[Christopher B. J. Smith:]
>There exists a perfectly clear convention for rests AND notes lasting
>an entire measure where the measure is longer than 4/4; for rests it
>is a whole rest, for notes it is a double (barred) whole note |O|
>like that.
I've only heard of the one for a whole-bar rest, not for a note. I guess
the latter is no more confusing than the former, looked at rationally; but it
looks extremely odd to me, and the idea of notating it would take me a bit of
getting used to.
I would be especially reluctant to use it if the double whole note (or
breve, as I would call it) could reasonably be a partial value for the bar in
question. I would certainly prefer to use a single, exact note, even if it was
unusual - such as the double-dotted semibreve in the 7/4 example I mentioned
earlier. (I do vaguely seem to recall this coming up on the list before, and
double-dotted notes for septuple metres were not much favoured.)
Is the full-bar note convention found only in 20th-century music, or even
late 20th-century music? (If this exists as an accepted convention, I'm
slightly surprised I've never heard any clue of it; but, the more recently it
originated, the more easily I could have missed seeing it.)
I have seen breves printed either as round or square notes (in both cases
with bars on both sides). As far as I know, this difference normally has no
meaning at all; but I have occasionally considered the idea of using the square
version for a full long bar, or (in unbarred music) for an indefinitely long
value (such as where a note in piano music is held by the pedal until it fades
away), and the round note only for a strict value of two semibreves. But I've
never actually used this distinction in a regular way - I have a bit of
reluctance to invent new conventions like this, no matter how clear they are.
Regards,
Michael Edwards.
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