Metro-rhythmic historical geography of folk music in Central Europe: the frontier of domination of triple and duple metre

The article discusses the problem of metro-rhythmic diversity in Europe – particularly in Central Europe – in terms of metre type. Using a spatial index of tunes from Oskar Kolberg’s nineteenth-century folk music collection (covering mainly the lands of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, but also other Slavic countries), all melodies were mapped with their assigned locations and metres. This approach made it possible to trace rhythmic diversity in Central Europe, especially the popularity of triple time in central and western Poland. By analysing the labels attached to some of Kolberg’s tunes, it was possible to examine metre diversity across different types of melodies, distinguished by their potential origin and time of diffusion. The analysis showed that the left bank of the River Vistula and the belt between Greater Poland and Warsaw played a particularly important role in the spread of musical innovations. The distribution of the triple metre cannot be explained by political boundaries or ethnic divisions, even though the spatial extent of the dominance of triple and duple metres reveals a cohesive territorial range. Ultimately, the spatial and statistical analysis of intangible cultural representations uncovers a hidden cultural frontier in Central Europe – porous and seemingly unrelated to visible social divisions.