(It.: ‘bound’; Fr. lié; Ger. gebunden).
Of successive notes in performance, connected without any intervening silence of articulation. In practice, the connection or separation of notes is relative, and achieved through the presence or absence of emphasis, Accent and attack, as much as silences of articulation; degrees of connection and separation vary from legatissimo (representing the closest degree of connection), tenuto, portamento, legato, portato, non legato, mezzo-staccato, Staccato (the natural antonym of legato), to staccatissimo, and some of these terms have connotations going beyond simple degrees of connection or separation.
In 20th-century notation, legato is generally indicated by means of the Slur across a succession of notes; the beginnings and ends of slurs are now generally marked by articulations (of bowing or tonguing in string and wind instruments, and of phrasing in keyboard instruments). The slur often, however, had a vaguer general meaning of ‘legato’ in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Successions of notes in modern notation are seldom left without any indication of articulation, but if they are, the performer will normally presume that a legato style of playing is called for.
This notion, that legato playing represents an ‘ordinary’ style of performance rather than a special effect, perhaps originated in the cavatina style of early 19th-century Italian opera and its imitation in Romantic instrumental music, or before that in the cantabile slow-movement styles of the 18th century. In earlier centuries, both legato and staccato styles of playing were normally available as special effects, the normal style of playing and singing often being something between the two: in medieval and Renaissance music, the ligature seems sometimes to have been a prescription of a special legato effect. The degree of legato to be used also depended on repertory and instrument: for example, Diruta (Il transilvano, Venice, 1593, 1609) distinguished between a legato organ style and a detached harpsichord style for dance music. For Baroque and early Classical fast movements, a non-legato style was regarded as usual, whereas the legato was normally reserved for long notes and slow movements (C.P.E. Bach, Versuch, 1753; Quantz, Versuch, 1752, etc.; this style of performance is still called for by Türk, Clavierschule, 1804). In some 18th-century music, slurs over arpeggiated chords imply a kind of legatissimo, where all notes are to be held down until the chord changes.
For translations from relevant early authorities, see Donington; for useful general advice on legato and staccato in early music, see Badura-Skoda, Ferguson and Keller.
See also Articulation and phrasing; Articulation marks and Bow, §II, 3.
H. Keller: Phrasierung und Artikulation (Kassel, 1955; Eng. trans., 1965, 2/1973)
E. and P. Badura-Skoda: Mozart-Interpretation (Vienna and Stuttgart, 1957; Eng. trans., 1962/R as Interpreting Mozart on the Keyboard)
R. Donington: The Interpretation of Early Music (London, 1963, 5/1992)
H. Ferguson: Keyboard Interpretation (London, 1975)
C. Brown: Classical and Romantic Performing Practice (Oxford, 1998)
GEOFFREY CHEW