Normally, we're told that 5/4 is usually 3/4 + 2/4 or 2/4 + 3/4. (At the very least, it's unusual to have a meter that large without "secondary stress" beats.) However, how do we make sense of the metrical pattern when the two rhythms are pitted against one another?
For instance, consider the following (reduced) excerpt from George Dyson's Quo Vadis:
The first bar is clearly 3/4 + 2/4—or would be if the tempo weren't so slow (it's about quarter note = 56). The second bar, however, puts the stress on the third beat in the men's voices but on the fourth beat in the women's voices. And in the third bar, the voices suggest a 2/4 + 3/4, but the accompaniment seems to be in a 3/4 + 2/4 pattern. Plus, the aforementioned slow pulse seems to wash away any real sense of an overall rhythmic organization.
So how do we analyze such a pattern to make sense of it?