Quintuple time was much in favour with the ancient Greeks, and is found in the folk-songs of the Finns, Turks, Negroes, Basques, and in Bavarian and Bohemian dances.
In 1893, the eminent professor of music Ebenezer Prout had warned composition students off both five-time and seven-time, baldly stating: 'It will seldom, if ever, be advisable for the student to experiment with quintuple or septuple time.' (13) In 1918, an American composer, T Carl Whitmer, expressed some frustration over the reception of pieces that made use of five-time: 'If, perchance, we write in quintuple time we are asked whether duple time is not more natural and we are informed that our work is the result of a mental attitude.
The decline of the use of regular metre has made the occurrence of bars of quintuple time unremarkable in later music.' (17)
Both are rare, but quintuple time is much the less rare of the two.' (23)
20, casts doubt on the collector's interpretation in the transcription of some pieces: 'As usual, there are a number of songs noted as in quintuple time. Of these, "The Bold Lieutenant" is perhaps the most certainly in this rhythm [...] In some other tunes, such as "Lord Marlborough", noted by Mr.