Staccato

(It.: ‘detached’).

Of an individual note in performance, usually separated from its neighbours by a silence of articulation. The separation may be, but is not invariably, accompanied by some degree of emphasis, and occasionally the term may imply emphasis without physical separation. The term may be regarded as the antonym of Legato; a degree of articulation intermediate between staccato and legato, which has sometimes been represented by the term ‘non legato’, was regarded by certain 18th-century authorities as the normal method of playing melodies with life (according to C.P.E. Bach in his Versuch, 1753, it implied playing with ‘fire and a slight accentuation’). It is not always clear, however, that the use of the term ‘non-legato’ implies something different from staccato marks; in late Beethoven, for instance, the use of the term ‘non-legato’ or staccato marks, often occurring after legato passages, may both merely be intended as indications not to slur.

In 20th-century notation the staccato is generally prescribed by means of a dot over or under the note and is distinguished from the more emphatic staccatissimo, indicated by a wedge. Furthermore, modern notation often prescribes the technical means to be adopted by the performer in order to secure the required effect. String playing is particularly rich in such distinctions: for example, there is a difference between a staccato in which the bow remains on the string (with or without a change of bow direction for each note) and the Sautillé and spiccato in which the bow leaves the string between each pair of notes. Such technical distinctions gradually came into use from the 18th century; for details, see Bow, §II, 2(iv, vii) and 3(vi–ix).

Before the second half of the 19th century, dots, dashes and wedges were likely to have the same meaning, although some notators and theorists distinguished between dots and dashes, meaning different degrees of staccato, at least from the time of Quantz (Versuch, 1752) and Leopold Mozart (Violinschule, 1756), and it was generally expected in the 18th century that performers would make use of a variety of different touches. The autograph score of the Molto Allegro of Mozart’s Symphony no.41, shows a mixture of bold dashes and smaller staccato marks which, although they are actually small dashes, have often been taken to represent dots. Such passages, in which one or other form predominates or where smaller or larger marks appear to be consistently associated with particular elements in the musical phrases, have led many scholars to maintain that Mozart, and other composers of the period whose autographs contain a similar variety of forms of staccato marks, intended to indicate two distinct types of staccato execution by means of these marks. On the basis of theoretical writings, the dash has usually been considered to indicate a shorter and sharper execution, and the dot a longer and lighter one (though the writings of some theorists suggest alternative interpretations). Advocates of a deliberate differentiation between dots and dashes in the music of some 18th-century composers are, however, faced with rationalizing many passages, such as the one in fig.1 from the Andante of Mozart’s String Quartet in E k614, where the variety of the forms is so extensive as to render a meaningful distinction between two distinct types impracticable. A number of scholars (perhaps most persuasively P. Mies: ‘Die Artikulationszeichen Strich und Punkt bei Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’, Mf, xi (1958), 428–55) have argued that the apparent distinction between dots and dashes resulted from habits of writing, particularly at speed. This line of argument provides a plausible alternative explanation of seemingly consequential differentiation between the two forms. Whether or not a notational distinction was sometimes intended, there can be no doubt that composers envisaged, and the best performers employed, a continuous spectrum of subtly varied staccato execution, not two discrete types. One distinction, almost invariably observed by Mozart, Beethoven, and many of their contemporaries, was between normal staccato marks and staccato marks under a slur indicating portato; in the latter case, whatever the form of their marks elsewhere, they punctiliously employed dots. In Baroque thoroughbass notation, vertical dashes are sometimes used to indicate tasto solo passages, no doubt also implying some degree of emphasis or articulation.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries a wide variety of signs came to be used to signify various nuances of staccato articulation involving numerous combinations of dots, vertical and horizontal dashes, vertical and horizontal wedges etc., in the music of such composers as Debussy and Schoenberg. Attempts have been made since then to standardize this aspect of notation, but without general success.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

H. Keller: Phrasierung und Artikulation (Kassel, 1955; Eng. trans., 1965, 2/1973)

H. Albrecht, ed.: Die Bedeutung der Zeichen Keil, Strich und Punkt bei Mozart (Kassel, 1957) [see also P. Mies, Mf, xi (1958), 428–55]

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, 4/1989)

C. Brown: ‘Dots and Strokes in Late 18th- and 19th-Century Music’, EMc, xxi (1993), 593–610

C. Brown: Classical and Romantic Performing Practice (Oxford, 1999)

GEOFFREY CHEW/CLIVE BROWN