To the principles of beauty belong, above all things, order and regularity. In music this order consists in measures of time. All measurement by time, even the scientific, depends upon rhythmic, regularly returning results, as in the revolutions of the earth, of the moon, and in the vibrations of the pendulum, &c. Thus, by the regular interchange of accented and unaccented sounds in music and poetry, we obtain the rhythm of the work.
But while in poetry the structure of verse serves only to reduce to artistic order the external accidents of expression by language, rhythm is not only the external measure of time in music, but it belongs to the innermost nature of its power of expression, giving to music its distinctive character. There is, therefore, a finer and much more various culture of rhythm necessary in music than in poetry. Here rhythm determines not only the time, how long a note is to be maintained, and how many notes fall within a certain space of time, but it also distinguishes those notes which are to be sung with more or less emphasis.
We know that in a bar of
time the first beat must be more accented than the second; in a bar of
time the rhythmical accent falls upon the first and third beats; in a bar of
and
