Polymetry

in music, the simultaneous use of two or more meters. As the vertical joining of two to three different time signatures, polymetry is occasionally encountered in music of the 18th-19th centuries. It is more often found in 20th-century music. Polymetry occurs in the ball scene from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni, where the composer combines three dance meters. A typical feature of I. F. Stravinsky’s music is motif polymetry— the vertical combination of motifs that have different meters but are written in the same time signature.

in versification, the use of different verse meters within a single work. Known since ancient times, polymetry was extensively used in baroque and romantic poetry; it has also been used in 20th-century poetry. It is usually found in long narrative poems in which a given meter is maintained throughout a thematically unified part of the work and is changed at the transition to another part; examples are N. A. Nekrasov’s Contemporaries and A. A. Blok’s The Twelve. Polymetry is less common in short poems, where it has been used by such poets as V. V. Mayakovsky and V. Khlebnikov.