The Piano Column v1 n1

A Good Word for the International System of Notation
Or: Have Crotchets a Meaning in Life Any More?

Over the course of the past ten to fifteen years, American music instruction books have arrived in New Zealand frequently enough to start replacing traditional English instruction books in the libraries and satchels of piano and violin teachers and their students.

Suzuki piano teachers have been teaching reading to the under-fives using the Jane Smisor Bastien method, and to over-fives using the James Bastien method books for more than a decade. The Frances Clark Library’s Music Tape and AB Reader series have been used as readers for several years, and the newly published Bastien series is proving extremely popular. No H in Snake is widely used for teaching theory to young children through games, the Alfred Edition tutor series is seen frequently around the country, Avsharian’s Fun with Rhythm, Constance Starr’s Music Road, and Hickman’s Music Speed Reading… the list goes on. Even dyed-in-the-wool traditional piano teachers now regard the John Thompson tutors, long the bastion of traditional piano teaching, with disfavor.

And there are as many string instruction books coming from America as there are piano methods too.

One now must ask what the attraction of the American tutor books is.

Well, first (and this is of least actual or musical importance) they tend to have very pretty or stylish pictures which children love. In addition, they are generally well printed and spaced and are easy to read.

Then, secondly, they have new ways of approaching the materials of music using “multi-key” and “landmark” approaches to reading, beginning with the use of all ten fingers at once (which all Suzuki students can of course do immediately) rather than building up note by note and one finger at a time from middle C as the traditional Middle-C system does. The use of many landmarks (bass clef F, treble clef G, middle C, bottom C, top C etc.) from the start assures that the music available to the early reader is much more sophisticated and hence satisfying to the Suzuki beginner reader than most traditional primers. The use of the same type of material in several different keys from very early on in the reading progress offers great satisfaction to the student who already plays in several keys and has the added advantage of offering insights into the harmonic series if it is desired to discuss this here.

But thirdly, and most importantly, the American tutors call a spade a spade. The largest note in common use is called exactly what it is: a whole note (𝅝), and all other notes are seen as divisions of it. This is in sharp contrast to the ‘English’ name which is itself a medieval Latin word, ‘semibreve,’ meaning half of a short note!

Our systems of notation and nomenclature were developed originally by monks in the European Middle Ages.

Their original written notes were the long, the longest commonly used note whose function was more or less equivalent to the present-day ‘whole note’ (𝅝), and the breve or ‘short note,’ equal to one half of a long. When a shorter, or minim (𝅗𝅥), note was required, the semibreve was used, a note equal, as its name implies, to half of a breve. There was no need for shorter notes until music became more complex at the start of the Renaissance, and an ultra-short note was found to be necessary. It was named for what it was—a note of minimal length—the minim (𝅗𝅥)!

Now, human nature being what it is, musicians enjoy fast notes best, and as shorter notes became what was commonly written and performed, the longer notes, the Long and the Breve, were less and less used.

A strange situation arose. The human physique cannot actually perform notes constantly shorter and shorter, and human brains need the contrast of long notes with shorter ones for musical completeness. So although the written long notes (the Long and the Breve) became less commonly used, it was the written signs for the semibreve and minim which replaced those sounding lengths of notes.

As composers by this process effectively lost their signs for indicating notes of the lengths of a half and a quarter of the (new length) minim, they found they needed new notes and signs to replace them with.

The process did not occur overnight: it was a gradual progression taking some hundreds of years to complete.

It was in the sixteenth century that English composers required to divide the minim for ornamentation purposes. As always, the written method was preceded by performance practice: “crocketing” became a common way of ornamenting the minim. The name was borrowed from the other arts—crockets of ornamental vine leaves and buds were commonly sculpted in stone over archways. So “crockets” or “crotchets” became the new smallest note.

By a century later, a smaller note again was required to name the types of notes used by singers when performing trills or “shakes.” Those who have listened to singers trilling know how fast this can be. We would transcribe it as a demi-semiquaver or thirty-second note today. To them, this vocal shake was known as “quavering,” and the note-unit of this shake became known as the quaver, written ♪.

A century later, it was found necessary to divide this quaver in two halves to make two semiquavers. These were the smallest units in common usage in the Baroque era.

By the time of the Classical era, short notes had to be written as half of that again. The customary prefix “semi” had already been attached, so it was necessary to find another, “demi,” from the Latin words “deminuo” (to diminish) and “dimidium” (half).

Demisemiquavers arrived.

By the end of the century, Greek had to be called upon to provide yet another prefix to denote a further halving of the value of the short notes. Thus hemidemisemiquavers appeared on the scene.

And so it was that the English arrived at a system containing the semibreve, minim (𝅗𝅥), crotchet (♩), quaver (♪), semiquaver, demisemiquaver, and hemidemisemiquaver: a half-of-a-short-note, a minimal-size note, an ornament note, a note the length of the smallest sound in a vocal trill, and notes a half and a quarter of that again! And all this in a hotchpotch of Latin, English, French, and Greek words, all of which are outdated in their meanings.

How did other countries survive the transition from the Middle Ages?

The Italians, inheritors of the Latin language, naturally enough also inherited the semibreve and the minim (minima), but more logically called their division of the minim a semiminima and the crotchet and quaver, by analogy with the smallest divisions of pitches, a croma (chromatic note) and (again logically) semicroma.

Their resulting system is already a great deal more logical than the English, but is still stuck with the basic illogicality of calling the longest notes “half-shorts” and “minimal” notes.

Both this and the English system then may be seen to be inadequate. They are, in fact, outclassed by systems in other languages which taught the changes through more clearly.

The French, for instance, tried to work on note shape and color.

The 𝅝 is a ronde or round note (i.e., without a stem), the 𝅗𝅥 is a blanche or white note, the 𝅘𝅥 a noire or black note. So far, so good, though we may object that all notes are round, that there are two white notes and at least four different sorts of black notes.

Their next notes are again named by their appearance: the 𝅘𝅥𝅮 is a croche or hook note (but not, for goodness’ sake, to be confused with the English crotchet, despite the similarity in their pronunciation) and the 𝅘𝅥𝅯 is a double croche or double hook (for the two tails on the semibreve).

The French system is then a tenable system, but one whose basic premises are a trifle wobbly in the matter of blacks and whites at least.

Against these attempts to deal with the medieval system, which like Topsy “just grewed,” the logic and simplicity of what I now call the International System becomes very desirable and a real relief to work in.

I used to be very suspicious of this system which I believed to be an American invention, saying that anything which upset an accepted English usage must constitute slipshod non-language. But I had not realized that the Germans, the Russians, the Estonians and Latvians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Hungarians and in fact almost all other languages of European origin use it too, and a good many others besides, like, for instance, the Japanese.

In this system, the 𝅝 is indeed called a “whole note.” The Germans, since I should find other examples, call it eine Ganze. The Russians know it as belaya nota.

A 𝅗𝅥 is exactly half of that: a “half note” (eine Halbe, polu nota).

A 𝅘𝅥 is worth just a quarter of the 𝅝, hence it is called a “quarter note” (Viertel, chetvyennaya nota).

A 𝅘𝅥𝅮 is an eighth of a 𝅝, hence “eighth note” (Achtel, etc.).

A 𝅘𝅥𝅯 simply is a sixteenth of a 𝅝, its name says it all (sechzehntel). The sixteenth is the note’s name and at the self-same time is its description and sufficient definition. It can be subdivided indefinitely, and the largest note, the whole note, can without problem be multiplied by two or more (to make a double-whole note) if necessary. The easiness of the system can be confirmed by comparing the descriptive and (comparatively) short thirty-second note with a bulky “hemidemisemiquaver” (how many was that again?) or the sixty-fourth with the “semihemidemisemiquaver” (come again?).

Certainly! Here is the section transcribed with the correct musical notation as it appears in the document:

A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but a note whose length is understood in its name is easily taught to three-year-olds, whereas one with a complicated and meaningless name is not easy for eight-year-olds—or, for that matter, for adults to learn.

An even greater advantage in the use of the International System can be found in the comparatively recently developed American ways of counting these notes. Counting ‘1-2-3-4’ works fine for professionals, and indeed for ten-year-olds, but to explain to a five-year-old that 𝅘𝅥 𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝅘𝅥 is counted anything other than ‘1, 1-2, 1’ is frustrating, to say the least.

Americans now use an associative factor, a ‘what you see is what you say’ scheme, which makes theory and reading games with tiny tots—and indeed with primary children of all ages—a great pleasure.

A whole note 𝅝 is counted “Hold that whole note,” with the four syllables corresponding to the four beats in the note. It’s not just clapped perfunctorily but experienced in the whole body: the clap comes on “Hold,” hands are held together for the remaining three beats, and then they shake rhythmically up and down three times—“that-whole-note.”

The whole note is thus performed ‘clap, shake, shake, shake’.

The half note 𝅗𝅥 is counted “half-note,” and the two beats are performed as a clap and a hold, while the note’s name is spoken rhythmically.

The quarter note 𝅘𝅥, with its “two syllables for a one-count note?” I hear you querying, exulting that the system must surely break down here. But no, the two syllables are uttered in the time of one clap and provide a perfect guide for the subsequent subdivision of the beat into eighth notes.

The eighth note 𝅘𝅥𝅮 is the simplest note to teach next, as quarter 𝅘𝅥 easily translates to two eighths, and the sixteenth 𝅘𝅥𝅯 follows as four sixteenth notes within a beat.

Try this system! It is well thought-out and works easily for little and big ones alike. The simplicity of the system is amazing. Even the smallest children can learn with ease and rapidity how to clap or drum both long and complex rhythms at the first reading.

Of course, this is not to deny that there are other simplified systems of counting used with great success by other teachers.

For instance, Anne Sherman and Helen Willbery of Lower Hutt use English words whose rhythm matches the musical rhythm under consideration. For example:

• 𝅘𝅥 𝅘𝅥 = “hay hay”
• 𝅘𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝅘𝅥𝅘𝅥𝅮 = “horses, horses”
• 𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝅘𝅥𝅮 = “galloping, galloping”
• 𝅝 = “sit”
• 𝅗𝅥 = “stand”
• 𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝅘𝅥𝅮 𝅘𝅥𝅮 = “walk, walk, walk, walk”
• 𝅘𝅥𝅯 𝅘𝅥𝅯 𝅘𝅥𝅯 𝅘𝅥𝅯 𝅘𝅥𝅯 𝅘𝅥𝅯 𝅘𝅥𝅯 𝅘𝅥𝅯 = “running, running, running, running”

We do this after all ourselves when we teach Minuet II’s as ‘raspberry jam and cream’ or ‘over the moon I fly’ or ‘pussycats love to purr.’

(Interesting in this context are Pacific Island languages, which have no concept of individual note lengths but deal in rhythmic patterns given labels by association with the dance in which they are found or with the verbal pattern sung to this rhythm. Where they use Western notation, the nomenclature used depends entirely on which nationality of missionaries got there first!)

There are a number of strong advocates of other counting systems, such as the “French” counting which was in vogue in my early years and seems to be making somewhat of a straggling comeback now. Taa-aa-aa-aa and taa-aa and ta-te and taffy-taffy were good nonsense syllables, but when all is said and done, they are just that—nonsense. These terms are as easily confused as crotchets and quavers or croches and white notes/black notes by a child struggling to comprehend, describe, and clap them all at once. They are also more easily recited at the wrong speeds than using simple “1s” and “2s,” which lack intrinsic connection to the actual notes and their meanings.

The International system as counted by American musicians has the tremendous advantage that it simply cannot go wrong. What you see is what you say. You see a 𝅝, you know it is a whole note, the largest of all the notes. Its name is simply that—a “whole note,” and you hold it while counting, “Hold that whole note.” This ensures it is given four equal counts. Similarly, clap-saying “half-note” for 𝅗𝅥 reinforces both its name and meaning while acting as pure counting syllables. The way you say it conveys its length.

It is a system so simple that its logic is sometimes scorned due to suspicion of Americana. But surely, now that so many of our children are reading these nomenclatures in their tutor books, it is time for teachers to refer to whole and half notes for their students too, rather than sticking to the comfort of the old familiar habits we grew up with—the English nonsense syllables.

On and up with the International system!

Gillian Bibby
86 Maida Vale Road
Roseneath
Wellington 1