TIMS, in music, is that which measures the duration of sounds; and is marked by emphatic or accented notes, which are heard at equal distances, or by the regular returns of cadences.
A succession of sounds, says Rousseau, however happily it may be conducted in its procedure, in its transitions from low to high, or from high to low, will produce nothing, if we may speak so, but indeterminate effects. It is the relative and proportionate duration of these very sounds that fixes the genuine character of any music, and gives it its full energy. Time is the soul of melody: airs, whose movements are slow, naturally deject our spirits, and inspire sadness; but those which proceed with cheerfulness and vivacity, whose cadences are regular and properly marked, excite us to joy, and scarce can the feet restrain themselves from dancing. Remove measure, destroy the proportions of duration between sounds, and the same airs which those proportions rendered agreeable to you, will remain without charms and without force, will, in short, become incapable of pleasing or interesting. Time, on the contrary, has its own intrinsic power; it depends on itself alone, and can subsist without diversity of sounds. Of this the drum presents us with an example; rude indeed, and extremely inadequate, because in it the sounds cannot be supported.
Time in music is considered, either with respect to the general movement of an air, and in this sense it is said to be swift or slow; or it is considered with respect to the aliquot parts of every bar; these parts are marked by motions of the hand or foot, and in a particular sense are called times; or, in short, it is considered with respect to the proper value of each particular note in duration.
In his Musical Dictionary, at the word Rhythme, Rousseau has sufficiently treated concerning the time of music among the Greeks. Such readers as wish to examine the rhythmus of the ancients more curiously,
may derive considerable advantage from reading Cicero's treatise De Oratore, and Burney's dissertation prefixed to his history. We are more particularly concerned in the time of modern music.
Those musicians who may be called ancient moderns, only recognize two different species of measures or times; one containing three equal divisions of time, which they called perfect measure; the other comprehending two, which they termed imperfect measure; and they denominated the signs which they added to the clef, times, modes, or prolations, to fix the character of the bars, whether of the one or the other kind. These signs did not, as at present, serve for that use alone, but they likewise fixed the relative value of notes; as may be seen at the words Mode and Prolation in Rousseau's Musical Dictionary, with respect to the maximum or large, the long, the semibreve. With respect to the breve, the manner of dividing it was what they more precisely called time; and that time was perfect or imperfect.
When the time was perfect, the breve or square was equivalent to three semibreves; and this they signified by a full circle, sometimes with lines drawn through it and sometimes not, sometimes likewise it was marked thus .
When the time was imperfect, the breve was only equivalent to two semibreves; and this was marked by a semicircle or C. Sometimes this C was inverted; and this signified that the value or duration of each particular note was diminished by one half. We at present express the same thing by intersecting C with a line. Sometimes the quantity of a bar, signified by the intersected C, where the notes only are protracted to half their value, divided into what they called minor times; and that which was marked by the C without a line, where the notes occupied their full duration, into major times, in which the bar was generally divided into four equal parts or times.
We have exactly retained the triple time of the ancients, as well as the double, which we call common time; but, by an unaccountable caprice, we have hardly retained any thing in their manner of dividing notes except by duplicates, though their division into three equal parts is often no less necessary to us than to them; so that to divide a bar into three equal parts, or a time in the same manner, we are at a loss for characters of expression, and scarcely can we tell how to supply them. We must have recourse to the figure 3, or to other expedients of the same kind; which demonstrate how inadequate our musical characters are to answer their proper purposes. See TRIPES in the Musical Dictionary.
To ancient music we had added a combination of time, by which the bar, instead of two, is divided by four, equal parts or times; but as they may always be reduced to bars containing only two, it may be said, that in reality we have only two or three times as the aliquot parts of all our different bars.
The value of times is as numerous and different as the diversities in the quantity of bars and the modifications of movement. But when the bar and the movement are once fixed, all the bars should be perfectly equal, and all the times contained in each bar perfectly equivalent one to another. Now, to render this equality sensible, every bar is struck, and every time distinguished, by a motion of the hand or foot; and by these motions
motions the different values of notes are exactly regulated, according to the genius and character of the bar. It is a surprising phenomenon to observe with how much precision, by the assistance of a little habit and practice, initiates may be brought to follow and distinguish the times, with an equality so perfect, that no pendulum can vibrate more justly than the hand or foot of a good musician, and that even the internal perception of this equality is sufficient to conduct them and to answer with accuracy every purpose of sensible motion; so that, in a concert, every performer plays or sings the bar with the utmost exactitude, without hearing the time distinguished by any other, or distinguishing it himself any other ways than by the succession of his own ideas.
Of the different times included in a bar, though all are equal, yet there are some more strongly and sensibly marked than others. This distinction is expressed in execution by emphatic or accented notes, and by such as are unaccented or common. The time which is thus more sensibly distinguished is called the perfect time; that which is more feebly distinguished, or which is occupied by unaccented notes, is called the imperfect time. (See Music, art. 174.) The perfect is the first of every bar, consisting of two times; it is the first and third of such bars as include three or four times. The second time is always imperfect in every bar, and it is the same case with the fourth in bars containing four times.
If every time be subdivided into two other equal parts, which may likewise be called isochronic or hemichronic times, for the first part of this subdivision you will likewise have a perfect time, and for the second an imperfect; and there is no part of any time which may not, according to Rousseau, be subdivided in the same manner.
Here, however, we must dissent; and for this plain reason, that notes may be so minutely subdivided, as by the shortness of their duration to be rendered incapable of emphasis; and we should be glad to know how this author, either with his hand, his foot, or this thought, could distinguish the perfect and imperfect times of a demi-femiquaver.
Every note which begins in the imperfect and ends in the perfect time, is an antichronic note; and as it violates and shocks in some measure the order of the bar, its commencement in the middle of one time, and its continuation to another, is called syncopation.
These observations are necessary to such as would learn how they may employ dissonances with success. For every dissonance properly introduced, ought to be prepared in the imperfect, and struck in the perfect time: except, however, in successions of cadences avoided, where this rule, though applicable to the first dissonance, is not equally so to those which succeed it. See DISCORD and PREPARATION.