Barring It All, Part 1
Thanks to some perceptive comments on fasola-songwriters and elsewhere, I’m going to revisit my previous post on rhythm and meter. Two comments that intrigued me were Leah Velleman’s idea that there might be a generative theory of rhythm that applies to shape-note hymnody and Tarik Wareh’s observation that rhythm and the placement of bar lines are not independent phenomena. Another suggestion, emailed by a friend, was to look at higher-level accents. I hope you’re not sick of LOUISIANA (SH 207), because I’d like to start there again. I had classified settings of the text as “even” if their accented syllables were evenly spaced. However, as Leah and others pointed out, I allowed some fudging at the end of lines, so my “even” rhythms weren’t strictly even. Here’s a rhythmic setting of “Come, little children”...
read more