The Elements of Art:

Rhtyhm in Music, Poetry, and Art

 

OBJECTIVES:

 

1. Students should be able to define rhythm in the disciplines discussed, including music, verse, and art.

 

2.  Students should be able to discuss various uses of rhythm in African music and dance.

 

3.  Students should be able to discuss kinds of meter in verse and to analyze the meter of the selected verses below. 

 

4. Students should be able to discuss and explain the various affects of meter in verse and how meter can be used to symbolize ideas and convey themes.

 

5.  Students should be able to discuss the analogues for musical and poetic rhythm in art, and to apply them to selected works of art.

 

 

 

OUTLINE

 

I.  The rhythms of life

A.  Examples of rhythm in life

B.  Examples of rhythm in language

C.  Definition of rhythm

 

II. Rhythm in music

A.   African culture: rhythm as language

i.   African drums: the Djembe, dum-dum, and the talking drums

ii. Rhythm as foundational: play along with the group

B.  Jazz and improvisation

C.  Cantus firmus and rhythmic stability

D.  Uses of Rhythm to create an effect

i. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony: the hand of fate

ii.  Chopin's Raindrop prelude 

 

III.  Rhythm and Language

A. Verse: Definition

i.  Verse

ii. vs. Prose

B.  Examples of meter in language

C.  Various kinds of meters in verse

 

 

IV.  Applications

A.  Scansion of verses included below

 

V.  Rhythm in Art

A.  Visual analogues to rhythm: movement in paintings

i. Raphael's The School of Athens, (movement vs. space or      silence)

ii.The Dome of the Rock: rhythm vs. Silence 

ii. Jackson Pollack: Guardians of the Secret (analogue to use of multiple kinds of                     feet and the poem Waiting for the Storm)

 

 

Selected Verses for this Unit:

 

Samuel Tarlor Coleridge

What is an Epigram?

 

What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole;

Its body brevity and wit its soul.

 

Epitaph for a waiter

by David McCord (1897-1997)

 

By and by

God caught his eye

 

 

 

An anonymous limerick

 

 

There was a young lady named Bright,

Who traveled much faster than light,

She started one day

in a relative way

and returned on the previous night

 

From childood:

 

Hickory dickory dock

The mouse ran up the clock

The clock struck one

and down he run

Hickory dickory dock

 

 

When I was one-and-twenty

A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

 

When I was one-and-twenty

I heard a wise man say,

AGive crowns and pounds and guineas

But not your heart away;

Give pearls away and rubies,

But keep your fancy free.@

But I was one-and-twenty,

No use to talk to me.@

 

When I was one-and-twenty,

I heard him say again.

AThe heart out of the bosum

Was never given in vain;

>Tis paid with sighs a plenty

And sold for endless rue.@

And I am two-and-twenty,

And oh, >tis true, >tis true.

 

 

Waiting for the Storm

Timothy Steele (b. 1948)

 

 

Breeze sent a wrinkling darkness

Across the bay. I knelt

Beneath an upturned boat

And moment by moment felt

The sand at my feet grow colder

The damp air chill and spread

Then the first rain drops sounded

On the hull above my head.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For sheer fun, see how the poet can manipulate rhythm and rhyme to create the illusion of meaningful language:

 

The Jabberwocky

by Lewis Carrol

 

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

 

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

 

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

 

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arm, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

He chortled in his joy.

 

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe

(Carroll, The Annotated Alice 197).

 

 

 

"It seems very pretty," [Alice] said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand! ... Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas only I don't exactly

know what they are! ... Somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate "

 (Carroll The Annotated Alice 197).

 

Carroll later expanded and revised the spelling of his poem for inclusion in

The Looking Glass. He gave the following as the literal English of the passage. "It was

evening, and the smooth active badgers were scratching and boring holes in the hill side; all unhappy were the parrots; and the grave turtles squeaked out" (Carroll,  The Annotated Alice 192). 

 

That's enough to begin with," Humpty Dumpty interrupted: "there are plenty of hard words there. 'Brillig' means four o' clock in the afternoon the time when you begin broiling things for dinner."

"That'll do very well," said Alice: "and 'slithy'?"  "Well, 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy,' 'Lithe' is the same as 'active.' You

see it's like a portmanteau there are two meanings packed up into one word."

 

 This is the first of several portmanteaus that Carroll used in "Jabberwocky:"

 

 "I see it now," Alice remarked thoughtfully: "and what are 'toves'?"

"Well, 'toves' are something like badgers they're something like lizards and they're something like corkscrews."

"They must be very curious looking creatures."

 "They are that," said Humpty Dumpty: "also they make their nests under sundials  also they live on cheese."

 "And what's to 'gyre' and to 'gimble'?"

 "To 'gyre' is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To 'gimble' is to

make holes like a gimlet."

"And 'the wabe' is the grass plot round a sun dial, I suppose?" said

Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.

"Of course it is. It's called 'wabe,' you know, because it goes a long

way before it, and long way behind it"

"And a long way beyond it on each side," Alice added.

"Exactly so. Well then,'mimsy' is 'flimsy and miserable' (there's another

portmanteau for you). And a 'borogove' is a thin shabby looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round something like a live mop."

"And then 'mome raths'?" said Alice. "I'm afraid I'm giving you a great deal of trouble." "Well, a 'rath'is a sort of green pig: but 'mome' I'm not certain about. I think it's short for 'from home' meaning that they'd lost

 their way, you know."

 "And what does 'outgrabe' mean?"

 "Well, 'outgribing' is something between bellowing and whistling, with

 a kind of sneeze in the middle: however, you'll hear it done,

 maybe down in the wood yonder and, when you've once heard it,

 you'll be quite content" (Carroll,  The Annotated Alice 270-2).