On the other hand, the Scherzo of the same work is unevenly divided into phrases of four and two measures.
With the advent of Stravinsky and other moderns a new problem of time beating has arisen in connection with the attempt to free music entirely from the formal division of the bar line placed at regular intervals. Not that these composers dispense with the bar line completely, but they place it in such disconcertingly irregular places that the conductor’s task is doubly difficult even when he attempts to indicate it merely with a single down-beat.
The two following examples from Igor Stravinsky’s “Petrouchka”[3] illustrate this difficulty. The tempo is too fast to permit the use of regularly divided gestures, and yet it is very difficult to bring in the single beats with such metronomic precision that the musicians can play all of the individual eighth notes evenly and without hurrying.
[3] Copyright by Russischer Musikverlag, Berlin
EXAMPLE Nᵒ. 1
3 in a measure
