Quaver

His odes shall be read with minim, or crochet, or quaver rests.

This Inspector, when I first knew him, was a man of fourscore years, or thereabouts, and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of winter-green that you would be likely to discover in a lifetime’s search. With his florid cheek, his compact figure, smartly arrayed in a bright-buttoned blue coat, his brisk and vigorous step, and his hale and hearty aspect, altogether he seemed—not young, indeed—but a kind of new contrivance of Mother Nature in the shape of man, whom age and infirmity had no business to touch. His voice and laugh, which perpetually re-echoed through the Custom-House, had nothing of the tremulous quaver and cackle of an old man’s utterance; they came strutting out of his lungs, like the crow of a cock, or the blast of a clarion.

The crotchets and quavers are dancing up and down the stave like little black boys on a fence.

"Aw come on, guys!" The woman, clearly overwhelmed by the force of the two friends' personalities, quavered on the point of tears.

We shall hear her quavering them […] to some sprightly airs of the opera.