Fig. 11.
(Pianists will recall a modern instance, so far as the dot is concerned, in a little exercise in C major of Czerny's.)
The practice cannot have been due to the non-invention of the “tie” or “bind.” For though the first use of this is difficult to trace, clear instances, in the form of a bracket, ︷, occur in Morley's Practical Music, published in 1597.
Rests.
[15.]—Rests, especially whole note rests, when used for a whole measure, are still very often illogically placed in the middle of the space they represent. This has been defended on the ground that they represent silence or inaction, and that therefore no error can arise from their appearance being deferred. But a performer should be conscious of the action or inaction of every voice or part. If there be a seeming vacuum or hiatus, how is he to know whether it is a note or rest which has been omitted? If he concludes, from the absence of any note, that a rest is intended, he can only guess how long it will prove to be when it does come. Therefore, in the writer's opinion, rests should be located on the same principle as notes. If it be not a profanation to say so, since the example is from Bach, the rest in [Fig. 12] would have been better placed at the beginning of the measure. Let a sheet of paper be held over the right half of the measure, and though the player will be able to begin, he will not know in how many parts the piece is written.
Fig. 12.
[16.]—In open score, that is, in writing a single melody or part on one stave, it is usual to make whole note rests below the fourth line, and half note rests above the third. Quarter note rests should be written exactly in the middle of the stave. The crook of eighth note rests, and the upper crook of shorter rests, is generally placed in the third space, in the absence of any reason to the contrary. The stems of rests are, in manuscript music especially, better slanted somewhat. This helps to distinguish them from the stems of notes—in rapidly written manuscript a not unimportant thing!