Quintuplet

What it means

A quintuplet divides a note value into five equal parts where, according to the prevailing order, four would stand — in triple-based contexts, correspondingly five instead of three. It belongs among the irregular divisions that cannot be represented by continued halving and therefore need a figure of their own.

In the notation

Above or below the group stands the figure 5, usually with a bracket or slur. The notes are written in the value that would give four without the figure: five sixteenths marked as a quintuplet fill the space of four ordinary sixteenths, that is, one quarter note. The individual note is thus shorter than the written value. Because the division does not resolve into simple ratios, it cannot, unlike dotting, be paraphrased otherwise.

Musical use

The effect is a slight ungraspability: five notes on one beat cannot be organized into two equal halves, which is why the group is heard as a whole rather than as a subdivision. This is used for flowing figures that seem uncountable — in ornaments, in cadenza-like runs, in music that wants to avoid metric fixation. In the nineteenth century, quintuplets often appear in passages of a free character; in the twentieth century, irregular divisions were used far more systematically.

The quintuplet is to be distinguished from a group of two plus three or three plus two notes: this is organized, the quintuplet is not — its five notes are equally long and equally weighted.

The quintuplet is designated with the figure 5 above the note group.

Performance practice

Do not count out a quintuplet but practise it as an even movement: play the group repeatedly into the frame of a beat, until it fits without calculating. Check with a metronome that beats only the beat. Take care that no note receives extra weight — any accent within the group turns it into an organized figure. And record yourself while practising; irregularities are hardly noticed while playing itself.