Editing Notes inégales (section)

===Pre-modern era===

The practice of notating pairs of unequal note lengths as pairs with equal notated value may go as far back as the earliest music of the [[Medieval music|Middle Ages]]; indeed some scholars believe that some [[plainchant]] of the [[Roman Catholic Church]], including [[Ambrosian chant|Ambrosian]] hymns, may have been performed as alternating long and short notes. This interpretation is based on a passage in [[Augustine of Hippo|Saint Augustine]] where he refers to the Ambrosian hymns as being in ''tria temporum'' (in three beats); e.g. a passage rendered on the page (by a later transcriber) as a string of notes of equal note value would be performed as half note, quarter note, half note, quarter note, and so on, in groups of three beats.

The [[rhythmic mode]]s, with their application of various long–short patterns to equal written notes, may also have been a precursor to ''notes inégales'', especially as they were practiced in France, specifically by the [[Notre Dame School]]. However the gap between the late 13th century ''[[ars antiqua]]'' use of the rhythmic modes and the middle of the 16th century, when [[Loys Bourgeois]] first mentioned ''notes inégales'', is a large one, and little trace of the practice can be found in the fluid [[polyphony]] of the intervening period.