Talk:Double whole note

Length

Its length is equal four beats in 4/2 time and similarly a whole bar in time signatures where the top number is greater than the bottom (but not more than twice as great).

I don't think I understand the second part of the sentence (from "and similarly"). A note lasting as long as a bar of 12/8, for example, would not be written as a breve, but as a dotted semibreve. 7/4 would be a double-dotted breve. Or am I misunderstanding something? --Camembert

Please rewrite this so it makes sense to you. It's a long time since my music theory lessons and I was having trouble covering the different scenarios. Warofdreams 19:15, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Righto. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. --Camembert

alla breve

should an alla breve article redirect here? and if yes, shouldn't be at least mentioned once the term 'alla breve' (which refers to the tempo) see http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/texta/AllaBreve.html for example Nkour 15:49, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)

• I can't see why it should. Either an expanded mention in time signature and a redirect there, or a full article on the alla breve would seem more appropriate. Warofdreams 15:09, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I added a mention, because at least it might cause confusion, and its derivation is related to the breve. However, I agree that the page shouldn't redirect here, since I haven't discussed its modern use (and shouldn't, as far as I can see, because that isn't directly related to the breve). Rigadoun 04:49, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Two-adjacent whole notes

Can someone give a citation or post an example of this usage? I'm not sure if I've ever seen it, and I work a lot on the history of musical notation. Usually this notation means that two independent voices are both singing/playing a whole note on the same pitch. Thanks! -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 16:36, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I second this. I have never seen a breve represented this way, and as of now, no citations have been added. 88.104.243.200 (talk) 15:55, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

This has certainly been lingering for long enough (since at least 2009!). While I believe I may have seen this obscure usage somewhere, my dim memory does not constitute a reliable source and a fairly diligent search has failed to turn up anything that confirms this notational practice, so I have removed mention of it in the text. The image (with its rather ambiguous caption) remains, however, and this should perhaps also be dealt with in some way. FWIW, a few sources do actually give a third alternative, though it is really just a minor variant: the symbol formed by adding vertical lines to a whole note may be made either with double lines (as currently shown) or with single ones. If the image is to be replaced, perhaps this should be taken into consideration.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Done, finally. :-) -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 17:51, 4 January 2015 (UTC)

Many thanks. This is much better, and your changes to the caption are also an improvement.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:34, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 02:44, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Double whole note → Breve (note) — Much simpler, and the current title can be confused with dotted whole note. Georgia guy (talk) 18:08, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm fine with the move. But I don't know that it's actually simpler, having a disambiguation term in the title itself. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 00:28, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

I rather doubt that "double whole note" will be confused with "dotted whole note", but more importantly, changing Double whole note → Breve (note) would put this article at odds with the whole note, half note, etc. articles. --Atemperman (talk) 02:32, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose for the sake of consistency. I call it a breve, myself, but that is not the terminology adopted on Wikipedia for article names of musical notes. StAnselm (talk) 07:44, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

To be fair on consistency -- American usage includes both Breve and Double Whole Note as terms. but I agree that it's unlikely to be confused with Dotted whole note. So remain neutral -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 10:32, 21 May 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Discuss this sentence

Because it lasts longer than a bar in most modern time signatures, the breve is now rarely encountered. In time signatures where the top number is exactly twice that of the bottom, however, it lasts a whole bar and so may still be found (the most common time signature of this kind is 4/2).

Is 4/2 that common in today's music?? I would like for some discussion on whether it is worth mentioning both 4/2 and 8/4 in this paragraph as valid time signatures for this note. Georgia guy (talk) 14:13, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I don't have any statistics to cite off the top of my head, but I would think that 4/2 is much more common than 8/4 (neither of them being common though) in common practice music. In Renaissance music, 4/2 (C) and 6/2 (O) are probably equally common -- with 6/2 being much more common in early 15th c. music, but 4/2 increasing in importance going towards and into the 16th century. It's worth mentioning, I'd think, because otherwise people might not be able to come up with a time signature that needs the breve. 9/4 almost never takes the breve (usually a dotted-whole tied to dotted-half) so the next most common (explicitly notated) time signatures after 4/2 I'd think would be 5/2 (common in Crumb among others), 8/4 and 11/4. These are just guesses from having looked at a lot of unusual music over the years. -- Michael Scott Cuthbert (talk) 21:48, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Now, why is a dotted-whole tied to a dotted-half preferred over a breve tied to a quarter note in 9/4?? Georgia guy (talk) 22:13, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Because 9/4 is usually (3+3+3)/4 and so it is clearer to choose notes that fit that pattern. OldTownAdge (talk) 15:54, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

How do you know which form of 9/4 (3+3+3 or 2+2+2+3) is more common?? I cannot recall ever seeing any references to 9/4 that are not time signature lists, music lessons, or customizable music software where the time signature is one thing that can be changed?? Georgia guy (talk) 15:57, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Dotted breve

Has a dotted breve ever been in use?? We would need a time signature of 6/2 in order to have one. Georgia guy (talk) 23:34, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes. See Claudio Monteverdi's Lamento della ninfa (link). Although it has a written time signature of "3", it's really in 6/1, containing dotted breves. (There are no dotted longas in that piece, though.) Double sharp (talk) 05:40, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

By the way, a 12/4 time signature would also be enough. Double sharp (talk) 12:44, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Double sharp, what special property does 12/4 have that made you say it would be a better choice?? Twelve is a big number of beats. Georgia guy (talk) 12:51, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

@Georgia guy: 12/4 has only four beats as compound quadruple. It's like 12/8. Logically, 12/4 is the compound-time analogue of 4/2, which seems more normal than 6/2 being the compound-time analogue of 2/1. Double sharp (talk) 13:01, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

User:Double sharp, We should call the time signature "four two dot time", a name that is not a misnomer. Likewise, 12/8 is not really 12/8, but "four four dot" time. Georgia guy (talk) 13:06, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Additional citations

Why and where does this article need additional citations for verification? What references does it need and how should they be added? Hyacinth (talk) 03:33, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

The sections headed "Breve rest" and "Alla breve" display no citations at all. It might be nice to have something to confirm the accuracy of these claims, though they do not appear particularly controversial to me. The rest of the article appears to be well-sourced.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 04:13, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Breve for a beat

How are time signatures with the breve as the beat notated?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:24, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

The expression "time signature" is sometimes used, but the technical term is "mensuration sign", and the use of a breve beat is indicated by drawing a vertical line through that sign. There are four basic signs: (1) a plain circle (tempus perfectum), (2) a circle with a dot at the center, (3) a broken circle (similar to the letter C, for tempus imperfectum), and (4) a broken circle with a dot at the center. The central dot in (2) and (4) indicates major prolation, and is for obvious reasons incompatible with the vertical line. So, for practical purposes, prolatio minor is the only form of beat subdivision natural to alla breve time. We are of course speaking here of a notational practice belonging to the 14th to 16th centuries. Although the expression "alla breve" continues to be used down to the present it has become a misnomer, since by the 18th century it came to refer to music with a minim (half-note) beat. Perhaps this needs to be explained in the article?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:30, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

For modern time signatures (which is what I think the questioner was referring to), using 1⁄2 as the "denominator" seems the most logical. Perhaps Carl Orff's time signatures (using a picture of the note instead of a number at the bottom) might look better in such cases, though. Double sharp (talk) 05:43, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Alas, neither LilyPond or MuseScore appear to want to put up with this nonsense of a ⁴
_1⁄2 time signature. I imagine that this is because nobody seems to have ever needed one. Though I could see a use for it: a piece that starts in ⁴
₄, and then starts accelerating, pausing the acceleration every time the speed doubled (resulting successively in ⁴
₂, ⁴
₁, and then ⁴
_1⁄2 and ⁴
_1⁄4). Double sharp (talk) 14:26, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, what kind of note would fill in the last of those time signatures?? We don't have a note that is twice the maxima; has anyone proposed a notation for such a note?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:37, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Well, I sort of did, but in jest (though I suppose the name bismaxima might be taken seriously). (^_^) The problem is that we have a way to write arbitrarily small binary notes (just add as many flags/beams as you want), but not arbitrarily large ones. We already don't have a single note that fills a ⁵
₄ bar, so I am not too concerned about this never-used case of ⁴
_1⁄4. Double sharp (talk) 03:13, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

To fill in a 5/4 bar, we would need a whole note tied to a quarter note, though IMO in practice it is usually written as either a half note tied to a dotted half note or a dotted half note tied to a half note, depending on the stressed beats. Georgia guy (talk) 13:17, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

That is, I think, exactly what Double sharp is saying. However, it occurs to me that there is a single symbol used to fill a complete 9/8 bar, even though its use is almost entirely confined to scholarly transcriptions of 14th-century music. This is the "double dotted" half note with the two dots arranged vertically (like a colon). I have just checked the article Dotted note, where I have discovered this convention is not even mentioned.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 20:43, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Wrong. A double dot makes a note 1.75 (not 2.25) times as long. A double-dotted half note would be equal to 7 eighth notes, not the 9 that we need to fill in a 9/8 bar. Georgia guy (talk) 23:10, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

Not if you define it otherwise. Keep in mind that these are not consecutive dots, but vertically aligned ones. See for example p. 346 in Willi Apel's The Notation of Polyphonic Music. Similar conventions could be (but have not been) developed for situations such as the one contemplated here. A whole note followed by just half of a dot, for example, is just as perfectly logical as it is perfectly impractical, for obvious reasons.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:25, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

In the case of making a note 1.25 times as long (which covers ⁵
₄), apparently George Crumb invented his own convention: put augmentation dots on both sides of the notehead. Thus the note .. would fill a ⁵
₈ bar. This feels ad hoc to me in a way that the notation : for filling a ⁹
₈ bar that Jerome Kohl mentions doesn't, though. In fact, that notation makes a lot of sense in its own way as well: then every dot multiplies the note's length by 1.5. Double sharp (talk) 07:46, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

The Crumb example is very interesting, and one I have not previously encountered. Although it may be ad hoc now, who knows what may happen in the future? Many other notational features now adopted as standard were once made-up-on-the-spot and required a footnote to explain them. On the other hand, I can see a certain problem when Crumb's notation is used with a staccato dot or (worse) quintuple division dots for repeated notes ;-)—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:02, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Parenthetical referencing

I just changed the parenthetical referencing to use ref tags and a reflist, as a good faith improvement, but had it reverted by the next editor. I read the wiki guidelines on this and have to now acknowledge and accept the reversion. I have not looked at the referencing styles current in other articles on musical notation, because it would be good to have some consistency throughout. In general I am sure I am not the only person who thinks the parenthetical method clutters up the page, and maybe predates the ref tag method. Sigh! P0mbal (talk) 10:07, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Equally, I am sure I am not the only person who thinks the footnote method clutters up the page. As for "predating", I believe you will find the historical information in the article Parenthetical referencing but, if not, it appears to have first been used at the end of the 19th century, as a means of dispensing with the ugly clutter and distraction of footnotes. So, footnotes certainly do predate parenthetical referencing, but I'm not sure what you mean by "ref tag method". Consistency among articles on related topics may be a desirable thing (I certainly believe it is), but this is one argument that is specifically rejected in WP:CITEVAR.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:21, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, good to read your views. But of this I am sure: that, contrary-wise (if I understand what you say), footnoted citations are an established and concise way of dispensing with the the ugly clutter and distraction of parenthetical referencing.(Cy Tation, All about Citations, 90) Reason: surely footnotes are there, like wikilinks, to be read if wanted; but parenthetical referencing forces itself on the reader and interrupts the flow of information. By "ref tag method" I meant the use of the tags 'ref' and '/ref' to enclose citations that are then listed later, and I am sorry if I did not use a better description. The principle of consistency of style is a must in a single article, desirable in related articles, but a dream throughout all Wikipedia articles. And it's too far down the road to argue with WP:CITEVAR.

P0mbal (talk) 15:45, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

I think the views, pro and con, on both forms of citation are already well represented in the various articles and talk pages about Wikipedia citation styles. Thanks for explaining what you meant by "ref tag method"—it made perfect sense as soon as I read your explanation. We can only agree to disagree: my eye flows easily over a parenthesis (whether a citation or an aside) to the resumption of the sentence on the far side; it does not do so when it hits a little elevated numeral, for the simple reason that I cannot tell whether it is important enough to pay attention without looking at it, and it is often quite a long distance away. I do look forward to the day when everyone on Wikipedia can agree on a single citation style, whatever it may be, but I am not holding my breath.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:51, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

British?

Re: "In music, a double whole note (American), breve (British), or double note[1][2] is lasting two times as long as a whole note (or semibreve). It is the second-longest note value still in use in modern music notation.": My impression has always been that among Americans the terms double whole-note and breve are pretty much interchangeable. My undergraduate piano teacher, for example, who was an American teaching at an American University and who herself had studied exclusively at American schools, always called these note values breves, never double whole-notes. Otherwise her usage was strictly American: She always said "quarter-note", "eighth-note", and so on, never "crotchet", "quaver", and so on. I suggest we change (British) to (chiefly British). TheScotch (talk) 22:29, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

I just looked up breve in the American Heritage Dictionary, first edition (in my opinion the best American dictionary ever published). It says "Music: a single note equivalent to two whole notes". If the American Heritage considered the term either exclusively or chiefly British, it would point this out. It doesn't. Thus I've changed my mind: this Wikipedia article should say neither "breve (British)" nor "breve (chiefly British)"; it should simply say "breve". I'm deleting the "British". TheScotch (talk) 23:50, 14 May 2021 (UTC)