sixteenth note

noun

, Music.

1. a note having one sixteenth of the time value of a whole note; semiquaver.

sixteenth note

noun

1. music a note having the time value of one-sixteenth of a semibreve Also called (in Britain and certain other countries)semiquaver

Word History and Origins

Origin of sixteenth note¹

First recorded in 1860–65

Example Sentences

Conductor Carlo Montanaro makes the musical values paramount, supporting the singers right down to the last sixteenth note in some of the greatest arias and ensembles in the operatic repertoire.

From Seattle Times

Like good musicians, good translators are obsessive; and if the listener might not care, or might not realize he cares, about the difference between an eighth note and a sixteenth note, the violinist does.

From New York Times

His routines were a glorious rush of improvisatory looseness and seemingly contradictory precision: He’d know intuitively when to cross his eyes or jut his jaw, and if his split-second decisions were as definitive as a well-placed sixteenth note, they also felt wild and a little dangerous, an invitation to reckless freedom and joy.

From Time

It will be seen that the lower eighth note rest in the first example belongs to the same part as the following sixteenth note rest, though by no means on a line with it.

From Project Gutenberg

Toscanini's friends knew that refusing to go to Bayreuth seemed to him almost like betraying Wagner, that in his distress over the whole situation he was past feeling such thrusts as the one last week published in the Berlin Vossische Zeitung: "The great musician, with incorruptible ears ever mistrustfully and pedantically intent on the last sixteenth note, has heard out of the mighty orchestra that is Germany only the discordant tone."

From Time Magazine Archive