Purcell and his contemporaries. In English Music during the time of Purcell, as well as just before and after, notes inégales were often applied in French modeled works, such as courants, and other "French" dance movements where the notes inégales are not written out. It must be decided on a case by case basis. However one of the forms of the notes inégales, the "Lombardic or 'scotch' snap", became very popular in English music in the post-Elizabethan period, and that predilection continued throughout the Baroque and into the Classical period. It is usually written out, but not always. The short–long notes inégales, or "scotch snap" can be found to be nearly begging for use at the ends of certain phrases, typically in a triplet based texture, and for instance especially in a Menuet that features triplets, where often at the cadential points, the triplets fall away and playing the evenly notated 8th notes seem to invite a short–long rhythmic alteration. This can also be found in the transitional music such as that found in Musicks Hand-maid, (1678), (John Playford, editor), as well as in typically English composers such as Thomas Augustus Arne in his keyboard sonatas. Arne in particular wrote many variation movements that would sometimes start in duplets, but sometimes used a great deal of triplets, and often in the transitions one finds even notes that when leading to a triplet section, applying long–short (or even occasionally short–long) notes inégales proves very effective. This also often occurs in the Gallant, Empfindsamkeit, and Classical music of J.C. Bach and Haydn and their contemporaries. (further citations and examples to come SJ) Alternative Entasis Theory An alternative point of view is that this idea of Notes Inégales as uneven beats with a fixed perfectly regular amount of swing as in modern Jazz is completely wrong. Instead the idea might have been to install a sense of musical surprise and unpredictability in the listener, a sense that every note is new. This alternative interpretation arises out of a detailed understanding and familiarity with other concepts that would have been well known to musicians of the time. Evidence from mechanical clocks to the contrary isn't too convincing once you have this alternative interpretation, because musical clocks, by their nature, are of course mechanical. It could just be a limitation of the craftsmen in ability to reproduce the fluidity of the rhythms of musicians of