operate, there is a fusion (or ideal fusion) between operations in the natural world and those in the world of art and artifice. His philosophy is close to William Carlos Williams’ notion of ‘all ideas in things’. But these ‘things’ (phenomena) are active agents in the world, not static entities. That is why he sees the Chinese written characters as providing a connection between the actual world and the symbols that are used to denote it. Furthermore, these symbols carry historical traces via the use of metaphorical application to refer to more abstract entities. Crucially for the argument of the present book, the Chinese character represents not a static ‘picture’ of a thing or (via the combination of elements of the character) a more abstract concept suggested via metaphor, but the capturing of a moment in verb. Such dynamism – the depiction and representation of movement – is central to Fenollosa’s argument, at the expense of what he sees as the static noun. Words/characters are live representations of possible world actions. In summary: ‘Chinese poetry demands that we abandon our narrow grammatical categories, that we follow the original text with a wealth of concrete verbs’ (1936: 21). Whereas Fenollosa builds an argument against the grammarians and linguists who categorize parts of the ‘sentence’, seeing that whole field as mistaken in its medieval (‘inveterate logic of’ in Fenollosa’s terms) or Victorian obsession with classification, his work suggests that the sentence itself (in the English language, at least) is a rhythmic entity that requires some consideration in the present book. The sentence does not constitute the unit of rhythm in poetry, as we have seen in Chaps. 5 and 6, but nevertheless is a grammatical construct that deserves consideration and which adds to the levels of polyrhythmic complexity. Another angle to Fenollosa’s argument that the verb is the central entity in language and poetry is his allusion to the works of Shakespeare whose English is characterized by ‘persistent, natural and magnificent use of hundreds of transitive verbs’ (1936: 29). The verb ‘is’ rarely appears and ‘weakly lends itself to the uses of rhythm, in the unaccented syllables’ (ibid.).

10.3  Reversible Poems The monosyllabic morphemic nature of the Chinese language, along with its lack of articles and grammatical inflections (Métail 2017), suggests that it may not be open to the same kind of rhythmic variation as the English or other multi- and poly-­ syllabic languages. However, rhythmic identity in classical Chinese poetry would suggest a different kind of rhythm is possible. Such rhythm is more structural, more a part of the design of the whole work, and less characterized by beat, accent or stress within words and phrases. An example is the reversible poem. Huiwen (palindromic) poetry or huiwenshi: enlarges and absorbs other classical poetic styles through a diversity of patterned forms, achieving its reversible efficacy through the usual poetic determinants of sound and tonal

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pattern, rhythm and meaning, imagistic turns […] thematic continuity, visual elegance. (2017: xx)

Although these qualities might be said to inhere in many forms of Western poetry, the overall visual/aural patterning is more marked in the Chinese style, whereas in the English tradition, at least, such wordplay is confined to metaphysical poetry or eccentric Victoriana; or in the French, via the legacy of Raymond Queneau. Métail (2017: xxxix) elaborates further on the nature of the Chinese language with regard to poetic composition when she states that ‘punctuation does not exist and lines breaks follow metrical and rhythmic criteria’. With regard to metrics: Irregular lines with five or seven syllables [characters] are most frequent […] a caesura is located between the second and third characters in the five-syllable line or between the fourth and fifth word in the seven-syllable line. Thanks to the irregular length, the central character (third or fourth) changes hemistich in [a] reverse reading. It can sometimes even change grammatical category, being a verb in one reading direction and a noun in the other. This pivot position between two halves of the line favors changes in meaning. (2017: xl)

As an example of a reversible poem, Métail translates the fifth-century poem by Wang Rong, huo yuan zuo hui wen shi, as ‘Reversible poem composed in the Imperial Garden’: Sloping peaks divert the winding path Erected stones form a mountainous chain. Abundant flowers brush against birds at play Dense trees shelter cicadas that sing.      * Cicadas sing and hide in thick trees Birds play and stir abundant flowers. Mountains touch, amassing height of stones The winding path coils up the slopes of peaks. (with permission from The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press)

Overall, the semantic flow in the reversible poem is from the distant to the near and from the near to the distant. Although the original Chinese five-syllable lines are translated into the more discursive English phrases (of between nine and ten syllables each), we can trace the larger structure in the relations of the lines within each half of the poem and in the mirrored nature of the poem as a whole. The Buddhist or Taoist stillness of the poetic, while seeming to subjugate rhythm to a minor role in the overall effect, also allows rhythmic variation within a pattern. It is as if the system described in Chap. 11, deriving principally from African drumming, is seen here in the mathematically describable grand design of a polyrhythmic framework.

10.4  Freer Verse in the Chinese Style In a less classical, freer Western mode, the following poem adopts some of the principles of the Buddhist poetic:

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Mount Colden In late September, a Canadian high sits over the mountains. Up here there are no trees, just alpine rock. We’re above the sound of water, nearer the sky and the clouds. No birds, chipmunks or bears come this high. The chatter of excited climbers up from Syracuse for the weekend, their voices like Buddhist prayer flags colouring the air with invocations: Algonquin, Iroquois, Marshall, Skylight, Gothics, Marcy, Panther, Wright.

The poem takes the form of tercets (three-line verses), unrhymed. The first two tercets each consist of two sentences. Punctuation is used to vary the rhythmic flow within the formal structure. In the first tercet, the break between the two sentences comes within the second line. In the second tercet, it comes at the end of the second line. The third and fourth tercets form a single sentence together. The effect is that, in the poem as a whole, the first half establishes and reinforces the tercet structure, with some variation; but the second half of the poem breaks free, using the same structure but overlaying it with a more expansive rhythmic flow. However, on closer examination, the third and fourth tercets are punctuated by a comma at the end of the second line of the third tercet and a colon at the end of the first line of the fourth. Overall, the poetic embodied by the poem has similarities with the classical Chinese style: it is meditative, still, descriptive and resonant without being metaphorical. Both are poems and thus bound by the sense of completeness and cohesion that is assumed in the poetic form. On the other hand, there are significant differences: the rhythmic flow is looser, determined as much by the syntactic shape as the framework of four tercets that make up the poem. Syllables are not significant, but the multi-syllabic nature of the English words creates more variation. There is not the same mirrored reversibility as in the Chinese example; rather, a linear, quasi-­ narrative momentum. The following poems written in and about Asia, from a European perspective, also carry some of the Buddhist poetic. The balance is between stillness or an arrhythmic single point of concentration and mediation on the one hand and the movement of the perceptions (like a camera) and of the lines on the other. This is not just an East-West generalization, but an attempt to see what features of classical Chinese and Japanese poetry might be adopted to consider multi-levelled rhythms, even when the photographic or filmic nature of the writing seems so stationary. Let us look at four poems, each written in a different rhythmic mode: ‘At the Back of the Waldorf Astoria, Shanghai’, ‘To-ji Temple Market’, ‘Café near Tonobe’ and ‘At Baiyun Airport, Guangzhou’. At the back of the Waldorf Astoria, Shanghai A swarm of scooters speeds along Suzhou Road South past an old man, oblivious in his roadside shack.

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He is lost in thought, deep inside his old mobile phone amongst old chairs, boxes, the detritus of the city. Underneath ‘The Outline of Shanghai Tobacco Sales Network’ and ‘The Great Northern Telegraph Corporation, 1922’ signs on the Shanghai heritage architectural trail. One block west of the Bund, of 21st century China with its lights, power overload, the neon cityscape of Pudong and the Saturday night revellers from across the world the fashion gurus at Nougatine at Jean Georges, Three on the Bund. I watch him enter unconsciousness, and then sleep, wrapt in the China Telecom interface, locked into sub-Cupertino, the backstreets, the vapour trail of civilization.

This poem is written in European sonnet mode, but carries the modulations and rhythms of prose. It is unrhymed but uses alliteration (‘A swarm of scooters speeds along Suzhou Road South’) and establishes its prosaic measure, defined by the line endings but sitting within the rhythm of the five sentences that make up the poems. There is no metrical pattern. The poem starts with two two-line sentences, as if to establish a rhythmic unit, an extended metrical pattern from which the rest of the poem will depart – like the beginnings of a jazz composition. But it is not improvisation that follows the opening lines and sentences; rather, it is the foundation for the following two sentences, neither of which – strictly grammatically speaking – is a sentence. Because there is no main verb in either of the third or fourth sentences, and because they are composed of three and four lines respectively, the rhythmic sense of a slowing down towards a stillness. The poem then ends with the final three-line sentence, bringing the vapour of the trail of high-speed scooters back into the frame. One could summarize the multiple rhythms of this poem by saying it is composed of 5 sentences, each consisting of run-on lines in a pattern of 2 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 3 to make up the 14 lines of a sonnet, and taking a characteristically ‘square’ shape on the page. The lines are of roughly equal length but work additively, not metrically. At the same time, the form suggests a song and sits in tension with the prosaic, everyday nature of the content and its expression. To-ji Temple Market Everyone here is resolutely here: through the gate step into the incense yard, rub smoke into your clothes, light a candle for the Buddha. In the easing rain you reach the praying yard. Put up your umbrella and peer deep into the recess of the shrine; buy tea, buy noodles. Have the calligrapher write a message for you to the other side. There is no tomorrow

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there is no yesterday – you’ve already passed through the gate.

Compare the previous poem with ‘To-ji Temple Market’. Again, the poem is prosaic, but this time the lines are shorter. Because the concentration of the writer and reader is on short ‘snapshot’ statements, the pace (and content) is slower, resulting in the typical focus on the language and sense of the poem that is one of the factors that distinguishes it from prose. Here, too, the poem is composed of five sentences, punctuated not only by their punctuation but also by line breaks, in a pattern 6 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 3. This is no sonnet, but a 17-line composition, with an emphatic repetition of 3-line sentential units at the end. The structure mirrors the experience: first, a looser entry from the day-to-day world into the ante-yard of the temple. Second, an arresting two-line sentence to break that looser rhythm as you realize you are in a different world. Third, the sense that you have arrived at a rhythmical stability or pattern even before you realize you have arrived. Café near Tonobe Carp the weight of pike in the ornamental lake. They stare up out of bloated splendour at the drifters gracing the skyline. In the café garden what they see, refracted, are paper lanterns, parasols, the cultivated artifice of bonsai. The off-duty businessmen are supplanted. In their soulless blue they look like lost guards of the past. Inside the café, American jazz, diluted. I drink bitter tea, then sweet coffee as the heavy tile rooves only just hold the whole scene down.

Pattern in poetry is important: it has a visual function (we can tell the words on the page form a poem, even by looking at a distance where we cannot see the detail of the words, but apprehend the overall shape). ‘Café near Tonobe’ takes the form of four unrhymed quatrains. The rhythm is not additive, as in the freer verse of the previous two poems; but nor is it metrical. The unit of rhythm that plays against the sequential drive of the language is the stanza or ‘verse’, marked by the four-line regularity but (visually, again but with aural intent) by the spaces between the stanzas. Two of the sentences that make up the poem are verbless, ‘Carp the weight of pike/in the ornamental lake’ at the very beginning of the poem, signalling a stillness. There is no movement from a main verb. This stillness is picked up again in the penultimate sentence which starts the final stanza: ‘Inside the café, American jazz/ diluted’. It should also be noted that none of the poems in this section starts its lines

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with a capital letter unless they start a sentence, further emphasizing the prosaic flow of the language, albeit within a poetic frame. At Baiyun Airport, Guangzhou Pork dumplings in vinegar for breakfast; cappuccino with taikoo golden coffee sugar crystals and a complimentary sandwich cookie. At the bill, each banknote is checked for authenticity. At 6am, the city is moving on fast wheels in thirty degree heat and 90% humidity. Flights are already departing for Tianjin, Changsha, Chongqing, Xiamen, Fushan and Nanjing. On the flight to Xi’an, I’m given a gift: on the box are plum blossoms and the words Warmth. Refreshing. Harmonious. Nourishing. But it’s early spring, and the plums are too hard and much too bitter to eat.

Finally, ‘At Baiyun Airport, Guangzhou’ shares the stanza principle of the previous poem, but does so in a different configuration. Rather than four quatrains, the poem is made up of four tercets and a final couplet. One could see it as a terza rima sonnet: there are 14 lines, but very differently arranged from the prosaic sonnet in ‘At the back of the Waldorf Astoria, Shanghai’ above. One could also consider whether the rhythm behind the poem is triple rather than duple. Whereas ‘Café near Tonobe’ uses a ‘standard’ duple rhythm to make up its four quatrains, ‘At Baiyun Airport, Guangzhou’ might be said to use triple rhythm. The rhythms cannot be captured so simply, however, because within each stanza or section, there is considerable variation. On the one hand, there are run-on lines like ‘At 6 am, the city is moving on fast wheels/in thirty degree heat and 90% humidity’, and on the other there are staccato lists, like ‘Tianjin, Changsha, Chongqing/Xiamen, Fushan and Nanjing’ and ‘Warmth. Refreshing. Harmonious. Nourishing’. The other notable feature about a structure of this kind is that the final couplet, as in terza rima sonnets or Shakespearean sonnets, provides a summation or counterpoint, reflecting back in its tighter two-line form across the poem as a whole, as if to say: you have been lulled into a particular rhythm, but now you need to change and see what has been said in a different and/or conclusive light.

10.5  Asian Dance Rhythms Sharma et al. (1996) take a sociological perspective in looking at a range of hybrid Asian/British music/dance cultural forms in their political contexts. Sharma (1996), one of the editors as well as a contributor, captures the hybridity of the cultural forms: ‘As you enter this shop [in Birmingham] waves of polyphonic rhythms and

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melodies struggle for aural ascendancy: sounds of Bombay clash with the religious shubads of Punjab; of Apache Indian is being drowned out by the frenzied poetry of the great Qawwal Aziz Mian’ (1996: 15). The underlying metaphors are ones of conflict or submersion: ‘struggle’, ‘clash’, ‘drowned out’. It is undeniable that polyrhythmic aural experiences can be conflicting and can be felt as areas of conflict in multiple, complex and hybrid identities. At the same time, harmonic rhythmic relations can also be experienced. Sharma et al.’s book reminds us that polyrhythmicity sits within a political arena as well as a musical, literary and cultural one. First, we should move away from the notion that ‘melody’ and ‘harmony’ are standard appropriations of European/North American culture and that ‘rhythm’ is the province of the global South or, worse, ‘primitive’ cultures that are more wedded to the physical. Second, the re-discovery of rhythm in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in international, hybrid fields is to be welcomed as a global phenomenon rather than the possession of a few hegemonic countries or cultures. Third, that, as pointed out elsewhere in the book, rhythms can operate at many levels in an artwork or in social situations at the same time, for example, in harmonic shifts as well as at a bassline, foundational level. Fourth, that dualism (e.g. rhythm as opposed to melody) is unproductive in a field in which over-simplified discourses reduce the understanding of the complexity of time relations.

10.6  Indian rāg I wrote in A Prosody of Free Verse (2017) about the close association between Indian rāg and dance, suggesting that the long rhythmic phrases gave a useful hint as to how to account for free verse rhythms in Western poetry. What was acknowledged in that discussion (2017: 136–8) was that unmetered music  – ālāp  – was under-researched and ‘an immensely difficult problem’ (Clayton 2000: 9). Where I differed from Clayton was in the role of repetition in music and, by implications, other art forms. Here I address the problem of unmetered art forms, followed by further consideration of the role of repetition in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Repetition takes its position in art forms largely as a framing device and as one that can provide a link between two or more art forms as they combine. In terms of the framing function, this can take place at the level of the whole work, so that, for example, a refrain or a rhythmic cadence could start and end a piece. If it recurs throughout a work, it might be termed a motif. The advantage of large-scale rhythmic framing is that it draws a line (frame) between the operation of everyday life and the nature of the artwork. Repetition in everyday life is habitual or diurnal, still notable by its variations. Repetition in art is an attempt to draw attention to the enhanced patterning of experience. The very act of formal repetition establishes a framework within which it is possible to understand and appreciate (a) the way phenomena relate to each other in everyday life via an abstract concept and (b)

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formal rhythmic shaping in its own right, with its propensity to explore a relationship between repetition and non-repetition within a work. However, ‘unmetered art forms’ exist. Novels and long sagas, by their very nature, arrange time through the manipulation of characters, action, settings and other devices, including the direct narratorial management of time. A novel does not have to embody any obviously repetitive devices as its principle is post hoc propter hoc. It is inherently sequential and quasi-causal. Poems, musical compositions, dances, films, plays and other art forms that operate in time can also be unmetered. They tend to work within a framed concept of the work itself, but within that frame there is no obligation or demand for repetition. Finally, there is no repetitive or metered requisite in terms of meaning. Meaning does not have to be repetitious in order to be made, communicated and/or understood. The ālāp, therefore, is of particular interest in polyrhythmicity because it acts as a preface, as an exploratory pre-metrical section of a rāg. It is said to be close to the voice, to expression, to setting a mood, helping the musician to establish a connection between her- or himself and the context as well as with the audience, if present. It is improvisatory and is, in a sense, a search for a rhythmic pulse. Often the introduction of the tabla marks the end of this undulating, sometimes increasingly pacy, introduction. The ālāp is not without rhythm. Each note or combination of notes in the exploratory sequence, like a conversation, moves one towards the tala or metric cycle. Once the metric cycle is established, the variations within and beyond it form a new and more multi-levelled temporal relationship. An example of ālāp can be found in Debasmita Bhattacharya’s Raag Bhairavi, available on YouTube (2017). The tala can vary in pattern from 3 to 128 beats, with metrical patterns like 4 + 4 + 4 + 4 (duple rhythms) or 3 + 2 + 2 (mixed triple and duple) or 7 + 1 + 2, and in this respect can be compared to the rhythms explored in Chaps. 4, 5, and 11, with rich interlayering of rhythms within a single work.

10.7  Percussion in the Music of Southeast Asia Becker’s 1968 study laid the ghost of assumptions prevalent in the first half of the twentieth century that Southeast and East Asian rhythm was non-existent. This assumption was based on a notion that this region was different from Europe, Africa or the Americas. Its difference was assumed to be based on a notion of time that was static, in the present and freed of the sequences of the past, present and future. Such a notion was associated with a view of social relations being infused by religion or spiritual paths that transcended time. Part of Becker’s argument is to show that Western transcription or scoring conventions lay an artificial and inappropriate framework of analysis on Southeast Asian music. In particular the duple or quadruple rhythmic patterning is reinforced by transcription, obscuring the larger rhythmic phrases in the music. An analogy with the tyranny of metre in shaping thinking about rhythm in poetry is evident. She illustrates the point by analysing musical pieces from Laos and Thailand,

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concluding that the rhythmical phrasing is 16- or 32-beat before repetition takes place – still duple rhythm, basically, but extended over longer phrasing with accents at the end rather the beginning of the phrases. This end-accented pattern distinguishes such phrasing from what we described elsewhere as the pulse at the start of a rhythmic phrase. What is more salient for the argument of the present book is that Southeast Asian rhythms are predicated on a ‘square’ framework: within the even numbered relationship of rhythmic units, there are multiples of 2: 4, 8, 16 and 32 with end-accented shape. There is little syncopation, but rather a cyclical pattern, thus creating a sense of timelessness; and yet, the emphasis on the last note of a phrase suggests emphasis on the marking and segmentation of time. As Becker suggests (1968: 177): …varying clusters of characteristics make it possible to identify four different types of drum patterns, 1) configurative, 2) extended, 3) durational, and 4) metronomic.

Configurative patterns tend to be shorter than extended patterns and provide the marking of regular rhythmic phrases, especially in relation to text (in performance). Extended types of rhythm explore the longer phrases that are more akin to melody or sense; are harder to conceive in the memory; and yet are definitional in terms of the intended language of the music. Durational patterns, rather like the variations in tala described in the previous section, can take non-duple form as in 3 + 3 + 2 or 2 + 3 + 3 patterns, still finding a place within the overall duple hierarchical structure, but with the addition of syncopation. Metronomic patterns are un-syncopated and most akin to European regular metre. Becker’s conclusion is that Southeast Asian percussive structures ‘while orderly, are complex, subtle and highly diverse’ and that the notion that such multi-layered rhythmic composition is mere duple time in all fields is ‘no longer a satisfactory explanation of the rhythmic organization of the music of mainland Southeast Asia’ (1968: 189). McGraw (2008) focuses on Balinese gamelan. In order to capture the nature of gamelan, he posits the term ‘temporality’ as indicating: all elements of time, duration, and rate in music. Temporality includes the overall duration of a piece, its tempos and their transformations, constructions of metre, density, and the various ways in which a piece of music can ‘distort the ‘objective’ perception of time through the manipulation of information, i.e. repetition and variation versus the presentation of new material. (2008: 137–8, footnote)

That is to say the collective arrangement of time in a gamelan composition or performance is distinctive, and the seeming lack of a driving rhythm at ground level is replaced by an overarching architecture of sound that marks itself in relation to larger expressions of rhythmic shape. Here, tempo does have a place in polyrhythmicity, not least through its variation both within each instrument, but also between the levels represented by different instruments. What is significant is not cyclicity itself (the all-too-often assumed nature of gamelan), but coincidence of rhythmic patterns at key points in the composition.

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Tempo in European musical notation is often indicated by expressive terms: for example, larghissimo (very slow), through adagio (slow with expression), andante (walking pace) to allegro and prestissimo, with many points in between. These are impressionistic categories and might be varied between movements in a larger work. They can also be represented numerically via a ratio of beats per minute. It is only in comparison and gear changes in tempi that rhythm manifests itself and often in larger-scale compositions. Transitions in tempi, marked by terms like rallentando (a gradual slowing down) or rubato (free adjustment of tempo for expressive purposes), also add to the repertoire. None of these tempi are rhythmical in themselves: they are principally about the rate or pace of sound in music. They rarely if ever appear in the performance of poetry or dramatic script; if they do, they do not affect the rhythms and signify modal rather than rhythmic changes in the work. But in Balinese and Southeast Asian music, changes in tempi can be more salient within the overall structure of the work, not least because the rhythmic gear changes are set within an overall ‘static’ framework characterized and built through duple time. They are also more suited to an oral, collective tradition of movement in time.

References Andrews, R. (2017). A prosody of free verse: Explorations in rhythm. New York: Routledge. Becker, J. (1968). Percussive patterns in the music of mainland Southeast Asia. Ethnomusicology, 12(2), 173–191. Bhattacharya, D. (2017). Rhag Bhairavi  – Alap. London: Music of India Festival. Accessed at youtube.com/watch?v=nR0S0ftugw, July 2020. Clayton, M. (2000). Time in Indian music: Rhythm, metre and form in North Indian rāg performance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ellison, R. (1972). Shadow and act. New York: Vintage. Fenollosa, E. (1936). In E. Pound (Ed.), The Chinese written character as a medium for poetry. San Francisco: City Lights Books. McCarthy, C., & Dimitriadis, G. (2000a). The work of art in the postcolonial imagination. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 21(1), 59–74. McCarthy, C., & Dimitriadis, G. (2000b). Art and the postcolonial imagination: Rethinking the institutionalization of third world aesthetics and theory. Ariel, 31(1), 231. McGraw, A. C. (2008). Different temporalities: The time of Balinese gamelan. In Yearbook for traditional music (Vol. 40, pp. 136–162). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Métail, M. (2017). Wild geese returning: Chinese reversible poems (G. Jody, Trans.). Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press. Sharma, S., Hutnyk, J., & Sharma, A. (1996). Dis-orienting rhythms: The politics of the new Asian dance music. London: Zed Books.

Chapter 11

Researching Polyrhythmicity

Abstract  The present book is based on research into polyrhythmic patterning in music, the arts, contemporary culture and the social sciences. How has this phenomenon been researched, and how might it be researched in future? Multiple-levelled notation of rhythms, showing how one rhythmic sequence relates to others in the same composition or same sociocultural phenomenon, are discussed and demonstrated. Conventional musical notation, though it might provide a starting point for the notation of multiple rhythms, is too bound by the division of time relations into regular time signatures. Issues of timing, terminology and existing models for analysis are explored in order to find a new language for describing and analysing multi-­ levelled rhythms. Examples of the notation of rhythm are presented, and a new composite and multi-levelled prosody is proposed which operates at macro-, mezzoand micro-levels in an overall approach to polyrhythmicity. Keywords  Timing · Terminology · Analytical models · Research · Methodology

11.1  Timing Van Leeuwen (1999: 36) makes a useful distinction between time (or what has been called ‘relative time relations’ so far) and timing. The parallel can be made with ‘argument’ and ‘argumentation’. The first term in each case is the more abstract general noun. The second refers to the process of how successive events or phenomena or elements of the timing or argument relate to each other. Once again, the connection between musical timing and social relations and patterns is made. Such distinction between ‘time’ and ‘timing’ is part of what is needed in a clarification of terms. The apparatus of terminology will be an important element in a repertoire of tools that are needed for further research in the field. There is a conflation of the terms ‘pulse’, ‘accent’, ‘stress’ and ‘beat’ (1999: 39) that the present book needs to interrogate. While accent and stress can both contribute to beat, it is helpful to distinguish this cluster of emphases from pulse, which can

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be seen as the trigger of starting point of a rhythmical phrase: a phrase that might be regularly punctuated by metrical beat or which may flow in a rhythm closer to the speaking voice in a freer, less metrical form. The only occasion on which pulse is coincident with accents, stress and beat is when the metrical form of the phrasing is highly regular. Van Leeuwen offers further distinctions which are helpful in describing multiple rhythms and their co-relations; these reinforce the connection between the social and the musical. First is the provenance of the pattern (1999: 46), though this will vary according to the cultural context. The second is the experiential meaning potential of the rhythmic pattern, i.e. the activity that accompanies the pattern. He also links duple and triple time to social provenances, particularly those of dance choreography: Most human actions have a duple rhythm, and in music, too, triple rhythm is the exception rather than the rule – almost all popular music has duple rhythm. This [triple rhythm] ‘being different from the everyday’ can then be given more specific value in a given context. It can, for example, mean ‘noble’ and ‘dignified’, as in Aristotle, or ‘individuality’ and ‘emotive expressivity’, as in the Romantic era. (1999: 51)

Van Leeuwen also distinguishes between continuous time, as evidence in the drone sound that starts and finishes much Indian music, signifying eternity, and fluctuating time, which ‘also lacks phrasing, but does shift between different pitches, at more or less regular intervals which are, however, too long to produce a clear sense of regular pulse or periodicity’ (1999: 54). This latter mode is often used to represent large-scale emotional shifts – a mode that operates between the continuous a-temporal mode on the one hand and the rhythmical phrasing brought about by pulses on the other. In A Prosody of Free Verse (Andrews 2017: 118–22), I attempted to set the foundation for a system for unmeasured time or genuinely free (as opposed to liberated) verse. This proto-system now needs to be developed to accommodate multi-levelled rhythms, including combinations of metrical and freer forms of rhythm. The duple/ triple distinction is a good start from the metrical perspective. From the point of view of freer, additive rhythms (rather than the divisive rhythms of metre) in rhythmic phrases that can vary considerably in length, the model used in A Prosody provides another starting point. That model consisted of ‘bars’ that were variable in length and a five-point ‘vertical’ scale of intensity of beat or emphasis.

11.2  Researching Polyrhythmicity In Chap. 4 there was initial exploration of the contribution made by African music to polyrhythmicity. The specific nature of multi-levelled rhythms in any composition is captured by Chernoff (1979: 47) as quoted by van Leeuwen (1999: 56): Instruments must find their entrance, not by counting from the main beat, but in relation to other instruments. The use of ‘staggered’ independent entrances in the cross-rhythmic relationships of the music indicates an important characteristic of African music.

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Individual drummers may find themselves coinciding with other musicians every 24 or 36 beats, for example, thus operating on a larger rhythmic canvas that is usual in Western/European music. So, in effect, there is synchronization, but on a larger scale, allowing individual rhythmic phrasing to take place between the synchronized moments in the composition/performance. An analogy is made with changing social relations, where synchronized time may be losing its hold on social patterns, allowing more individualized movements within broader social conventions, or, in other words, more subjective time finding its place within an overall ‘objective’ time framework. This makes the search for a system to research polyrhythmicity an important research goal, but one which will have to take into account the relativity of different rhythmic patterns rather than any single overarching grand design. It would not be appropriate for a methodological system for researching polyrhythmicity, however, to be couched in the binary terms of ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ time. These are both relative terms. There is no subjectivity that is not socially informed; and ‘objectivity’ is the sum of a series or collection of ‘subjective’ (i.e. individually sourced) observations and principles. Rather, we need a more sophisticated approach that works on the basis of axes or spectra of possibilities.

11.3  Some Further Terms for Analysis Rhythm is evident in most compositions, unless the music takes the form of a stillness, like a drone in Indian rāg. This section explores a number of key terms in the methodology of researching polyrhythmicity. First, a polyrhythmic model, if seen as the default framework of musical time, casts music in which all the elements synchronize their timing to the same pulse as monorhythmic time. This happens rarely and suggests that the narrow conception of rhythm as a series of beats is too crude a model to account for rhythm of any kind, let alone multi-levelled rhythms. As monorhythmic time is, in van Leeuwen’s terms (1999: 208), ‘measured time’, it belongs to the abstract category that is a theoretical possibility rather than a common actuality. Similarly, ‘unmeasured time’ is not necessarily arrhythmic. It is composed of a series of rhythmic phrases which are not metronomic, not regular, nor in any way stand in relation to a metrical pattern. It is sometimes called additive rhythm because one phrase builds upon another, and each one adds to the overall rhythmic identity of the work. Such additive rhythmic movement is characteristic of free verse (vers libre) as opposed to liberated verse (vers libéré). These definitions are in agreement with van Leeuwen’s conception (1999: 213) of unmeasured time as music that one cannot tap one’s feet to, but not with his notion that unmeasured time signifies ‘the “eternal”, the “sacred”, the “supernatural”’. Second, phrasing is a key term in polyrhythmic studies because phrases define and mark the time relations between themselves. Some of this phrasing will be regular, with beats evident in each phrase, thus falling under the category of metricality.

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Others will be of irregular length, perhaps containing one or more beats but always starting with a pulse. The pulse, which kick-starts the phrase, may be accentuated or may be an offbeat, as in syncopated rhythmic phrases. Third, a melodic phrase is none other than a rhythmic phrase with tonal and/or pitch variation. Similarly, most rhythmic phrases, unless they are played on monotone instruments, have a melodic contour. Fourth, the boundaries between phrases or groups of phrases are marked by silences, however brief. The present book does not take the view that it is the silences that define the rhythm. Rather, that they play a crucial part in defining the shape of the rhythm in providing a ground on which the rhythms are played out. Boundaries are important at either end of the musical composition but also within it for structural reasons. Fifth, if rhythms are written on or sculpted in the air in sound, the air itself provides a tangible substance against which the rhythm(s) are defined. Although this might be called the ground for the rhythm, it is not the same ground as in a Purcell composition, for example, where the harpsichord might provide the baseline continuo for the rest of the composition.

11.4  Rhythmanalysis Lefebvre (2004) took as his central premise the notion that rhythm was fundamental to thinking about space as well as time and that both space and time should be considered together in the analysis of music, physicality, daily life and urban experience from a Marxist perspective. His work on rhythm is discussed in the present chapter because of its significance as a tool of analysis as well as an object of that analysis. As a basic principle, Lefebvre’s position is that ‘everywhere where there is interaction between a place, a time and an expenditure of energy, there is rhythm’ (2004: 15). Putting aside the space/time issues for the moment, the interesting feature that is mentioned is that of the ‘expenditure of energy’, as if to say that rhythm cannot exist purely on a matrix of space and time, but that it has to have driving pulse behind it. This qualifier also helps us to distinguish between metricality and rhythm. Metricality can exist without the expenditure of energy; rhythm cannot. What follows from Lefebvre’s characterization of rhythm is a list of elements of a framework for analysis: repetition; interference of linear processes and cyclical processes; and the trajectory of rhythms in terms of birth, growth, peak, decline and end (2004: 15). The first two seem to suggest an analogy with the idea that there is a ‘ghost of metre’ behind music, poetry and everyday life and that ‘interferences’ with metricality set up different kinds of rhythm(s). This much is now accepted. But such a conception does not get to the heart of free rhythms nor help to define the nature of the measure: that is to say, the distinctive shape of a rhythmical phrase or the relative shapes of rhythmical phrases in a polyrhythmic analysis.

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As far as the present book is concerned, the key paragraph in Lefebvre is this one: The notion of rhythm brings with it some complementary considerations: the implied but different notions of polyrhythmia, eurhythmia and arrhythmia. […] Polyrhythmia? It suffices to consult one’s body; thus the everyday reveals itself to be a polyrhythmia from the first listening. Eurythymia? Rhythms unite with one another in the state of health, in normal (which is to say normed!) everydayness; when they are discordant, there is suffering, a pathological state […] Polyrhythmia analyses itself. A fundamental forecast: sooner or later the analysis succeeds in isolating from within the organised whole a particular movement and its rhythm. Often coupled empirically with speculations […] the analytic operation simultaneously discovers the multiplicity of rhythms and the uniqueness of particular rhythms. (2004: 16)

Lefebvre’s notion of eurythmia is a poetic one; that is to say, it inheres in the present (lyric) moment. The rhythmanalyst ‘thinks with his [sic] body, not in the abstract, but in lived temporality’ (2004: 21). Eurythmia is a state of being and consciousness – the state of being in the present and being aware of that presence – as well as the way a healthy body functions. This inclusive, harmonic conception underpins Lefebvre’s theory. It suggests a state of wholeness in which the body lives in harmony with its environments. Thus it cannot know its rhythms consciously and is only aware where there is significant difference – or, at the extreme, discordance – in the relations between rhythms. And yet the rhythmanalyst is not a poet, though she/he comes closest to poetry than to any other disciplines like statistics or psychoanalysis: ‘like the poet, the rhythmanalyst performs a verbal action, which has an aesthetic import. The poet concerns himself [sic] above all with words, the verbal. Whereas the rhythmanalyst concerns himself with temporalities and their relations within wholes’ (2004: 24). The rhythm-analysis here defined as a method and a theory pursues this time-honoured labour in a systematic and theoretical manner, by bringing together very diverse practices and very different types of knowledge: medicine, history, climatology, cosmology, poetry (the poetic), etc. Not forgetting, of course, sociology and psychology, which occupy the front line and supply the essentials. (ibid.)

The rhythmanalyst has, therefore, to be multi- or inter-disciplinary.

11.5  Existing Models for Analysis Agawu’s (1995: 180) model for the analysis of rhythmic expression ‘prescribed a set of more or less abstract generative relationships involving, sequentially, gesture, the spoken word, song, instrumental music, and dance or stylized gesture’. This set, as discussed in Chap. 5, is based on gesture as the key communicative mode where the model begins and ends sequentially. The model suggests that the linear sequence is part of a potential circular movement from stylized gesture back to gesture. In many ways, the model might be presented as a circle, in which case the relationships between the modes of gesture, word, song, instrumental music and dance might be assumed to all interact with

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each other, rather than in a staged and linear way. For example, in Agawu’s model, there seems little possible connection between gesture and vocal music, gesture and instrumental music, and yet such connections can be readily imagined and demonstrated. Similarly, the spoken word seems at some distance from dance or stylized gesture, whereas spoken word performance accompanied by dance and/or stylized gesture, or vice versa, is easily imagined and referenced. Agawu acknowledges that ‘although the model isolates domains for the sake of analysis, they are in practice intertwined’ (1995: 185). What that suggests is that the model does not fully reflect practice and therefore derives from an incomplete theory of polyrhythmicity. Agawu also notes the inappropriateness of Western notational systems for representing African rhythms while at the same time acknowledging that there is no generally accepted notational system within Africa. The closest that has been discovered for the purposes of the present book is that by Arom (1993), discussed previously in Chap. 4. Perhaps Arom’s (1993) model for the description and analysis in his short analysis of a piece called ‘Bobangi’ from the Aka Pygmies provides the best basis for a model for polyrhythmic analysis. I will start with an explication of this model and then use it as a foundation to build a model that will embrace a wider set of polyrhythmic relations in music, literature and other arts. His analysis, some of the elements of which have already been discussed in Chap. 4, begins with a caveat: ‘that the degree of complexity of a polyrhythmic construct is not dependent on the number of its constitutive parts alone’. He goes on (1993: 56): Actually, the interweaving of diverse rhythmical patterns with their relative positions – to each other as well as to the pulse – ensures what seems to be the overall purpose of this music, namely perceptual ambiguity.

This caveat is interesting and may refer to an aspect of the cultural context of the listening and response to the music (Arom does not elaborate). However, the notion of perceptual ambiguity does not apply in the current discussion, nor in the wider attempt to provide a theory and model for polyrhythmicity. Perceptions of rhythmic relations are largely outside the remit of the current book in that they are highly variable and would require a separate research project to determine; they are situated in the psychological or socio-psychological fields. The focus of the present book is to understand and convey the complexity of polyrhythmic relations. While it is acknowledged that perceptions are part of the dialogic composer-performer-­ audience relationship, the primary focus of the present book is on the composer and performers and their compositions and performances. There is also the question of perceptual ambiguity. There is no sense in the present book that ambiguity plays a part in polyrhythmic reception and analysis, at least as far as confusing ambiguity is concerned. If, on the other hand, ambiguity refers in more general terms to two (or more) operations happening simultaneously, then it might be useful in the description and analysis of polyrhythmic relations. Because of the more common associations of ‘ambiguity’ with inexactness or ambivalence,

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Fig. 11.1  The Bobangi song periods from Arom (1993: 56)

the term is not used in the present book where the drive is towards exactness and clarity in the exposition of multi-levelled rhythms. The polyrhythmic system depicted in Fig. 11.1 requires some explication before it is discussed. The vertical axis notes the instruments that are used in ‘Bobangi’: four vocal parts, three (sets) of drums and metal blades. The horizontal axis denotes the ‘song periods’ which make up the ‘macroperiod’ in Arom’s terminology: this is the underlaying metrical framework within which the rhythms are played out. Although the diagram suggests symmetry or equal lengths for each song period, the relative length of these periods within the macroperiod probably makes for rhythmic variation at a higher structural level. As we have seen in other compositional practices, a pattern is established in the opening ‘periods’ or cadences of a musical composition or (especially) free verse compositions which creates a template, a ‘measure’ against which the rest of the composition can develop. Sometimes that defining measure is returned to during and often at the end of a composition; sometimes it is abandoned altogether but provides an initial trace or starting point for rhythmic identification. The drums and blades provide the ‘polyrhythmic substructure’ (1993: 57). The four vocal parts ‘unfold within a periodic framework of 36 minimal values’ which provides the overarching umbrella and units of analysis for each song period. Without explicating the rhythmic relations between each of the instruments and voices (see the article for a full explication), an example of such relation is between the song and the first two drums (1:3), between the song and the third drum (1:12) and between the song and the blades (2:3). Such rhythmic variation and complexity are replicated between each of the eight ‘instruments’ (four voices, three drums, blades) in the overall composition. As Arom states, ‘the organization of the periodicity of this piece uses six ratios, respectively 1:2, 1:3, 1:4, 1:8, 1:12 and 2:3’ (1993: 57).

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In understanding that such a model can only be a framework for composition, Arom notes that: At this level, the piece appears globally symmetrical. But a closer look at the way the substance is organized reveals that but for the third drum, the symmetry is systematically broken. (ibid.)

In the second drum, for example, the so-called simplest case of a hemiola (in which, typically, two groups of three beats are replaced by three groups of two beats, giving the effect of a shift between triple and duple metre) is evident, thus setting up the tension between duple and triple metre. But what Arom calls ‘rhythmic oddity’ (as in the 7 + 5 beats of the first drum and the 11 + 13 of the blades) needs to be embraced within a theory and model of polyrhythmicity as not so much an oddity in relation to a basic metre, but as a different layer in the overall presentation and depiction of rhythmic complexity. Arom is aware of the limitations of a mathematical model such as this, with its dependence upon counting. He concludes: What is remarkable is that attributing any notion of verbal counting to the performers is out of the question, Paradoxically, in traditional African music, “everything is measured, but nobody counts”. For the African musician, each melodic construct, each rhythmic pattern is conceived and perceived as a global, undividable entity which, once learnt and memorised, will be performed without reference to any counting. (1993: 57)

Understandably, any such abstract system based on numbers and counting will be embodied in the haptic memory. The numbers remain a systemic abstraction. Numbers – at least those used in the described system – tend to highlight the metrical underpinning of the composition rather than the rhythmic flow. The danger in such a division between metrical and numerical accountability on the one hand, and rhythmic ‘flow’ on the other, is that rhythm will remain a quasi-mystical phenomenon informed by ‘the ghost of metre’. Although Arom’s model provides a basis for a model of polyrhythmicity, a model that fully accounts for polyrhythmic identity and variation needs to build further. In the following section, a model is proposed that attempts to take that further step.

11.6  A New Model for Polyrhythmic Analysis What, in addition to Agawu’s and Arom’s models, is needed to build a more comprehensive model for polyrhythmicity? Agawu provides a model based on sequential movement from gesture through spoken word to vocal music, thence to instrumental music and dance. Although there is circularity to the model (a suggestion is made above that it might be better depicted in circular format), its principal drive is to see gesture as the prime mover and the gradual transformation of word into music and then to the physical representation of rhythmic expression in dance or ‘stylized gesture’. Its strengths are its insights into the genesis of rhythms and their transformations in different modes and the links it makes between the different modes of rhythmic representation.

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The strengths of Arom’s model are its mathematical and metrical basis for accounting for the multi-levelled complexity of a single instance of musical performance. It depicts more fully than any other model the interrelationship of the several instruments in the composition. But the very mathematical/metrical basis of the model is also its weakness: what it sees as a rhythmic ‘oddity’ is actually at the core of rhythmic invention. Even the term ‘rhythmic variation’ would not account for the nature of rhythmic shape, as again the reference is back to metre. A new model must be based on firm theoretical ground. While this is expounded elsewhere in the present book, the essence is as follows: a comprehensive theory of rhythm that can be applied to music, poetry, other forms of literature and dance as well as to the humanities and social sciences in their exploration of time relations must embrace freer rhythms along with regular ones. At the freer end of the rhythmic spectrum, rhythms are additive rather than metrical. The unit of rhythm is longer than for conventional metrical prosodies. Such a ‘unit’ of rhythm must embrace the semantics of rhythmic relations – certainly where words are concerned, but also the ‘substance’ of the message in non-verbal forms. Furthermore, because the aim is to describe, understand and analyse multi-levelled rhythms (polyrhythmicity), a language for the articulation of those levels must be developed. Once the model is designed and expounded, it must be tested against theory as well as against examples to check its validity and reliability. Development of a model may well change the nature of any emergent theory of polyrhythmicity. The proposed model has macro-, mezzo- and micro-levels. At the macro levels, consideration of overall rhythmic structure is made, and the prevailing type of rhythm – whether metrical, semi-liberated or free – is determined. The macro-level also looks at synchronization: the overall pattern of rhythms in a work and how they relate to each other and to measured time. The mezzo-level considers rhythmic phrasing and articulation, including durations within a work, like the line in a poem or a melodic/rhythmic phrase in music. Such phrasing and articulation, because it is looking at the relations within a work, will also address sections, movements, stanzas and other structural devices within a piece. The micro-level (the one on which there has been most attention in prosodies) is about relations within the line or melodic/rhythmic phrase. It will include consideration of metrical feet, syllabification, ictus and beat. In proposing a new model for polyrhythmic analysis, the newer dimensions will be the macro- and mezzo-levels indicated above. The aim is to set the better known and researched micro-levels within a larger frame which provides more descriptive and explanatory power.

11.7  Macro-level Rhythmicity At the highest level, there is no time. Like the function of the drone in Indian music, the ‘still point’ signifies no movement and a state of being above time. One step below that high point is the beginning of time relations, signified by the equivalent notions of zero and 1. Indeed, this binary conception seems to have determined

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most rhythmic and prosodic theory right down to the micro-levels. But charting the macro-level reveals further lineaments and principles of rhythmic shape and determination. First amongst these is synchronization. Behind the evident practice of synchronization is a harmonic principle: the notion that there is an elegance and unity of design in any work. Lest this begin to sound like a religious conception, it is important to state at this point that there is no connection between ontological states of being and religious experience in the formation of art works. There might be a spiritual dimension to the relationship between time and non-time, and rhythmic compositions have often been used to transport people’s state of mind from one plane to another (e.g. from physicality to mindfulness or movement to stillness and vice versa). The focus of the present book is on the nature of polyrhythmic patterning, rather than on its several effects. Also linked to the macro-level of rhythmicity is semantics. While ‘meaning’ is embedded at every level of the model, the substance operates at the macro-level through intended meaning and through determination in relation to existing genres. In semantics, we enter the territory of intended meanings as opposed to interpreted meanings. In the languages of poetry, the novel, music and dance, there is always room for negotiation in the space between intention and interpretation. The present book concentrates on intended meanings. In genre terms, each of the forms or text types of compositions carries meanings that are associated with them. Sonnets, for example, carry the etymological trace of little songs but also the personal voice that has been imprinted through generations of writers. Formally, the sonnet can break down into different mezzo-level sub-­ forms (Petrarchan, Shakespearean, free verse, Lowellian etc.), but they are all sonnets by stint of their 14-line structure. Therefore substance and genre are closely related at the macro-level. The choice of form is a rhetorical choice. Part of that choice is a macro-rhythmic one. From a musical perspective, as has been discussed in Chap. 4, fugue is the macro-­ level genre that best helps us to understand polyrhythmicity. With counterpoint as a principle of composition and architectural (vertical) design being as important as forward (horizontal) motion, fugue provides a musical and metaphorical template for thinking about the shape of multiple rhythms at the macro-level. As we will come to discuss at the mezzo-level, its component devices – inversion, modulation, syncopation and mirroring – form part of a whole that allows absence and presence, the recurrence of different forms in a harmony (not always tonal harmony) and polyphonic characterization. However diverse the elements of the overall form are in fugue, there is always synchronization within a passage of time. Finally, at the macro-level, there are major distinctions between measured time, usually conceived in terms of systemic metricality one the one hand and ‘unmeasured’ time, suggested by the timing embodied in additive rhythms, on the other. However, it is inappropriate to think of additive rhythms and their presence in free verse, for example, as unmeasured. There is simply a different rhythmicity at work, and it is important recognize that this operates at the macro- as well as mezzo- and

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micro-levels. Nevertheless, the relationship between measured time and unmeasured time is a useful one in the description of those rhythms that take their reference point from regular metres. Above all, macro-level rhythms are describable as patterns.

11.8  Mezzo-level Rhythmicity The mezzo-level is concerned with the internal relations between rhythms within a work. The first sub-level describes large-scale structural internal relations. Examples are stanzas, strophes and sections in poetry, chapters in novels and movements in music. The principle extends to ‘polyptiques’ or multi-panelled works in art, like diptychs and triptychs, as well as to the rhythms of a building in terms of movements within it and the relations of its constituent parts, in architectural design. These divisions in artworks are less perceptible as rhythmic units, because they seem static structural devices. But because they operate in time as well as space, they have rhythmic significance. In novels, for example, chapters and sections within chapters often mark a movement to a different time and/or place and/or perspective. They manage the complex map of framed experience that allows us, as readers, to step out of everyday time and reflect on a possible world in which time is arranged in order to suggest the macro-design of the author. The second sub-level is that of the line or cadence or measure. This level operates within the large structural shapings of sections, chapters and movements and is the key syntactic focus of rhythmic design. Lines, cadences and measures start with a pulse (of varying degrees). It is as this sub-level that rhythms are most obviously felt in the semantic/emotional nexus. The rhythms determine the feeling, whereas the words or notes or moves signify the intellectual meaning. In metrical compositions, a regular beat is assumed and either observed and/or used as a basis for departure. The terms that describe variation include syncopation, compression, turn, natural phrasing (e.g. of colloquial speech), emphasis within the line, spring, fall, balance and repetition (see Andrews 2017: 118–22 for further explication of this prosodic level in relation to free verse). The concept of articulation is important to the sub-level, not only in terms of the clarity of expressiveness but also in the sense that movements are articulated in different choreographic ways (and not only in dance).

11.9  Micro-level Rhythmicity The micro-level is well charted. There is a spectrum of views, with beat-based prosodies at one end and syllable-based prosodies (in languages in which syllables exist) at the other. The fact is that both beat-based prosodies and syllable-based prosodies depend on each other, and it is more productive to think of a spectrum

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of possibilities. The major difference in approaches is that beat-based prosodies see the beat, ictus or stress as the determining feature of the metrical foot or, at longer length, the rhythmic phrase. Beat is conceived at either a three-level intensity (high, medium or low) or on more finely calibrated scales. Its identity at the micro-level has often been writ large to suggest that the macro- and mezzo-levels are determined by it. In other words, its metricality (where evident or implied) is assumed to operate to inform the whole design of the piece. Beat-based prosodies are also dependent on repetition and therefore on regularity – hence their close association with metres. Syllable-based prosodies assume a different driving principle: that words and morphological sub-sections of words (again, in certain languages) are made up of syllables and that these are countable. In Western languages, the notion of a syllable sits half-way between phonology (the science of potentially meaningful sounds in a language) and morphology (the grammatically significant sub-parts of words). It has no rhythmic identity in itself, as syllables might be tonally as well as rhythmically neutral. But the chaining together of syllables in words and in the lines of poetry, for example, can provide a pattern that is significant visually and rhythmically. In Chinese and Japanese, the syllable can be represented by a whole character. The simplest examples are that of the haiku (5-7-5 syllables) and waka/tanka (5-7-5-7-7) in Japanese. (There are further variations, each with their own term. As all these are whole works, they provide a miniature version of the three levels of rhythmicity described in the present chapter.) The interesting aspect of syllabification in poetry, as far as the present discussion is concerned, is that of rhythmic shape. A series of syllables in its own right does not have rhythmic shape. Its numerical and semantic identity forms a mathematical/ visual pattern that suggests rhythmicity while at the same time emphasizing the stillness (outside time) that was mentioned at the beginning of Sect. 11.8. Where variation of stress comes in, the rhythmic shape is more pronounced, and the poem is seen to move in time. The other factor to bear in mind in discussions of beat and syllable is accent. In speech, the reference as far as rhythm is concerned is not to variation in phonetic pronunciation, but to variation in stress. This aspect of natural speech prosodies was discussed in Chap. 5. Whereas accent, beat, stress and ictus are often used synonymously, it is useful to distinguish between them. Accent can be associated with inflection within the natural spoken language. Ictus is the ‘stress of voice laid upon an accented syllable of a word’ and thus is somewhere between accent and beat. Beat is a cruder category than stress, in that it tends to be thought of in terms of high, medium or low intensities or more often in a binary sense of ‘strong’ or ‘weak’. Stress allows for finer calibrations of emphasis, both tonally and rhythmically. A summary table to represent the terms and relationships between the three levels of rhythmicity is provided below (Table 11.1). The key point of this polyrhythmic model is that all three levels operate together.

References

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Table 11.1  Macro-, mezzo- and micro-rhythmicity Level of rhythmicity Macro

Mezzo

Micro

Characteristics Large-scale designs and forms used to determine the semantic frame of a work The relations between time and non-time; time and timing Mid-level internal structural decisions that control the time relations within a work

Smaller units of rhythm that make up the line or phrase based on beats and/or syllables

Examples of terms used Genre Fugue

Stanza Section Movement Line Melodic and rhythmic phrasing Metrical feet Beat Ictus Stress Accent

References Agawu, K. (1995). African rhythm: A Northern Ewe perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Andrews, R. (2017). A prosody of free verse: Explorations in rhythm. New York: Routledge. Arom, S. (1993). Everything is measured but nobody counts: Musical time organization in Central Africa. In E. A. Dagan (Ed.), Drums: The heartbeat of Africa (pp. 56–57). Montreal: Galerie Amrad African Art Publications. Arom, S., & Ligeti, G. (1991). African polyphony and polyrhythm: Musical structure and methodology (M. Thom, B. Tuckett, & R. Boyd, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chernoff, J.  M. (1979). African rhythm and African sensibility: Aesthetics and social action in African musical idioms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lefebvre, H. (2004). Rhythmanalysis: Space, time and everyday life ( E.  Stuart & M.  Gerald, Trans.). London: Continuum. [Originally published as Éléments de rythmanalyse: Introduction à la connaissance des rythmes. Paris: Éditions Syllepse, 1992.] Martinec, R. (1995). Hierarchy of rhythm in English speech. PhD dissertation. Sydney: University of Sydney. Van Leeuwen, T. (1999). Speech, music, sound. London: Macmillan.

Chapter 12

Polyrhythmicity in Learning and Education

Abstract  Rhythm was a significant element in the design of European educational approaches such as eurythmics in the 1920s, though current educational thinking and practice have relegated rhythm to regular and repeated exercises in physical education, limiting the expression and exercise of rhythm. In a sedentary period of history, with sedentary learning (in front of a computer and/or in a classroom), there is a case for learning on the move. While mobile learning (learning a range of media platforms in a range of modes) has concentrated on the technology and on virtual learning environments and interfaces, it has not addressed learning sequences from a rhythmic perspective, emphasizing instead the choice of the individual as to when and where they learn. There thus seems to be a new need to consider the place that rhythm and polyrhythms play in the act of learning, both individually and socially, and how timing in learning and education, as in other fields of human activity, can be crucial to success and curriculum reform. Keywords  Contemporary rhetoric · Polyrhythmicity · Learning · Curriculum · Education · Argument · Argumentation · Multimodality · Dialogue · Text

12.1  Introduction This chapter extends the argument of the book by considering some of the issues in integrating polyrhythmicity into an overall theory of contemporary rhetoric. It also considers how curricula might be reformed in the light of such moves. By ‘rhetoric’ is meant not a version of Western classical rhetoric, nor the progymnasmata that formed the basis of education in the figures and devices of language of the medieval period in Europe. Rather, contemporary rhetoric will need to be re-fashioned for the twenty-first century, not as ‘the art of persuasion’ but as the ‘arts of discourse’. To expand further on these three reference points, classical rhetoric, which includes pre-Athenian rhetoric as well as the Greco-Roman tradition, was concerned with public discourse in emerging democracies. It was functional in that it © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021 R. Andrews, Polyrhythmicity in Language, Music and Society, Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education 12, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-0566-6_12

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served the purpose of helping speakers to win arguments in public forums; and its very functionality established an important principle for rhetoric, namely, that it served real world engagement and decision-making. Furthermore, Aristotle’s version of rhetoric stood in contrast to Platonic philosophizing. Rhetoric was practical, influential and part of the realpolitik. The reason that classical rhetoric is not fully appropriate to contemporary schooling is that it operated and was generated within a different temporal and social context. Its very groundedness in everyday life means that it cannot be transposed as a system to a twenty-first century specific context. Furthermore, classical rhetoric has little to say about rhythm; its focus is mostly on the public context, on structure, on genres, on sequencing and on style (both of the delivery and of the speaker). Neither are progymnasmata the best way to re-introduce rhetoric to the twenty-­ first century curriculum. Once reified into a system by the classical rhetoricians and their medieval European counterparts, it was the logical next step to write manuals of rhetoric based on a fossilization of the rhetorical practices and the admonitions of antiquity. Progymnasmata are text-book exercises based on a simple pedagogic model: principle, example, imitation. To explain more fully, the approach was to outline the principle of the rhetorical device; then to provide an example of it; and then to ask the student to imitate that example. Such a rigid, formal and transmission-­ like pedagogy was bound to become tedious as a practice for students but also to kill off the dynamic, fit-for-purpose nature of rhetoric itself in its reduction from a live social practice to a set of rules and regulations. Thirdly, although much of history has used Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric as the ‘art of persuasion’, there are at least two reasons why that definition is too narrow for contemporary purposes: one is that there is more than ‘persuasion’ in everyday discourse; and another is that rhetoric is no longer confined to spoken or even written verbal language. It is the most appropriate theory of communication, along with social semiotics, to inform multimodal approaches to communication: the use of spoken verbal language and written language alongside and in combination with still image, moving image, gesture, physical movement and other modes of communication. Multimodality – the deployment of more than one mode in communication – not only fits well within a theory of social semiotics or rhetoric but also informs the communicational context within which polyrhythmicity works in social and artistic discourse.

12.2  Polyrhythmicity Within a Theory of Rhetoric In previous books (1992, 2014, 2017, 2018) I have explored the possibilities of rhetoric as an overarching theory of the arts of discourse with particular reference to education at school and university levels. In the more recent books, the focus has been on poetry and poetics. In this section, I position the discussions of polyrhythmicity within such a theory of contemporary rhetoric and in the context of education. The discussion will not cover human embodied cognition, already discussed in A Prosody of Free Verse (2017: 19–25).

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Issues of rhythm come within the concept of periodicity. Sequencing in classical rhetoric, known as ‘dispositio’ (arrangement) in Roman rhetoric, was concerned with templates and formulae for the construction of arguments in public discourse. At its simplest, there was a two-part structure, posited by Aristotle, and concerning statement and proof. However, as the variations below demonstrate: • A speech has two parts. It is necessary to state the subject and then to prove it. • ...at most the parts are four in number: exordium, statement, proof, epilogue [though the statement might be divided into the ‘narrative’ and ‘division’, and a refutation might be added to make a six-part oration]. • The most complete argument, then, is that which consists of five parts: the proposition, the reason, the proof of the reason, the embellishment, and the résumé. • The fullest argument is fivefold, the briefest threefold [without the last two parts] and the mean fourfold, lacking either the embellishment or the résumé. In other words, it was possible to structure arguments in anything from two-part to six-part arrangements. When it came to performance or delivery (‘presentatio’), the variations in length of the various parts, and the emphases given by the orator in different sections of the argument, would determine the rhythmic effect intended on the audience. Such prescription – or at least guidance via templates and a framework – was modified by Quintilian to a more flexible and holistic approach where he suggested that ‘...it is often necessary to employ such changes and transpositions when the cause itself obliges us to modify with art the Arrangement prescribed by the rules of the Art’. This is where a closer link between polyrhythmicity, rhetoric and education can be made. First, composition will be concerned with the ‘cause’ (Latin: ‘inventio’) and the function of the work. This is a typical rhetorical approach, which assumes that any discourse (e.g. a text or utterance) is a response to existing discourses (cf. Bakhtin). Rhetoric asks simple questions that can be considered in any discourse: what (the subject matter), from whom (the rhetor), to whom (the audience), how (the ‘art’) and why (the function). If the overarching substance and function of the discourse is clear, arrangements of the work will follow. We already, therefore, have more than one level of rhythm operating in the sense that the whole discourse sits within and in relation to (we could almost say ‘in counterpoint to’, to borrow again the terminology of fugue) existing discourses. Within the discourse itself, following Quintilian, we might employ ‘changes and transpositions’ when the cause ‘obliges’ us to do so. This is the field of stylistic variation, but it is also rhetorically relevant in that the changes and transpositions are intended to operate within the overarching work (or utterances) as a whole. Furthermore, such changes and transpositions are not merely to persuade or to win an argument; they are there to make communication clear, to amuse and to explain and (sometimes) for elegance. In short, Quintilian suggests that we might ‘modify with art the Arrangement prescribed by the rules of the Art’. In other words, the advice is educational and rhetorical in a deeper sense. It does not simply recite a set of rules to be learnt and

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applied. It adds an extra dimension of judgement: once we know the ‘rules’, we can modify them to suit the purpose of our composition, whether in speech, writing or another mode or modes. Rhythmic layering and sequencing, with all its variations, will enable us to communicate more clearly and effectively.

12.3  The Basis of a New Approach to Rhetoric In order to re-fashion rhetoric for schooling in the twenty-first century, we need to go back to first principles. As suggested above, these are simple: Who is communicating to whom about what? Why are they doing so, where is the communication taking place, and how are they doing it? We might add to the last question: how best can they do so? To unpack this basic set of questions that help to provide a framework for communication: first, ‘who’ is communicating could be a single person, a group of people, a company, a government or any other communicator or ‘rhetor’. Second, although the ‘whom’ is assumed to be a single or multiple audience, that audience can play a proactive role in the dialogue as well as being on the receiving end of the communication; their role can be equal to or even more dominant than that of the instigator of the communication. Third, the ‘what’ of the communication can be variously defined as subject matter or even as the interaction itself (e.g. ‘I do’ or the slipping of a ring on to the finger in a marriage ceremony – see Austin 1962; Searle 1979; Leech 1983). The ‘why’ of communication sets the communicative act within its social context, and in turn, the social context is partly defined by the economic and political dimensions that inform the moment and which inevitably bring issues of inequality and power relations to the table. The ‘where’ of communication is an underestimated aspect of discourse, bringing spatial and geographical framing to bear on the acts of communication. Finally, the two facets of ‘how’ – how is such communication effected, and how could it best be done? – introduce the range of possibilities for communication as well as questions of propriety and impropriety. The ‘how’ of communication is the foundation for much of pedagogy and learning in classrooms, but it is the argument of this chapter that understanding the whole rhetorical framing of the act of communication, as well as incorporating rhythmic considerations, is necessary to become highly competent as a communicator and also as a receiver of communication (a listener, a reader, an audience). The above paragraph outlines some of the principles that need to be taken into account. Added to these principles is consideration of the fact of multimodality in contemporary communication. Multimodality is not new: the juxtaposition of word and image, for example, has been common practice in artwork, in illuminated manuscripts, in book illustrations for hundreds of years and more recently in newspapers and magazines. Similarly, speech and gesture have always accompanied each other; film is a medium in which moving image, sound and speech (as well as sub-­ titles in writing) have been working alongside each other since its inception. Multimodality is so ubiquitous in communication as to be taken for granted. Even in seemingly monomodal acts of communication, there is usually more than one

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mode at play, both explicitly and implicitly: reading a poem on a page, for example, requires attention not only to the words (and possibly the inner voice that is recited in the head) but also to their spatial arrangement, their relation to the white space around them and, furthermore, to the spatial context (on a busy train, in an isolated location) in which the poem is read. Multimodality has been given more prominence in research since the 1990s, coincident with the advent of digitization and the Internet/World Wide Web (Kress 2010; Hawisher et al. 2010). The contiguity of word and image on computer interfaces, and in the last 20 years or so on mobile phone screens, with enhanced audio facility, has meant that multimodality has become the norm for communication. It is helpful to distinguish between multimodality, which deals with the modes of communication and media (including ‘social media’) which provide the hardware, applications and platforms via which multimodal messages are carried. The ubiquity and presence of multimodality in our lives can be taken for granted or seem so ever-present as to be banal. Such ubiquity might remain banal if it were not for the case that multimodality, nearly 30 years after its re-birth through digitization, still does not figure prominently in educational curricula in schools.

12.4  Curriculum and Pedagogic Design This section will focus initially on curricular and pedagogic design in schools in England and then look more widely at such design in other European jurisdictions. The advent of digitization, the re-appearance of multimodality and the re-­emergence of rhetoric (e.g. Andrews 1992, 2014) in the early 1990s was coincident with the establishment of the National Curriculum in England via the Education Reform Act of 1988. It is important to note that the very title is a misnomer: the curriculum is not ‘national’ in that it did not apply to the UK as a whole, but only to England and Wales. There are even differences in its application between these two jurisdictions, so the following discussion applies to England only. One of the principles of the National Curriculum in England is that it was built on nineteenth-century ‘subjects’. These subjects were conservatively conceived, so that although ‘English’ was split into reading, writing, speaking and listening (traditionally, the ‘four language skills’), each of these skills, in the order listed above, was given greater prominence than the next one. Reading and becoming literate have greater prominence than writing; speaking had greater prominence than listening; and speaking and listening (always seen as reciprocal in principle if not in practice) were seen as more reciprocal, and given less curriculum time, than reading and writing (where the reciprocity was underutilized). The arrival of the ‘literacy hour’ in primary schools in the mid-1990s gave even greater weight to the hierarchy of language skills. At the secondary level, the subsequent reinforcement of the distinction between language and literature resulted in literature study being seen as the province of the elite while ‘functional language study’ became the fodder for the majority. Added to this compartmentalization of the curriculum was the regressive

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move to privilege ‘heritage’ in the choice of English literature that was available for study: a narrowly conceived heritage. The fusion of an eclectic (world) range of literature with learning to communicate for the twenty-first century seems a long way from the narrow conception of the language skills and a tightly focused selection of ‘national’ literature in English. It is also case that the last 30 years in education in England have seen a turn to more transmissive models of pedagogy, so that the heritage is taught and, therefore, by assumption, learnt. Particularly in the last 10 years, several multi-academy chains of schools (the new norm in school governance replacing local authority control) have adopted monolithic pedagogic models in which ‘subject knowledge’ is taught at the expense of learning processes and in which examinations have increasingly again become the norm to test such knowledge. The debate about the place of rhetoric in the school curriculum outside England has been more secure, more general and more grounded in the relationship between language, culture and civic education (see Rutten and Soltaert 2012; Biesta 2012). In some countries in Europe, and in the USA via the Scottish tradition of rhetoric, the place of rhetoric is more assured than in England, where the split between language and literature first appeared in the late nineteenth century. It appears that this fissure in schooling in England gave literature the chance to establish itself as the ‘central humanities discipline’ from the 1920s onwards (see Sampson 1921) and thus not only to secure a literary basis to the curriculum but also a narrow cultural basis too. Rhetoric was forgotten and became the narrowly political pejorative term that is its principal association today in everyday discourse. It is not coincidental that studies in the place of rhythm in education and in particular the discipline of eurhythmics also came to prominence in the 1920 and 1930s and then waned in influence in educational discourse. The study of eurhythmics (see Jacques-Dalcroze 1930; Anderson 2011, for example) continues to seek correspondences between physical movement, music and education. It can be seen from the above analysis that a rhetorical perspective would not have associated language and literature so closely with nationhood, nostalgia and elitism (though rhetoric, in a narrower pejorative sense, has been used to reinforce such associations at particular points in history); nor would an overemphasis on examinations have been likely (though the links between rhetoric and assessment are under-researched). If rhetoric is understood and practised as the arts of discourse, a range of modes and media would be used to ensure that the school population is ‘literate’ at the end of formal schooling. Such ‘literacy’ would be multimodal and polyrhythmic. It would engage with fiction and non-fiction, private and public discourse, a range of genres, speech/listening as well as reading/writing and the relationship between communication, time, physicality and action in the real world.

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12.5  Composition and Framing A concomitur of a rhetorical approach is that, to put it at its most general, the rhetor composes and the audience or interlocutor re-composes. In other words, to explicate the process in more detail, the person or people who are instigating the act of communication first draw from available multimodal and polyrhythmic resources the specific elements he/she or they need to effect the communication. If the rhetor is an artist, he/she or they draw on whichever media are needed to make the composition; if they (I will use the generic ‘they’ to refer to a single or multiple composer) are a musical composer, they will use any or all of the resources available to them to make the piece of music; if a writer, the modes and media that are best suited to the act of communication; and so on. Each of these rhetors is composer: they literally put together elements to make meaning and frame them within conventional or semi-conventional frames (or indeed transgress and/or break the frames) for making meaning. The compositions created by any such rhetors are always implicitly or explicitly multimodal and time-based. These compositions involve the bringing together of parts to create a new whole. The parts may sit in tension with each other and/or be complementary. One mode may be foregrounded with the others in support; or there may be an equal balance between the modes. By suggesting that the interlocutor re-composes, acknowledgement is being made that communication is not a one-way street. A message is received by the audience; but the audience re-makes meaning according to their own history, their own associations, their own interpretation of the message that has been ‘sent’. The audience thus plays a pro-active part in meaning-making; they may well, for example, re-compose again in the form of a review, in talk about a performance after a show or in discussion of a book. Similarly, every act of learning in a school seems to consist of a re-making by the student of the opportunity for learning that is offered by the teacher. Again, to concretize this process, a teacher (or a student) may bring into a classroom an ‘object’ for discussion. It could be a fossil from a beach or an experience from childhood or an observation from a weekend or from the world news. That ‘object’ is explored for its significance and then transformed via rhetorical transduction into another form: an essay, a series of notes, an oral debate, a painting, a report or a photograph with captions. It seems to me that, pedagogically, the act of learning in schools is an act of transduction from one mode to another and thus a re-making of the knowledge as initially presented to or by the student. If this is the case, it follows that the curriculum and its pedagogies must make room for such composition and re-composition via transduction. Pedagogically, too, sensitivity to timing and to rhythm is a key art in teaching: knowing when to introduce a question or a topic, when to change gear, how to structure learning (particular when the economics of attention may wax and wane during a lesson, lecture, seminar or within the whole day of learning) and how to manage such complexity within a whole group as well as for individuals within that group. None of this process can be completed and make meaning without the act of framing. Framing (the verb rather than the noun ‘frames’) is in the hands of the

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rhetor and the audience. If they do not share the same understanding of the frames in which they are communicating, it is likely that clear communication will not take place as intended. Frames are scaffolds for the construction of meaning. They can be put up, dismantled, be made invisible, accentuated, transgressed or broken according to the rhetorical purpose; but they should not be reified to the extent that they become rigid and dominate the communication. At the same time, meaningful communication cannot take place without an act of framing that suggests the genre (or hybrid mix of genres) and the social basis on which communication is taking place.

12.6  Text The notion of ‘text’ from a rhetorical, multimodal and digital perspective is different from ‘text’ in the narrower sense of a unified work of meaningful language or the even narrower sense in schooling of the ‘textbook’ that contains the key works that are to be studied in the curriculum (see Fransman and Andrews 2012). Texts lie inside the frames that are discussed in the previous section. Multimodally, they are often collages, mash-ups or juxtapositions in the compositions that are created and ‘read’. From a rhetorical perspective, they have real world signification in that they are not cauterized or separated from the real world. Such texts make distinctions like ‘fiction’ and its opposite, ‘non-fiction’, redundant. We can see that, as suggested elsewhere in this chapter, the privileging of fiction in a curriculum in England since the 1920s makes fiction centre stage and other forms of written discourse marginal (‘non-fiction’). From a digital perspective, texts are not the brief messages that we use when we cannot get through by phone or when we need to send a brief message (somewhat superseded by Twitter and WhatsApp and other applications that enable rapid, brief and socially networked messaging), but texts in the more general sense are fluid, and re-purposeable in different modes, platforms and media. A key consideration for texts in a twenty-first century curriculum is length. While multimodality and digitization have, in their different as well as combined ways, shortened the length of messages we send to one another, the communication curriculum has to decide: does it want to recognize this emphasis on brevity and accept it, or does it wish to preserve the articulated length and scale of texts so that students can learn structure, articulation and argument? Rhetoric helps to answer this question. It requires both an understanding and use of short texts, on the one hand, and longer texts, on the other. Short texts will be needed in a range of social and political situations. But the ability to compose and read longer texts is essential to a democracy because arguments have to be made, discussed and resolved in order for reasoned action to take place or, at the very least, for toleration of difference in a democratic society. Thus the movement between short texts and longer ones in the curriculum and the teaching day are a matter for rhythmic consideration.

12.7 Argumentation

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12.7  Argumentation In curricular terms, it was heartening to see that during the 1990s in the National Curriculum in England, the 2000 version acknowledged the importance of argumentation, not just in English as a school subject but also in the arts, history, geography, science and mathematics. Essentially, argumentation in this context meant: how are ideas articulated (both expressed and joined) within a subject? What kinds of evidence count within each subject? Without going down to the level of epistemology (‘What is history?’) or into the more nuanced aspects of Toulminian model of argumentation (warrant, backing), the curriculum showed signs that it was keen that, by the end of formal schooling, students should be able to argue for and/or against a proposition and provide evidence to back up their claims. In this sense, the foundation for work, further education and/or university level higher education was established more firmly. Clearly (and now much more explicitly) criteria for the highest performances at university level include explicit reference to argumentational ability; and, in the ‘real world’, argumentation is understood to be a process via which consensus is reached without violence or force (cf. Habermas 1986). Multimodal argumentation further acknowledges that evidence can take many forms. Although the ‘language’ of argumentation is conventionally verbal (witness statements, data from interviews, supporting references, notes from observation), it can also be visual (a photograph of a scientific effect, a car number plate, footage from a surveillance camera), tactile (a piece of cloth in a court of law, a fingerprint) and/or gestural. In cases where the claim is compressed with the evidence – say, in the case of an artwork or musical composition presented for assessment, without verbal accompaniment  – multimodality can help to explain the argumentational rationale. Such an approach to argumentation within a twenty-first century conception of contemporary rhetoric implies a number of different assumptions about argument: we no longer need argument be linear and sequential, thus invoking logic. Connections may be made between claims and evidence that are either compressed into a single statement or disaggregated so that the claim and supporting evidence are clearly differentiated. Contiguity remains important, but links may be made by the audience as well as the composer. In effect, the argument is made up of the constituent parts of the composition and their relationship within (and beyond) a frame. Thus, as suggested earlier, the functions of argumentation become more than persuasion and more than is conventionally assumed; they include clarification, the generation of humour; the bringing together of unlikely elements in a composition; the dialogue between rhetor and audience; a series of moves towards consensus or the understanding of difference; and a precursor for decision-making and action. We know that argument is highly prized in school and university education, but also in the workplace and in society more generally. There is often an assumption that students progress in their schooling from personal and narrative forms of discourse towards more public and argumentational forms. Such an assumption is based on a Piagetian model of development that we are gradually socialized and

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move from individual to collective cognition. From a different perspective, however, argumentation can be seen to be present in everyday discourse from the start of life and certainly by the start of schooling. The dumbing down of argument in early or later schooling (and even at university level) may well mitigate against its development as a social and cognitive tool, but a broader conception of education and learning will recognize that argument is part of the fabric of growing up in a democracy. Outside the curriculum itself, the school can create a community that is comfortable with argumentation. A classic example is the creation of a school council, or more informal gatherings in which teachers and students meet to discuss ideas, resolve difference, or build collective consensus to inform action. Formal debates of an academic nature are possible from a much earlier age than has often been assumed (see Fox 1990), and through these students can learn that the formulation of an argument can be made without necessarily believing in the cause that is argued. Learning to accept challenges to a claim or proposition and to go through a process of rational and thoughtful argument as ideas develop – these processes are highly valuable to an education system and its function in society, justifying ever more strongly why argument is highly prized within assessment criteria and regimes.

12.8  H  ow Can Rhetoric, Polyrhythmicity and Argumentation Be Better Embedded Within the School Curriculum? There are some key issues that have to be debated or settled before we can think through how rhetoric, polyrhytmicity and argumentation may be better represented within the school curriculum. First, it has to be acknowledged that school subjects, themselves derived from university disciplines, are sites for the contestation of knowledge and not just the fossilization of knowledge. Second, if we accept that the present curricula in schools in different jurisdictions are not only based on a selection of knowledge, but also that it is hard to reform such curricula, let alone revolutionize them, we may decide that it is best to work within existing patterns of curriculum design. Third, if we were to consider wholesale revolution in the school curriculum, what would our principles and starting points be for a thoroughly relevant, elegant and pedagogically exciting curriculum? Each one of these facets of the ‘problem’ needs to be taken in turn. To understand that school subjects are not set in stone, but are sites for contestation of knowledge in a particular epistemological field of enquiry, is to take a considerable leap from much current practice. In one of my own specialist fields of interest  – literature  – there are a number of contestable issues. It can be safely argued and agreed that a study of poetry, plays, novels and short stories as fictional works is a worthy area of study. But even ‘English Literature’ (part of the title of my degree at university, and a school subject in England) is not that clear a category. It

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can mean literature written in England, by those born in England, or by anyone writing in the English language. Often is has hegemonically assumed that a writer like Yeats or Heaney (Irish) or Lochhead (Scottish) is part of English Literature. ‘Literature in English’ can include translations into English, and/or writing in the postcolonial tradition in the English language. Conversely (and inappropriately), writing by Black British or Asian British writers, whether they were born in England or moved to England in their childhood, is often seen in narrow circles as ‘writing from other cultures’. Overall, the confusion and uncertainty about what constitutes ‘Englishness’ from a European, post-Brexit and/or UK-based perspective can provide fuel for debate about ‘English Literature’. We can see, even from this simple example, that notions of nationhood, culture, ethnicity and race inform discussions of school and university-based categories. If you see these four aspects of identity as uniform, you have a narrower and more rigid sense of self than if you see them as related but disaggregated. A rhetorical perspective allows an understanding of the contested nature of the field and for celebrations of hybridity, both within society and within literature. It does so because rhetoric embraces and assumes a positive argumentational spirit and, because of its functional rather than formal nature, is not confined to the notion of discrete genres. Polyrhythmicity in the curriculum does not mean a return to eurhythmics in its narrower sense of the physical interpretation and enjoyment of music nor in its wider sense of an organic, harmonious, integrated approach to development. Rather, it is relevant to the structuring of the curriculum and to the design of learning at every level: first at overall course design level in the way that component parts are conceived in the whole. Second, in sensitivity to the economics of attention for learners, not only across an entire course but also in the day-to-day delivery of it. Third, in the pedagogic pacing of teaching, reflecting the time relations that taught plans have in relation to learning. If you decide to work within existing curricular categories and conventions, you will find, as discussed earlier, that argumentation, if not rhetoric, has appeared as a goal in subjects as diverse as history, geography, mathematics and science. In this approach, there is hope that rhetoric, polyrhythmicity and argumentation might take a more central role in all school subjects, not just at the higher levels, but throughout the curriculum. Argumentation, however, tends to be seen as a higher-order cognitive skill deriving from earlier competence in narrative and description. From a Piagetian perspective (one that still has a strong hold on educational curriculum planning), ‘formal operations’ follow the establishment of ‘concrete operations’. In effect, from this perspective, narrative and rhythm play a much larger part in discourse for the early years and precede argumentation. Contrary to this conventional view is the assumption that young children are adept at argumentation; that they understand the social context of discourse; and that they are fully rational beings from an earlier age than the Piagetian position would acknowledge. Whichever position is taken in terms of cognitive development, rhetoric, polyrhythmicity and argumentation can be built into existing curricula by emphasizing the social nature of modes of communication and the place of rhythm and argument alongside and within narrative and description and situating learning in the range of school

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subjects within a real-world context, thus opening communication not only to social but also to socio-political situations. Imagine not so much a reform and development of the curriculum as a wholesale curricular revolution. If we were starting from scratch, what would a rhetoric-­ informed curriculum look like? In the medieval period, rhetoric was one of the three subjects in the trivium, which also included grammar (the mechanics, terms and categorizations of language) and logic (dialectic thought and analysis). Rhetoric was seen as the application of these two in the world of interaction. Added to these in an overall liberal arts curriculum were aspects of number: arithmetic, geometry (numbers in space), music (numbers in time) and astronomy (numbers in space and time). To re-work this curriculum for the twenty-first century, we might suggest a different configuration. Rhetoric would cover all aspects of communication: speech, writing, still image, moving image, gesture, physical movement and sound (including music). It would embrace all functions of communication (not just persuasion) and would take a multimodal and polyrhythmic perspective. Within each of the modes of communication, the ‘grammar’ of those modes would have to be learnt, but this would be more than the sentence-based linguistic grammar that we have been used to. Even within spoken and written language (which have different grammars), there are levels of scale of unit with language that require description and understanding; these levels (e.g. the phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactic, sub-textual and textual) need not only to be understood, but practice in how to integrate/use them must be included in a working and practicable curriculum (see Andrews 2001: 10 for a full account of these levels). Added to these would be the grammars of visual design (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006) of movement and of gesture. The learning of additional second or foreign languages would come under the aegis of a communication-based curriculum. Such a curriculum would include oral as well as written stories. The narrative dimension, along with the multiple rhythmic complexities of narrative (discussed earlier in this book), would figure alongside argumentation and description and would imply immersion in a range of narratives, from folk tale to novel, from mini-­ narratives to epics. Such inclusion incorporates imagination, tradition and presence to the curriculum and to the lived experience of children and young people – both their own stories and those of others would find a place in the curriculum, allowing the composition or oral and written stories alongside their reception. While outside the focus of the present chapter, such a new curriculum would expect also to include mathematics as a separate form of communication/‘language’ system, perhaps including elements of the medieval curriculum such as geometry and music (though music would also fall under the rhetoric of sound). It would also include science – not only the constituent sub-divisions of science but also ‘scientific method’ and other subjects that would loosely come under the canopy of humanities, geography, history, civic education. Such a re-configured curriculum does not look that different from current curricula, so it may be that gradual moves towards a new curriculum for the twenty-first century might be taken, according to the needs of each educational jurisdiction, but with a larger aim in mind: the creation of a curriculum that not only equips young

Bibliography

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people to play an active and fully empowered part in democratic societies of the future but that also is more nuanced in its implementation.

12.9  Conclusion Behind the notion of curriculum reform in the light of rhetorical education and the democratic mission of the school is a further principle: that of dialogism. The idea that learning should be more dialogic (the etymology of the word is Greek, meaning ‘through speech’) stems from a number of sources. One of these is Bakhtin’s theory of the dialogic imagination (Bakhtin 1982) which suggests that the products of literature and culture are generated not by a single authorial voice but by dialogue with a tradition of voices, to which a new voice is added. Another is the emergence of ‘learner voice’ (‘pupil voice’ or ‘student voice’) in education (see Walker and Logan 2008), whether it is represented by presence on schools councils, university boards and committees or in some other way. The inclusion of such voices redresses the imbalance of a teacher-led transmission pedagogy by seeing learning as a collaborative negotiation and construct between teacher and pupil/student. The principle of dialogism (and its foundation in Bakhtinian dialogic theory) is also present in Alexander (2008) where it underpins the generation of productive talk in the classroom or seminar room  – a tradition that goes back at least to the rise of oracy (Wilkinson 1965) and to the seminal work of Barnes et al. (1971) on language, the learner and the school. Finally, the dialogic principle sits behind the wider paradigm shift from teaching to learning, best characterized by Lightfoot and Martin (1988). Rhetorical education, including practice and theory in rhythm and argumentation, sits in a long and varied worldwide tradition and has been given new momentum by the research, practices and theories mentioned in the present chapter. It is important not just in itself as an overarching theory informing communication within curricula but in the very nature of rhetoric: not only to be inwardly balanced but also to be outward-looking, to engage with the world, to help forge proactive and balanced citizenship and to equip young people to make a positive contribution to the future. Sensitivity to the function of polyrhythmicity in the arts, humanities and social sciences can play a part in such a project.

Bibliography Alexander, R. J. (2008). Towards dialogic teaching: Rethinking classroom talk (4th ed.). Thirsk: Dialogos. Anderson, W.  T. (2011). The Dalcroze approach to music education: Theory and applications. General Music Today, 26(1), 27–33. Andrews, R. (1992) Rebirth of rhetoric: Essays in language, culture and education (ed.), London: Routledge (re-issued in Routledge Library Editions: Education, 2012).

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Andrews, R. (2001). Teaching and learning English: A guide to recent research and its implications. London: Continuum. Andrews, R. (2014). A theory of contemporary rhetoric. New York: Routledge. Andrews, R. (2015). Critical thinking and/or argumentation in higher education? In M. Davies & R. Barnett (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of critical thinking in higher education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Andrews, R. (2017). A prosody of free verse: Explorations in rhythm (Routledge studies in rhetoric and stylistics series). New York: Routledge. Andrews, R. (2018). Multimodality, poetry and poetics (Routledge research in language and communication series). New York: Routledge. Austin, J. L. (1962). How to do things with words. Harvard University William James lectures, 1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Austin, J. L. (2018). In J. Urmson (Ed.), How to do things with words (new ed.). Eastford: Martino Fine Books. Bakhtin, M. M. (1982). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, M. M. (1987). Speech genres and other late essays. Austin: University of Texas Press. Barnes, D., Britton, J., & Rosen, H. (1971). Language, the learner and the school. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Biesta, G. (2012). Becoming world-wise: An educational perspective on the rhetorical curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(6), 815–826. Enoch, J., & Gold, D. (2013). Seizing the methodological moment: The digital humanities and historiography in rhetoric and composition. College English, 76(2), 105–114. Fox, C. (1990). The genesis of argument in narrative discourse. English in Education, 24(1), 23–31. Fransman, J., & Andrews, R. (2012). Rhetoric and the politics of representation and communication in the digital age. Learning, Media and Technology, 37(2), 125–130. Habermas, J. (1986). The theory of communicative action: Reason and the rationalization of society (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Polity. Hawisher, G. E., Selfe, C., Kisa, G., & Ahmed, S. (2010). Globalism and multimodality in a digitized world: Computers and composition studies. Pedagogy, 10(1), 55–68. Hughes, T. (1970). Myth and education. Children's Literature in Education, 1, 55–70. Jacques-Dalcroze, E. (1930). Eurythmics and its implications. The Musical Quarterly (translated by Rothwell, F.), 16, 358–365. Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Abingdon: Routledge. Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading images: The grammar of visual design (2nd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. Leech, G. N. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman. Lightfoot, M., & Martin, N. (1988). The word for teaching is learning. London: Heinemann. Rutten, K., & Soltaert, R. (2012). Revisiting the rhetorical curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 44(6), 727–743. Sampson, G. (1921). English for the English: A chapter on national education. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Searle, J. (1979). Indirect speech acts. In P.  Cole & J.  Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Speech acts (pp. 59–82). New York: Academic Press. Toulmin, S.  E. (2003). The uses of argument (2nd ed. [1958]). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vygotsky, L. (1991). Genesis of the higher mental functions. In P. Light et al. (Eds.), Learning to think (pp. 32–41). London: Routledge. Walker, L., & Logan, A. (2008). Learner engagement: A review of learner voice initiatives across the UK’s education sectors. Bristol: Futurelab. Wilkinson, A. (1965). Spoken English. Birmingham: University of Birmingham.

Index

A Analytical models, viii, 14, 143–147 Argument, 4, 7–9, 12, 27, 37, 46–49, 52, 53, 87, 95, 99, 112, 118, 125, 129, 136, 137, 139, 153–156, 160–163 Argumentation, 7, 8, 14, 99, 139, 161–165 Arts, vii, viii, 1–3, 5–7, 9, 11–13, 20, 36, 38, 46–48, 51, 60, 70, 73, 74, 80, 82, 90–92, 96, 99, 100, 107, 111, 118, 121, 125, 128, 129, 135, 136, 144, 148, 149, 153–155, 158, 159, 161, 164, 165 C Cadence, 3, 9, 21, 23–26, 44, 45, 47, 57, 60, 65–67, 72, 73, 80, 81, 85, 135, 145, 149 Chinese poetry, 129 Circadian rhythms, 18–19, 28, 41, 124 Contemporary rhetoric, 8, 14, 153, 154, 161 Conversation, 12, 13, 15, 55–68, 90, 97, 104, 125, 136 Cross-rhythms, 25, 49, 50, 67, 99, 140 Curriculum, 14, 154, 157–165 D Dance, viii, 1–3, 5, 22, 37, 38, 48, 51, 62–66, 90, 109, 128, 134–136, 140, 143, 144, 146–149 Dance rhythms, 14, 134–135 Dialogue, 37, 51, 57, 70, 90, 97, 98, 116, 117, 125, 156, 161, 165

E Education, vii, viii, 14, 108, 125, 153–165 F Film, viii, 1, 14, 21, 23, 106, 115, 117, 118, 121–124, 128, 136, 156 Form, vii, viii, 1–7, 9–13, 20, 23–26, 33, 34, 38, 41, 46, 47, 49, 53, 58, 60, 63, 66, 67, 69, 71, 72, 74, 76, 77, 79–81, 83–86, 89–96, 99, 100, 104, 109, 111, 116, 117, 120, 121, 128–137, 140, 141, 147, 148, 150, 151, 159–161, 164 Framing, 4, 9, 14, 48, 53, 58–60, 63, 64, 72, 77, 84, 85, 95, 96, 99, 100, 111, 121, 125–126, 135, 156, 159–160 Free verse, vii, 2–4, 13, 20–27, 40, 50, 56, 59, 60, 66, 70, 72, 77, 81, 84–86, 116, 117, 135, 140, 141, 145, 148, 149, 154 Fugue, viii, 11–14, 21, 25–26, 46–48, 77–83, 93, 96, 116–117, 125, 148, 151, 155 H Hybridity, 134, 163 I Indian rāg, 14, 26, 27, 32, 37, 135–136, 141 International, viii, 12, 31–41, 104, 127, 135

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Index

168 L Learning, 19, 41, 109–111, 125, 153–165 M Melody, 6, 7, 11, 24, 26, 27, 32, 44, 47, 49–53, 65, 105, 124, 127, 135, 137 Methodology, 141 Metre, vii, 2, 4, 6, 9, 11–13, 18, 20, 22, 25–27, 56, 58–60, 63, 65, 67, 70, 72–77, 83–86, 89, 90, 105, 126, 136, 137, 140, 142, 146, 147, 149, 150 Modulation, 47, 79, 80, 93, 96, 132, 148 Multimodality, 25, 125, 154, 156, 157, 160, 161 Multiple rhythms, viii, 3, 17–28, 63, 106, 132, 140, 148 N Narrative, 12, 13, 32, 37, 39, 47, 53, 65, 70, 71, 74–76, 78, 79, 82, 84, 90–94, 96, 98–100, 116, 117, 122–124, 131, 155, 161, 163, 164 Novel, viii, 1, 12, 13, 21, 53, 72, 89–100, 121, 123, 128, 136, 148, 149, 162, 164 P Percussion, 14, 43, 44, 53, 65, 136–138 Performance, 13, 25, 26, 28, 41, 45, 51, 53, 63–64, 72, 83–85, 94, 105, 117, 137, 138, 141, 144, 147, 155, 159, 161 Poetry, viii, 1, 2, 6–14, 22, 25, 27, 39, 46, 48, 50, 52, 55–62, 66, 67, 69–87, 89, 90, 95, 96, 99, 116, 117, 126–131, 133, 135, 136, 138, 142, 143, 147–150, 154 Polyrhythmicity, vii, viii, 2–5, 7, 9, 11–14, 19, 26, 28, 31–41, 43–53, 55–87, 89–100, 103–113, 115–151, 153–165 Postcolonial, 14, 37, 127–128, 163 Prose, 3, 8, 9, 13, 22, 23, 38–41, 67, 69, 70, 73, 84–86, 90, 96, 132, 133 Pulse, 3–5, 21, 24, 27, 37, 44, 46, 49, 51, 66, 67, 71, 77, 78, 136, 137, 139–142, 144, 149 R Rap, 14, 116–117 Research, 14, 18, 19, 45, 60, 108, 111, 139, 141, 144, 157, 165 Rhythm, vii, viii, 1–14, 17–28, 32–41, 43–47, 49–67, 69–78, 80–86, 89–91, 93,

96–100, 104–112, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 123–138, 140–149, 154, 155, 158, 159, 163, 165 S Social schemata, 1, 45 Social sciences, vii, 1–3, 7, 11–14, 19, 36, 38, 74, 125–126, 135, 147, 165 Social time, 13, 18, 33–35, 53 Space, 6, 7, 13, 26, 34–38, 52, 59, 63, 64, 84, 85, 87, 91, 94, 98, 100, 109, 111, 115, 116, 118, 120, 121, 125, 133, 142, 148, 149, 157, 164 Speech prosody, 13, 21, 55–68, 150 Sport, 14, 41, 111, 112 Story, 39–41, 72, 74, 78, 91–94, 96–99, 116–118, 121, 124, 128, 162, 164 Structures, 2, 4, 6–8, 10–12, 14, 21, 24, 25, 32, 37, 40, 45–52, 55–57, 59, 60, 65, 73–77, 79, 80, 82, 84–86, 93, 94, 99, 100, 104, 105, 107, 109, 110, 117, 118, 123–125, 130, 131, 133, 134, 137, 138, 147, 148, 154, 155, 159, 160 T Terminology, 66, 67, 139, 145, 155 Text, 3, 49, 50, 55, 61, 72, 78, 79, 82, 83, 86, 128, 129, 137, 148, 154, 155, 160 Theory, vii, viii, 2–5, 8, 9, 11–14, 20, 33, 37, 46, 56, 59, 60, 63, 64, 70, 74, 76, 84, 89, 90, 92–96, 99, 106, 143, 144, 146–148, 153–156, 165 Time, vii, 4, 5, 7–13, 17, 18, 26–28, 31–41, 43–51, 53, 57, 59, 62, 63, 65, 67, 71, 73, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81, 83, 85, 87, 90, 91, 93, 96–100, 103–112, 115–121, 124, 126, 128, 132, 136–144, 147–151, 157–159, 164 Time relations, vii, 2–5, 9, 11–14, 20, 24, 27, 31, 32, 36, 38, 41, 43–46, 48, 49, 52, 63, 64, 67, 70, 76, 91–94, 98, 99, 105, 107, 108, 115, 118, 121–124, 135, 139, 141, 147, 151, 163 Time zones, 13, 41, 104 Timing, 14, 105, 111, 123, 139–141, 148, 151, 159 W Workplace rhythms, 110