Lesson 85: Virtuoso Studies, Part 5 — Complex Rhythms

Play a hemiola pattern (three over two) cleanly at performance tempo.
Read and play a passage in 5/8 or 7/8, common in twentieth-century recorder music.

The complex rhythm becomes simple at the moment you stop counting it.

Baroque music has hemiolas at almost every cadence; contemporary recorder music uses irregular meters (5/8, 7/8) as basic vocabulary. A player who has not drilled these will be reading them in real time at the performance — exactly when they fall apart.

Hemiola — three against two

Two bars of 3/4 sound like one bar of 3/2 — six quarters regrouped as three pairs, used at cadences to slow the pulse.

Bars 1–2 feel three-to-the-bar; bars 3–4 feel three-to-the-pair (the hemiola); bar 5 lands.

Practise with the metronome on the half note — the new pulse during the hemiola.

Irregular meters — 5/8

5/8 counts as 2 + 3 or 3 + 2; the score's beaming usually indicates which. This drill establishes 2+3.

Each bar is two eighths plus three eighths. The first beat is a longer wait than it looks.

Irregular meters — 7/8

7/8 groups as 2 + 2 + 3 or 3 + 2 + 2 — same drill, different grouping.

The daily warm-up

Ten minutes per session:

Three minutes of the hemiola drill at quarter = 80 with the metronome on the half note.
Three minutes of the 5/8 drill at quarter = 96.
Three minutes of the 7/8 drill at quarter = 96.
One minute of switching meters: four bars each of 4/4, 7/8, 5/8 in immediate succession.

Now play these

Telemann: Twelve Fantasias, TWV 40:105: Telemann's cadential hemiolas are the textbook examples.
Telemann: Twelve Fantasias, TWV 40:106: A continuation of the fantasia sequence.

When the hemiolas at a Telemann fantasia's cadences are clearly audible in your recording, move on to Lesson 86.