Is there a name for the incomplete measure completing the anacrusis?

Question

In a piece that starts with an anacrusis/pickup measure and ends, or ends a repeating section, with a compensating incomplete measure, is there a term for that final measure?

incomplete measure can describe both the starting and ending measures.
anacrusis and pickup refers only to the starting measure.
??? refers only to the ending measure?

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 11 '21 at 11:37

10

I don't think there is a specific term for it. Cute options would be calling it a katacrusis or a dropoff bar, with a somewhat moderate chance of people getting your meaning. They would also be sort-of candidates for an official term if such a one would often be asked for. But I don't think that happens often enough that some term would have had a chance to be solidly established.

P.S.: I see that Wikipedia in its entry for "anacrusis" refers to the completing bar as "complement" which seems as nice a term as any.

answered Oct 11 '21 at 11:37

Hehe, I like your inventions! It looks like *katacrusis* might already have a definition in ancient Greek or biblical scholarship, as a rhetorical "parenthetical aside": https://www.google.com/books/edition/Paul_Through_Mediterranean_Eyes/07QM_otHMp8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=katacrusis&pg=PA70&printsec=frontcover https://www.inthebeginning.org/chiasmus/xfiles/john12_20-36.pdf – Andy Bonner Oct 11 '21 at 12:26

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 11 '21 at 11:07

5

The simplest way to describe it would be to use its bar number. As for an actual name of this kind of incomplete bar; I don’t know of one.

Incidentally, a pickup bar at the beginning of a piece is bar 0.

answered Oct 11 '21 at 11:07

Bob Broadley

21,161
6
67
121

Never noticed 'bar 0' before - but it's right. Still learning... +1. – Tim Oct 12 '21 at 06:32

Is there a name for the incomplete measure completing the anacrusis?

2 Answers2