Rests
Just like the notes, the rest symbols already had the same shapes that were later to develop into the modern symbols (with the smaller values being successively introduced in the course of the period of Mensural notation). Unlike the notes themselves, rests had a fixed, invariable duration and could not be perfected, imperfected or alterated; however, they could in turn induce imperfection on a neighbouring larger note. For longa rests, there were two separate forms for the perfect (triplex) and for the imperfect (duplex) longa. As a consequence of their invariant duration, a sequence of rests could be used as an indication of the prevailing meter of a composition (in the absence of modern bar notation). This is often found at the beginning of the tenor voice of a composition.
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Famous quotes containing the word rests:
“My aversion from music rests on political grounds.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Prayer is the fair and radiant daughter of all the human virtues, the arch connecting heaven and earth, the sweet companion that is alike the lion and the dove; and prayer will give you the key of heaven. As pure and as bold as innocence, as strong as all things are that are entire and single, this fair and invincible queen rests on the material world; she has taken possession of it; for, like the sun, she casts about it a sphere of light.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)