Inmusic, adouble whole note (American),breve (British) ordouble note[1][2] lasts two times as long as awhole note (orsemibreve). It is the second-longest note value still in use in modernmusic notation.[2] The next longest notated note is thelonga, which is double the length of the breve. The longest notated note (though now obsolete except in some contexts) is themaxima.
In medievalmensural notation, thebrevis was one of the shortest note lengths in use,[3] hence its name, which is theLatinetymon of "brief". In "perfect" rhythmic mode, the brevis was a third of a longa, or in "imperfect" mode, half alonga.[4][vague]
In modern notation, a breve is commonly represented in either of two ways: by a hollow ovalnote head, like a whole note, with one or two vertical lines on either side, as on the left and right of the image, or as the rectangular shape also found in older notation, shown in the middle of the image.[5][6]
Because it lasts longer than abar in most moderntime signatures in common use, the breve is rarely encountered except inEnglish music, where the half-note is often used as the beat unit.[7]
A related symbol is thedouble wholerest (double rest orbreve rest), which usually denotes a silence for the same duration.[2][8]) Double whole rests are drawn as filled-in rectangles occupying the whole vertical space between the second and third lines from the top of themusical staff. They are often used in long silent passages which are not divided into separate bars to indicate a rest of two bars, regardless of the duration of each bar.[9] This and longer rests are collectively known asmultiple rests.[10] They are also used to represent whole bar rest fortime signature4
2 only.
Alla breve, thetime signature2
2, takes its name from the note value breve. In the mensural notation of the Renaissance, it was an alternative term forproportio dupla, which meant that thebrevis was to be considered the unit of time (tactus), instead of the usualsemibrevis. The old symbol
, used as an alternative to the numerical proportion 2:1 in mensural notation, is carried over into modern notational practice to indicate a smaller relative value per note shape. It is normally used for music in a relatively quicktempo, where it indicates twominim (half note) beats in a bar of fourcrotchets (quarter notes), while
is the equivalent of4
4, with four crotchet beats.[11]
