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 without a tail  is the breve; and the lozenge shape  is the semibreve. In a later development there were added the double long and the minum. The breve, according to Franco of Cologne, was the unit of measure. The development of a fixed time division was further continued by Philippe de Vitry. It has been noted with well-founded astonishment that at this time the double time (i.e. two to the bar) was unknown, in spite of this being the time used in marching and also illustrated in the process of breathing. Triple time (i.e. three to the bar) was regarded as the most perfect because it was indivisible. It was as if there lay some mysterious enchantment in a number that could not be divided into equal portions without the fraction. “Triple time,” says Jean de Muris, “is called perfect, according to Franco, a man of much skill in his art, because it hath its name from the Blessed Trinity which is pure and true perfection.” Vitry championed the rights of imperfect time and invented signs to distinguish the two. The perfect circle  represented the perfect or triple time; the half circle the imperfect or double-time. This has survived in modern notation to indicate four-time, which is twice double-time; when crossed it means double-time. The method of dividing into perfect and imperfect was described as prolation. The addition of a point to the circle or semi-circle (⊙ . &thinsp;) indicated major prolation; its absence, minor prolation. The substitution of white for black notation began with the first year of the 14th century and was fully established in the 15th century.

It has already been shown how the earlier form of alphabetical notation was gradually superseded by one based on the attempt to represent the relative height and depth of sounds pictorially. The alphabetical nomenclature, however, became inextricably associated with the pictorial system. The two conceptions reinforced each other; and from the hexachordal scale, endowed with the solmization of ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la—which was a device for identifying notes by their names when talked of, rather than by their positions when seen on a page of music—arose the use of what are now known as accidentals. Of these it may here be said that the flat originated from the necessity of sinking the B of the scale in order to form a hexachord on the note F in such a way as to cause the semitone to fall in the right place—which in the case of all hexachords was between the third and fourth notes. This softened B was written in a rounded form thus: ♭ (rotundum), while the original B remained square thus: (quadrum). The original conception of the sharp was to cross or lattice the square B, by which it was shown that it was neither to be softened nor to remain unchanged. The flat, which originated in the 10th century, appears to have been of far earlier date than the sharp, the invention of which has been ascribed to Josquin Des Près (1450–1521). The B-sharp was called B cancellatum, the cross being formed thus. The use of key signatures constructed out of these signs of sharp and flat was of comparatively late introduction. The key signature states at the beginning of a piece of music the sharps and flats which it contains within the scale in which it is written. It is a device to avoid repeating the sign of sharp and flat with every fresh occasion of their occurring. The exact distinction between what were accidental sharps or flats, and what were sharps or flats in the key, was still undetermined in the time of Handel, who wrote the Suite in E containing the “Harmonious Blacksmith” with three sharps instead of four. The double ♭♭ (sometimes written or ) and the double sharp  (sometimes written,   or ) are conventions of a much later date, called into existence by the demands of modern music, “while the sign of natural (♮) is the outcome of the original B quadration or square B.

The systems known as Tonic Sol Fa and the Galin-Paris-Chevé methods do not belong to the subject of notation, as they are ingenious mechanical substitutes for the experimentally developed systems analysed above. The basis of these substitutes is the reference of all notes to key relationship and not to pitch.

MUSIC HALLS. The “variety theatre” or “music-hall” of to-day developed out of the “saloon theatres” which existed in London about 1830–1840; they owed their form and existence to the restrictive action of the “patent” theatres at that time; These theatres had the exclusive right of representing what was broadly called the “legitimate drama,” which ranged from Shakespeare to Monk Lewis, and from Sheridan and Goldsmith to Kotzebue and Alderman Birch of Cornhill, citizen and poet; and the founder of the turtle-soup trade. The patent houses defended their rights when they were attacked by the “minor” and “saloon” theatres, but they often acted in the spirit of the dog in the manger. While they pursued up to fine and even imprisonment the poachers on their dramatic preserves, they too often neglected the “legitimate drama” for the supposed meretricious attractions offered by their illegitimate competitors. The British theatre gravitated naturally to the inn or tavern. The tavern was the source of life and heat, and warmed all social gatherings. The inn galleries offered rather rough stages, before the Shakespeare and Alleyn playhouses were built. The inn yards were often made as comfortable as possible for the “groundlings” by layers of straw, but the tavern character of the auditorium was never concealed. Excisable liquor was always obtainable, and the superior members of the audience, who chose to pay for seats at the side of the stage or platform (like the “avant-scène” boxes at a Parisian theatre); were allowed to smoke Raleigh’s Virginian weed, then a novel luxury. This was, of course, the first germ of a “smoking-theatre.”

While the drama progressed as a recognized public entertainment in England, and was provided with its own buildings, in the town, or certain booths at the fairs, the Crown exercised its patronage in favour of certain individuals, giving them power to set up playhouses at any time in any parts of London and Westminster. The first and most important grant was made by Charles II. to his “trusty and well-beloved” Thomas Killigrew “and Sir William Davenant.” This was a personal grant, not connected with any particular sites or buildings, and is known in theatrical history as the “Killigrew and Davenant patent.” Killigrew was the author of several unsuccessful plays, and Sir William Davenant, said to be an illegitimate child of William Shakespeare, was a stage manager of great daring and genius. Charles II. had strong theatrical leanings, and had helped to arrange the court ballets at Versailles for Louis XIV. The Killigrew and Davenant patent in course of time descended, after a fashion, to the Theatres Royal, Covent Garden and Drury Lane, and was and still is the chief legal authority governing these theatres. The “minor” and outlying playhouses were carried on under the Music and Dancing Act of George II., and the annual licences were granted by the local magistrates.

The theatre proper having emancipated itself from the inn or tavern, it was now the turn of the inn or tavern to develop into an independent place of amusement, and to lay the foundation of that enormous middle-class and lower middle-class institution of interest which we agree to term the music hall. It rose from the most modest, humble and obscure beginning—from the public-house bar-parlour, and its weekly “sing-songs,” chiefly supported by voluntary talent from the “harmonic meetings” of the “long-room” upstairs, generally used as a Foresters’ or Masonic club-room, where one or two professional singers, were engaged and a regular chairman was appointed, to the “assembly-room” entertainments at certain hotels, where private balls and school festivals formed part of an irregular series. The district “tea-garden,” which was then an agreeable feature of suburban life—the suburbs being next door to the city and the country next door to the suburbs—was the first to show dramatic