MUSIC 



4024 



MUSIC 



RESTS 



whole 

 rest 



half 

 rest 



quarter 



eighth 

 rest 



sixteenth 

 rest 



thirty-second 

 rest 



Measures and Time. Just as a poem is di- 

 vided into lines of certain length, not that it 

 may "look well on a page" but that the rhythm 

 or meter in the mind of the poet may be ap- 

 parent, so every musical composition is divided 

 into equal portions of time, called measures. 

 Nowadays poets frequently disdain the old 

 division into rhythmic lines, and compose what 

 they call "free verse," which has no regular 

 metrical scheme, but no musician ever tries to 

 write music without separating it into meas- 

 ures of equal length. When music is heard, it 

 is the rhythm or accent which shows where 

 the divisions come; when music is written, the 

 measures are separated by vertical lines called 

 bars, thus: 



A measure bar measure bar measure 



And just as a line of poetry is divided into 

 jeet, so a measure in music is divided again 

 into equal portions of time called beats. A 

 measure may have two beats, six beats, four 

 beats, three beats, but unless there is some in- 

 dication to the contrary, one measure must not 

 have two beats and the next three or four. On 

 looking at a piece of music it is not necessary 

 to count the number of beats to a measure, for 

 the composer has clearly indicated this. To 

 the right of the clef sign at the beginning of the 

 composition appears a fraction which is known 

 as the meter signature. The numerator of the 

 fraction tells how many beats there are to each 

 measure ; the denominator, what kind of a note 

 is to receive one beat. Suppose, for instance, 

 that the signature is %, the so-called "common 

 time" signature. It shows instantly that a 

 measure contains the value of four quarter 

 notes; or, in other words, that there are four 

 beats to a measure, and that each beat belongs 

 to a quarter note. The signature % indicates 

 that an eighth note is the standard and receives 

 one beat, while there are six such notes to a 

 measure. Half notes, quarter notes and eighth 



notes are the ones most frequently used as 

 standards, and the signatures most commonly 

 used are %, %, %, %, % and %. 



Musical Accent. If every note in a measure 

 received just the same stress, there would be no 

 reason for dividing a composition into measures 

 at all, but music has its accent just as do words. 

 In each measure the first beat, the note just 

 after the dividing bar, is accented, and the dif- 

 ferent meters correspond to certain meters in 

 poetry. A % or a % meter, for instance, is like 

 the trochee in poetry (which see), which con- 

 sists of a strong syllable followed by a weak, 

 while the %, % and % measures are like the 

 dactyl, with its "strong, weak, weak" move- 

 ment. 



In pronouncing a long word it is frequently 

 necessary to use more than one accent, the 

 "secondary" accent, as it is called, being not so 

 heavy as the regular one ; and music shows the 

 same tendency. If a measure has two or three 

 beats it has but one accent, as "one, two, one, 

 two" or "one, two, three, one, two, three;" but 

 in measures with four or six beats there is a 

 secondary, weaker accent which falls on the 

 beat immediately after the center, thus ONE, 

 two, three, four" or "ONE, two, three, four, five, 

 six." In case there are nine or twelve beats to 

 a measure for % and *% time are not un- 

 known the first note in each group of three is 

 stressed, but the main accent always falls on 

 the first beat. For "ragtime," or syncopation, 

 see subhead, page 4025. 



Divided Beats and Broken Measures. It 

 must not be imagined that just because a me- 

 ter signature indicates that a certain note is 

 the standard, only that kind of a note can be 

 used in the composition. If the signature is %, 

 for instance, it is not necessary that quarter 

 notes shall predominate. There may be half 

 notes, which have the value of two quarter 

 notes; there may be eighth notes, of which it 

 takes two to equal a quarter note, or there 

 may be sixteenth or thirty-second notes, but of 

 course there cannot be a whole note, for that 

 is equal to four quarters, and a % measure 

 does not contain so many. It must be borne 

 in mind that every measure must be complete 

 must contain just exactly the time value in- 

 dicated in the signature. In the % meter a 

 measure may contain a half note and a quarter 

 or two quarter and two eighths, but not a half 

 note and an eighth note. Figure out for your- 

 self and mark down on a staff as many differ- 

 ent note combinations as possible for a % 

 measure; for a %; for a %. 



