 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: janlynn
Date: 2002-02-13 19:22
ok, hope im not gonna sound too stupid here ...
we are playin a piece in wind symphony that starts off in 3/2 time but quickly changes to cut time, then back to 3/2. and so on. i understand how to play 3/2, but ... when it comes to cut time, am i cutting the 3/2 or, reg. 4/4?
thanks, JL
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Author: Dee
Date: 2002-02-13 19:53
Cut Time is simply another way of writing a 2/2 time signature and always has that meaning. So you really should not think of it in relation to either 3/2 or 4/4. It's an independent entity.
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2002-02-13 20:01
Janlynn -
Cut time is the same as 2/2 time, two beats per bar with the half note getting the beat. In 3/2 time, the half note also gets the beat, but there are three to the bar.
Unless the conductor says something different, each half note gets one beat, and the speed of the half notes stays constant.
The other possibility is a proportional change, in which the speed of the measures remains constant. I've never seen an alternation between 3/2 and cut time where you go back and forth from 3/2 to 4/4.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: janlynn
Date: 2002-02-13 20:07
its from "make our garden grow" in candide suite. im still a bit confused - i think im making this harder than i thot. but i thot cut time was 2 beats to a measure with a quarter note getting one beat - not a half note - huh?
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Author: Dee
Date: 2002-02-13 20:11
Cut time is always 2/2. That is two beats per measure with a half note getting one beat. If it is very fast of very slow the conductor may conduct it differently for convenience but the technical definition stays the same.
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Author: Dee
Date: 2002-02-13 20:13
Darn typos!
... very fast or very slow, the conductor ...
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Author: janlynn
Date: 2002-02-13 20:20
geez, i never knew that. boy do i feel stupid. guess i always just "felt" the music whenever i played cut time instead of really "read" it. and now that im really paying attention becuz of the 3/2 it threw me. but, now ive learned something.
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Author: Marge
Date: 2002-02-13 22:14
Maybe a little back-to-the-basics also would help here (and for other time-signature situations). What I learned at age 5 at my mother's knee is still good, I guess.
The number over the line (or to the left of the slash if as written on a computer) tells how many beats per measure. The number below the line (or to the right of the slash) tells what kind of note gets one beat. As far as cut time goes, it might help (or merely confuse) to think of the 2/2 as a reduced fraction, from 4/4--though that's not exactly accurate either.
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Author: Marge
Date: 2002-02-13 22:20
Further thought I should have added to my posting: Don't ever feel stupid for asking a question and exposing what you don't know. It's smart to ask questions and stupid not to. Asking questions is part of the learning process. But then I shouldn't be pontificating here--Janlynn did ask her question, so we know into what category she falls.
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2002-02-13 23:25
Almost never say never, I guess... but "cut time," that thing indicated by something that looks like ¢ for a time signature, is not every single time necessarily absolutely always and without fail the same as 2/2, although that's generally true.
Example: in Vivaldi's Gloria (Westerman Edition), "Cum Sancto Spiritu" has the ¢ signature, yet a full measure consists of a double whole note, or eight quarter notes.
Cut time as indicated by ¢ means to cut in half the number of beats per measure as would otherwise be counted in "common" time. Common time, indicated by a c in the signature, means that each quarter note should get a single beat. The c is generally used with four quarter notes per measure, so that it is the same as 4/4; but this need not always be so. Thus, in the Vivaldi cited above, ¢ indicates a signature of 4/2, whereas c would have meant 8/4. Leaving out the upper number in the time signature is really no big deal, because it's easy to just look at a measure and count for yourself.
Anyway, however many half notes there are in each measure, ¢ means that a half note should get a single beat.
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2002-02-13 23:29
Well, with Mark's new typefaces in use, it seems that ¢ looks fine in Verdana when it's being typed out, but it isn't so clear in Courier when we read it. Anyway, if you look closely in the above, wherever you see ¢ it represents a c cut in half by a vertical line.
Regards,
John
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Author: Hiroshi
Date: 2002-02-14 00:56
3 beats melody always makes the first beat very minutely longer than the other two beats. That is the way they played these 300 years.
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Author: Rene
Date: 2002-02-14 05:24
I learned from this thread that you call "alla breve" cut time. You never stop learning.
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Author: jez
Date: 2002-02-14 13:11
I Learned that 'over there' you call a breve a double whole note. Seems like a waste of ink, but at least I've learned something too.
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Author: janlynn
Date: 2002-02-14 14:38
i learned that i really knew what cut time was, just never thot of it in 2/2. always just cut each note value in half without thinking much. anywayyyy -- went over my music again last night and I GOT IT! yay
JL
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Author: Ken Shaw
Date: 2002-02-14 18:34
jez -
In early notation, a Breve (a double whole note) was what it meant -- literally the shortest note there was. It's written like a square whole note (which was called a semi-breve).
Twice the length of the Breve was the Longa, which was written like a Breve but with a stem.
Twice the length of the Longa was the Maxima, which was written like a Longa but with the square head changed into a rectangle twice as wide as it was high.
Early notation is a hoot. There have been more variations than you could imagine, with various round, square, triangular and diamond note shapes, ligatures, colors, and on and on.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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Author: GBK
Date: 2002-02-14 18:58
Ken is right on, as usual.
However he brought back those thoughts of "Rennaisance Notation 101" from grad school. I had tried to block out all memory of that course.
Seriously, it is quite an eye opener.
The preferred text: "The Notation of Polyphonic Music 900-1600" (Apel)
More than you'll ever need to know...GBK
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Author: jez
Date: 2002-02-14 19:12
Ken & GBK
Did you guys ever try to play the lute. Coming to terms with the different forms of tablature (French, German, Neapolitan et al) some of which are upside-down, some start at number 1 , others zero others have letters........... It does my head in.
You sound the sort who'd love it. Stops you worrying about your reeds for a while
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