Four-four time
Four quarters per bar, the most common time signature of all. Weight on the one and three.
What it means
Four-four time contains four quarters per bar. The beat is the quarter, the grouping duple: the bar falls into two halves of two beats each. From this results the accent pattern — the one is heavy, the three medium-heavy, two and four are light.
It is the most common time signature of all and is therefore in some contexts not specially designated at all. The sign C stands equivalently for it; its English name is common time.
Four-four time is to be distinguished from alla breve, which has the same note span but is counted in two halves, and from two-four time, which contains half as much note value per bar. At a fast tempo, the feel of four-four time approaches that of a two-beat metre — exactly what the alla breve notation expresses.
In the notation
The time signature 4/4 or the sign C stands at the beginning of the line after the clef and key signature. Eighths and sixteenths are beamed into groups of one quarter each, often additionally combined by half-bars, so that the duple division of the bar remains visible. A full bar is filled by a whole note or a whole rest.
Musical use
Four-four time carries chorales, marches, wide areas of art music, and the greater part of popular music. Its prevalence rests on the fact that it allows both a striding and a flowing movement and can be felt in two beats as well as in four. In popular music the emphasis often lies on two and four instead of on one and three, which gives the bar a different pull without changing the time signature.
Other names
In English, four-four time is called common time; the time signature C is therefore often interpreted as an abbreviation of this word. In fact it comes from mensural notation, where a half circle designated tempus imperfectum.
Performance practice
Feel the gradient of the four beats, instead of accenting them all equally — an even accentuation makes the bar dull. At a fast tempo, count in halves and keep the fourfold grouping in your ear. With syncopations, take care that the bar order remains present in the background; otherwise the effect is lost. And check when reading whether the half circle is crossed through: on this depends the way of counting.