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When writing in English for an international audience.
I'm not a native speaker of English myself, and I was wondering whether, say, crotchet and quaver are more generally recognized than quarter and eighth note, or the other way 'round. And if I choose the American terminology (which to me, as a non-native speaker, seems a bit more transparent), will I be readily understood by British readers?
Since most other languages use the fraction terminology instead of providing clumsy terms of its own (hemidemisemi…), you would do the international audience a favor by sticking to the American terms. (For a comparison, see Lilypond notation.) Even if a reader's native language has its own set of colorful terms, the fractions would be decoded easily.
I disagree with the approach that a motivated reader could look up or even learn the British terms: If you write to be read and understood, the hurdles should be as low as possible. I expect the relation to be more drastic than the hit counts provided by Aaron's suggestion.
This is just personal anecdote, but it seems all the British speakers I've encountered understand the American English terms, but very few American speakers seems to understand the British terms. Unfortunately what I don't know is which English version is used when someone is using English as a second or translation language.
A search of music journals on JSTOR came up with
A brief survey of the articles suggested that "quarter note" is generally used by journals published in the United States, while "crotchet" is more used by journals published in Europe.
I'm an American English speaker and find the British terms confusing but not insurmountable. Over time, without any concerted effort, I'm learning them. Whichever set of terms you choose, a motivated reader will just look up the terms if necessary.
If you think your audience is likely to be unfamiliar with one set of terms or the other, you could include a brief legend at the beginning or end of the manuscript.
The entire question could be avoided by using the symbols themselves rather than words, if that's an option. For example, any reader of print who understands either "crotchet" or "quarter note" will also understand ♩.
To try to put some numbers on this, I ran some comparisons in Google Ngrams. It's worth noting that the two British terms that are unambiguously more common in these graphs, "minim" and "quaver", also have other usages that may be throwing these comparisons off.1 Google Ngrams can differentiate between nouns and verbs, which allows it to (hopefully) differentiate the two senses of "quaver", but that doesn't help for "minim".
All in all, I think there's some evidence that the British terms are more common in Google Books's corpus, but the present-day frequencies are relatively close. (The British terms were certainly more common historically, though.)
![]](https://i.stack.imgur.com/cKars.png)
Eighth note vs. quaver (note that Google Ngrams can differentiate between verbs and nouns if you tell it to do so — thanks to Andrew Leach for pointing this out):
Sixteenth note vs. semiquaver:
1 A unit of volume and a verb meaning "to tremble", respectively.
I don't think the original English terms such as crotchet or minim are going to fade away too soon, although the fractional U.S. terms do make a lot of sense. The former have been around for far longer, and there are still many who swear by them. (And some who swear at them...).
It would be an idea to include in the glossary what each term means, then use one throughout. Even inclusion of French, German, etc. terms, (French 'croche' = quaver, confusingly). Most of the 'English' terms are actually shorter - 'crotchet'= 'quarter-note'; 'quaver' = 'eighth-note', and I believe all musos ought to be able to understand both, so maybe you need to consider which side of the pond the vast majority of your readers will be from in order to decide.
This hard to say, as we do not know what you write for which audience. If you are addressing an audience versed in musicology then any such term should be fine. Using the american system is probably a bit more reasonable if you really have an international audience, as the american system is a bit more logically transparent.
The American vernacular is only used in the US and Canada. In all the other English-speaking nations the British terms are used. In Europe, if the English terms are used then the British terms are used. In all of the British Commonwealth, except Canada, the British terms are also used.
There are many more countries that use the British terms than the Americans, but then again there is also no real reason you cannot learn both.
Are you following British or American usage in the rest of the document? There is something to be said for remaining consistent. If you are writing "colour", "centre", and "lift", also write "semibreve". If you are writing "color", "center", and "elevator", also write "whole note".
If you are writing for publication, follow the guidance of your publisher.
Music note terminology varies in different languages, but the American note value terminology is more popular and universally standard. The American version makes sense to more people internationally mainly because the fractional naming convention is easier for learning and rhythm (info from studybass.com). But it also gets tricky if you're working with time signatures other than 4/4 timing. As an Australian, although I prefer the British note value terminology, I also understand the American version and I assume most British readers would too.
You should use the British terms as the American ones assume you only ever compose in and refer to 4/4
