How do you define rhythm? published: 2nd September 2025

Oxford dictionary has 645 various definitions for the word "run". So how do you define it? With your feet? Nose? Rhythm suffers from the same problem, it means a lot of things and they are not always clearly distinguished even in academic discussions. Let's look at some definitions of rhythm found in the literature of music.

  1. Plato: "An order of movement."
  2. Baccheios the Elder: "A measuring of time by means of some kind of movement."
  3. Phaedrus: "Some measured thesis of syllables, placed together in certain ways."
  4. Aristoxenus: "Time, divided by any of those things that are capable of being rhythmed."
  5. Nichomacus: "Well marked movement of times."
  6. Aristides Quintilianus: "Rhythm is a scale of chronoi compounded according to some order, and the conditions of these we call arsis and thesis, noise and quietude."
  7. Vincent d'Indy: "Rhythm is the primordial element. One must consider it as anterior to all other elements of music."
  8. Stefan Hollos & J Richards Hollos: "In its most general form rhythm is simply a recurring sequence of events."
  9. Susan Langer: "Rhythm is the setting up of new tensions by the resolution of the former ones."
  10. Harold Percival: "The character and meaning of thought expressed through the measure of movement in sound or form, or by written signs or words."
  11. David Wright: "Rhythm is the way in which time is organised within measures."
  12. Andrew C. Lewis: "Rhythm is the language of time."
  13. Jason Martineau: "Rhythm is the component of music that punctuates time, carrying us from one beat to the next and it subdivides into simple ratios."
  14. Anne Caroline Hall: "Rhythm is made by durations of sound and silence and accent."
  15. Trudi Hammel Garland & Charity Vaughan Kahn: "Rhythm is created whenever the time continuum is split up into pieces by some sound or movement."
  16. Jeanne Bamberger: "The many different ways in which time is organised in music."
  17. Claire Boge, John Clough, Joyce Conley: "Patterns of duration and accent of musical sounds moving through time."
  18. Grosvenor Cooper & Leonard B. Meyer: "Rhythm may be defined as the way in which one or more unaccented beats are grouped in relation to an accented one."
  19. Daniel Levitin: "Rhythm refers to the duration of a series of notes, and to the way that they group together into units."
  20. Peter Vuust & Maria Witek: "Rhythm is a pattern of discrete durations and is largely thought to depend on the underlying perceptual mechanisms of groupings."
  21. Aniruddh Patel: "The systematic patterning of sound in terms of timing, accent, and grouping."
  22. Richard Parncutt: "A musical rhythm is an acoustic sequence evoking a sensation of pulse."
  23. Caroline Monahan & Edward Carterette: "Rhythm is the perception of both regular and irregular accent patterns and their interactions."
  24. Martin Clayton: "Rhythm, then may be interpreted either as an alternation of stresses or as succession of durations."
  25. Bonnie Wade: "A rhythm is a specific succession of durations."
  26. Justin London: "A sequential pattern of durations relatively independent of meter or phrase structure."
  27. Svetlana Chashchina: "Rhythm is a sequence of durations of sounds, disregarding their pitch."
  28. Andrew Milne & Roger Dean: "A sequence of sonic events arranged in time, and thus primarily characterised by their inter-onset intervals."
  29. Simha Arom: "For there to be rhythm, sequence of audible events must be characterised by contrasting features." There are 3 types of contrasting features that may operate in combination: duration, accent, and tone colour (timbre).