Longa

What it means

The longa is a note value from medieval and Renaissance mensural notation. It ranks above the breve and below the maxima, and depending on the prevailing mensuration, the ratio governing note-value relationships, it divided into either two or three breves (imperfect or perfect longa).

It was written as a black or, later, hollow notehead with a downward stem, which distinguished it visually from the stemless breve.

In the notation

In modern editions of medieval and Renaissance music, the longa appears as an elongated, often rectangular notehead with a stem. When transcribed into modern notation it is usually rendered, depending on the chosen transcription ratio, as a dotted or irregular whole note or as a value spanning several bars.

Musical use

The longa was a core part of mensural notation, which governed the rhythmic organization of polyphonic music from the 13th to the 16th century. In the Notre-Dame school and the Ars antiqua it formed, together with the breve, the basis of the rhythmic modes.

The longa should be distinguished from the breve, the next smaller value, and the maxima, the next larger one. With the shift to white mensural notation and later to modern notation, the longa lost practical importance and now appears mainly in editions of early music.