BAR, in Music, a stroke drawn perpendicularly across the lines of a piece of music, including between each two a certain quantity or measure of time, which is various as the time of the music is either triple or common. The use of bars is not to be traced higher than 1574; the time when the English translation of Adrian le Roy's book on the Tablature was published, and it was not until some time after that the use of bars became general. Barnard's cathedral music, printed in 1641, is without bars; but bars are to be found throughout in the Ayres and Dialogues of Henry Lawes, published in 1653; from which it may be conjectured that we owe this improvement to Lawes.