: :

16 ACCENT ACCENT
Of the modem employment of this artifice One' of the most interesting experiments in
the following examples will suffice : mixed accents that has yet been tried is to be
found in Liszt's oratorio ' Christus.' In the
Schumann, P. F. Concerto (Finale). ' Hirtengesang
pastorale for orchestra entitled
an der Krippe the following subject plays an
'

^^=i-
'^^^^m important part

:p=1:?-

1«. Bbahms,
It—
'Sehicksalslied.'
- etc
m^^m^^^^
iijf^

:sgis
Wle Waa - eer
^^m
Ton EUp - pe
It is impossible to reduce this passage to
any known rhythm ; but when the first feeling
of strangeness is past there is a peculiar and
quaint charm about the music which no other
Klip pe ge wor fen.
combination would have produced. Such
It will be seen from the above extracts what examples as those last quoted are however
almost boundless resources are placed at the given merely as curiosities, and are in no way
disposal of the composer by this power of to be recommended as models for imitation.
varying the position of the accent. It would Besides the alternation of various accents,
be easy to quote at least twice as many it is also possible to combine them siiDultane-
passages illustrating this point but it must ;
onsly. The following extract from the first
suffice to have given a, few representative finale of '
Don Giovanni not only one of
' is
extracts showing some of the effects most the best-known but one of the most successful
commonly employed. Before leaving this part experiments in this direction :

of the subject a few examples should be given 20. ^ , ^ .-—-^

of what may be termed the curiosities of accent.
These consist chiefly of unusual alternations of
triple and common-time accents. In all prob-
ability this peculiar alternation was firat used
by Handel in the following passage from his
opera of Agrippina'
'

17.

Bel pia ce-re c go - de-re fl • do a-moil

In the continuation of the song, of which
the opening bars are given here, the alternations
of common and triple time become more
frequent. In the rare cases in which bars of
3-4 and 2-4 time alternate, they are sometimes
written in 5-4 time, the accent coming on the
first and fourth beats. An example of this
time is found in the third act of "Wagner's
'
Tristan und Isolde,' in which the composer has
marked the secondary accent by a dotted bar. In the above quotation the first line gives a
quick waltz in 3-8 time with only one accent
in the bar, this accent falling with each beat
of the second and third lines. The contredanse
in 2-4 time and the minuet in 3-4 have each two
accents in the bar, a, strong and a weak one,
as explained above. The crotchet being of the
same length in both, it will be seen that the
A example, developed at greater
similar strong accents only occur at the same time in
length, may
be seen in the tenor air in the both parts on every sixth beat, at every second
second act of Boieldieu's La Dame Blanche.' '
bar of the minuet, and at each third bar of the
[The second movement of Tchaikovsky's contredanse. A somewhat similar combination
'Pathetic Symphony contains the best-known
' of difiFerent accents will be found in the slow
modem example of a genuine quintuple rhythm, movement of Spohr's symphony 'Die Weihe
so happily treated that no feeling of eccentricity der Tone.'
is created.] All the accents hitherto noticed belong to