A Note on Interp of Ornam

8/13/2019 A Note on Interp of Ornam

1/10

A Note on the Interpretation of Musical Ornaments

Author(s): J. A. Fuller MaitlandSource: Sammelbnde der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft, 13. Jahrg., H. 4. (Jul. - Sep.,1912), pp. 543-551Published by: Franz Steiner VerlagStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/929402.

Accessed: 06/06/2011 08:09

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at.http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=fsv..

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Franz Steiner Verlagis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sammelbnde der

Internationalen Musikgesellschaft.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=fsvhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/929402?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=fsvhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=fsvhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/929402?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=fsv


2/10

J. A. Fuller Maitland, A Note on the Interpretation etc.

A Note on the Interpretationf MusicalOrnaments.By

J.A. FullerMaitland.(London.)The revival of public interest in the music of old times is a healthy signof musical development; and we may justly claim to have the music presented

to us with as great an approximation to the conditions of its original per-formance as is possible. Now that the keyed instruments which preceded thepianoforte are occasionally to be heard in concerts, it is far more desirablethan before that we should ascertain as fully as we can what was the meaningattached by the composers of different schools to the signs for the ornamentalpassages on which so much of their effect depended. Why, it may be asked,did they not write out their ornaments in full, as they wished them to beperformed? There are several reasons for this; one of the most obviousbeing the labor to the transcriber, and another the not unnatural wish toguard the art of music and the profession of teacher by some small myst-eries of the craft which only a proficient could explain after he had beendefinitely initiated into the musical profession. There is a yet more power-ful reason in this fact, that the practice of the composers ran, as it alwaysdoes, far ahead of the theoretical science which could explain certain disson-ances obviously delightful to the hearer and interesting to the executant.These dissonances, upon which the music seems naturally to dwell, were notreferable to any harmonic scheme as then understood, and it was felt to bebetter to express by a conventional sign the fact that they stood outside theharmonic scheme. That is especially true with regard to the most importantornament of all, and the one which is most generally misunderstood in thepresent day, the appoggiatura , to which I would direct attention moreclosely later on. The other signs for ornaments, from the single or doublediagonal lines above the notes used by the Elizabethan Virginal composers,to the crowd of marks used by the French and German writers immediatelybefore Bach, are not really difficult to explain, and at each period we arehappily provided with a guide on the subject in some treatise or other bya contemporary of the composers in whose works the marks occur. Unfortun-

36*

543herrlichen italienischen Kunst gewinnen, welche die Voraussetzung fiir dieEntwickelung der Kantaten (auch der kirchlichen) Bach's bildet. Mit UJber-raschung wird man erkennen, wie so gar mancher uns wohlvertraute Einzel-zug sich bereits beinahe hundert Jahre friiher vorgebildet findet, so daB mandurchaus nicht bei Bach's Zeitgenossen den Ursprung zu suchen hat, sondernvielmehr bei seinen und ihren gemeinsamen Vorliufern. Ich zweifle nicht,daB bei dieser Befreundung mit der alten Kantatenkunst speziell auch dieverschiedenen Formen der Verwendung des Basso ostinato das Interesse be-sonders anziehen werden.


3/10

544 J. A. Fuller Maitland, A Note on the Interpretation etc.ately, we are left without such a guide in the earliest of the signs justmentioned; but there seems to be no doubt that the double strokes indicateeither a mordent or a pralltriller- probably the former, and that the singlestroke stands for an appoggiatura-single or double-coming from belowthe principal note. One of the chief difficulties in regard to ornaments isthat at different periods people have used the technical terms in differentsenses. It is stated by some authorities, though on what grounds I do notknow, that the word mordent was at one time used for what is generallycalled the pralltriller -that is, of an ornament in which the auxiliary noteis above the principal. Of course all the recognized writers on the subjectapply the word mordent to the sign with a small vertical stroke different-iating it from the sign for the pralltriller . Happily all the existing treatiseshave been most ably summarised by Edward Dannreuther in his Primerof Ornamentation (Novello Primer Series), and it is not necessary to dwellat length on the interpretation of these older signs, since in that book it ismade fully clear what they all mean. It is in the case of the appoggiaturathat the greatest confusion reigns, and it is the more curious that it shouldbe so, since of all the ornaments this one has lingered longest in practicalmusic, and the difference between a correct and an incorrect performance ofit is enormous. Its conventional sign is of course a small note precedingone of the ordinary size. The acciaccatura , represented by a small notewith a stroke through it, has an assured place in notation, for the thingwhich it expresses could not possibly be expressed without it. The crushingof a note into the chord it precedes is one of the most obvious of ornamentaldevices, and one of the few on which little difference of opinion can arise.But very often editors and publishers have not been sufficiently careful todistinguish between the small note with a stroke through it and the smallnote without a stroke, so that many editions of the classics exist in whichit is almost impossible to tell which ornament of the two is meant till werefer to the original or to some fascimile reprint. The acciaccatura re-mained in use in England in one very odd way, and it may still occasionallybe heard in country churches. The desire of overcoming the lack of rhythmicdefiniteness inherent in the organ led to the indication of the starting-pointof a chord by the introduction of the note immediately below the bass noteas an acciaccatura, so that one used to hear effects like this:

If the study of ornaments and their interpretation were only in order torestore the practical performance of the older music, it might well be leftto a few specialists who could be trusted to preserve the tradition; but asDannreuther well says in the preface to his book, Several of the ornamentsoccur in daily practice, and the entire number cannot be ignored, were in


4/10

J. A. Fuller Maitland, A Note on the Interpretation etc. 545only for the fact that Sebastian Bach makes extensive use of so many . Itis not only because of Bach's supreme position in music that this is said,but because it is precisely in Bach's music that modern editors and inter-preters have, as I think, strayed farthest from the composer's intentions.The student of Bach meets at a very early stage of his studies with anumber of apparently contradictory ways of expressing these ornaments,which now are written out in full, now expressed by the conventional signs,and sometimes implied and not expressed at all. It has been suggested bySpitta that his practice in this connection differed according to the class ofperformers for whom he was writing. In his church cantatas, for the mostpart, the recitatives close with the written notes exactly as they are to besung; in some exceptional cases the usual convention has to be observed andthe cadence performed as if it were in Handel, the last note but one beingwritten as if it were identical with the last note, though it is evident thatthe upper note is to be taken there. Even here Bach's practice is not uniform,nor does he always make things clear even to the church singers. But asa rule he does, and in writing for the secular singers and players he usesthe signs which they would most readily understand. But yet the ordinaryappoggiatura is used in the conventional way throughout both sacred andsecular works, and it is this which has puzzled so many well-meaning editors,who have as yet hit upon no regular method of interpreting its value. Itcan hardly be denied that the best possible authority on the practice ofBach's own time is Daniel Gottlob Tiirk, although his Klavierschule oderAnweisung zum Klavierspielen fiir Lehrer und Lernende, mit kritischenAnmerkungen did not appear until 1789, nearly forty years after Bach'sdeath. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach stood too near to his father's time toexplain quite unmistakably the signs which were in ordinary use in his day,since every one understood them; but Tiirk embodies the practice of Bach'stime with that of later composers, and gives us the clearest idea of whatwas in common use a little while before him. His account of the longappoggiatura, or long Yorschlag , is admirably clear, although Dannreutheris right when he says that Tiirk's explanations cannot be strictly appliedto compositions anterior to the time of C. P. E. Bach . The long Vorschlagconsists of a small note placed before a large one, and generally of thedenomination next lower than the principal note, i.e., minim before a semi-breve, quaver before a crotchet, &c. The undisputed fact that this ornamentoccupies half the time of the principal note has led some later writers tosuppose that the apparent value of the small note is in all cases to be de-ducted from the principal note, so that a Vorschlag or appoggiatura whichrepresents a quaver before a minim will be of shorter duration than onewhich represents a crotchet in the same position. These modern interpretersleave out of account the all-important use of the appoggiatura before dottednotes; for Tiirk's rule is quite clear that in that case the small note robsthe principal note of two-thirds of its value, so that whether in triple orduple time the principal note has to be contented with only one-third of itsnominal value. This use of the Vorschlag is ignored by almost all moderneditors and interpreters; yet there are many cases in Bach's works wherethe strict interpretation according to Tiirk's rule would give a great additionalgrace to the music, and in all cases it would remove from it that jerkyimpression which is undoubtedly produced when the sign is ignored or inter-


5/10

546 J. A. Fuller Maitland, A Note on the Interpretation etc.preted according to the apparent value of the auxiliary note. The commonestform in which the appoggiatura occurs is in a group consisting of a quaverfollowed by two semiquavers and preceded by a little semiquaver. A greatmany musicians know that when this occurs it is to be played as a groupof four even semiquavers, with a slight stress on the first of the group.There can be no doubt at all that in Boccherini's Violoncello sonata in A,a well-known passage in the allegro which stands in the ordinary printededitions as

should really be played with a long appoggiatura as

The error here is of course due to the misprint of the appoggiatura as if itwere an acciaccatura. A curious thing occurs as late as the overture toRossini's Barbiere di Siviglia , where a similar group of notes on its firstoccurrence is printed in the orchestral parts in the conventional manneras a small semiquaver before a group consisting of a quaver and two semi-quavers:-

but at the second occurrence of the phrase the same group is written outin the way in which we should write it at the present day:---------? --- --' -i -- -

I have been told, by no less eminent an authority than the late W. S. Rockstro,it was universally understood in his time that the groups were to beplayed exactly in the same way, and that the conventional notation wassimply adopted in the first instance as a kind of acknowledgment of theobvious fact that the appoggiatura note made an unpermitted discord if itwere taken as a real note. The fact that Casals is accustomed to play thepassage quoted from Boccherini with the short appoggiatura at its firstoccurrence and with the long one at the second, may indicate that he usessome edition in which the convention just referred to is embodied. Rockstroused to maintain also that the custom of writing the appoggiatura in thisconventional way went on to much later days than one would think; andthat Chopin's Prelude in B fiat should be played with a long appoggiatura,thus:

F- 44ZZ47--~Zt=


6/10

J. A. Fuller MIaitland,A Note on the Interpretation etc. 547One would not like to force this interpretation upon modern pianists, butif editors and others would approach the older music without their presentconviction that the written note is to be interpreted as it would be in thepresent day, we should get a far more flowing effect in many things by Bachand other masters. There is a not uncommon objection to this traditionalmethod of interpretation, based on the curious progressions which sometimesresult, or where there are two appoggiaturas at once. For example, in thevery difficult number in the St. Mlatthew Passion, the duet and chorusSo ist mein Jesus nun gefangen , some of the appoggiaturas, if interpretedaccording to Tiirk's rule, do undoubtedly give very curious progressions,and it has therefore become customary to give them in a kind of compromisebetween the long and short Vorschlige , sometimes allowing them no morethan the length of an acciaccatura. Now, to say nothing of the ugly, jerkyeffect that this produces, can anyone who realises the wonderful effect ofthe quiet solo voices contrasted with the exclamations of the choir hesitate toprefer an interpretation which makes for greater smoothness? If we desireto defend this interpretation, we must remember that the appoggiatura notesare entirely free from harmonic rules, and it did not really matter in thetime of Bach whether such notes made even consecutive fifths with someother parts or not. The application of this same rule to thousands of otherinstances is a fascinating employment for the lovers of Bach, and it is onewhich may be recommended very specially to conductors and editors. I oncehad a talk with D)annreuther about the ornaments in the aria of Bach's

Goldberg Variations, in which he had hesitated to apply Tiirk's rule inits full meaning. When I played him the aria in accordance with that rule,he was so struck that he suggested bringing out a new edition of the Varia-tions in order to explain in great detail how the air was to be played.The usual text of the aria and the interpretation according to Tiirk's ruleare given below.Aria con Variaxioni.

__p r~ ?I?C

_I 41 - 1~ _ _

,- '- 5 -1I _-- _______ ____ .


7/10

548 J. A. Fuller Maitland, A Note on the Interpretation etc.

I _ ____ _ __- _ i_ __?___ _F-

i _ I I _ _ _

.-..------- ___--_,

S1 I _1 r_ _ __F? _ _ _ _ _ j K -

--. 4,. __-

___?__A__

__---- _--- =_ _-, -- .--- --___. ____--_-___l. . . . . . . --~,lh I? . , I-

-' ._______ ? . ____zzz~ ....i- __i _

- ~~ ~ iP

_ --F - _-

_ ... . .. ______ - --4 . . .__ ___ ____ _ __- _ __-- - _---- Tc_


8/10

J. A. Fuller Maitland, A Note on the Interpretation etc. 549

I_=~-:--

-~-- - -

, I _ _ _ - -I-I_, z---- --- -' r----r j----- - - -r---- -- - ..I ot-'- -- . . . ----

-- -- - ---

The same according to Tilrk's System of Interpretation,

I -:_tI - -- --- -- -- - - - -.

_. __. . - - -i L- _- ---i -_ ?___.._...__

__, ._ ._ __

__


9/10

550 J. A. Fuller Maitland, A Note on the Interpretation etc.

I .... . --- - - ?.. . - St-?-L

~~-C/ , - -- i J :- , r .I__1)___-

_--_ _- _ 4 - - --F- -__ - -

I_ ________1 _L *ii-r-------e 13;_- --.--- - ?- I--r--r------ _=:-_c ---'_-

/I -

__ _-I- - -47j__ _e. . . . . . . . . . . -C- - -

-I --e -e---- -- --- -t -,__=_.__b-L------- ,-- -- - ...--

- _ F , - - - -I rI

-- - -,---- . . . .. L___

= t =

- - : i1) In this instance the strict interpretation of Tiirk's rule has been modifiedas, according to the letter of that rule, the C sharp would bear the strong accenton the third beat of the bar, and the point of appoggiatura would be lost. The


10/10

J. A. Fuller Maitland, A Note on the Interpretation etc 551

r___

-sL-_. _--

,5 .. J I 4J 1___-4- ,.-,_: ._ _ -:.--

-1--- ~ _ _

,4-P-,i--_- 7-- -, -_ -:- -, - .

- -1 -- - --_--_ ___. ___ _. . . . ..._-,-_-,C----- ---v__- _________ - _

---~-t- -

1--.-f--- -.-?---------- --e- --4__--_-_-__-_----_ _ _ _ _ - i-_jj

friend.Isupon ern -u onlytbe

I do not wish to enforce my own opinions, or those of my masters andfriends, upon modern students, but only to beg the moderns to compare theeffect of the two interpretations, and to see if they do not agree with methat the conventional way (putting aside its high historical authority) is notalso the most effective in the true sense.above reading may be justified by the assumption that the demisemiquaver C sharp,to which the crotchet is tied, is regarded as too short to bear the stress, of whichexamples are to be found in bars five and six of the second part of the aria, wherethe crotchet, tied to a semiquaver, loses virtually its entire value to the appoggia-tura before it.

A Note on Interp of Ornam

Documents

Transcript of A Note on Interp of Ornam