In a message dated 1/2/10 7:47:39 AM, [email protected] writes: Historical tablature used headless notes, but this made it difficult when music required notes of longer duration than semibreve.
I have always loved the delicious irony that the note with the longest value in modern notation, usually termed a "whole" note in the USA, should be known as a semibreve. Literally "half a short." In earlier notation there was obviously a longer note value, a breve, that could be so subdivided. And if there was a "short" (brevis), there was clearly a "long" (longa) of even greater value. All this goes to show how music of the Middle Ages began to be embellished, and musicians needed to devise shorter and shorter values in order to notate such passages. Eventually, even the minim couldn't do the job. Hemidemisemiquavers anyone? Peter Danner -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
