Research Point - Variable Metre

Boris Blacher

Boris Blacher was a German 20th Century composer, born in 1903. He was a renowned teacher; his first post came in 1938 when he was appointed director of a composition class at the Dresden Conservatory by Karl Böhm. He was forced to resign from this post in 1939 as his teaching didn't comply with National Socialist policy; he was accused of writing degenerate music. After the Second World War his teaching career continued when he was appointed Professor at the Musikhochschule in West Berlin in 1948, a post he held until 1970.

His experimentations with rhythm and development of the concept of variable metre were inspired by Schoenberg’s note-rows; a non-repetitive ordering of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale. He used variable metre to bring musical variety to his works by expanding and contracting measures. Blacher chose to displace the centre of attention from harmony to rhythm (Francis Burt, “The Teaching and Ideas of Boris Blacher,” The Score 9 (1954)).

In her 2009 PhD thesis "Elasticity in three compositions with flute by Boris Blacher" Cecilia Taher explores Blacher's use of variable metre, proposing that there is more to variable metre than providing logic to the apparently arbitrary rhythm of modern music. She proposes that the concept of expansion and contraction of measure is also applicable to pitches and textural development; the aural effect of "elastically developing music". She states that Blacher's compositional style evolved, such that in his later compositions the traditional concepts of form and texture are replaced by a new idea of constantly moving, elastic shape. Her thesis goes onto to look at durational and pitch organization, form, texture and their interactions in Blacher's works.

(From Taher, 2009)

The above figure shows the distribution of time signatures through the 2nd and 4th movements of Blacher's Duet for Flute and Piano (1972). It shows how Blacher creates rhythmic variation through ever changing time signature.

(From Taher, 2009)

The figure above is an extract from Divertimento, op. 38 (1951); it shows there is an ever changing number of quavers in each bar, but Blacher (or the publisher) doesn't state the new time signature at the start of each bar. It's almost as though he is trying to demonstrate that the changing time signatures are a natural progression and do not need to be implicitly stated.

(From Taher, 2009)

The figure above shows the geometric inversion of time signatures used by Blacher. This figure reminded me of the cycle of fifths diagram used to depict key signatures. I think this is what Taher (and Blacher) were trying to do; it draws a link between pitch and rhythm to create the idea of horizontal (rhythmic) and vertical (tonal) development.