Two hundred fifty-sixth note

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart used 128th and 256th notes in his Variations on "Je suis Lindor", K. 354. Playⓘ at eighth note=40 (quarter note=20)

In music, a two hundred fifty-sixth note (North American), or demisemihemidemisemiquaver (British), is a note played for 1⁄256 of the duration of a whole note. It lasts half as long as a hundred twenty-eighth note and takes up one quarter of the length of a sixty-fourth note. In musical notation it has a total of six flags or beams.

A single 256th note is always stemmed with flags, while two or more are usually beamed in groups. Notes this short are very rare in printed music, but not unknown. They are principally used for brief, rapid sections in slow movements. For example, they occur in some editions of the second movement (Largo) of Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto (Op. 37) (1800), to notate rapid scales. Another example is in Mozart's Variations on "Je suis Lindor" (1778), where four of them are used in the slow (molto adagio) eleventh variation. A further example occurs (Grave.Adagio non troppo) in Jan Ladislav Dussek's (1760–1812) Fifth Piano Sonata, Op. 10 No. 2. They also occur (Largo) in Vivaldi's (1678–1741) Concerto, RV 444, and in bar 15 of François Couperin's Second Prelude from L'art de toucher le clavecin (1716).

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