> 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.
Longs and Breves originate in the notation for musica plana (chant), which mainly had two imprecise values, and a person we would term 'conductor' who raised and lowered his hand to prolong the notes and indicate stress with the goal of making his sections intonation as close to speech as was reasonable. Musica mensurata stole some of the notation of m. plana, developed a number of unfortunate complications to show rhythm (which were later mostly abandoned). Faster paced music was not the only reason shorter note durations were resorted to; the exclusive use of dupla relationships (and consequent ease in reading) for the shorter notes may well have had something to do with it. -- Dana Emery To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
