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 (painting) A Dance to the Music of Time (painting) A Dance to the Music of Time is a painting by Nicolas Poussin in the Wallace Collection in London. It was painted between about 1634 and 1636 as a commission for Giulio Rospigliosi (later Pope Clement IX), who according to Gian Pietro Bellori dictated its detailed iconography. The identity of the figures remains uncertain, with differing accounts. The painting is well known for giving its name to the "A Dance to the Music of Time" novel cycle, though this title is first seen in a Wallace Collection catalogue of 1913. Before that