Sondheim & Musical Meter: Extra Time(s)
Plus, a Johanna crossword, & more from our conversation with Elsbeth showrunner Jonathan Tolins! | Sondheim Supplement #43
Last Sunday, we published a Sondheimian guide to musical meter. We looked at how his music moves in twos, threes, and fours—first in simple meters (2/4, 3/4, 4/4), then in their compound cousins (6/8, 9/8, 12/8).
Today, we step outside those more regular grids. We turn now to irregular measures built from unequal groups of beats (5/8, for instance, as 2+3 or 3+2), and to mixed meter, where the time signature itself changes from measure to measure.
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Now, let’s dive in to Sondheim’s quintuple meters…
Quintuple (5/8, 5/4, etc.)
Count it: 1–2, 1–2–3 or 1–2–3, 1–2).
Feels like: an asymmetrical two-beat cycle built from unequal groups (2+3 or 3+2)
Meters like 5/8 and 7/8 are often called irregular (or complex, or asymmetric) because they’re formed by adding groups of 2 and 3 to make measures of uneven length. In Sondheim’s work, these meters appear, but relatively sparingly: much of his rhythmic interest—wrong-footing, propulsion, variety—comes from syncopation, cross-rhythm, and articulation within a regular grid (4/4, 3/4, 6/8, 12/8, and so on). He alternates time signatures much more frequently than he sustains these irregular meters for long stretches. More on that a little later.
Sweeney Todd gives us two neat examples of an irregular (quintuple, in this case) meter: