I have had some exposure to music thru the years. I played the clarinet in hs, for example. But one thing has always perplexed me: Why does music have to have meter?
The Gregorian Chant doesn’t have meter. I am Roman Catholic, so I certainly have heard the gc enough. I don’t think it would make the Billboard top 100. But it certainly seems to do well enough without it.
Also, it seems to place undue burden on the composer. While they are writing a song, they have to wreck their brain making sure it has meter too.
So where am I wrong it my questions? And why does music have to have meter?
“Meter” (in the sense of a time signature in sheet music) is simply a way of externally representing–mapping, if you will–what is happening rhythmically in the music, and as a rubric for describing relative individual note durations. Like a rhyme and syllable scheme with poetry.
And most composers don’t have a difficult time writing with meter, anyway. They’re fluent in the language of music and musical notation. Note also that with the advent of recording technology (especially computer-driven digital recording) actually writing your sheet music out in long-hand notation has become infinitely easier and even largely unnecessary.
Humans seem to have a fondness for rhythm. Doesn’t every culture, old and new, have drums? The combination of tonal shifts and rhythm essentially defines music, and differentiates it from noise [insert all-too-easy joke here].
While I’m sure many appreciate Gregorian Chant, people in general prefer music with its tones and beats. I doubt Chant makes the top 100,000.
Some free-thinkng avant garde composers may chafe at meter, but I suspect most find it a comforting framework to build upon, and would be rather lost without.
I think GaryT seems to have understood the question posed by your OP, better than I. Sorry.
Anyway, I agree with his basic assessment: music doesn’t require meter/rhythm, but we humans sure do seem to prefer it that way. I listen to a lot of ambient/enigmatic/progressive instrumental stuff, and quite a few pieces in those genres lack any discernible meter at all. But they still sound good to me, and they’re clearly “music” by any definition.
I would agree, that it doesn’t have to have meter. And there’s lots of music like plainsong that doesn’t. Much of Irish sean-nós singing doesn’t seem to have anything like a regular meter.
ETA I agree with Cyningablod and GaryT that most westerners prefer something with a regular rhythm. Me, I happen to like the sean-nós singing but I admit it’s an acquired taste.
I agree with previous posts. Just wanted to add that many of our bodily functions have a sort of meter (regular, therefore notate-able rhythm), e.g. heartbeat, walking, chewing, sex. I’m sure that’s part of why our brains evolved to generally prefer it in music.
A survey of animal “music” might help us ascertain to what extent this is a factor.
I just looked up some clips of some sean-nos singing, and every clip I saw had a very clear 6/8 meter. Yours, also, seems to have a 6/8 meter, though he does a lot of pausing.
I suspect that many of those “no meter” songs simply have a changing meter; for others (Gregorian), the meter is not formally written down because nobody had come up with a way to codify it when those songs were first put in writing but it exists, you can’t just sing those songs making one note longer and another one shorter depending on the phase of the moon.
It’s not so common nowadays, but during the 19th century there were a lot of “mixed-meter” or “mixed-style” compositions around: some of them, if you listen to different parts without previous knowledge that it’s the same song, you’d never guess. For an example, check out “Vals de Astrain” in youtube (I’m at work, so I’d rather not go there on principle): it’s a vals-jota, its jota parts are very well-known under the alias of “riau riau”, its waltz parts are associated with dancing papier-mache and balsa giants, and thanks to YouTube I can now prove to “outsiders” that yes, that waltz the giants dance and the Riau Riau are actually the same song. And the reason Astráin thought of mixing those specific two genders is that both have a 3/4 beat, other mixed genders mix different beats as well as tempos and styles.
As I was thinking more about this question, I came to the same conclusion that Nava suggests:
A lot of music that appears to the “naked ear” not to have meter, actually does. In the ambient/progressive instrumental stuff I mentioned, a lot of the apparently meter-less music is actually just made up of a lot of shifting or irregular meters.
(Now, this begs the question of whether you can actually call frequently-shifting and irregular meters, “meter” in the first place, but that’s a subject for a different thread, I suppose.)
I collect foreign language versions of English cast recordings. The absolute worst ones lack a sense of meter. Yes, Korean Evita and Japanese Aspects of Love, I’m talking about you.
OTOH, when meter is achieved, it can be orgasmic, like the Korean Phantom of the Opera and Czech Jesus Christ Superstar.
Aside: What is the Gregorian chant? Please do not take offense, but is that akin to what the Monty Python monks mumble? Is that what Monty Python is making a parady of? I didn’t know there was such a thing!
It is a kind of music which started in monasteries in the early Middle Ages; I’m not familiar enough with Monthy Python to know whether it’s what they’re mocking in that particular sketch. IIRC my History of Music, the oldest partitures we have are Gregorian. It’s all a capella (sung with no instruments).
Some of its oldest songbooks aren’t even on five lines, but on four; there is no indication of meter or key - but they’re already recognizably organized just like current music sheets. The names used for notes in many languages (Do/Ut Re Mi Fa Sol La Si) are the first sillables of the first seven verses of a Gregorian song, which happen to follow that progression; that is, the first verse begins with a Do note, second with Re, etc.
I would like to make a point to clarify confusion between rhythm/tempo and meter. If you have two beats per second, that is very rhythmic but can have no meter. Meter tells you how things are grouped together and where the emphasis is. In 4/4 meter the first beat of each 4 is stressed. Also sometimes 3rd, or in jazz more commonly 2 and 4; also can vary in latin music, but the emphasis repeats every 4 beats (well, there are exceptions to that too but work with me here).
My point is that you can have rhythm without meter.
Wow. I’ll have to go back and check that. IIRC Iarla Ó Lionáird used to be quite the traditionalist, and I was under the impression that the traditional style didn’t have a meter. But now I have my doubts about that.
Does art have to have color? Photographers or film directors who work in B&W would argue No. But color (or lack of) IS a parameter typically used in desribing art.
Meter is simply one parameter that can be used in music. But you can have music with melody, harmony and rhythm (per CookingWithGas) and no meter.
