A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Quintuple Time

by Franklin Taylor

QUINTUPLE TIME. The rhythm of five beats in a bar. As a rule, quintuple time has two accents, one on the first beat of the bar, and the other on either the third or fourth, the bar being thus divided into two unequal parts. On this account it can scarcely be considered a distinct species of rhythm, but rather a compound of two ordinary kinds, duple and triple, employed alternately. Although of little practical value, quintuple time produces an effect sufficiently characteristic and interesting to have induced various composers to make experiments therein, the earliest attempt of any importance being probably an air to the words 'Se la sorte mi condanna' in the opera of 'Ariadne' by Adolfati, written in 1750, and it is also met in some of the national airs of Spain, Greece, Germany, etc. Thus Reicha, in a note to No. 20 of his set of 36 fugues (each of which embodies some curious experiment in either tonality or rhythm), states that in a certain district of the Lower Rhine, named Kochersberg, the airs of most of the dances have a well-marked rhythm of five beats, and he gives as an example the following waltz—

In the above example the second accent falls on the third beat, the rhythm being that of 2-8 followed by 3-8, and the same order is observed in a very charming movement by Hiller, from the Trio op. 64, in which the quintuple rhythm is expressed by alternate bars of 2-4 and 3-4, as follows—

Non troppo vivo

In Reicha's fugue above referred to, the reverse is the case, the fourth beat receiving the accent, as is shown by the composer's own time-signature, as well as by his explicit directions as to performance. The following is the subject:—

Allegretto.

Other instances of quintuple rhythm are to be found in a Trio for strings by K. J. Bischoff, for which a prize was awarded by the Deutsche Tonhalle in 1853, in Chopin's Sonata in C minor, op. 4, in Hiller's 'Rhythmische Studien' op. 52, [App. p.766 "'Viens, gentille Dame' in Boieldieu's 'La Dame blanche'; Löwe's Ballad 'Prinz Eugen,' a number in Rubinstein's 'Tower of Babel,' and elsewhere,"] etc.; but perhaps the most characteristic example occurs in the 'Gypsies' Glee,' by W. Reeve (1796), the last movement of which runs as follows.

This may fairly be considered an example of genuine quintuple rhythm, for instead of the usual division of the bar into two parts, such as might be expressed by alternate bars of 3-4 and 2-4, or 2-4 and 3-4, there are five distinct beats in every bar, each consisting of an accent and a non-accent. This freedom from the ordinary alternation of two and three is well expressed by the grouping of the accompaniment, which varies throughout the movement, after the manner shown in the following extract:—

[ F. T. ]