With one breve, or four minims, to measure, and sung faster like four crotchets; in quick common time; -- indicated in the time signature by ?.
(Ital.) : Time signature indicating progress by half-note: . (The breve was a note value in old music notation.)
(Italian), "in shortness." Cut time or 2/2 meter. Indicated with the symbol "¢."
a musical time signature indicating two or four half notes to a measure
counted with two beats per measure, each beat represented by a half-note.
The meter signature ¢ indicating the equivalent of ² ½ time.
Cut time. Short for 2/2 time signature. The half note gets the beat (Two half note beats per measure).
This is a proportional mensuration that is in substance Tempus perfectum Prolatione Imperfecta with the tactus shifted from the semibreve to the breve. The most common time signature present in the Odhecaton, it is a later development than the basic four, and is called `alla breve' because of the shift in focus from semibreve to breve. The mensuration sign for alla breve is a broken circle with a vertical (or sometimes angled) line through it, . Also known as proportio dupla, it can be thought of as a division of time values by two, so that the semibreve in Tempus Imperfecta Proportione Imperfecta (marked with the broken circle which looks ) is equal in duration to the breve in Proportio Dupla. This symbol and term have survived into the present day.
Cut time; meter in which there are two beats in each measure and a half note receives one beat.
(''It.'') – "according to the breve" – Indicates two minims in a bar, formerly four.