thumb|[[Urlinie in G with fermata on penultimate note. & (compare with penultimate note at )]]
<div style="float:right;clear:right;"></div>
thumb|Cadenza indication from Beethoven's [[Piano Concerto No. 3 (Beethoven)|Piano Concerto in C minor: fermata over rest indicates beginning, fermata over shake (trill) indicates close. ]]
thumb|Grand pause () in [[Franz Schubert's D. 759, I, mm.60-4. (without G.P.: )]]
A fermata (; "from fermare, to stay, or stop"; also known as a hold, pause, colloquially a birdseye or cyclops eye, or as a grand pause when placed on a note or a rest) is a symbol of musical notation indicating that the note should be prolonged beyond the normal duration its note value would indicate. Exactly how much longer it is held is up to the discretion of the performer or conductor, but twice as long is common. It is usually printed above but can be occasionally below (when it is upside down) the note to be extended.
When a fermata is placed over a bar or double-bar, it is used to indicate the end of a phrase or section of a work. In a concerto, it indicates the point at which the soloist is to play a cadenza.
A fermata can occur at the end of a piece (or movement) or
in the middle of a piece. It can be followed by either a brief rest or more notes.
Other names for a fermata are corona (Italian), point d'orgue (French), Fermate (German), calderón (Spanish), suspensão (Portuguese).
51px|right
51px|right
Some modern composers (including Francis Poulenc, Krzysztof Penderecki, György Kurtág, and Luigi Nono) have expanded the symbol's usage to indicate approximate duration, incorporating fermatas of different sizes, square- and triangle-shaped fermatas, and so on to indicate holds of different lengths. However, that is not standard usage. In the music notation program Sibelius: "By default, a regular fermata is set to 1.5 times written duration, a long (square) fermata is set to 1.75 times written duration, and a short (triangular) fermata is set to 1.25 written duration." Thus, a whole note (semibreve) with fermata would last 4+2=6 quarter notes (crochets), 4+3=7 quarter notes (crochets), or 4+1=5 quarter notes (crochets), respectively.
The fermata sign is encoded in Unicode in the Musical Symbols block as U+1D110 MUSICAL SYMBOL FERMATA (𝄐) and U+1D111 MUSICAL SYMBOL FERMATA BELOW (𝄑).
See also
- Caesura
- Da capo