Techniques of Polytempic Polymicrotonal Music Creation: What is Polytempo?, part VI

 What is Polytempo? 

What is tempo?

First of all, we must understand what tempo is. So I will explore this topic as deliberately, naively, and as guilelessly as I possibly can, to ask the most basic questions without the pomp, rhetoric, and expectations of my doctorate, telling both me that I damn well know what tempo is, when in fact, do I?

Jean-Baptiste Lully thought he knew what tempo was when he accidentally crushed his toe with his staff, pounding the tempo onto the floor while conducting Te Deum. Lully was 'tempoed' to death. There is no more concrete example of tempo than this. Now imagine three more Lullys pounding the floor at different rates of speed with their staffs. This is polytempo, and hopefully not the accidental polydeaths of the three additional Lullys. 

Today's version of this would not be so much the conductor, but perhaps a drummer? Or more precisely, the click-track pounds the tempo into the ears of hapless musicians via headphones for them to play to. But, is that really the tempo? What if the tempo is 15 bpm? This very slow tempo is so awkward at that slow rate that it would require more audible information for the performer, in the form of additional pulses to create a more understandable pulse rate for performance. Then, the tempo requires additional divisions of the "beat" or "pulse" to be more effective, even though the composer demands a Grave Larghissimo tempo of 15 BPM. 

The topic becomes complicated, and we haven't even gotten to the time signature yet. So, tempo is really not that simple to define. Adding additional information to the tempo structure, such as time signature, rate, beat, pulse, and subdivisions, makes tempo a bit more involved than one would think. 

On the other hand, any steady pulse rate lasting for many measures in a section can establish itself as a tempo. The articulated surface rhythms can become a sustained source of pulses that can translate to a temporal structure in their own right. This mode of thought may pertain more to polyrhythms, which are local temporal structural changes that last a few measures and then resolve back to the original tempo. In a way, the preparation of tempo changes can be compared to the techniques of harmonic modulation, with the new tonality prepared, cadential affirmations, and the establishment of a new key.  

Fundamentally, the tempo is a concrete grounding structure on which to build additional rhythmic figurations that are part of the musical landscape. These added rhythmic structures create the form and contain the harmony of that tempo through its unique rhythmic life, and becomes an expression of that particular tempo. 

What is Polytempo? 

Polytempo, for me, involves having four of these independent, established, grounded, musical landscapes with sophisticated rhythmic structures of their own, not simply rhythms marking beats at different rates of speed. That is just a polyrhythm. Not polytempo.

According to Jeppesen, the 16th-century composer's attitude towards each polyphonic line was that it was regarded as an individual with its own personality, or personhood, and that it ought never be deprived of its identity. I believe I have found my former life on planet Earth. (Exactly how I feel about each line)

Polytempo is a global structure that contains anywhere from two to x number of voices that can truly establish their own identity and show growth, or developmental changes occurring within their trajectory, like any lifeform of music.

What about Polymeters? 

Polymeters can become polytempic. Polytempo can be implicit or explicit, as in Carter's String Quartets or Ives's Universe Symphony. Although polymeters may have a single unifying temporal substrate underneath, the arduous assertion of the surface pulse and subsequent building of further rhythmic innovations and figuration will establish polytempic independence. If there is no development of rhythmic figuration or invention, then the simple clanging of different rates of notes may only be heard as an elaborate polyrhythm at the local or regional level. Nevertheless, if polymetric surface speeds result in entirely unrelated underlying pulses, even if there is a unifying tempo underneath at the bottom substrate, and they all share common barlines, it can still be considered polytempo as long as the different meters remain globally unchanged and each voice eventually becomes heard as a separate tempo, by pulse rate, and by assertion. This is much the same way a new key center is informally modulated, by assertion, or repetition, rather than a PAC (Perfect Authentic Cadence) or an IAC (Imperfect Authentic Cadence). 

These are not maxims. Just my thoughts and opinions that will be subject to change.

to be continued...