A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Time Table

by William Smyth Rockstro

TIME TABLE. A Table denoting the forms and proportionate duration of all the notes used in measured Music.

The earliest known indication of a Time Table is to be found in the well-known work on Cantus mensurabilis, written by Franco of Cologne about the middle of the 11th century. Franco mentions only four kinds of notes, the Large (or Double Long), the Long, the Breve, and the Semibreve. Franchinus Gafurius, in his 'Practica musicæ,' first printed at Milan in 1496, describes the same four forms, with the addition of the Minim. These were afterwards supplemented by the Greater Seiniminim, now called the Crotchet, and the Lesser Semiminim, or Quaver; and, later still, by the Semiquaver, the Demisemiquaver, and the Half-Demisemiquaver.

The modern Time Table, denoting the proportionate value of all these notes, is too well known in our schoolrooms to need a word of description here.

[ W. S. R. ]