Editing Notes inégales (section)

===Prevalence outside France===

Application of ''notes inégales'' to contemporary performance of music not written in France, for example the music of [[Johann Sebastian Bach|J.S. Bach]], is extremely controversial, and indeed resulted in one of the most heated debates in 20th-century [[musicology]]. One school of thought attempted to show that the French practice was actually widespread in Europe, and performance of music by composers as diverse as Bach and [[Domenico Scarlatti|Scarlatti]] should be suffused with dotted rhythms; another school of thought held that even-note playing was the norm in their music unless dotted rhythms were explicitly notated in the score. Evidence on both sides of the argument is compelling; for example 17th-century English writings recommending unequal playing ([[Roger North (17th century)|Roger North's]] autobiographical ''Notes of Me'', written around 1695, describes the practice explicitly, in reference to English [[lute]] music), as well as François Couperin, who wrote in ''[[L'art de toucher le clavecin]]'' (1716), that in Italian music, Italians always write the notes exactly the way they want them played. Then again, the practice may have been more widespread in some areas, such as England, than others, such as Italy and Germany.

[[Johann Sebastian Bach|J.S. Bach]] famously imitated the style in Contrapunctus II from the ''[[Art of Fugue]]''; however, in this piece the ''notes inégales'' are written out as dotted rhythms.

But in Contrapunctus VI, fully embracing ''notes inégales'', a composition written in the complex texture of the "Ouverture", ''in Stile francese'', Bach uses "the dotted style" in augmentation, and writes out the ''notes inégales'' although many treatises describe the assimilation of upbeat notes to have the slower rhythms become "in sync" with the shorter notes of the fast upbeat note groups, as well as the "short" notes of the ''inégales'' pairs.

And perhaps most significantly, in Contrapunctus 16 – actually two Fugues one normal and its pair in mirror inversion, the ''notes inégales'' are written out in a texture of running triplets, showing the varying value of the dot, as well as the varying "swing" of ''notes inégales''. And it is of interest to note that in the keyboard arrangements of this work, the ''notes inégales'' '''are not''' written out, and this suggests strongly that the practice of ''notes inégales'', of rhythmic alteration, was known to Bach and his circle. In his teens, Bach travelled and studied at the French-modelled Court of Georg Wilhelm in Celle (near Lüneburg) in northern Germany, where there was an orchestra modelled on the Concert Royal of [[Jean-Baptiste Lully fils|Lully]]. During this time it is believed he studied and wrote compositions in the French Style, such as a five-part incomplete ''Fantasie and Fugue'' for organ, BWV 562, that is based exactly on the voicing, texture, and structure of the works of the French baroque composer [[De Grigny]], and would make it eligible for ''notes inégales''. His later work, the Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 537, also uses the same mostly 8th note texture, is written in the same time signature, features a similar texture, and responds well to the application of long–short ''notes inégales'' to the evenly notated 8th notes, and short–long to the slurred 8th note pairs, also typical and consistent to classic baroque French ''notes inégales'' procedures.