In music, notes inégales (French: unequal notes) refers to a performance practice, mainly from the Baroque

Baroque music

Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...

 and Classical music eras, in which some notes with equal written time values are performed with unequal durations, usually as alternating long and short. The practice was especially prevalent in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 in the 17th and 18th centuries, with appearances in other European countries at the same time; and it reappeared as the standard performance practice in the 20th century in jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

.

History

The practice of notating pairs of unequal note lengths as pairs with equal notated value may go as far back as the earliest music of the Middle Ages

Medieval music

Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...

; indeed some scholars believe that some plainchant of the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

, including Ambrosian

Ambrosian chant

Ambrosian chant is the liturgical plainchant repertory of the Ambrosian rite of the Roman Catholic Church, related to but distinct from Gregorian chant. It is primarily associated with the Archdiocese of Milan, and named after St. Ambrose much as Gregorian chant is named after Gregory the Great...

 hymns, may have been performed as alternating long and short notes. This interpretation is based on a passage in Saint Augustine

Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo , also known as Augustine, St. Augustine, St. Austin, St. Augoustinos, Blessed Augustine, or St. Augustine the Blessed, was Bishop of Hippo Regius . He was a Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province...

 where he refers to the Ambrosian hymns as being in tria temporum (in three beats) (1); e.g. a passage rendered on the page (by a later transcriber) as a string of notes of equal note value would be performed as half-note, quarter-note, half-note, quarter-note, and so on, in groups of three beats.

The rhythmic mode

Rhythmic mode

In medieval music, the rhythmic modes were set patterns of long and short durations . The value of each note is not determined by the form of the written note , but rather by its position within a group of notes written as a single figure called a "ligature", and by the position of the ligature...

s, with their application of various long-short patterns to equal written notes, may also have been a precursor to notes inégales, especially as they were practiced in France, specifically by the Notre Dame School

Notre Dame school

The group of composers working at or near the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris from about 1160 to 1250, along with the music they produced, is referred to as the Notre Dame school, or the Notre Dame School of Polyphony....

. However the gap between the late 13th century ars antiqua

Ars antiqua

Ars antiqua, also called ars veterum or ars vetus, refers to the music of Europe of the late Middle Ages between approximately 1170 and 1310, covering the period of the Notre Dame school of polyphony and the subsequent years which saw the early development of the motet...

use of the rhythmic modes and the middle of the 16th century, when Loys Bourgeois

Loys Bourgeois

Loys "Louis" Bourgeois was a French composer and music theorist of the Renaissance. He is most famous as one of the main compilers of Calvinist hymn tunes in the middle of the 16th century...

 first mentioned notes inégales, is a large one, and little trace of the practice can be found in the fluid polyphony

Polyphony

In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....

 of the intervening period.

France

It was in France, beginning in the late 16th century, that notes inégales began to take on a critical role in performance practice. The earliest treatises that mention inequality of notes in performance indicate that the reason for this practice is to add beauty or interest to a passage which otherwise would be plain. Over 85 music theory

Music theory

Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...

 and performance treatises from France alone mention the topic between 1550 and 1810, with the large majority written between 1690 and 1780. Within this body of writing there is considerable inconsistency, but by the late 17th century a consensus practice began to emerge.

The typical rule, from the late 17th century until the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

, is that notes inégales applies to all notes moving stepwise which have a duration of one quarter the denominator of the meter, for instance, eighth notes in a meter of 2/2, or sixteenth notes in a meter of 4/4; and one half the denominator of the meter in cases of triple or compound meter, for instance, eighth notes in 3/4, sixteenth notes in 3/8, 6/8 and 9/8. In addition, the inégales could only function on one metrical level; for example, if sixteenths are to be played long-short, long-short, an even eighth-note pulse must be carefully maintained for the music to retain its shape.

Sometimes the notes inégales are notated as unequal, for example in some of the keyboard works of François Couperin

François Couperin

François Couperin was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family.-Life:Couperin was born in Paris...

, where he uses a dot to indicate the lengthened note. This and similar passages by Rameau (in his first Gavotte) clearly show that this means to apply an even greater amount of inequality to dotted eighth-sixteenth note pairs than to eighth-eighth pairs, which are already understood to be played unequally. The exact amount of inequality required is also unspecified, and most of the treatises leave this detail to the taste of the performer. It may have varied from double-dotted to minimally perceptible, depending on the context. Some recent papers and books include a full analysis of this topic as well as practical guides for the performer.

There were situations which were understood to be exempt from application of notes inégales. A broken arpeggiated figuration in the left hand, such as an Alberti bass

Alberti bass

Alberti bass is a particular kind of accompaniment in music, often used in the Classical era, and sometimes the Romantic era. It was named after Domenico Alberti , who used it extensively, although he was not the first to use it....

, was always understood to be played regularly. Sometimes one sees the explicit marking: croches égales meaning equal "hooks" or eighth notes. Passages which mixed note values may have been exempted from the practice. Occasionally a long slur printed over a series of notes was understood to imply that all the notes should be played evenly, except that the first note under the slur could be accented. Passages which were highly disjunct were also less likely to be played unequally than conjunct passages, although the sources are not unanimous on even this.

Occasionally the long-short version of notes inégales was reversed to a short-long, known sometimes as the Lombard rhythm

Lombard rhythm

The Lombard rhythm or Scotch snap is a rhythm associated primarily with Baroque music, generally consisting of a stressed sixteenth note or semiquaver followed by a dotted eighth note or quaver. This effects a reverse of the dotted rhythm normally used in notes inégales, in which the longer value...

 or the Scotch snap.

Outside France

One of the best sources for understanding the situation of notes inégales in France is the notation of music by composers from other European countries who wrote imitations of it. Music from Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 all borrowed this feature of French music, with the difference that the inequality of note values was often notated, since not all performers could be expected to add the notes inégales themselves (though evidence from Georg Muffat and Telemann strongly suggests that German performers would certainly be familiar with them).

Application of notes inégales to contemporary performance of music not written in France, for example the music of J.S. Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

, is extremely controversial, and indeed resulted in one of the most heated debates in 20th century musicology

Musicology

Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...

. One school of thought attempted to show that the French practice was actually widespread in Europe, and performance of music by composers as diverse as Bach and Scarlatti

Domenico Scarlatti

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style...

 should be suffused with dotted rhythms; another school of thought held that even-note playing was the norm in their music unless dotted rhythms were explicitly notated in the score. Evidence on both sides of the argument is compelling, for example 17th century English writings recommending unequal playing (Roger North's

Roger North (17th century)

Roger North, KC , English lawyer, biographer, and amateur musician, was the sixth son of t he fourth Baron North....

 autobiographical Notes of Me, written around 1695, describes the practice explicitly, in reference to English lute

Lute

Lute can refer generally to any plucked string instrument with a neck and a deep round back, or more specifically to an instrument from the family of European lutes....

 music), as well as François Couperin, who wrote in L'art de toucher le clavecin

L'Art de toucher le Clavecin

L'art de toucher le clavecin is a didactic treatise by the French composer François Couperin...

(1716), that in Italian music, Italians always write the notes exactly the way they want them played. Then again, the practice may have been more widespread in some areas, such as England, than others, such as Italy and Germany.

J.S. Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

 famously imitated the style in Contrapunctus II from the Art of Fugue; however in this piece the notes inégales are written out as dotted rhythms.

Jazz

A similar practice to notes inégales occurs from the 20th century to the present day, in jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

, although the term "swung note" is used by jazz musicians and listeners. Indeed, it is so universally understood that a stream of eighth-notes is to be rendered unequally that the phrase "straight eighths" is used whenever a jazz arranger wants a performer to play eighth-notes evenly. In jazz practice, in addition, it is common for the notes not only to differ in duration but in intensity. Swung eighths written on the beat are generally read as quarter-note triplets, while notes written on off-beats are played as eighth note triplets. Therefore, the underlying rhythmic grid to most jazz music is an eighth note triplet pattern. Most musicians don't do the math involved in playing notes, instead simply feeling an uneven subdivision. Occasionally, sixteenth notes are swung and played fitting into a sixteenth-note triplet grid.

The similarity to the rule of 17th century France is striking, in that jazz is organized in rhythmic layers, with chord changes often at the level of the bar or half-bar, followed by a quarter-note beat, and an eighth-note level in which notes are played freely, and almost always unevenly. Some scholars (2) have speculated a connection by way of the influence of French music in New Orleans on early jazz styles.

Sacred Harp

Traditional Sacred Harp

Sacred Harp

Sacred Harp singing is a tradition of sacred choral music that took root in the Southern region of the United States. It is part of the larger tradition of shape note music.- The music and its notation :...

 singers often sing in the rhythm of notes inégales, thus deviating from the printed notes; for details see Performance practice of Sacred Harp music.