Thanks for clarifying! The “shave off” colloquialism in my previous message may not be all that clear. “Shave off” means “subtract from the composer’s original, full note value” and release (breathe) early.
Why are early releases such a frequent phenomenon in my choir’s performances of Renaissance polyphony? Because composers in the 16th century often wrote very long stretches of music, much longer than a human being can reasonably sing in one breath, without any rests. See, for example, the image in my May email <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-user/2026-05/msg00080.html>. In our choir’s modern practice, standardized early releases enable us to have, for example, all altos breathe at the same time. This means that all consonants land at the same time! On Mon, 22 Jun 2026, Kieren MacMillan wrote: > > The only quarter rest here that is original to the 1604 source is the > one at the beginning of measure 11 (third measure of this system) in the > Tenor (T1) part. > > So in in m.10 of the bass part, there was only a dotted half note, and no > quarter rest [before the barline/tick]? > No, the original note values for the bass in measure 10 were g2 aes2 ees1 % semibreve / whole note here! That semibreve/whole note is converted to ees2. r4 in my edition because my choirmaster wants the basses to “shave a quarter off their whole note.” Why does he want the basses to shave a quarter off? Because the altos — third staff from the top — need a breath before measure 11 begins, so their ees'2 (original note value) is converted to ees'4 r4 (a quarter-rest breath). And the choirmaster wants the basses to finish the word “Regem” and breathe *at the same time as the altos.* The T1s are singing bes2. r4 (instead of the original bes1) for the same reason. > The reason that I started this email thread is that next time, I’d love > to be able to write something like “Brackets around rests [or XYZ symbol > over a rest] indicate that those rests are editorial additions to indicate > early releases.” > > It might help me understand better if you posted this excerpt with ONLY > the original glyphs (notes and rests) present, but spaced identically to > this (so you’d have to use \hide for some rests, I’d assume). > I can restore the original note values tomorrow if helpful! In the meantime, you can view all the original note values, in the original key (my edition is transposed up a semitone), here: CPDL #28193 <https://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/Genuit_puerpera_regem_(Orlando_di_Lasso)> .
