30: Simple vs. Compound Time

The idea that 6/8 counts 6 eighth notes per bar is… kind of a white lie, in the same way that the idea that 9/8 is 9 eighth notes per bar, or 12/8 is 12 eighth notes per bar, are sort of white lies. It depends on the tempo, but most of the time, 6/8 is actually 2 beats, each of which is a dotted quarter, divisible, of course, into 3 eighth notes each; and likewise,  9/8 is 3 beats and 12/8 is 4.

It at first seems logical to count to 6, as in “1 2 3, 4 5 6”, but in fact, the way we count 6/8 is much more often “1 and a, 2 and a”—since it’s much more common for the dotted quarter to be the beat in these time signatures than the eighth note.

JS Bach wrote Passion narratives for all the four Gospels—very long musical settings (lasting between an hour and 45 minutes and 2 hours 45 minutes, depending on which Passion, plus tempo/style choices) of the plot of the chapters of the Gospels directly concerned with the arrest, trial, torture, and death of Jesus Christ. (There is much more to be said about the Passions—especially the Matthew and John, the most popular. That’s an article for another time.) I encourage you to go listen to them, even if you aren’t Christian, because even then, they still are extraordinary works.

In the example below—to demonstrate how this would be counted by a bass singing this (never mind that I chose to write it down as if it were for violin and cello)—I’ve copied down the first two bars of the actual bass part for the violin, and then written a very basic accompaniment in the cello part. At this point in the St. Matthew Passion, Jesus has just died, it is getting late on the night before a holy day, and a man named Joseph of Arimathea (a very rich Jew, who would, as a result of this experience, become a Christian—and eventually a saint) has just gone to Pilate to ask for the body of Jesus to prepare the body for a speedy burial. (Bach interrupts the plot at this point, and this bass singer—who isn’t Joseph, Pilate, or any of the other narrative characters, but is really meant to represent any believer—asks God to make his heart pure, so that this pure heart may serve as a tomb of sorts, into which the crucified Jesus may come to rest. What has been transcribed is the very beginning of that prayer, a request to God to “make my heart pure.”) Notice how the dotted quarter really is the key unit here, not the eighth note, despite the bottom number of the time signature being an 8.

 

In time signatures where we have a multiple of 3 (except 3 itself, which is a straightforward 1-2-3… except when it isn’t), things are counted like this almost all the time: 1 and a, 2 and a, 3 and a… and so on. Groups of 3 eighth notes each, in a pulse of dotted quarter notes, are the norm. Time signatures (with top numbers 6, 9, 12, and so on) are referred to as being in “compound” time.

Compound duple is 6/anything, since there are 2 dotted quarters per bar (123 456), compound triple is 9/anything, and compound quadruple is 12/anything. Similarly, “simple” time signatures are those with top numbers 2, 3, and 4, where there is no guess work: the pulse is whatever the bottom number says.

3/8 in particular—or a very fast 3/4 (which I’ll show you as well)—is the exception I mentioned above. 3/8, most of the time, is not simple triple like its cousin 3/4 is (almost always). Instead, most of the time, we say that 3/8 is “compound single”.

Here's the difference: This is the German Dance by Karl von Dittersdorf. (It’s in Suzuki volume 5, and I’ve played it, so I know how fast it can get. The pulse really is the bar, i.e., the dotted quarter—not the individual eighth notes.) The pulse here is so fast that it really only makes sense to count “1 and a” over and over.

Contrast this with this minuet, BWV Anh 114, written by Bach to teach his second wife and their 13 children how to play a keyboard instrument (presumably harpsichord, possibly clavichord):

I’ve written the cello accompaniment very differently here versus in the Dittersdorf to be suggestive of the pulse. In the Dittersdorf, the pulse was the bar, but here, we’re in a much more relaxed 3/4 where each quarter is one pulse. This is simple triple, in contrast to the Dittersdorf’s compound single.

I did, however, promise to end with an example of where 3/4 is so fast that it behaves like the Dittersdorf and is much more easily thought of as compound single than simple triple, purely on the question of tempo. This is from the third movement of Beethoven’s Third Symphony. Here, the tempo marking I chose means that each bar passes in just over 500 milliseconds.

I know from personal experience—since this is exactly the same tempo marking given in the second movement of the Ninth—just how fast 116 is, and also that most conductors stick to it religiously in both the Third and the Ninth, if not even going a little above, maybe to 120 or 126. At these speeds, even though we’re in 3/4, the bar and the beat are one, a fact made indisputable by the tempo marking given in dotted halves rather than quarters. In cases like this (now, in the second movement of the Ninth, and at other similar times), 3/4  bucks the normal trend (represented by the Bach minuet) of operating as simple triple, and instead joins 3/8 in operating as compound single.