Meter

Meter in Western Music

Meter in Western music has been an explicit concern of composers and theorists sine the 13th century. Ideas concerning the temporal values of particular notes and their interrelation, known as “mensural notation,” were systematized c. 1260 C.E., and remained in use until about 1600. Since the rough standardization of rhythmic aspects of notation around 1600, meter in Western music is generally of two principle types: duple or triple. Groupings of regularly recurring rhythmic pulses into groups of two or four constitute duple meter, while groupings of three, six, or nine constitute triple meter. Such groupings are indicated in a measure, in which one complete pattern of rhythmic recurrence is indicated by enclosing said pattern between two bar lines. Meter is often indicated at the beginning of a piece through fractions like 4/4, 3/4, 6/8. The numerator of these fractions indicates how many of a specified note value are in each measure. The denominator typically indicates the note value that gets the beat.

For example, the time signature 3/4 indicates that the quarter note (1/4) gets the beat, and that there are three in each measure. The 6/8 time signature, while indicating that there are 6 eighth notes (1/8) in a measure, does not necessarily mean that the eighth note gets the beat, since very often 6/8 is felt as two beats (123–456), depending on the tempo. Each meter, whether duple or triple, can be further described as simple or compound. A compound meter is one in which the basic pulse is subdivided into groups of three. Thus, the 6/8 is a compound-duple meter because it consists of two groups of three. The 9/8 time signature would be considered compound-triple meter, since it is made up of three groups of three eight notes (123–456–789). Meters like 3/4, 2/4, and 4/4, in which each beat divides into multiples of two, are referred to as simple meter. The time signature 3/4 would be considered simple-triple, while 2/4 and 4/4 would be simple-duple. Meters other than these are, at least in Western music before the 20th century, very rare.

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