Re: tuplets

[Trevor Bača]

On 9/26/07, Kieren MacMillan <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> It's not nearly as slick as "tuplet"... but how about "rhythmic ratios"?
> The phrase sums up almost precisely what it represents, and would be
> (I imagine) VERY easily translated.
>
> Just my 2 cents Canadian (which is about the same as 2 cents American
> nowadays!)

Yes, it is, isn't? And paying for hotel rooms (and beers) in Europe is
getting downright prohibitive ...

There's another (English) term out there that I don't like but that
will translate directly into FR, ES and the other Romance languages:
"irrational rhythm". I've avoided bringing it into this thread before
because I personally disagree with it. But it is now used regularly in
English. See, for example, the (English) wikipedia articles for each
that suggests that perhaps the entry for "tuplet" and "irrational
rhythm" should merge.

You can find examples of Ferneyhough using the term (I can google if
anyone cares). And there's also a passage in one of Balint Andras
Varga's interviews with Xenakis where the two of them discuss the
term. Xenakis has 9:5 type stuff all over his music, of course, and in
one of the interviews in Varga's book, Varga asks Xenakis where these
rhythms come from. And Xenakis's first response is "Why do people call
those rhythms irrational? They're actually very rational." By which I
think Xenakis is pointing to the fact that these rhythms are
inherently made of *ratios* (whatever in the time of whatever) and so
belong to the set Q of rational numbers; these rhythms definitely do
*not* belong to the set *irrational* numbers. My objection is on the
same basis: a good term for these rhythms *would have* been "rational
rhythms" ... but, for better or for worse, the term "irrational
rhythm" seems to be sticking (in English at least).

(My hunch here -- which is only that -- is that the term sticks
because players sometimes find the rhythms hard ... and so
"irrational" points to "difficulty" more than to the mathematical set
of numbers to which the rhythms belong. But who knows.)

So, there's that. It's available. And although I don't personally like
it because I think it's counter-descriptive, it will at least
translate readily to those languages that simply cannot backform
something like "tuplet".

FWIW, I would *much* prefer "tuplet" in our English docs; I would only
propose "irrational rhythm" where the translators are coming up empty
in the other languages.


-- 
Trevor Bača
address@hidden