Tim,
 
If this is what you meant when you said, "What about
melissma?" You said an awful lot in a few words!
 
These problems are not impossible to manage, and you have
been thinking of creative ways to approach it, which is what
it is all about.
 
For my purposes, the alternation isn't really an option,
because I tend to like to have an unbroken melody.
 
In balkan folk music, which is I like to think of as really
being pre-classical, or early music, with the odd meters and
irregular phrase lengths, there are options.
 
I think of the music as really being analogous to the meters
of verse, since the music is actually keyed to songs, or
ballads of one sort or another--musically phrases often
correspond to the measure lengths. Unaccented syllables occur
as a "quick" pulse, which is actually two counts, and
accented syllables occur as a "slow" pulse, which is actually
three counts.
 
The odd measures, like the fifth one you'd get in a
pentameter, function sort of like the extra 2/4 measure you
often find in American blues and folk songs from the early
part of this century, sort of as a prefix-to  or a tag-after
the four measure phrase.
 
As I said, the thing is that there tend not to be a lot of
melodies that correspond to  the odd meters. One of my
favorite rhythms is the Bulgarian 5/8, for a dance called
Pajdusko--it corresponds to the iamb and is quite fast.  All
the ballads are sung to the same basic melody, and the
musicians, through use of melismata, casurae, and a couple of
other tricks, are able to make it interesting--but no matter
what you try to write, it all sounds like the same song.
 
Ted
 
 
 
 
Tim Romano wrote:
 > 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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