Talk:Note value

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Occasionally one encounters a variant in which (almost) all note heads are open. Eg, opening bars of Quatrième Acte of "Les Fastes de la grande et ancienne Ménestrandise", as printed by Edwin Kalmus (undated, but purchased new in 1994) in François Couperin clavichord pieces vol 3:

Or see http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Strasse/7784/gif/bspasap6.gif The interpretation is obvious (by noting the rests): a black head is half the value of a white. Kwantus 19:07, 2005 May 8 (UTC)

Yes, in fact there's an example from Charpentier at the bottom of this article, under "mensural notation". —Wahoofive (talk) 20:31, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
Ah so. It's so shrunken and fuzzy I didn't see its distinguishing feature.
The others Actes of this Couperin piece are in "usual" schwartzkopf notation. There must've been some sort of reason for this one to be done differently...I wonder what it was. Kwantus 21:00, 2005 May 8 (UTC)
If you click on the Charpentier example you'll see a larger version. —Wahoofive (talk) 21:29, 8 May 2005 (UTC)
It would still be better to have an original that's clear
Image:Weisskopf-charpentier-baerenreiter.png
Kwantus 23:10, 2005 May 8 (UTC)
I agree, although your example forces a horizontal scroll. Please go ahead and replace the image on the main page with a better-quality one. —Wahoofive (talk) 01:38, 9 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, the need to scroll is actually a function of window size too, but I've got smaller nice-looking rendering... Kwantus 18:04, 2005 May 12 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] The role of Note Values in Time Signatures

Attention Wahoofive! In our quest to make time signatures more accessible, I feel the following sentence needs be added to the note value article:

"Note values appear as the bottom figure in time signatures, where they indicate the beat unit of a musical work."

I am not sure whether this should appear right up at the top, just after the line about the rest. (It probably should, because it's important -)

....OR whether it should be inserted just before the History section, with a new heading: "The Role of Note Values in Time Signatures" - in which case I would preface the proposed sentence with the word "Unmodified".

Please indicate your preference ASAP and I will execute this pronto. FClef 8 September 2005 23:59 (GMT)

I wouldn't be in a hurry to do this. This article as it stands is about the various note symbols. While obvious there's a sort of Platonic meaning of "note value" separate from the symbols used to represent them, it won't be easy to graft this concept into this article without some more thought. —Wahoofive (talk) 23:48, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

I can see where you're coming from re "grafting", and hence my unsureness of where to put such a sentence. My main reason for suggesting this is to deal with the uncertainty of people like Scott Ritchie (in "Article Difficult to Understand" in Talk:Time Signature"). He asks - if I remember rightly - what a note value is, because he has difficulty relating it to a time sig.

I will leave this for the moment and revert in due course. FClef 9 September 2005 10:39(GMT)

[edit] Source for earliest 128th note

The article claims that

The earliest use of the hundred-twenty-eighth note is in the first movement of Beethoven's Sonata "Pathetique" Op. 13.

A source, please? EldKatt (Talk) 16:32, 12 April 2006 (UTC)


I'm removing the claim, now. Beethoven's WoO 65 (24 variations on "Venni Amore" by Righini) contains a few isolated 128th notes, and although the earliest surviving source is from 1802, my Könemann urtext edition states that the very first edition was printed in 1791. This is before Op. 13, so there are clearly good reasons to assume the above statement is incorrect. EldKatt (Talk) 19:18, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] does not work

Something is missing here. An ill-defined rest between notes must be assumed; else consecutive notes will run together.

Nowhere is this even mentioned. In the absense of notation to say otherwise, what is one to assume about this spacing? For example, might one just chop 10% off the value of a note? Is the spacing between whole notes any different from the spacing between eigth notes? Perhaps one should chop off a 1/256 note in all cases?

Then of course there is the matter of staccato and similar. Just how much time gets chopped off of the note?

Which part of the note gets chopped? The beginning, the end, or a bit of both?

24.110.145.202 21:54, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Duration of notes

The article says that "A note value does not stand for any absolute duration, but can only be understood in relation to other note values." So, if it's not absolute duration that determines whether a given note is, say, a crotchet or a quaver, then what is it? Is it that what are perceived to be the "main beats" of the music are always crotchets, whatever their duration? Or is it a combination of this and a sort of ball-park convention about how long crotchets should be? For example, if the main beats of a piece were two seconds apart then would a crotchet be two seconds? Or would that be thought to be "too long", so that the main beats actually became minims? This question is tied up with the notion of time signatures, but that article doesn't seem to explain it either. For example, what would cause me to write a piece in 4/2 rather than 4/4? If not the absolute duration of notes then what? If anyone could explain these issues (in the article(s)) then that would be great. 86.150.100.14 (talk) 20:43, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

The assignment of value to duration is pretty arbitrary. In the Middle Ages they started with two note values, which they called "long" (longa) and "short" (breve). Through a process you might call "note value inflation", the breve gradually through the centuries came to become a very long note (twice the length of a whole note). Even from the same composer there can be variations of some 1000% (that's a thousand) in the length of a particular note value -- a Mozart slow movement might have slowly-pulsing eighth notes after the first movement had had lickety-split quarters. The reason no rule is cited in the article is that there is no rule. It's like "loud" and "soft". A birdsong might seem deafening if it's waking you up in the morning, but right after you get off a plane the same birdsong might seem almost inaudible. —Wahoofive (talk) 00:43, 22 March 2008 (UTC)