, by Athenaeus, son of Athenaeus Before the 20th century, quintuple time was rare in European concert music, but is more commonly found in other cultures.
Ancient Greek music Rhythm in ancient Greek music was closely tied to poetic meter, and included what are understood today as quintuple patterns. The two
Delphic Hymns from the second century BC both provide examples. The First Delphic Hymn, by
Athenaeus, son of Athenaeus, is in the quintuple
Cretic meter throughout. The first nine of the ten sections of the Second Hymn, by
Limenius, are also in Cretic meter. In addition to the Cretic meter, which consisted of a
long-
short-
long pattern, ancient Greek music had seven other quintuple meters: Bacchic (
L-
L-
S), Palimbacchic (or antibacchic:
S-
L-
L), four species of Paeanic (
L-
S-
S-
S,
S-
L-
S-
S,
S-
S-
L-
S—which is a composite of
pyrrhic and
trochee—and
S-
S-
S-
L), and
hyporchematic (
S-
S-
S-
S-
S).
Asia, Transcaucasia, and the Middle East Arabic theorists already in the early
Abbasid period (AD 750–900) described
modal rhythmic cycles (
īqā‘āt), that included quintuple meters, though taxonomies and terminology vary amongst writers. The first figure to describe these rhythms was
Abū Yūsuf Ya‘qūb al-Kindī (ca 801–ca 866), who divided them into two broad categories,
ṯẖaqīl ("heavy", meaning slow) and
khafīf ("light", meaning quick). Two of his
ṯẖaqīl modes—
ṯẖaqīl thānī ("second heavy", S-S-L-S) and
ramal (L-S-L)—and one
khafīf mode are quintuple. The most important writers of the later Abbasid period (AD 900–1258) were
Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (d. 950) and
Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037). Al-Fārābī elaborated the rhythmic system established a century earlier by another important early Abbasid musician,
Isḥāq al-Mawṣilī, who had based it on local traditions, without any knowledge of classical Greek music theory. Isḥāq's and al-Fārābī's system consisted of eight rhythmic modes, the third and fourth of which were quintuple: called
ṯẖaqīl thānī ("second heavy"), and
khafīf al-ṯẖaqīl thānī ("second light heavy"), both of which are short-short-short-long, in slow and fast tempo, respectively. This terminology and these definitions continued to be found as late as the 12th century in
Muslim Spain, for example in a document by Abd-Allāh ibn Muḥammad ib al-Ṣīd al-Baṭaliawsī. In the Moroccan
Malḥūn repertory (an urban song style closely associated with
Andalusian music), rhythms are sometimes introduced into the basic meter of . Turkish classical music employs a system of rhythmic modes (called
usul), which include units ranging from two to ten time units. The five-beat meter is called
türk aksağı. The traditional music of
Adjara in Western Georgia includes an ancient war-dance called
Khorumi, which is in quintuple meter. The cyclically repeating fixed time cycles of
Carnatic and
Hindustani classical music, called
tālas, include both fast and slow quintuple patterns, as well as binary, ternary, and septenary cycles. In the Carnatic system, there is a complex "formal" system of tālas which is of great antiquity, and a more recent, rather simpler "informal" system, comprising selected tālas from the "formal" system, plus two fast tālas called
Cāpu. The slow quintuple tāla, called
Jhampā is from the formal system, and consists of a pattern of beats; the fast quintuple tāla is called
khaṇḍa Cāpu or
ara Jhampā, and consists of beats. However, the pattern of beats marking the rotation of the cycle does not necessarily indicate the internal rhythmic organization. For example, although the
Jhampā tāla, in its most common
miśra variety, is governed by , the most characteristic rhythm of melodies in this tāla is . The tālas in Hindustani music are somewhat more complicated. To begin with, they are not systematically codified, but rather comprise a miscellany of patterns from a number of different repertories. Secondly, the counting units (
mātrā) of each tāla are grouped into segments called
vibhāg, which constitute slower "beats" of from to 5 of those counting units. Third, in addition to the sounded
vibhāg, marked by hand-claps (
tālī), there are also
vibhāg marked only by a wave of the hand—the so-called
khālī beats. The two quintuple tālas in these repertories are
Jhaptāl——and
Sūltāl—. Both are measured by ten
mātrā units, but
Jhaptāl is divided into four unequal
vibhāg (the third being a
khālī beat) in two halves of five
mātrā each, and
Sūltāl is divided into five equal
vibhāg, the second and fifth of which are
khālī. The
kasa repertory of traditional
Korean court music often employs cycles in quintuple time, even though Korean traditional music terminology has no specific term for it. This repertory can be traced back in some cases to the fifteenth century. Quintuple meter is also occasionally found in folk music, with perhaps the most well-known example being the
Eotmori (엇모리) rhythm (장단) often employed in
Sanjo. Quintuple is the oldest surviving traditional Korean meter.
Australia Quintuple meter occurs as a variation in some women's dance songs of
indigenous Australians, where a measure is occasionally inserted into songs with a basic duple or four-beat pattern.
The Americas Traditional dance songs of the
Yupik of Alaska are accompanied by frame drums, beaten with a long thin wand, most commonly in a crotchet–dotted crotchet (quarter–dotted quarter) pattern.
European folk music Many European folk and traditional repertories also feature quintuple meter. This is particularly true of Slavic cultural groups. The Bulgarian "
paidushko" dance, for example, is in a fast , counted . In north-eastern Poland (especially in
Kurpie,
Masuria, and northern
Podlaskie), five-beat bars are frequently found in wedding songs, with rather slow tempos and not accompanied by dancing. Traditional Russian wedding songs also are in quintuple time. The Poles and Russians share this proclivity for quintuple meter with the Finns,
Sami people, Estonians, and Latvians. In Finland, the
Kalevalaic "
runometric" songs are the most distinctive feature of folk music, and the most common melody of these epic songs is in quintuple meter. This melody was described in the oldest study of runo singing in 1766, but first published in a musical transcription only about 20 years later. One South Slavic example is recorded in a manual published in 1714 by the Venetian dancing master Gregorio Lambranzi. It is a
forlana titled "Polesana", probably meaning "From
Pola", a city in
Istria—today a part of Croatia but a Venetian possession until 1947. Although Lambranzi notated this dance in time, its recurring phrase structure shows it to be in compound-quintuple time, so that its correct form is actually written in . Greek folk music is also characterized by rhythms in asymmetrical meters. The repertory of the
Peloponnese, for example, includes the Doric
tsakonikos from Doric-speaking (see
Tsakonian language)
Kynouria in time. The
Epirus region of Northern Greece also has dance melodies in a slow 5 (2–3). Spanish folk music is also noted for the use of quintuple meter, particularly well-known examples being the
Castilian rueda and the
Basque zortziko, but it is also found in the music of
Extremadura,
Aragon,
Valencia, and
Catalonia. Some types of the folk dances collectively referred to as
gavottes, and stemming from
Lower Brittany in France are in meter, though , , and are also found. In the
Alsatian region of
Kochersberg, a peasant dance called the
Kochersberger Tanz is in time, and is similar to a dance of the
Upper Palatinate in
Bavaria called
Der Zwiefache or
Gerad und Ungerad, because it alternates even and uneven bars ( and ).
European art music Medieval and Renaissance In European art music it became possible only in the 14th century to notate quintuple rhythms unambiguously, through the use of minor or reversed
coloration. In some instances from the late-14th-century
Ars subtilior period, quintuple passages occur which are long enough to regard as an established meter. For example, in the
secunda pars of an anonymous two-voice
Fortune (MS Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale
ital. 568, fol. 3), a "clear and definite rhythm" in the upper part creates a meter set against the of the lower part. The earliest
complete European compositions in quintuple time, however, appear to be seven villancicos in the
Cancionero Musical de Palacio, which were composed between 1516 and 1520. Notation of the quintuple meter in these seven pieces is achieved in various ways: •
Juan del Encina uses the mensuration in "Amor con fortuna", but in "Tan buen ganadico", he uses a signature of (1496). •
Juan de Anchieta uses (
tempus perfectum,
proportio quintupla), in both "Con amores, mi madre" (1465), and "Dos ánades, madre". • The anonymous "Pensad ora'n al" uses the mensuration . • "Las mis penas madre" by
Pedro de Escobar and "De ser mal casada" by Diego Fernández (d. 1551) both use just the proportion sign . Other examples from the 16th century include the
In Nomine "Trust" by
Christopher Tye, the "Qui tollis" section of
Jacob Obrecht's Missa "Je ne demande", the "Sanctus" from the
Missa Paschalis by
Heinrich Isaac, and the final "Agnus Dei" of
Antoine Brumel's Missa "Bon temps". Keyboard examples from this period include the first half of an English setting of the offertory
Felix namque from about 1530, and a passage in no. 41 of the
Libro de tientos (1626) by
Francisco Correa de Arauxo.
Baroque and Classical In the
Baroque and
Classical eras quintuple meter is, if anything, even less frequently encountered than in the
Renaissance. One possible example is the ritornello that precedes and follows Orfeo's aria "Vi ricorda" in act 2 of
Claudio Monteverdi's ''
L'Orfeo''. The notation is problematic, however, and while several editors (
Robert Eitner,
Vincent d'Indy,
Hugo Leichtentritt, and
Carl Orff) have transcribed it in quintuple meter, others interpret it differently. The verses of
Giovanni Valentini's
madrigal Con guardo altero, published in
Musiche a doi voci (1621) is composed in .
Johann Heinrich Schmelzer included a section of 27 measures in his
Harmonia à 5, composed by at least 1668. Two brief passages of occur in the "mad scene" (act 2, scene 11) from
Handel's opera
Orlando (1732), first at the words "Già solco l'onde" ("Already I am cleaving the waves") when the demented hero believes he has embarked on
Charon's boat on the
Styx, and then again two bars later.
Charles Burney found this whole scene admirable, as a portrait of Orlando's madness, but observed that "Handel has endeavoured to describe the hero's perturbation of intellect by fragments of symphony in , a division of time which can only be borne in such a situation". Burney's German contemporary,
Johann Kirnberger, also felt that "No one can repeat groups of five and even less of seven equal pulses in succession without wearisome strain". Another exceptional 18th-century example is an entire aria composed in time, "Se la sorte mi condanna" found in
Andrea Adolfati's opera
Arianna (1750), but the English theater composer
William Reeve, with the last movement of his ''Gypsy's Glee'' (1796), to the words "Come, stain your cheeks with nut or berry" (in time) is credited with having composed an example in true quintuple time, "for instead of the usual division of the bar into two parts, such as might be expressed by alternate bars of and , or and , 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…".
19th century There appear to have been several motivations for composers to use quintuple time: firstly to demonstrate technical skill, as in the Tye and Correa de Arauxo examples, and secondly to produce an atmospheric effect, or to suggest unease or unusual excitement, as in Handel's
Orlando. In the 19th century, a third motivation arises with the rise of
nationalistic music, which often invokes folk-music elements. In any case, quintuple time becomes much more frequent (though still not common) in the 19th century. Early examples include Fugue 20 (Allegretto) from
Anton Reicha's
Trente-six fugues for piano (1805), the tenor aria "Viens, gentille dame" from act 2 of
François-Adrien Boieldieu's opera
La dame blanche (1825), and the third movement (
Larghetto, con molta espressione), from
Frédéric Chopin's
Piano Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 4 (1828). Although Reicha's fugue probably falls into the category of technical skill, the composer does mention taking as a model for the meter the Alsatian
Kochersberger Tanz. Nationalistic influence is clearer in the operas of the Russian composer
Mikhail Glinka: the "Nuptial chorus and scene" from act 3 of the opera
A Life for the Tsar (1834–1836) was the first time a composer of art music set the pentasyllabic
hemistichs of Russian wedding songs in quintuple meter instead of adapting it to a more conventional one. In his next opera,
Ruslan and Ludmila (1837–1842) Glinka repeated the effect in the opening of act 1, where the chorus sings an epithalamium to Lel', the Slavonic god of love, once again in quintuple time. Later Russian examples are found in
Tchaikovsky's folk-song settings:
Fifty Russian Folk Songs for piano four-hands (1868–1869), ''Children's Ukrainian and Russian Folksongs
(book 1: 1872, book 2: 1877), and Sixty-Six Russian Folk Songs'' for voice and piano (1872), where quintuple meter is notated by regularly alternating signatures, usually and . Also
Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov's
Russian Easter Festival Overture initial theme is in . Shorter passages also occur in the music of
Hector Berlioz:
La tempête (1830), later incorporated into
Lélio as the finale, has "quintuple metre for a whole section, notated in compound duple; 'bars' of are defined by a recurring rhythmic pattern and by accents (six 'bars' covering bars 289–306 in the notation)", The outer sections of the
scherzo from
Alexander Borodin's unfinished Third Symphony are in time, interrupted six times in bars 36–38, 69–71, 180–182, 218–220, 352–354, and 392–394 with a three-bar group in . The central trio section, b. 235–313 is in time. From around the middle of the century, there is
Carl Loewe's ballad for voice and piano, "Prinz Eugen, der edle Ritter", Op. 92 (to the poem by
Ferdinand Freiligrath, 1844), which is in time throughout,
Ferdinand Hiller's Piano Trio No. 4, Op. 64 (1855) and
Rhythmische Studien for piano, a String Trio by K. J. Bischoff, which was awarded a prize by the Deutsche Tonhalle in 1853, and
Benjamin Godard's Violin Sonata No. 4, Op. 12 (1872) which includes a
scherzo in time throughout. The piano virtuoso
Charles-Valentin Alkan showed an interest in unusual rhythmic devices, and composed at least four keyboard pieces in quintuple time: the first three of the ''Deuxième recueil d'impromptus
, Op. 32, no. 2 (1849), Andantino, Allegretto, and Vivace (the fourth and last piece in this collection is in septuple meter), and a "Zorzico dance" episode in the Petit Caprice, réconciliation
, Op. 42 (1857). In opera, Wagner, inserted several bars in "Tristan, der Held, in jubelnder Kraft", in act 3 of Tristan und Isolde'' (1856–1859). Another instance from around this same time is found in
Anton Rubinstein's "sacred opera"
Der Thurm zu Babel (The Tower of Babel), Op. 80 (1868–1869). In
Johannes Brahms's late collection of six vocal quartets, Op. 112, the second piece, "Nächtens", is entirely in . At the very end of the century,
Alban Berg used meter throughout his song-setting of
Theodor Storm's poem, "
Schließe mir die Augen beide" (1900). Three of the best-known examples of quintuple meter in the
symphonic repertoire are from late in the
neoromantic (or
post-romantic) period, which reaches from the mid-19th century through World War I: the second movement of
Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 in B minor, "Pathétique", Op. 74 (1893) (described by one author as the very first example of quintuple meter in Western classical music),
Rachmaninoff's The Isle of the Dead, Op. 29 (1908), and the opening movement, "Mars, the Bringer of War" of
The Planets (1914–1916) by
Gustav Holst. (The final movement, "Neptune, the Mystic", is also in quintuple meter, but this is less well known.) The first theme of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, mvmt. II is shown below. : \relative c { \set Score.tempoHideNote = ##t \tempo 4 = 144 \set Staff.midiInstrument = #"cello" \clef bass \key d \major \time 5/4 fis4\mf(^\markup { \column { \line { Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6, mvmt. II, opening theme } \line { \bold { Allegro con grazia } } } } g) \tuplet 3/2 { a8(\ a4(\mf b) \tuplet 3/2 { cis8(\ [ a( g) fis-. ] e-. [ es-.( d-. cis-. b-. bes-.) ] a4\mf } The Finnish composer
Jean Sibelius used a pattern of quintuple meter in the third movement of
Kullervo (1891–1892), where "the orchestra maintains a pattern of five beats in a bar, while the chorus elongates its lines to phrases of fifteen, ten, eight, and twelve beats, respectively". These are
Karelian rhythms, reflecting nationalism in Sibelius's music. He used these quintuple meters as well in several male-chorus works: "Venematka" (no. 3 from
Six Partsongs, Op. 18, 1893), the third movement, "Hyvää iltaa, lintuseni", from
Rakastava, Op. 14 (1894), and "Sortunut ääni" (no. 1 from
Six Partsongs, Op. 18, 1898). In 1895, the British composer
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor wrote the second movement, "Serenade", of his
Fantasiestücke, Op. 5, for string quartet in time. A little more than ten years later, the Scottish composer Robert Ernest Bryson wrote a string-orchestra fantasy titled
Vaila in time. In the piano repertoire, the "Promenade", from
Modest Mussorgsky's
Pictures at an Exhibition (1874), has five versions, in each of which is mixed with other meters, regularly or irregularly: • alternates with for eight bars, then two of and one pair of + , ending with twelve bars of • alternates regularly with throughout (effectively ) • regular alternation of and until the final two bars, which are and C • irregular mixture of , , and , with a single bar at the end • four pairs of regularly alternating and , then an irregular mixture of , , and to the end. The opening measures are shown below: : { \new PianoStaff 4 \stemDown \stemNeutral \time 6/4 \stemDown \stemNeutral } \new Voice \relative c'' { \time 5/4 s1 s4 \time 6/4 s1. \time 5/4 s2. \stemUp c8^( f d4) \time 6/4 \stemUp c8^( f d4) s1 } >> \new Staff 4 \time 6/4 } >> >> } To this same period (and to the Russian tradition) also belongs "Prizrak" (Phantom), in time, which is No. 4 of
Sergei Prokofiev's Four Pieces for Piano, Op. 3 (1911). These examples are all simple quintuple time. Compound quintuple meter is less frequent, but an instance is found in the middle section of the third movement, "Andante grazioso", of Brahms's
Piano Trio No. 3 in C minor, Op. 101 (1886), which is in with
turnarounds. "Fêtes", the second movement of
Claude Debussy's
Nocturnes for orchestra (1892–1899), also has a recurring passage of two bars, embedded in a context of mainly compound triple () bars. The seventh of
Florent Schmitt's
Eight Short Pieces for piano four-hands (1907–1908), "Complainte", is in with occasional bars of inserted. The first section of
Nikolai Medtner's Piano Sonata Op. 25 No. 2 in E minor ("Night Wind"), which is from 1911, is "perhaps the most extended piece of music in time in existence".
20th century The common occurrence of quintuple meter in many folk-music traditions caused an increase in its appearance in the works of composers with nationalistic tendencies in the early 20th century. Examples are the Prelude in the Unison from
George Enescu's Orchestral Suite No. 1, Op. 9 (1903), "In Mixolydian Mode", "Bulgarian Rhythm (2)", and the third of "Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm", nos. 48, 115, and 150 from
Béla Bartók's
Mikrokosmos (1926, 1932–1939), the "Chanson épique", no. 2 from
Maurice Ravel's song cycle
Don Quichotte à Dulcinée (1932–1933), and the first theme group of
Carlos Chávez's
Sinfonía india (1935–1936), which is predominantly in time, but mixed with other meters. Another impulse for the use of quintuple meter was to evoke pagan and specifically Ancient Greek culture. The meter of the
bacchanalian "Danse générale" concluding Ravel's ballet
Daphnis et Chloé (1909–1912) is a particularly well-known example. In his First Symphony, the
Sinfonía de Antígona (1933), Carlos Chávez reworked incidental music he had composed in 1932 for a production of
Sophocles'
Antigone in the adaptation by
Jean Cocteau. In this symphony Chávez made extensive use of the Greek paeonic (or cretic) meter, notated in time in the score. The fourth and last movement of Ravel's
String Quartet is mostly in and time, alternating several times with time. A fourth example from Ravel is a particularly intense, if brief use of quintuples for symbolic purposes. This is
Frontispice for two pianos (1918), written at the request of
Ricciotto Canudo to accompany a philosophical meditation on
World War I, titled
S.P. 503, le poème du Vardar. Canudo's title bears the numerical designation of the postal sector of his combat division, and Ravel used the numbers as the basis of his composition. Five staves of music, "'progressing' vertically from flats through naturals to sharps, are played by five hands (three players) in meters of (i.e., ) and ". The Basque setting of
Pierre Loti's play
Ramuntcho made the inclusion of Basque traditional melodies in the incidental music composed for it in 1907 by
Gabriel Pierné a natural choice. Pierné included at the end of act 2 an arrangement of the Basque anthem
Gernikako Arbola by
José María Iparraguirre, which is in
zortziko rhythm, but he also quotes traditional
zortziko melodies, as well as imitating their quintuple rhythms, in the opening "Ouverture sur des thèmes populaires basques" as well as in the "Rapsodie basque" that serves as an interlude between the first and second tableaux of act 2. Pierné, who was attracted to quintuple meter as part of a broader taste for exoticism, also employed quintuple meter in his Piano Quintet, Op. 41 (1917), and in the
Fantaisie basque, Op. 49 (1927), for violin and orchestra. The outer sections of the second movement of the Quintet are in time, and marked "Sur une rythme de Zortzico", while the contrasting central section superimposes on time, in "quadruple quintuple" meter. In the
Fantaisie, a long section near the beginning is in time, and is marked "Rythme de Zortzico".
Igor Stravinsky's name is often associated with rhythmic innovation in the 20th century, and quintuple meter is sometimes found in his music—for example, the fugato variation in the second movement of his
Octet (1922–1923) is written almost uniformly in time. Much more characteristically, however, quintuple bars in Stravinsky's scores are found in a context of constantly changing meters, as for example in his ballet
The Rite of Spring (1911–1913), where the object appears to be the combination of two- and three-note subdivisions in irregular groupings. This treatment of rhythm subsequently became so habitual for Stravinsky that, when he composed his
Symphony in C in 1938–1940, he found it worth observing that the first movement had no changes of meter at all (though the metrical irregularities in the third movement of the same work were amongst the most extreme in his entire output). So many other composers followed Stravinsky's example in the use of irregular meters that the occasional occurrence of quintuple-time bars becomes unremarkable from the 1920s onward. Entire movements with a constant five-to-a-bar rhythm are less-often encountered. An example is the second-movement "Lament" of the
Double Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra, Op. 49 (1929), by Gustav Holst. One particularly notable pre–World War II quintuple-meter composition is the popular first movement, "Aria (Cantilena)" (1938), of the
Bachianas Brasileiras no. 5 by
Heitor Villa-Lobos (the second movement was added only in 1945). The opening and closing parts of this aria for soprano and orchestra of cellos is predominantly in , and the middle section is entirely in that meter. Written during the war, the third movement,
Andante calmo, of
Benjamin Britten's
String Quartet No. 1 (1941) is in . The
Ludus Tonalis by
Hindemith (1942) has several instances of quintuple meter: its
Preludium and retrograde-inverted
Postludium each have a
Solenne, largo section in ; Fugue II in G is in ; and though Fugue VIII in D is notated in , its
music is predominantly in , so shifts one beat forward each measure with respect to its notated meter. The
Passacaglia for piano (1943) by
Walter Piston is in quintuple meter. In the post-war period,
Gian Carlo Menotti used a quintuple-meter funeral march as an instrumental transition to the final scene of his opera
The Consul (1950), and Britten set "Green Leaves Are We, Red Rose Our Golden Queen", the opening chorus from his opera
Gloriana, Op. 53 (1952–1953, rev. 1966), in time.
Dmitri Shostakovich set Fugues 12, 17, and 19 from his
Twenty-Four Preludes and Fugues for piano, Op. 87 (1950–1951) entirely in time, and also interspersed this time signature with other meters in Preludes 9, 20, and 24, and in Fugues 15 and 16 from the same collection. Fugue No 17 in A major follows in the Slavic tradition of "naturally" flowing music in five time. Quintuple meter is sometimes employed to characterize particular variations of works in
variation form. Examples include the third movement, "Variations on a Ground", from the Double Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra, Op. 49 (1929), by Gustav Holst (11th and 18th variations in ), "Variation IV: Più mosso" (in time), in Part I of
The Age of Anxiety: Symphony No. 2 (1949) by
Leonard Bernstein. Britten composed his
Canticle III ("Still Falls the Rain"), Op. 55 (1954), in variation form, with the "Theme", "Variation IV", and "Variation VI" all in . In a similar fashion, extended single-movement compositions may set off large sections by using contrasting meters. Quintuple meter is used in this way by
Rob du Bois in his Concerto for Two Violins and Orchestra (1979), where bars 160–175 and 227–277 are in . In the
minimal music that emerged in the late 1960s, quintuple meter is not often encountered. A rare exception is found in an early work by
Steve Reich,
Reed Phase (1966), which is built on the constant repetition of a five-note basic unit in steady eighth notes. : { \override Score.TimeSignature • 'stencil = ##f \relative c'' { \set Staff.midiInstrument = #"clarinet" \set Score.tempoHideNote = ##t \tempo 8 = 280 \clef treble \time 5/8 d8[ a' g c a] } } Reich was not satisfied with the result, largely because of the failure of the meter to produce the kind of rhythmic ambiguity found in the 12-beat patterns he came to favour: Reich's 1979 Octet (originally scored for two pianos, string quartet, and two wind players who perform on both flutes and clarinets), revised and rescored as
Eight Lines) is entirely in quintuple time.
Jazz and popular music A survey of American popular music found that the most common accent pattern used in quintuple meter is
strong-
weak-
weak-
medium-
weak.
Musical theatre Until after the Second World War, quintuple time was virtually unheard of in the American genres of
jazz and popular music. When in 1944, Stravinsky was commissioned by
Billy Rose to compose a fifteen-minute dance component to be incorporated into his Broadway revue,
The Seven Lively Arts, Stravinsky composed
Scènes de ballet, to be choreographed by
Anton Dolin. Rose was enthusiastic about the new score when initially he saw the piano reduction made by
Ingolf Dahl, but later was dismayed by the sound of the orchestra, and offended the composer by telegraphing the suggestion that Stravinsky should allow the scoring to be "retouched" by
Robert Russell Bennett, who "orchestrates even the works of
Cole Porter". Whole sections of the score had to be cut for the Philadelphia premiere, because the New York
pit musicians, accustomed to the conventions of
Broadway musicals of that period, were unable to manage the bars that feature in Stravinsky's score. A dozen years later, things were changing in musical theater in New York.
Leonard Bernstein's
Candide opened on Broadway in December 1956, and featured a variety of meters that Billy Rose's musicians would have found as impossible as Stravinsky's. In act 1, the quartet "Universal Good" is a chorale in time, and the main verses of "Ballad of Eldorado" in act 2 are in , with turnarounds in or + .
Mary Rodgers's 1959
Once Upon a Mattress featured the song "Sensitivity". Later examples in musical theater include the song "Everything's Alright", from
Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), by
Andrew Lloyd Webber, which is mainly in , and "Ladies in Their Sensitivities" from
Stephen Sondheim's
Sweeney Todd (1979), which is in . Sondheim also alternates with (at the passage beginning "Living like a shut-in") and and (at "All I ever dreamed I'd be") in the song "In Buddy's Eyes' from
Follies (1971).
Jazz In 1914, American ragtime composers
James Reese Europe and
Ford Dabney composed and recorded a dance tune in called "Castles' Half and Half", based on a dance created by
Vernon and Irene Castle (described as a "hesitation waltz"). Additional tunes in were also composed by others in 1914 to accompany the dance. In 1959, the
Dave Brubeck Quartet released
Time Out, a jazz album with music in unusual meters. It included
Paul Desmond's "
Take Five", in time. Brubeck had studied with the French composer
Darius Milhaud, who in turn had been strongly influenced by Stravinsky, and is credited with the systematic introduction of asymmetrical and shifting rhythms that sparked a far-reaching surge of interest in jazz and popular music in the 1960s. The 1960
Max Roach album
We Insist! contains three tracks making use of . Starting in 1964, the trumpeter and band leader
Don Ellis sought to fuse traditional big-band styles with rhythms borrowed from Indian and Near Eastern music; this was largely initiated by his UCLA ethnomusicology studies with Indian percussionist and sitar player
Harihar Rao and his contact with Turkish-American music producer
Arif Mardin. For example, one of his largest works,
Variations for Trumpet, is divided into six sections with meters including , , , and . Two other Ellis compositions are entirely in time: "Indian Lady" and "5/4 Getaway". In 1966, the popular American television drama series
Mission: Impossible began a seven-season run with the "
Theme from Mission: Impossible" by
Lalo Schifrin. In 1968,
Leonard Feather interviewed pianist
Johnny Guarnieri in
DownBeat magazine; Guarnieri had spent the last few years working up arrangements of jazz standards changed to a rhythm. Guarnieri stated "I can forsee 5/4, within the next few years, sweeping the world completely". Shortly afterwards, Guarnieri released an album on BET records called
Breakthrough in 5/4, which consisted of original compositions in , jazz standards changed to , as well as a version of
Yesterday in .
Rock In the late 1960s, quintuple meters began to appear with some frequency in rock-music contexts as well, where exploration of meters other than became one of the hallmarks of
progressive rock. One of the earliest examples is "
Grim Reaper of Love" by
The Turtles (May 1966). Another early example is the instrumental that ends the
George Harrison song "
Within You Without You" (from the 1967
Beatles' LP "
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"); isolated bars also occur in the Beatles' songs "
Happiness Is a Warm Gun" and "
Across the Universe". The
Byrds' LP
The Notorious Byrd Brothers (recorded in the second half of 1967, and released in January 1968) contained two songs using quintuple meter, "Get to You" and "Tribal Gathering". Under the influence of Brubeck,
Keith Emerson of
Emerson, Lake & Palmer began exploring unusual meters at about this same time. His first quintuple-meter piece was "Azrael, the Angel of Death", written in 1968, and the meter cropped up again three years later in the opening instrumental section, "Eruption", of the
title track and some later passages from the album
Tarkus. The
Grateful Dead song "
Playing in the Band" was provisionally originally titled "The Main Ten", because it is performed in .
Frank Zappa frequently played in 5; two specific documented examples are "Flower Punk" from 1968 (a repeating pattern of 4 bars of 5 followed by 4 bars of 7) and "Five Five Five" (bars of combined with bars of ). Zappa even had a hand signal with which he could cue the band to quickly switch into a quintuple meter at any time during a live performance. ==Examples in popular music==