On 8 Nov 2007 at 9:26, Ken Moore wrote: > FWIW, I vote for: > > 1) dotted quarter rests in compound metres > 2) 4r 8 8 8r 8r in 6/8 > 3) 4r 8r 8 even in 4/4 (with its curious single beam for 4 eighths). > > The point of using quarter and dotted quarter rests is to reduce the > number of rests that could be mistaken for a main beat.
In 4/4 there's also the issue of it being what might be called a "pseudo-compound" meter, since it's structurally made up of two independent parts. That's the basis for the beaming of 8ths in 4 (as is also customary in 2/4). > This is the one > benefit of the otherwise confusing 15th C. (and later, my wife tells me) > practice of making a breve(B)* or a breve rest stand for three > semibreves (S) in tempus perfecta. Incidentally, I wonder whether the > practice of using 8r 8r 8 rather than 4r 8 derives at several removes > from the fifth rule of imperfection in tempus perfecta (i.e. when a B > represents two Ss instead of three) on p.108 of Apel: "A B-rest can > never be imperfected; however, a S-rest may cause imperfection of a note." While that statement from Apel is correct, it's important to realize that he got a lot of things wrong (though not as bad as what's-his- name in the articles on mensuration signs). > * this is a context in which it seems a bit perverse to call it a double > whole note. Well, they didn't *have* whole notes -- that's terminology that derives from the Italianate reforms of the 15th and 16th centuries, in which the note values were basically halved in the process of creating the new notation. Since then we've halved them yet again. A breve (transcribed today as double whole note) was not unusual even after the introduction of the Italianate rhythmic notation. What didn't survive down to today was the long, which, of course, didn't really have a strictly defined contextual value in any case. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
