Notes inégales

In music, notes inégales (French: unequal notes) refers to a performance practice, mainly from the Baroque and Classical music eras, in which some notes with equal written time values are performed with unequal durations, usually as alternating long and short. The practice was especially prevalent in France in the 17th and 18th centuries, with appearances in other European countries at the same time; and it reappeared as the standard performance practice in the 20th century in jazz.

History

Pre-modern era

The practice of notating pairs of unequal note lengths as pairs with equal notated value may go as far back as the earliest music of the Middle Ages; indeed some scholars believe that some plainchant of the Roman Catholic Church, including Ambrosian hymns, may have been performed as alternating long and short notes. This interpretation is based on a passage in Saint Augustine where he refers to the Ambrosian hymns as being in tria temporum (in three beats) (1); e.g. a passage rendered on the page (by a later transcriber) as a string of notes of equal note value would be performed as half-note, quarter-note, half-note, quarter-note, and so on, in groups of three beats.