or PARTITION, in Music. Either of these terms means that written or printed arrangement of different parts for voices or instruments, or for both, by which the structure of any piece of music, consisting of a number of such parts, is brought successively under the eye, measure after measure, so as to enable the student of composition to study the work, or the conductor of an orchestra to accompany the whole suitably on the pianoforte or organ, or instantly to perceive and correct errors in the performance, especially during rehearsals. In a score or partition, all the staves required in any given page for the different parts should be marked with their proper clefs, &c., and, on the left margin, with the names of the different voices or instruments, and then braced together at the left side, while at every bar of the measure a straight line is drawn down the page, from the top of the highest stave to the bottom of the lowest. For the sake of perspicuity, in every partition the same number of staves ought to be used from beginning to end on every page; even where many bars of rests occur in this or that part; and also the clefs, &c., ought to be marked on every page, as well as the names of the different voices or instruments. The general neglect of these simple precautions renders many partitions extremely confused and perplexing to their readers. In the article Music, we have used the word partition in preference to the word score, for various reasons; and especially as we had already the word partition used in the sixteenth century by an English writer of eminent musical authority, in the very sense in which we employ it. Thomas Morley, in his Plaine and easie Introduction to Practicall Musick, edition of 1597, page 34, has stamped the word partition as an English musical term. He says, "and to the ende that you may the more easily understand the contriving of the parts, and their proportion one to another, I have set it downe in partition."