''Prolation'' is a term used in the theory of the

mensural notation Mensural notation is the musical notation system used for European vocal polyphonic music from the later part of the 13th century until about 1600. The term "mensural" refers to the ability of this system to describe precisely measured rhythmi ...

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

and

Renaissance music Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century '' ars nova'', the T ...

to describe its rhythmic structure on a small scale, as opposed to ''tempus'', which described a larger scale. The term "prolation" is derived from the Latin ''prolatio'' ("enlargement"/"prolongation"), first used by

Philippe de Vitry Philippe de Vitry (31 October 1291 – 9 June 1361) was a French composer-poet, bishop and music theorist in the style of late medieval music. An accomplished, innovative, and influential composer, he was widely acknowledged as a leading mu ...

in describing Ars Nova, a musical style that came about in 14th-century France. Prolation, together with tempus, corresponds roughly to the concept of

time signature The time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, or measure signature) is a notational convention used in Western culture, Western musical notation to specify how many beat (music), beats (pulses) are contained in each measu ...

in modern music. Prolation describes whether a

semibreve A whole note (American) or semibreve (British) in musical notation is a single note equivalent to or lasting as long as two half notes or four quarter notes. Description The whole note or semibreve has a note head in the shape of a hollow ov ...

(whole note) is equal in length to two minims (half notes) (''minor prolation'' or ''imperfect prolation''; in Latin ''"prolatio minor"'') or, like a

tuplet In music, a tuplet (also irrational rhythm or groupings, artificial division or groupings, abnormal divisions, irregular rhythm, gruppetto, extra-metric groupings, or, rarely, contrametric rhythm) is "any rhythm that involves dividing the beat ...

, three minims (''major prolation'' or ''perfect prolation''; in Latin ''"prolatio maior"''). Tempus similarly describes the relationship between the

breve A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in ...

and

. These may be compared to the

additive rhythm and divisive rhythm In music, the terms ''additive'' and ''divisive'' are used to distinguish two types of both rhythm and meter: * A divisive (or, alternately, multiplicative) rhythm is a rhythm in which a larger period of time is divided into smaller rhythmic uni ...

, rhythmic divisions and rhythmic groupings which define time signatures. Early medieval music was often structured in subdivisions of three, while the

note value In music notation, a note value indicates the relative duration of a note, using the texture or shape of the '' notehead'', the presence or absence of a ''stem'', and the presence or absence of ''flags/ beams/hooks/tails''. Unmodified note valu ...

s in modern music are most often subdivided into two parts, 4/4 being the most common time signature, meaning that minor prolation has primarily survived in our time signature system, while major prolation has been replaced by notation modifying note values with

dots Directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS, also known as TB-DOTS) is the name given to the tuberculosis (TB) control strategy recommended by the World Health Organization. According to WHO, "The most cost-effective way to stop the spread of ...

triplets A multiple birth is the culmination of one multiple pregnancy, wherein the mother gives birth to two or more babies. A term most applicable to vertebrate species, multiple births occur in most kinds of mammals, with varying frequencies. Such bi ...

. The history of written medieval music shows a gradual shift from major to minor prolation being common. The equivalent term in the Italian notation of the fourteenth century is ''"divisio"'', which covers both tempus and prolation. Italian ''divisiones'', first described by

Marchetto da Padova Marchetto da Padova (Marchettus of Padua; fl. 1305 – 1319) was an Italian music theorist and composer of the late medieval era. His innovations in notation of time-values were fundamental to the music of the Italian ars nova, as was his w ...

, can also allow four minims within a semibreve. For instance ''octonaria'' and ''duodenaria'' place eight and twelve minims in a breve respectively divided into two or three "major" semibreves.

Further reading