Inmusic,duration is an amount oftime or how long or short anote,phrase, section, orcomposition lasts. "Duration is the length of time a pitch, or tone, is sounded."[1] A note may last less than a second, while a symphony may last more than an hour. One of the fundamental features ofrhythm, or encompassing rhythm, duration is also central tometer andmusical form.Release plays an important part in determining thetimbre of a musical instrument and is affected byarticulation.
The concept of duration can be further broken down into those ofbeat and meter, where beat is seen as (usually, but certainly not always) a 'constant', and rhythm being longer, shorter or the same length as the beat. Inserial music the beginning of a note may be considered, or its duration may be (for example, is a 6 the note which begins at the sixth beat, or which lasts six beats?).
Durations, and their beginnings and endings, may be described as long, short, or taking a specific amount of time. Often duration is described according to terms borrowed from descriptions ofpitch. As such, thedurationcomplement is the amount of different durations used, theduration scale is an ordering (scale) of those durations from shortest to longest, thedurationrange is the difference in length between the shortest and longest, and theduration hierarchy is an ordering of those durations based on frequency of use.[2]
Durational patterns are the foreground details projected against a backgroundmetric structure, which includesmeter,tempo, and all rhythmic aspects which produce temporal regularity or structure. Duration patterns may be divided intorhythmic units andrhythmic gestures (Winold, 1975, chap. 3). But they may also be described using terms borrowed from themetrical feet of poetry:iamb (weak–strong),anapest (weak–weak–strong),trochee (strong–weak),dactyl (strong–weak–weak), andamphibrach (weak–strong–weak), which may overlap to explain ambiguity.[3]
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