Metric Synchronization and Long-Range Polyrhythms in Elliott Carter's Fifth String Quartet
John Aylward · Perspectives of New Music · 2009
Metric Synchronization and Long-Range Polyrhythms in Elliott Carter's Fifth String Quartet Much of Elliott Carter's music since 1980 achieves form through use of long-range polyrhythmic structures. By the mid to late 1990s, Carter's use of the long-range polyrhythm becomes increasingly subde as he explores a greater formal flexibility. In this later practice, Carter utilizes constituent parts of a long-range polyrhythm outside the bounds of the polyrhythm itself.This technique creates contrasts between the interactions ofmetric layersboth inside and outside of a source long range polyrhythm. Once abstracted from a long-range polyrhythm, rhythmic components are free to associate with other metric layers and other musical parameters inmore dynamic and unpredictable ways. In the case of the Fifth StringQuartet, sketch study reveals that after composing JohnAylward ElliotCarter's Fifth String Quartet 89 the central long-range polyrhythm of the work, Carter extracts a key rhythmic component and embeds it into an earlier section of the work where itwill be heard and interpreted within a more flexible metric design. This superimposed tempo creates relationships with other metric layers that are qualitatively different from the ones it creates within the bounds of its source long-range polyrhythm. This technique allows Carter to invent new contexts for a polyrhythm's components and, in effect, ask what itmeans to hear these component rhythms in the context of fluid and flexiblemetric layersaswell aswithin global long-range polyrhythms. The Introduction to the Fifth String Quartet, the opening ofwhich is shown inExample 1, ismarked by a stylized character in the 2nd violin. Carter etches out this character by using the specific gesture of a snap pizzicato gesture that coordinates with phrase endings. This coordination of phrase-groups and pizzicato attacks belies the fact that the 2nd violin marks a regular pulse rate.What we may not hear on a firstpass is the exactitude of this pulse rate. As the 2nd violin marks every 44th quintuplet sixteenth note at surface tempo M = 72, it produces the embedded tempo ofM = 8.12. EXAMPLE 1: INTRODUCTION. 2ND VIOLIN PIZZICATO MARKS M = 8.12. 90 PerspectivesofNew Music It is safe to say thatCarter goes out of his way to articulate M = 8.12, since he could have easily chosen the distance of forty-five quintuplet sixteenth notes, which would have produced the exact tempo ofM = 8. One must assume that Carter places a special significance on this exact tempo, but this should not inhibit the listener from hearing the tempo as also simply representing M = 8. The various approaches to hearing tempi as flexible and exact are expertly summarized inAndrew Mead's article "On Tempo Relations" in Perspectives ofNew Music.1 Later we will find why Carter settles on this exact number, but for now there is much to be gained by hearing the tempo as an approximation ofM = 8. By discovering an approximate value of this embedded tempo, we immediately begin to see how it relates to other rhythmic layers of the work. One of themore interesting relationships arises at the end of the Introduction as the 2nd violin begins a dramatic metric accelerando (Example 2). The accelerando touches on M = 30, 40, 60 and finally, M = 80: ten times faster than the instrument's original embedded tempo and now 9/8 faster than the Introduction's surface tempo M = 72. The metric accelerando is made vivid by the static mid-ground tempi articulated by the 1st violin and viola, both proportionate toM = 72. The 2nd violin arrives atM = 80 just before all tempi synchronize at the downbeat of the Giocoso. The metric modulation is a surface indication of the formal event that we hear: all proportionate metric layers synchronizing. The event is similar to how pulse rates can synchronize EXAMPLE 2: INTRODUCTION. TWO STATIC TEMPI IN THE 1ST VIOLIN AND VIOLA ARE PROPORTIONATE TO THE 2ND VIOLIN'S EMBEDDED TEMPO M = 8. THE 2ND VIOLINACCELERATES TOM = 80 BEFORETHE DOWNBEAT OF M. 25 SYNCHRONIZES ALL TEMPI. ElliotCarter's Fifth String Quartet 91 within a long-range polyrhythm, but in this case the various pulse rates are treated with more flexibility. As the Introduction begins, Carter embeds M = 8 in a way that does not...