Paul,
Well, that is sort of what I am driving at. When you try to describe things you do, it almost automatically sounds formulaic, and maybe it is. Even in music, for example, people (probably not the artists themselves) have analyzed pop songs, and found things like the first three notes ascend 99% of the time in well loved songs, or that certain chords and chord patterns appear more often than not. As designers, we probably intuitively know what makes a course rhythmic, but at some point, while not a well formed thought, it is rooted in experience, a la, courses we have played or designed and we subconsciously design in things we liked elsewhere. And, it that is what it is, then it could probably be described after enough self analysis.
I agree it goes beyond handicap, length, par, etc. However, some of it is in the variety in what you do control as designer is the start of it, I think, even if intuitively done.
I suspect you look at your various prelim routings, always first for good holes, but when they are similar, start looking at your variety of pars, lengths, uphill/downhill, etc. Some of the basics start your rhythm, over say, four long par 4 holes in a row. Then, in feature design you might look, again leaning heavily on what each hole gives you, but then maybe looking at more or less bunkers, flatter and rolling greens, etc.
I do like your inherent concept of highlight the highs and lows, rather than trying to bring the least good hole "up to snuff" with more design features. I always wondered when Tillie said you had to beat a hole into being acceptable in polite company (not exact quote) and whether that meant he was trying to even them all out to some sort of standard.
Some have actually thought Dye and maybe Fazio, in efforts to make their high end courses more and more spectacular have sacrificed rhythm in their designs to a degree. Some might think the minimalists might break their mold to create some more and less spectacular holes every so often. (I realize there is more than the visual to cadence, but in a visual age, it does play a part)
It's harder to think about cadence when design emphasis is on 18 "signature" holes, no? Just like when courses started being designed more frequently in housing tracts.....the idea of wind balance (and close green to tee walks) sort of took a back seat to routing for housing frontage, and it became less a priority than before.
I suspect this generation thinks less about cadence than previous ones, but it wouldn't be universal and easy to demonstrate.