Mrs. P's Singers and Ringers Blog

In our discussion in General Music today, we were talking about note values.  I did a little investigating, and found that the shortest note value ever used in published music was a 2,048th note, in a piece by a German composer in 1825.  That’s just crazy!  There are a couple of examples of famous composers using 256th notes:  the Italian composer Vivaldi used them in one of his pieces, and some editions of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto are printed with 256th notes.  However, most editions of the piano concerto have 128th notes.  Even that is awfully short!  And a 256th note would have six flags on its stem.  I couldn’t find a printed example anywhere.

We also talked about British names for the different notes.  It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about those, and I had it wrong in class.  I thought a quarter note was called a quaver, but actually it’s called a crotchet.  The eighth note is a quaver, and a 64th note is a hemidemisemiquaver.  I think quarter notes and eighth notes are much easier, although I admit that a crotchet sounds cool!

So, what kind of note is this?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 30th, 2011 at 1:17 pm and is filed under News and Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.