prolation (from medieval Lat. prolatio, ‘bearing’, ‘manner’).
In early musical notation the term usually referred to the relationship between the minim and the semibreve. If prolation was ‘major’ there would be three minims in the semibreve, if ‘minor’, two. More rarely, it could refer to the relation between any pair of note-values, for example the semibreve and breve (otherwise known as ‘tempus’), or the breve and the long (otherwise known as ‘modus’). These relationships could also be ‘major’ (triple) or ‘minor’ (duple).... ...
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