In music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, a repeat sign is a sign

Musical notation

Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...

 that indicates a section

Musical form

The term musical form refers to the overall structure or plan of a piece of music, and it describes the layout of a composition as divided into sections...

 should be repeated

Repetition (music)

Repetition is important in music, where sounds or sequences are often repeated. One often stated idea is that repetition should be in balance with the initial statements and variations in a piece. It may be called restatement, such as the restatement of a theme...

. If the piece has one repeat sign alone, then that means to repeat from the beginning, and then continue on (or stop, if the sign appears at the end of the piece). A corresponding sign facing the other way indicates where the repeat is to begin. These are similar to the instructions da capo

Da capo

Da Capo is a musical term in Italian, meaning from the beginning . It is often abbreviated D.C. It is a composer or publisher's directive to repeat the previous part of music, often used to save space. In small pieces this might be the same thing as a repeat, but in larger works D.C...

 and dal segno

Dal Segno

In music notation, Dal segno is used as a navigation marker. From Italian for "from the sign," D.S. appears in sheet music and instructs a musician to repeat a passage starting from the sign shown at right, sometimes called the "segno" in English.Two common variants:*D.S...

.

When a repeat calls for a different ending, number brackets above the bars indicate which to play the first time (1), which to play the second time (2), etc. These are called "first-time bars" and "second-time bars," or "first and second endings."

Other notation

In Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant

Gregorian chant is the central tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical music within Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services...

, a repeat is indicated by a Roman numeral following a section. This is common particularly in a Kyrie

Kyrie

Kyrie, a transliteration of Greek κύριε , vocative case of κύριος , meaning "Lord", is the common name of an important prayer of Christian liturgy, which is also called the Kýrie, eléison ....

, where the lines followed by "iij" are to be repeated three times (corresponding to the correct liturgical form).

In shape-note singing, repeat signs usually have four dots, between each line of the staff. The corresponding sign to show where the repeat is from is either the same sign reversed (if it is at the beginning of a measure), or the dots themselves (if it is in the middle of a measure). First and second endings are given with just the numbers above the corresponding bars. Repeats notated at the beginning of a verse, or given with multiple lines of text per verse, are generally required; the repeats given for most songs of the final few lines are optional, and almost always used only for the final verse sung.

External links

• List of repeat variations