WEBVTT

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In Music, the
Brain, and Ecstasy,

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Robert Jourdain
points out that music

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relies on two kinds of meter.

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I mean, I'm sorry,
two kinds of rhythm.

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Meter, which is what is
indicated by the time

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signature, like this
piece is going to be 4/4

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or this piece is
going to be 6/8, which

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assigns and subdivides the
equivalent units of duration

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and forms a predictable pulse.

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We're going to be in 4/4, and
it's going to go like this.

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And all the beats are going to
be equivalent to one another.

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So it makes a pulse,
an ongoing pulse.

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That's one kind, that's
not the only kind.

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The other kind of rhythm
that exists in music

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is phrasing, which
according to Jourdain,

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chunks together separate
notes in measures in order

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to present coherent sound.

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Phrasing, says Jourdain, is the
rhythmic system that builds,

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quote, "large-scale musical
objects and thereby induces

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large-scale musical
perceptions."

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The distinction between the two
kinds of rhythm is very clear.

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If you think on the one hand
of a fourth-grade marching band

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that only uses meter, doesn't
use phrasing, all right?

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All it is is we're chugging
along this regular pulse.

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Versus say, Gregorian chant,
which only uses phrasing

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and does not use meter, OK?

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That difference.

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The two conceptions of
rhythm are sometimes

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referred to as vocal,
that's for phrasing,

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and instrumental,
that's for meter.

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Phrasing is vocal
because it naturally

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arises from song, and
thus, from speech.

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While meter, says Mr.
Jourdain, arises from the way

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we play musical instruments
and a need to play together.

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Meter organizes small groups
of notes, and sometimes larger

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ones, and thereby
provides a sort of grid

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upon which music is drawn.

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On the other hand, phrasing
gives a kind of narrative

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or a story to music.

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It's the mechanism by which
a composition can play out

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a grand drama.

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Broadly speaking, meter
organizes musical time

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on the small scale, while
phrasing organizes it

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on the large scale.

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Yet, says Mr. Jourdain,
the two kinds of rhythm

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are not entirely at
peace with one another.

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He's talking about
music here, right?

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The two kinds of rhythm
are not entirely at peace

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with one another.

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Meter in poetry can never
be as strictly mathematical

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as meter in music, since
it only approximates

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duration, the foundation
of meter in music,

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and does not always account
for such manipulation

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as happens by long vowels, and
alliteration, and the like.

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But poetry, too, usually employs
two rhythmic systems, the line

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and the sentence.

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And the two systems,
not entirely

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at peace with one another,
is an apt description,

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it seems to me, of what
happens in the Larkin poem

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or what happens in "Cut Grass."

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Because of the powerful
unbalanced syntax,

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that asymmetry that I was
talking about, short sentence

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then really long one,
large-scale rhythm

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muscles out of the
way in irregular,

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mostly predictable measure.

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As a result, we start
off with two strokes

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per line in stanza one.

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And we move by stanza two
into three strokes per line.

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This shifting of expectation
is akin to a poetics

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from early last
century, what was

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called the verse libre
that came before verse

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libra or free verse.

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Where accentual monosyllabic
meter, like iambic pentameter,

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was not forsworn but
subverted, no longer

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kept stable but among the
moving parts, a prominent foot

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without the predictable
number of feet in the line,

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as in "Cut Grass," or a fixed
number of scannable feet

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without predictable
placement of stresses

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among unstressed syllables.

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The objective in verse libre
was pattern without boredom,

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asymmetry without incoherence.

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What Larkin does is
establish a grid or a pulse,

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not with rigid meter, but
with his iambs and spondees--

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remember, there's two
stresses in a row--

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and by making consonant the
relationship between the line,

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and the chunk of the syntax.

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It dies in the white
hours of young-leafed June

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with chestnut flowers, with
hedges snow-like strewn.

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He doesn't go, "Oh, my God.

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If their tree peaks in that last
line, I better change that."

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He doesn't care about that.

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What cares is to make all
those wind phrases parallel

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and to use the line.

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So that you will
hear that pattern,

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and so that you are going to be
up at the surface of the poem.

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