binary, ternary and crug-y-bar

in an interview here with, i think, brad hurley, jean michel veillon says, regarding the playing of breton music on the wooden flute for dancing that,

rhythms are never as simple as they seem to be at first: in the majority of breton tunes, there is an almost omnipresent swing between binary and ternary rhythms; sometimes imperceptible, but important.

crug y bar is a famous welsh hymn tune, now sung to words by david charles but credted in hymn books as being traditional welsh. a tune called saron (also known by other names) was pricked down by ifor ceri (john jenkins) before 1820, thus predating the binary rhythm tune crugybar, which was incidentally also known as bozra. not what jmv is directly talking about perhaps but certainly an example of words dictating tune rhythm


X:1
T:Saron
N:casglwyd gan ifor ceri cyn 1820
M:3/4
L:1/4
Q:100
K:D %Transposed from G
D/E/|FFG|AAF|D/F/ D D/E/|FBA/B/|AFE|D2:||
A/G/|FGA|Bdc|BAA/G/|FED/E//F//|GGF|E2D/E/|
FFG|AAF|D/F/DD/E/|FBA/B/|AFE|D2:||


X:2
T:crugybar
M:4/4
L:1/4
Q:100
C:tradd.
K:D
D|F2FF|FA2F|DE2D|AB2A/B/|AF2E|D3:||
A|A2GF|B2Bd|BA2G|FA2B|B2AF|E3|
D|F2FF|FA2F|DE2D|AB2A/B/|AF2E|D3|