Whole note Whole note In music, a whole note (American) or semibreve (British) is a note represented by a hollow oval note head and no note stem. Its length is equal to four beats in time, that is the whole measure (or bar). Most other notes are fractions of the whole note (e.g., half notes and quarter notes are played for one half and one quarter the duration of the whole note, respectively). The symbol is first found in music notation from the late thirteenth century, and its British name derives from the "semibrevis" of mensural notation. The whole note and whole
A Dance to the Music of Time A Dance to the Music of Time A Dance to the Music of Time is a 12-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin and published between 1951 and 1975 to critical acclaim. The story is an often comic examination of movements and manners, power and passivity in English political, cultural and military life in the mid-20th century. The sequence is narrated by Nick Jenkins in the form of his reminiscences. At the beginning of the first volume, Nick falls into a reverie while watching snow descending on a coal