About: Polytempo

The term polytempo or polytempic is used to describe music in which two or more tempi occur simultaneously. In the Western world, the practice of polytempic music has its roots in the music theory of Henry Cowell, and the early practices of Charles Ives. Later on, composer Elliott Carter, in the fifties, began polymetric experiments in his string quartets that inevitably amounted to polytempic behavior by nature of several competing lines at different surface speeds. At around the same time, composer Henry Brant expanded on Ives's The Unanswered Question to create a spatial music in which entire ensembles, separated by vast distances, play in distinct simultaneous tempi.