In late 12th century, besides long notes, chants began to use short notes {brevis}. Brevis had one beat. Long had two beats. One long equaled two brevis. As in poetry, brevis and long can make two-syllable, three-syllable, or four-syllable meters: pyrrhic, iamb, trochee, spondee, tribrach, anapest, dactyl, and dispondee.
Later, chants began to use notes that combined long and brevis to make "longshort" three-beat notes. Then, trochee was long-short. Dactyl was long-short-short or longshort-short-long. Anapest was long-long-longshort. Spondee was longshort-longshort. Tribrach was short-short-short.
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Date Modified: 2022.0224