How long shall I hold the note when it has the little curved sign of the pause or hold over it? Is there any rule that fits all cases? This question was put to me by an amateur who takes pride in being exact. I had to confess that I did not know. I looked through many books but did not get satisfaction until I found it in a French volume.
The first rule given there is to let the pause sign act as though it were doubling the time of the note itself. If it is a half note make it a whole note and so on.
"But," asked my inquisitive friend, "here is a pause over a chord and in the left hand there is a broken chord, each note of which is a sixteenth note. What shall I do there?" Again by digging, I found that the practice was to double the length of the accompanying notes under a chord or note having a pause sign. This had the effect of doubling the chord and making the accompaniment proportionate. Again I found in one of my reference books that when a pause stood over the bar at the end of a composition it signified a rest equal to the length of that measure (the measure preceeding). This is found in places where there are a series of pieces or in places where there are repeats.
About this article
This article, written by Alice G. Witaker, was taken from the June 1922 issue of "Etude Musical Magazine."
Emily Sigers
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