(Lat. pausa, suspirium; Fr. pause; Ger. Pause; It. pausa).
A notational sign that indicates the absence of a sounding note or notes; in traditional Western notation every note value has an equivalent form of rest. A rest may, but need not, imply a silence; nor need silence in music be indicated by rests. In some cases rests may convey technical or physical information about sound production to the performer (e.g. the movement of hands over the keyboard or articulation) but need not result in any audible break in the music. On the other hand certain techniques of sound production (e.g. staccato or breathing for singers and wind players) will result in silence that is not indicated by rests.
Plainchant notation in the Middle Ages contained no sign for the rest, though in 12th-century square notation a vertical line drawn through the staff indicated a phrase ending and thus articulatory silence. This vertical line was taken over into the notation of Rhythmic modes in the same century (see Notation, §III, 2). As a small stroke intersecting only one or two lines of the staff, it signified the cessation of a reiterated modal pattern and thus usually a rest of some unspecified length. Rests specifying duration became necessary only when durations could not be deduced from the modal context; they first occur in the mensural notation of the 13th century. Franco of Cologne referred to the rest as vox amissa (i.e. ‘lost’ note, as distinct from vox prolata, ‘sung’ note), and he presented the six signs shown in ex.1 as the pausa perfecta (equal in duration to the perfect longa), the pausa imperfecta (equal to the imperfect longa and to the altered brevis), the pausa brevis (equal to the recta brevis), the pausa maior semibrevis (equal to the major semibrevis, i.e. two thirds of the brevis), the pausa minor semibrevis (equal to the minor semibrevis, i.e. one third of the brevis), and the finis punctorum (which was unmeasured and indicated the end of a section or composition). The rest signs of mensural notation, therefore, expressed absolute durations; by contrast, the durations of pitches were decided not only by the written note values but by the metrical context that might dictate the application of the processes of imperfection and alteration.
When in the 14th century the minima became a note value in its own right, the semibrevis rest became a vertical line of half a space depth hanging down from a staff line, while the minima rest became a line of the same depth placed on a staff line (exx.2a and 2b). Thereafter the rests for the semiminima or fusa and for the semifusa took the form of minima rests with, respectively, a single and a double flag to the right (exx.2c and 2d). By the 15th century the name ‘fusa’ was given to a note of half the value of a semiminima; the new fusa and semifusa rests took the form of minima rests with, respectively, a single and a double flag to the left (exx.2e and 2f).
Although the duration of a rest was not conditional on context, its temporal position within a metrical unit was. Two devices were used to clarify this: the location of a rest on a particular staff line and the dot of division. Thus in ex.3a the two minima rests are placed on the staff line of the following note and have no effect of imperfection on the preceding note. In ex.3b one of the two rests is placed on the staff line closest to the preceding note and has the effect of shortening that note; at the same time there is now only one minima rest in the following perfection, and so the note c' has to be altered (doubled in length) to fill out the perfection. In ex.3c the dot of division indicates where the end of one perfection and the beginning of the other falls, and thus achieves the same effect as ex.3b but by different means.
Thus there existed by the 15th century a set of signs in which, for the smaller values, the number of flags to the left of a rest corresponded with the number of flags to the right of the same note form. The only subsequent changes to the set of rest signs was the addition of still shorter values by addition of further flags, and the horizontal elongation of the vertical lines for semibreve and minim rests for clarity. The resulting forms that arose in the 17th century are shown in ex.4 together with their note forms.
The only significant changes since that time have been the conventional use of the semibreve rest to represent a full bar’s rest in whatever time signature; the use of the breve rest to represent two such bars and the long rest to represent four, usually with the number of bars indicated above the staff as well; and the notating of still longer rests as a horizontal bar on the middle staff line with the number of bars given above (ex.5). When an instrumental part is silent for a whole movement of a work, this is usually indicated by the word tacet and no staff is provided. A rest of long duration (conventionally of one bar or more) in all parts of a work for large forces, especially orchestra, is often called a ‘general pause’ and marked ‘G.P.’ above the staff.
For further information and bibliography see Notation, §III.
RICHARD RASTALL