Before the 20th century, septuple time was rare in European concert music but is more commonly found in European folk music and in other world cultures.
Asia and the Middle East In the Thai dance-drama genre
lakhon nok and the masked dance-drama
khon there is a unique group of songs based on a rhythmic cycle of seven beats, quite unlike the usual rhythmic structures of Thai traditional music. Portions of this repertoire of songs in additive meter date back to the
Ayudhia period (1350–1767). In the
Carnatic music of south India, there are thirty-five
tāla in five temporal species, multiplied by seven classes of measurement—one of the five species is septuple. The classes of measurement in this "formal" system consist of
seven basic tālas (called
sūḷādi talas). Each of these is built from three types of component durations: the one-beat
anudruta, the two-beat
druta, and the variable
laghu, which may have three (
tisra), four (
caturaśra), five (
khaṇḍa), seven (
miśra), or nine (
saṅkīrṇa) beats, and accounts for the five temporal species of each tāla. Two of the resulting thirty-five forms have seven beats in all: the
khaṇda form of
Rūpaka tāla, with one
druta and a five-beat (
khaṇda)
laghu: , and the
tisra form of Tripuṭa, with a three-beat
laghu and two
druta: .
Tisra Tripuṭa is one of the principal talas of the system, and so is often called simply by its basic name, Tripuṭa.
Khaṇda Rūpaka, on the other hand, is a comparative rarity. The more common form,
caturaśra Rūpaka, has a
laghu of four beats and so a total beat pattern of . Carnatic music also has an "informal" system of tālas, which uses a selection of the formal tālas. These include the septuple Tripuṭa, to which is added a
Cāpu (fast) version of it, called
miśra Cāpu (, or ).
Miśra Cāpu is one of the most characteristic rhythms in the music of southern India, accounting for well over half of the
padam compositions by the 17th-century composer
Kshetrayya, and occurs in some of the best-known
kīrtanam works by
Tyagaraja (1767–1847). The Hindustani tālas used in the north also include septuple patterns. The theme and first eight (of thirteen)
Variations on a Hungarian Song Op. 21, No. 2 by
Johannes Brahms is in septuple time, notated as regular alternations of and , though various accenting factors often obscure the perceived metre. In the last two of the five versions of "Promenade" from
Pictures at an Exhibition by
Modest Mussorgsky, is mixed irregularly with other metres: (4th Promenade) , , and , with a single bar at the end; (5th Promenade) four pairs of regularly alternating and , then an irregular mixture of , , and to the end. Symphonic and choral works containing occasional septuple bars include the conjuration of soothsayers in ''
L'enfance du Christ, Op. 25 (1854) by Hector Berlioz, which "has a relatively extended passage of septuple metre (ten bars of , then three of and three of ; the pattern repeats with four each of and )", and the Dante Symphony'' by
Franz Liszt, which has several bars in . In
operetta, parts of "Here's a man of jollity" in
Gilbert and Sullivan's
The Yeomen of the Guard (1888) is in , notated as alternating bars of and . The rest is in a mixture of and . An example of
chamber music from the later 19th century is found in the
Piano Trio No. 3, Op. 101, by Brahms. In the third movement (Andante grazioso), the main (outer) sections are in (notated as a recurring + + ), while the central section is in
compound-quintuple time: (notated as + ) with
turnarounds, and an eight-bar
coda in .
20th century Igor Stravinsky's name is often associated with rhythmic innovation in the 20th century, and septuple meter is sometimes found in his music—for example, the closing "General Rejoicing" section (Allegro non troppo), from rehearsal 203 to rehearsal 209, in his ballet
The Firebird (1910) is written uniformly in time. Much more characteristically, septuple bars in Stravinsky's scores are found in a context of constantly changing meters, as for example in his ballet
The Rite of Spring (1911–13), where the object appears to be the combination of two- and three-note subdivisions in irregular groupings. For example, in Part II, third tableau, "Glorification of the Chosen Maiden", bars of and are interspersed with bars of , , , , , , , , , and time. This treatment of rhythm subsequently became so habitual for Stravinsky that, when he composed his
Symphony in C in 1938–40, 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 septuple-time bars becomes unremarkable from the 1920s onward. This is as true for composers regarded as conservative as for those labeled "progressive" or "avant garde". In the former category, this rhythmic usage was characteristic of compositions from the 1920s and 1930s by
Gustav Holst. Septuple bars, for example, are found in passages in his opera
The Perfect Fool (1918–22)—notably the two "earth" themes in the ballet of the elements, and the arrival of the Princess, which is "a genuine example of the septuple measure as distinct from those arising merely from prosody"—and in
A Choral Fantasia, Op. 51 (bars 70–98, 179–85, and 201–209 are in ). Some of
Maurice Ravel's music incorporated septuple meter: for example, the brief "Danse générale" from Part I of
Daphnis et Chloé is in (subdivided as ), the finale of the
Piano Trio freely alternates between and , and the main theme of the finale of his
Sonata for Violin and Cello is in "quasi " (notated as a recurring + + ). An example from the next decade is
Benjamin Britten's String Quartet No. 2, Op. 35 (1945), where bars 2 and 13 after rehearsal
K in the first movement, "Allegro calmo senza rigore", are in , and from the 1950s, the second subject of the third movement, Allegro, of
Dmitri Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 102 (1957), which is in a fast . Examples from more "progressive" composers include the first and third movements of the First Cantata, Op. 29 (1938–39), by
Anton Webern, and the fourth movement (Intermezzo interrotto) of
Béla Bartók's
Concerto for Orchestra (1943). Septuple meter is sometimes employed to characterize particular sections of compositions, such as single variations of pieces in
variation form. One example is the third movement (Variations on a Ground), of Holst's
Double Concerto for two violins and orchestra, Op. 49, where the 13th and 17th variations are in time. An example from after the Second World War is found in Part I of
Leonard Bernstein's
The Age of Anxiety: Symphony No. 2, a theme-and-variations movement in which "Variation X: Più mosso" is notated in regularly alternating and bars, each pair amounting to one bar. Compositions entirely or predominantly in septuple meter are less common. Five of Holst's settings of English translations of hymns from the ancient Sanskrit
Rig Veda, composed between 1907 and 1912, are in septuple meter, specifically "Song of the Frogs" and "Creation" (songs 6 and 8 from his
Hymns from the Rig Veda, Op. 24, for voice and piano, composed in 1907–08) as well as "Funeral Hymn" (
Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda, Op. 26, Group 1, No. 3 for SATB chorus and orchestra or piano, composed between 1908 and 1910), "Hymn to the Waters" (
Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda Group 3 no. 2 for SSA chorus and harp or piano, composed in 1909), and "Hymn to Manas" (
Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda Group 4 no. 3 for TTBB chorus with orchestra or unaccompanied, composed in 1912). The last movement, "Precipitato", of the
Piano Sonata No. 7 by the Russian composer
Sergei Prokofiev, which is in , and
Sensemayá, for orchestra, by the Mexican
Silvestre Revueltas (predominantly in , with occasional interruptions in time and a brief 7-bar interlude at rehearsal 23 of ( + )) are particularly well-known instances.
Béla Bartók sometimes adopted septuple dance rhythms from the folk music of Eastern Europe, as in "Bulgarian Rhythm (1)" and the second of the "Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm", nos. 113 and 149 from
Mikrokosmos, both of which are in . Other examples from the middle of the century include the third movement, "Très Animé", of the
Fantasia for saxophone, 3 horns, and string orchestra (1948), by
Heitor Villa-Lobos, "In the First Pentatonic Minor Mode (En el 1er modo pentáfono menor)", no. 5 from
12 American Preludes for piano by
Alberto Ginastera, in , and "Old Joe Has Gone Fishing" by
Benjamin Britten (from the 1945 opera
Peter Grimes), which is written in , with the beats grouped as both and in a
round. ==Other notable compositions in septuple meter==