10

Set a melody to words - set the rhythm

design the phrases

Set the rhythm

I would imagine as many or more marks are awarded for setting the words to an appropriate metre and rhythm as are given for pitching the melody notes.

Typically you will be given text containing a “couplet”  - a couple of individual lines of a verse.  This sets the scene for a two phrase melody. Typically too the number of syllables in each line of the couplet will be unequal, often very unequal.  The two lines of the couplet suggest two phrases, therefore, but they don’t have to be of equal length.  Let the rhythm of the words dictate the phrase structure and the overall length (in bars) of the melody.  Unlike “completing the melody”, you are NOT constrained to write an 8 bar melody. Anything between 4 and 8 bars will do.

First spend a few minutes saying the words rhythmically in your head Very quickly you will put the proper stresses on the important words/syllables, and you may extend syllables over a rhythm to balance out rhythm.  As you “say” the words in your head, tap a beat with your hand. You will soon feel which syllables fall on the beat, and which are off the beat. You will sense also the strong first beat in a bar which will give you the metre (the time signature) for your melody as 2,3 or 4 time.

Try this now for the following text:

“And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds  ( 9 syllables )

And my heart puts forth its pain”                    ,    (7 syllables)

Write out the text, widely spacing each syllable, on the working paper, and as you say the words and tap the beat, circle or underline syllables that fall the beat, and add a bar-line before syllables that deserve special emphasis of being on the first beat of the bar.

You might end up with something like this:-

___  And the | haw-- tho---rn hedge  pu----ts  | for-----th its bu-----ds And my |

Hea-----rt   pu-ts   for-----th its | pai---------n  |

Even though there are probably better rhythmic settings, this setting couldn’t be faulted as it:

•  Lays the strong first beat stress on syllables of significant words (hawthorn, heart, pain), and the second strongest 3rd beat on syllables of the remaining significant words (hedge and buds)
• Relegates common, insignificant words  - “and”, “the” “its” -  to short-value off beat rhythm
• Picks up the right metre of 4 (or 2) time - there’s no good way of setting the words to 3 time
• Starts on an up-beat (anacrusis) as befits the unimportant words “And the” and has a final bar of just 3 beats

Here’s a full setting of the words in  4 simple time. Feel free to extend any syllable over several notes in a rhythm.

Alternatively, you may feel the words fit better the lilting rhythms of compound time, as in the example below.