Rest (music)


A rest is the absence of a sound for a defined period of time in music, or one of the musical notation signs used to indicate that.
The length of a rest corresponds with that of a particular note value, thus indicating how long the silence should last. Each type of rest is named for the note value it corresponds with, and each of them has a distinctive sign.

Description

Rests are intervals of silence in pieces of music, marked by symbols indicating the length of the silence. Each rest symbol and name corresponds with a particular note value, indicating how long the silence should last, generally as a multiplier of a measure or whole note.
American EnglishBritish EnglishMultiplierSymbol
LongaLong rest4
Double whole restBreve rest2
Whole restSemibreve rest1
Half restMinim rest
Quarter restCrotchet rest
Eighth restQuaver rest
Sixteenth restSemiquaver rest
Thirty-second restDemisemiquaver rest
Sixty-fourth restHemidemisemiquaver rest

  • The quarter rest may take a different form in older music.
  • The four-measure rest or longa rest are only used in long silent passages which are not divided into bars.
  • The combination of rests used to mark a silence follows the same rules as for note values.

    One-bar rest

When an entire bar is devoid of notes, a whole rest placed at the middle of the measure is used, regardless of the actual time signature. Historically exceptions were made for a time signature, when a double whole rest was typically used for a bar's rest, or time, where a dotted whole rest was used, and for time signatures shorter than, when a rest of the actual measure length would be used. Some published music places the numeral "" above the rest to confirm the extent of the rest.
Therefore, dotted whole rests and dotted rests of longer values are very rarely seen.
Occasionally in manuscripts and facsimiles of them, bars of rest are sometimes left completely empty and unmarked, possibly even without the staves.

Multiple measure rests

In instrumental parts, rests of more than one bar in the same meter and key may be indicated with a multimeasure rest, showing the number of bars of rest, as shown. A multimeasure rest is usually drawn in one of two ways:
  • As a thick horizontal line placed on the middle line of the staff, with serifs at both ends, or as thick diagonal lines placed between the second and fourth lines of the staff, resembling a large heavy minus sign or equals sign set at a slant. Both variants of thick line rests are drawn in the same shape each time, regardless of how many bars' rest they represent.
  • The older system of notating multirests draws each multimeasure rest according to the picture above right unless it will exceed a certain number of bars; rests longer than that limit are drawn using the thick horizontal line mentioned above. How long a multimeasure rest must be before resorting to a horizontal line is a matter of personal taste or editorial policy; most publishers use ten bars as the changing point, however, larger and smaller changing points are used, especially in earlier music.
The number of bars for which a horizontal line multimeasure rest lasts is indicated by a number printed above the musical staff. If a change of meter or key occurs during a multimeasure rest, that rest must be divided into shorter sections for clarity, with the changes of key and/or meter indicated between the rests. Multimeasure rests must also be divided at double barlines, which demarcate musical phrases or sections, and at rehearsal letters.

Dotted rest

A rest may also have a dot after it, increasing its duration by half, but this is less commonly used than with notes, except occasionally in modern music notated in compound meters such as or. In these meters the long-standing convention has been to indicate one beat of rest as a quarter rest followed by an eighth rest. See: Anacrusis.

General pause

In a score for an ensemble piece, "G.P." indicates silence for one bar or more for the entire ensemble. Specifically marking general pauses each time they occur is relevant for performers, as making any kind of noise should be avoided there—for instance, page turns in sheet music are not made during general pauses, as the sound of turning the page becomes noticeable when no one is playing.

's "In Futurum" comprises nothing but annotated rests; and results in a silent performance.