It’s rather common for a rhythm to begin on a weak beat or a weak part of a beat. This is known as an upbeat: a note, or group of notes, that precedes the first strong beat.
The upbeat acts as a kind of springboard that leads into the strong beat. Another term for strong beat, in fact, is downbeat
.
For example, in the popular Happy Birthday
tune, the first strong beat is on the syllable “birth”
(first part of the word Birthday
) – the rhythm of the word “happy”
is the upbeat.
Notice that the upbeat makes up an incomplete measure. When we number our measures, the incomplete measure is not counted as measure number one. Measure one is the first full measure.
The beginning of Charpentier’s Te Deum
, usually played by the trumpet, is a very well-known tune that begins on an upbeat:
Here is another example. This one is from Boccherini’s popular minuet from String Quintet No. 5
. In this case the upbeat consists of a group of 4 sixteenth notes:
In Op. 28 no.7, Chopin constructs a short and sweet prelude using only this rhythm:
Since the same two-measure rhythm is repeated another 7 times, each occurrence of the rhythm ends on the second beat of its measure. The third beat, then, becomes the upbeat of the next occurrence of the rhythm.
The rhythm, beginning on an upbeat each time, is repeated over and over.
Notice how this means that the upbeat can be used anywhere within a piece and not just the very beginning. In the Chopin example, the upbeat is a significant feature of the music’s character so it makes sense that once employed, it reappears over and over again.
See Audio Example 14.5 for the full piece.
