Ted,
Understood. What I had in mind was alternation between, on the one
hand, passages of 'limited' melody (limited because you are
staying close to meter at the expense of melodic variation, for
the reasons you give below)  and, on the other, melismatic
passages. The latter freer passages could be introduced on
mid-line syllables when they are followed by a caesura and/or at
the end-of-line pause, wherever appropriate, so as not to violate
the meter.  This would yield a macaronic effect: plainsong against
melodic variation.
Tim
 
Ted Boucher wrote:
 
> I've actually been thinking for the last day about how to
> explain this briefly and in a way that makes sense--I am not
> sure if I can, but here goes:
>
> Western Classical music tends to  use musical ideas or
> motives that can be  expressed in one or two measures, and
> developed in phrases of four or eight measures. This brevity
> allows lots of possiblilities for building elaborate
> structures based on many types variation, recurrance, and
> repetition.
>
> The rhythm of a complex meter often requires many more
> measures, often in what would work out to be an odd compound
> rhythm(like 11/16, or even 25/16) and even more problematic,
> in odd numbers of measures--like 5.
>
> This really is what limits your possibilities--you are sort
> of following twisted road that is very quaint and interesting
> for the first couple of trips, but after repeated trips,  but
> you have to follow all the same  twists and turns or you end
> up somewhere else.
>
> A melissma actually could make the meter more ambiguous.
>
> Hope this explains my position to all concerned.
>
> Ted
>
> Tim Romano wrote:
>  > Melisma might open up the melodic possibilities.
>  >
>  > Ted Boucher wrote:
>  >
>  > > ... when you work with verse, you find that the more
> complex a
>  > > meter is the less  room  you have for melodic variation
> ...
>  > >
>  >
>
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