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Breves (double whole note duration)

I am composing a piece in 4/2 time, and I want to use breves for notes that last for the whole bar (measure). So far I haven't found a way to enter a breve. For the moment I am using two semi-breves (whole notes) tied together. Does NWC have breves ?

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #1 –
I don't believe it does. I've never understood the importance of breves. Surely it can be done in 4/4 at half the tempo? I'd love someone to explain the different "feel".

A

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #2 –
No, NWC does not contain any breves (at least not yet, but I added this item to the official wish list a few months ago). I use them for recitativos.

If you've got other music fonts (e.g. Mozart), you can "copy" breves and insert them as "text" into the NWC staff. But then they, of course, do not sound, nor are they "counted" (which means that the bar must contain other NWC notes to fill the measure).

Paul

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #3 –
Oh, then the note duration that is twice a whole is called
a `breve' ? This is funny, because in french the words
'bref' and 'breve' mean 'brief' or 'short' ! In french,
I call it a 'carrée', i.e. 'squared' in english.

These breves are wery frequent in early music. Yes, we
could replace 4/2 by 4/4 and breves by whole notes, but
it is painful, and hard to read for people who are used
to playing or singing early music.

By the way, do you know the name of the notes that are
still longer than the breves ? And the corresponding rests ?

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #4 –
Thanks for your replies.

Like Olivier, I think that it is not so much the "feel" of breves but rather the "look" that makes them attractive. A page of 4/2 looks so much less cluttered than a page of 4/4.

How does the wishlist work ? Do I need to register my vote for breves as well (so that the relative popularity of different wishes can be compared), or are duplicate requests ignored ?

I will have to do some homework to find out more about breves - I have quite happily used them without knowing much about them!

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #5 –
About "breve" :
I wonder (I think I heard this long ago, when singing gregorian) if the name doesn't come from the same root that gave "breathe" in early english.
The old latin name for "whole note" ('ronde' in French) is semi-brevis, the 'ronde carrée' ("breve") being brevis --a full breathe.
There is no duration longer than the breve then :-), and in fact a "breve" take all the beats needed for the lyrics and/or measure. Exactly as the "whole rest" does... even in NWC :-D

HTH
          MAD

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #6 –
Oh, and to reply to first posts :
At this time there is no other way but inserting 2 whole notes. I use it in "Tristis est" of J.Kuhnau, since I want to use 4/2 notation.
I do NOT use 4/4 because I know by experience that the singers do NOT sing it the same.
As well as some Bach's scores where you find 32ths notes (in a slooow tempo though) make the interpret panic... The feel is not the same.

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #7 –
marsu wrote:
> There is no duration longer than the breve then :-), and
> in fact a "breve" take all the beats needed for the lyrics
> and/or measure.

Yet, I already sung a score (with no bar lines), where
the breve took exactly two beats (i.e. two whole notes),
and there was another notation that meant "continue up
to the end of the score". This note was like a brevis,
but with a stem such as an half note.

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #8 –
The note longer than a breve is a "longa".

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #9 –
The current system of notation was developed from the medieval neumes notation.

The notation was originally One Large (or Duplex Long) = two longs
One long = either two or three breves (or shorts).

With the passage of time, shorter notes than the breve were required and at first the semi breve (half short) came into being and then the minim, the name coming again from the Latin 'Semibreves minimae').

In due course the notes that were longer than the breve dropped out of common usage and so we are now left with the paradox of today's longest written note being called a breve (or short)

HTH

Richard

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #10 –
I'm from the Bahamas. I just turned 11. I'm in grade 7. I'm now taking Music Theory 3. So, I'm trying to find how many beats does aa breve have. Since a semi breve has 4 beats maybe if I double the value of a semi breve i'll get my answer to that question!

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #11 –
Depends on the time signature. As an example, a breve is two beats in 2/1 or four beats in 4/2.

Also, you say that a semi breve has four beats. It is true
in 4/4, but not in 2/2, 3/2 or 4/2 (two beats).

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #12 –
Yes, be pedantic if you like, but do give a helpful reply too!

There are 8 crotchets (i.e. quarter notes) in a breve. As the name suggests a breve is twice as long as a semibreve note. Of course in the right circumstances a semibreve rest can be any length. ;-)

Peter

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #13 –
Peter, I sincerely don't understand your response. Maybe it's because of my bad command of English language?

What is the word that you think I misunderstood? breve or beat? In this thread, I learned that the breve was equivalent to two whole notes, isn't it? And the beat is the duration that is used to beat time, isn't it? I'm sincerely sorry if you found me pedantic, but I assure you that I didn't intend to be.

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #14 –
Sorry if I came across a bit harshly. It was just that the question was really about the length in crotchets of a breve, even though the question itself referred, misleadingly, to beats. If I offended then please accept my apologies.

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #15 –
May I respectfully suggest that if any of us are too crotchety, it is because our breves are too tight?
 

Re: Breves (double whole note duration)

Reply #16 –
Peter, I firstly didn't understand how you could think that Selah Simone meant "crotchet" when he/she wrote "beat", but a friend of me explained me something that I didn't know.

When he was young, he learned at music school the correspondence "beat = crotchet" because most of music of a period (18th or 19th century, I don't remember) was written in 3/4 or 4/4.

About me, I couldn't conceive this, because I learned music when I was an adult (10 years ago) and I have sung much early music (where beats ar often the half note, not the crotchet), and also recent music, including one in 13/16 with unequal beats (3+3+3+2+2).

Reading back the message of Selah Simone, I notice that he/she says to "have turned 11". I suppose it is 11 years old. Is it still possible, now, to learn that "a beat = a crotchet", when we have rediscovered early music, and that modern music also uses many other beats ?