Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/83

 [**F2 Note: Not sure if PPer wants a table below or will use illustration instead. Table below formatted to take into account conversion of '' to _. Asterisks represent music symbols.]           maxima   longa   brevis   semibrevis   minima   semiminima   fusa

Mediæval,   *          *         *            *            *         * or *       * or *

Modern,                          *            *            *            *            *

breve    semibreve   minim    crotchet     quaver

Besides these simple notes various compound characters, called 'ligatures', were used to denote conventional note-groups.

For a time, in the transition from black to white notes, small distinctions of value were indicated by using some red notes or by retaining black heads for some notes while the rest were white. These niceties of notation were comprehended under the general term 'color', the need for which ceased in the 16th century.

Corresponding with the various notes were equivalent pauses or rests.

Signs were early placed at the beginning of the staff to show the kind of rhythm and the prolation intended. Tempus perfectum was marked by a circle, [Symbol]*, tempus imperfectum by a half-circle, [Symbol]*; if the prolation was minor, a dot was placed within these, [Symbol]* or [Symbol]*. Not until about 1600 were the measures regularly marked off, and then often only by a sort of check-mark—the rudiment of the modern bar.

The sign for imperfect time or duple rhythm survives in the modern time-signatures for quadruple and duple rhythm:—

It should be added that the growth of notation was much influenced by the use of various forms of 'tablature'—special notations devised for certain instruments (see sec. 52).

The first traces of attention to time-problems occur in the 10th and 11th centuries, long before we have a statement of the mensural system in full.

35. Organum, Discant and Measured Music.—The germ of counterpoint lay in experiments with combining two voices. Even the Greeks had a special term, 'magadizing' (from the instrument, the magadis, on which octaves could be played), for the singing together of two voices in octaves; and such melodic duplication was felt by them and by their successors to differ essentially from pure unison. So in the Middle Ages another step was taken by adding to a given melody what was called an organum (from the instrument on which it was possible), which