<\/p>\n
What do these lines of verse:<\/p>\n
\n The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea
\n In a beautiful pea-green boat,
\n They took some honey, and plenty of money,
\n Wrapped up in a five pound note.
\n<\/i>
\n<\/p>\n
have in common with these:<\/p>\n
\n Oh, beautiful for spacious skies
\n For amber waves of grain,
\n For purple mountains’ majesty
\n Above the fruited plains.
\n<\/i>
\n<\/p>\n
or with these:<\/p>\n
\n There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold
\n And she’s buying a stairway to heaven
\n And when she gets there she knows if the stores are closed
\n With a word she can get what she came for
\n<\/i>
\n<\/p>\n
or these:<\/p>\n
\n Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
\n A tale of a fateful trip
\n That started from this tropic port,
\n Aboard this tiny Ship.
\n<\/i>
\n<\/p>\n
They all use the four+three meter: lines containing four beats alternate with lines containing three beats. Technically this is heptameter<\/i> – a line with seven beats – also known as the “ballad line” (it shows up in a lot of ballads), with a short pause after the fourth beat to break up the line into two parts.<\/p>\n
The wonderful thing about four+three meter is that it really has the same timing as four+four meter – so it’s easy to follow the rhythm – except that the eighth beat is a silent “stealth” beat, a place for you to catch your breath before going on to the next verse.<\/p>\n
Contrast this with lyrics that are deliberately designed to be difficult to recite:<\/p>\n
\n I am the very model of a modern Major-General,
\n I\u2019ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
\n I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
\n From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical
\n<\/i>
\n<\/p>\n
That’s the opening verse of The Very Model of a Modern Major General<\/i>, the great patter song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance<\/i>. It goes on like that too, for verse after merciless verse, the inexorable rhythm requiring the singer to soldier bravely onward without a pause for breath. This is high art indeed! To properly sing the part of the Major General (not just to muddle through it, but to really nail it) requires a combination of natural talent and many hours of serious training.<\/p>\n
In contrast, Edward Lear, Katherine lee Bates, Robert Plant and Sherwood Schwartz (the respective authors of the first four examples above – wouldn’t you want to be invited to that<\/i> dinner party?) were clearly taking the position, by writing in the four+three meter, that theirs was a populist art: The underlying message is that this is a song or poem for everyone, an invitation to please join in.<\/p>\n
I happen to love the four+three meter, and I sometimes use it for composing verse just because it’s so darned fun. One of the wonderful things about it is that you can combine the music of any four+three song with the lyrics of any other. A perfect illustration is the following ingenious music\/lyric mash-up, written in 1978 by Roger Clark and Dick Bright:<\/p>\n
What do these lines of verse: The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea In a beautiful pea-green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five pound note. have in common with these: … Continue reading “Four + three”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}