In musical notation, a bar (or measure) is a segment of music bounded by vertical lines, known as bar lines (or barlines), usually indicating one or more recurring beats. The length of the bar, measured by the number of note values it contains, is normally indicated by the time signature.
Regular bar lines consist of a thin vertical line extending from the top line to the bottom line of the staff, sometimes also extending between staves in the case of a grand staff or a family of instruments in an orchestral score.
A double bar line (or double bar) consists of two single bar lines drawn close together, separating two sections within a piece, or a bar line followed by a thicker bar line, indicating the end of a piece or movement. Note that double bar refers not to a type of bar (i.e., measure), but to a type of bar line. Typically, a double bar is used when followed by a new key signature, whether or not it marks the beginning of a new section.
A repeat sign (or, repeat bar line [1] ) looks like the music end, but it has two dots, one above the other, indicating that the section of music that is before is to be repeated. The beginning of the repeated passage can be marked by a begin-repeat sign; if this is absent, the repeat is understood to be from the beginning of the piece or movement. This begin-repeat sign, if appearing at the beginning of a staff, does not act as a bar line because no bar is before it; its only function is to indicate the beginning of the passage to be repeated.
A mensurstrich is a bar line which stretches only between staves of a score, not through each staff; this is a specialized notation used by editors of early music to help orient modern musicians when reading music which was originally written without bar lines.
Lines extending only partway through the staff are rarely used, sometimes to help orient the reader in very long measures in complex time signatures, or as brief section divisions in Gregorian chant notation.
Some composers use dashed or dotted bar lines; others (including Hugo Distler) have placed bar lines at different places in the different parts to indicate different stress patterns from part to part.
If many consecutive bars contain only rests, they may be replaced by a single bar containing a multirest, as shown. The number above shows the number of bars replaced.
Whether the music contains a regular meter or mixed meters, the first note in the bar (known as the downbeat) is usually stressed slightly in relation to the other notes in the bar.
Igor Stravinsky said of bar lines:
The bar line is much, much more than a mere accent, and I don't believe that it can be simulated by an accent, at least not in my music. [2]
Bars and bar lines also indicate grouping: rhythmically of beats within and between bars, within and between phrases, and on higher levels such as meter.
The first metrically complete bar within a piece of music is called "bar 1" or "m. 1". When the piece begins with an anacrusis (an incomplete bar at the beginning of a piece of music), "bar 1" or "m. 1" is the following bar. Bars contained within first or second endings are numbered consecutively.
The earliest bar lines, used in keyboard and vihuela music in the 15th and 16th centuries, didn't reflect a regular meter at all but were only section divisions, or in some cases marked off every beat.
Bar lines began to be introduced into ensemble music in the late 16th century but continued to be used irregularly. Not until the mid-17th century were bar lines used in the modern style with every measure being the same length, and they began to be associated with time signatures. [3]
Modern editions of early music that was originally notated without bar lines sometimes use a mensurstrich as a compromise.
A hypermeasure, large-scale or high-level measure, or measure-group is a metric unit in which, generally, each regular measure is one beat (actually hyperbeat) of a larger meter. Thus a beat is to a measure as a measure/hyperbeat is to a hypermeasure. Hypermeasures must be larger than a notated bar, perceived as a unit, consist of a pattern of strong and weak beats, and along with adjacent hypermeasures, which must be of the same length, create a sense of hypermeter. The term was coined by Edward T. Cone in Musical Form and Musical Performance (New York: Norton, 1968), [4] and is similar to the less formal notion of a phrase.
Figured bass is musical notation in which numerals and symbols appear above or below a bass note. The numerals and symbols indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones that a musician playing piano, harpsichord, organ, or lute should play in relation to the bass note. Figured bass is closely associated with basso continuo: a historically improvised accompaniment used in almost all genres of music in the Baroque period of Classical music, though rarely in modern music. Figured bass is also known as thoroughbass.
In Western musical notation, a key signature is a set of sharp, flat, or rarely, natural symbols placed on the staff at the beginning of a section of music. The initial key signature in a piece is placed immediately after the clef at the beginning of the first line. If the piece contains a section in a different key, the new key signature is placed at the beginning of that section.
Musical notation is any system used to visually represent music. Systems of notation generally represent the elements of a piece of music that are considered important for its performance in the context of a given musical tradition. The process of interpreting musical notation is often referred to as reading music.
A time signature is an indication in music notation that specifies how many note values of a particular type are contained in each measure (bar). The time signature indicates the meter of a musical movement at the bar level.
In musical notation, an accidental is a symbol that indicates an alteration of a given pitch. The most common accidentals are the flat and the sharp, which represent alterations of a semitone, and the natural, which cancels a sharp or flat. Accidentals alter the pitch of individual scale tones in a given key signature; the sharps or flats in the key signature itself are not considered accidentals.
In Western musical notation, the staff, also occasionally referred to as a pentagram, is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch or in the case of a percussion staff, different percussion instruments. Appropriate music symbols, depending on the intended effect, are placed on the staff according to their corresponding pitch or function. Musical notes are placed by pitch, percussion notes are placed by instrument, and rests and other symbols are placed by convention.
In music, metre or meter refers to regularly recurring patterns and accents such as bars and beats. Unlike rhythm, metric onsets are not necessarily sounded, but are nevertheless implied by the performer and expected by the listener.
Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed books or pamphlets in English, Arabic, or other languages – the medium of sheet music typically is paper. However, access to musical notation since the 1980s has included the presentation of musical notation on computer screens and the development of scorewriter computer programs that can notate a song or piece electronically, and, in some cases, "play back" the notated music using a synthesizer or virtual instruments.
A ledger line or leger line is used in Western musical notation to notate pitches above or below the lines and spaces of the regular musical staff. A line slightly longer than the note head is drawn parallel to the staff, above or below, spaced at the same distance as the lines within the staff.
A rest is the absence of a sound for a defined period of time in music, or one of the musical notation signs used to indicate that.
Braille music is a braille code that allows music to be notated using braille cells so music can be read by visually impaired musicians. The system was incepted by Louis Braille.
The numbered musical notation is a cipher notation system used in Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and to some extent in Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, Ireland, the United Kingdom, the United States and English-speaking Canada. It dates back to the system designed by Pierre Galin, known as Galin-Paris-Chevé system. It is also known as Ziffernsystem, meaning "number system" or "cipher system" in German.
Mensural notation is the musical notation system used for polyphonic European vocal music from the late 13th century until the early 17th century. The term "mensural" refers to the ability of this system to describe precisely measured rhythmic durations in terms of numerical proportions amongst note values. Its modern name is derived from the terminology of medieval theorists, who used terms like musica mensurata or cantus mensurabilis to refer to the rhythmically defined polyphonic music of their age, as opposed to musica plana or musica choralis, i.e., Gregorian plainchant. Mensural notation was employed principally for compositions in the tradition of vocal polyphony, whereas plainchant retained its own, older system of neume notation throughout the period. Besides these, some solely instrumental music could be written in various forms of instrument-specific tablature notation.
In music, a repeat sign is a sign that indicates a section should be repeated. If the piece has one repeat sign alone, then that means to repeat from the beginning, and then continue on. A corresponding sign facing the other way indicates where the repeat is to begin. These are similar to the instructions da capo and dal segno.
Repeat. Wiederholungszeichen (Ger.) A sign that a movement or part of a movement is to be twice performed. That which is to be repeated is generally included within the sign of two or four dots in the spaces...When the performer does not, on repeating, go so far as the last dot-sign, but finishes at a previous cadence, it is usual to write over the repeat, Da Capo, placing a pause and fine over the chord at which the performer is to stop. If the signs of the repeat do not coincide with a well-defined portion of a movement the [segno] sign 𝄋 [] is sometimes added.
The Nannerl Notenbuch, or Notenbuch für Nannerl is a book in which Leopold Mozart, from 1759 to about 1764, wrote pieces for his daughter, Maria Anna Mozart, to learn and play. His son Wolfgang also used the book, in which his earliest compositions were recorded. The book contains simple short keyboard pieces, suitable for beginners; there are many anonymous minuets, some works by Leopold, and a few works by other composers including Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and the Austrian composer Georg Christoph Wagenseil. There are also some technical exercises, a table of intervals, and some modulating figured basses. The notebook originally contained 48 bound pages of music paper, but only 36 pages remain, with some of the missing 12 pages identified in other collections. Because of the simplicity of the pieces it contains, the book is often used to provide instruction to beginning piano players.
Tonic sol-fa (or tonic sol-fah) is a pedagogical technique for teaching sight-singing, invented by Sarah Ann Glover (1785–1867) of Norwich, England and popularised by John Curwen, who adapted it from a number of earlier musical systems. It uses a system of musical notation based on movable do solfège, whereby every note is given a name according to its relationship with other notes in the key: the usual staff notation is replaced with anglicized solfège syllables (e.g. the syllable la for the submediant) or their abbreviations (l for la). "Do" is chosen to be the tonic of whatever key is being used (thus the terminology moveable Do in contrast to the fixed Do system used by John Pyke Hullah). The original solfège sequence started with "Ut", the first syllable of the hymn Ut queant laxis, which later became "Do".
Percussion notation is a type of musical notation indicating notes to be played by percussion instruments. As with other forms of musical notation, sounds are represented by symbols which are usually written onto a musical staff.
Distant Memories is the third piece from Alexina Louie's Music for Piano. It was commissioned by the Alliance for Canadian New Music Projects in 1982. This piece features the changing meters and "senza misura", meaning "without measure". The other pieces in this songbook are "Changes", "The Enchanted Bells", and "Once Upon a Time". The four short solo piano pieces explore contemporary musical concepts and techniques while remaining accessible to younger students. As this was her first set of compositions for solo piano, it is fitting that Louie dedicated the pieces to her former childhood piano teacher and mentor Jean Lyons.
MusicEase is a WYSIWYG scorewriter created by Gary Rader and produced by MusicEase Software. It enables computers using Microsoft Windows and macOS to produce musical notation and listen to them in MIDI.
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