Those more or less brief and conventional formulae of embellishment which have always been liable to occur within traditions of free ornamentation (see Improvisation), and which proliferated in European music of the Baroque period. They have often been indicated by symbols, although composers, performers, music copyists and editors, and scholars have by no means always shown consistency or agreement in the use of specific symbols. Moreover, the general understanding of signs, symbols, terms and contemporary performing styles of ornamentation has varied greatly across time and place. This article deals primarily with the symbols used in Western art music and their interpretation.
Throughout much of the history of western European music, performers have been inclined to embellish the notes provided them by the composer. Even in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it is convenient to make a distinction between two kinds of embellishment. On the one hand, the technique of applying improvised or semi-improvised running figuration patterns to a given melody, so-called divisions or passaggi, creates melodic variation. Graces, on the other hand, are conventional melodic ornaments applied to single notes; by the Baroque era graces were indicated by a variety of stylized signs, most of which had, at least by intention, a particular meaning.
1. Middle Ages and Renaissance.
9. Late 18th century and 19th.
11. Index to ornaments and table of signs.
KENNETH KREITNER (1), LOUIS JAMBOU (2), DESMOND HUNTER (3), STEWART A. CARTER (4), PETER WALLS (5), KAH-MING NG (6–7), DAVID SCHULENBERG (8), CLIVE BROWN (9–10)
Before the 17th century ornamental signs in the conventional sense, added to notes to change their interpretation, were found only in keyboard and lute manuscripts, most of which were written in idiomatic tablatures. The earliest known use of stylized ornamental signs is seen in keyboard sources of the 14th and 15th centuries: the Robertsbridge Codex (c1320, GB-Lbl Add.28550) places a small circle above certain notes, and a number of German keyboard tablatures of the 15th century, most prominently the Buxheim Keyboard Manuscript (c1460–70, D-Mbs Mus.ms.3725), use a note form that adds a downward stem with a triangular loop. In all these cases it is clear that some sort of ornament is being indicated, but its exact nature (or even whether the same figure was meant every time) remains obscure.
Ornamental signs in lute tablatures came later: Vincenzo Capirola, in his manuscript anthology of lute music (1515–20, US-Cn VM C.25), used dotted red numerals to identify the upper auxiliary of a mordent and two dots above the number of the fret for the grace he called tremolo d'un tasto solo (tremolo on one fret), by which he meant a mordent, usually alternating between the first fret and the open string. In the 1548 Milanese edition of P.P. Borrono's music (Intavolatura di lauto … libro secondo, published by Castiglione) parentheses were inserted to isolate the two notes of a mordent.
English lute and keyboard sources of the late 16th and early 17th centuries also employed signs for mandatory ornaments. The most familiar are probably the diagonal strokes of varying number added to the stems of some notes by keyboard composers to indicate graces, as in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book (1609–19, GB-Cfm; see §3 below); Diana Poulton (B1975) described and explained other kinds of grace, sometimes indicated by crosses or other signs, that appear in English lutebooks of the period. In all these cases the use of the signs appears to be unstandardized and experimental, and their interpretation must be made on a source-by-source, or even sometimes a composition-by-composition basis.
For most of the vocal and instrumental ensemble music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, however, ornaments were not specified in the musical text but were added by performers at will within a more or less unwritten set of customs and proprieties. In this music, then, it is often impossible to draw clear lines between what we would call ornamentation, improvisation and arrangement, and the unwritten practice has to be reconstructed hypothetically. Evidence of its existence and nature is more abundant for some repertories than others, and as with most aspects of musical performance it is more explicit for the 16th century than before. Yet some sort of ornamental practice can reasonably be inferred for practically every repertory before 1600.
A number of early chant manuscripts use Significative letters, some of which may have had the effect of ornaments though their exact meanings are still conjectural. Several symbols of chant notation still used today had an original function that we would consider ornamental: the Liquescent neumes (epiphonus, cephalicus etc.) probably implied some sort of glissando; the quilisma also a glissando, possibly with a volume vibrato added; and the repercussive neumes (bistropha, tristropha, pressus etc.) an actual restriking of the note. All these interpretations are obscured by the uniformity of modern Solesmes style (see Notation, §III, 1).
Contemporary descriptions of 13th-century polyphony, chiefly by Anonymus 4, Franco of Cologne and Hieronymous de Moravia, show that, for all its fanciness as written, the music of the Notre Dame period was further embellished in performance. Anonymus 4 refers to a longa florata (flowered long) and a duplex longa florata (see Anonymous theoretical writings, §2, no.23), and Hieronymus describes several interpretative possibilities such as the florificatio vocis and flos harmonicus (both of which we would probably call trills), the reverberatio (an ornamental appoggiatura from below) and the nota procellaris (possibly a vibrato). All seem to have been added most appropriately to long notes, especially at the beginning or end of a phrase. The Plica, which developed from the liquescent neumes of chant and survived into the Franconian era, seems always to have functioned as a kind of grace note, sung differently from its companions.
Specific observations of this sort are more difficult to establish for secular monophony and for the polyphony of the 14th and 15th centuries. But the scattered remarks of theorists, normally lamenting excessive ornamentation, suggest that the tradition of adding ornaments to existing musical texts was all but universal, and a close examination of multiple versions and intabulations of a single song can reveal something of the character of this tradition.
By 1529 Martin Agricola in his Musica instrumentalis deudsch assumed that his audience of amateur instrumentalists would want to learn to add ornaments to their music, though his own instructions, even in a later edition, are fragmentary and abortive. As the musical literacy of amateurs grew over the course of the 16th century, however, a number of treatises offered instruction, in greater and lesser detail, in the art of instrumental and vocal ornamentation. Among the best-known are those by Ganassi (B1535), Ortiz (B1553), Dalla Casa (B1584), Bassano (B1585), Zacconi (E1592), Diruta (E1593) and Bovicelli (E1594). Their languages and vocabulary vary but, as Brown (B1976) has shown, most divide their subject broadly into graces (ornaments added to a single note) and passaggi or divisions (ornaments added between notes or over a longer passage).
They also generally agree that the two most important graces are the tremolo (in modern parlance, a trill or mordent) and groppo (or gruppo; a cadential upper-note trill, often with a turn at the end), and some add a few variants and additions such as Diruta's clamatione (a portamento up to the first note of a passage from a 3rd or 4th below) and Zacconi and Bovicelli's accento (a dotted figure filling in or expanding a written interval). Their treatments of passaggi are much more individual, but most share a pedagogical method, traceable at least to the early 15th century (see Fallows, B1990), in which each basic interval is decorated in numerous different ways – Ortiz, for example, shows 12 ways to fill in a major 2nd, Ganassi 28 and Bovicelli 35 – which the student would presumably practise over and over to develop a ready fund of ornamental figures to add while playing or singing (ex.1). Several treatises add specimen pieces of music with written-out ornamentation; these give a vivid, if perhaps exaggerated, view of the wealth of ornaments available and the use to which they were put in performance.
It must be emphasized that this kind of ornamentation was fundamentally an improvised practice, completely at the performer's discretion: no conventional 16th-century partbooks or choirbooks indicate ornaments in any way. The clean, uncluttered appearance of the music on the page is thus misleading. Performers of the Renaissance, instrumentalists and singers alike, saw improvised ornamentation as part of their fundamental training and their daily musical duty. The ability to add graces and passaggi at sight was part of the personality that a musician brought to the job; the treatises are full of commonsense advice on how to temper virtuosity with taste. Accompanied solo music, they say, may be ornamented more liberally than ensemble music; superius parts more than lower lines; happy music more than sad; cadences more than phrase beginnings; repetitions of a phrase more than its first presentation. Singers are further cautioned not to let their ornaments obscure the words, to abstain altogether in choral music with more than one on a part, and to avoid elaborate passaggi on the vowels ‘u’ and ‘i’.
See also Cadenza.
The first Spanish treatises referring to ornamentation – D.M. Durán's Súmula de canto de órgano (Salamanca, c1504) and the anonymous manuscript Arte de melodía sobre canto llano y canto d'órgano (early 16th century, E-Bbc 1325) – are concerned with vocal rather than instrumental music. Later, vihuelists (Milán, 1536) and other musicians (Ortiz, 1553; Bermudo, 1555; Santa María, 1565; Cerone, 1613) provided more extensive definition of instrumental ornamentation, combining the study of specific fingerings with attention to their execution. Correa de Arauxo (1626) alluded to the vocal ornaments recorded in the 17th century by such travellers as the Countess d'Aulnoy (see L. Jambou in Actes du Colloque musical franco-espagnol, Paris, 1999), and Martín y Coll introduced ornamented passages in his exercises for vocal training (2/1719). Nassarre (1723–4) considered both vocal and instrumental ornaments – the latter in connection with the keyboard – but observed that vocal music could sustain the execution of long ornamented passages only with difficulty. Thus the preponderance of attention paid to instrumental ornamentation partly obliterates a vocal practice of which little is known.
Theorists and practising musicians alike were concerned to define the ornamental procedures proper to their favourite string or keyboard instruments. This attitude entailed the use of terminology that evolved over the centuries and often had different meanings in different contexts. For example, vihuelists in the second third of the 16th century equated the redoble with the disminución or pasaje, whereas keyboard players of the period used redoble and quiebro interchangeably to mean trill. In the later 17th century guitarists such as Gaspar Sanz, Ruiz de Ribayaz and Francisco Guerau called the trill a trino; they also enriched the vocabulary of ornamentation with effects typical of the Baroque period: apoyamento, esmorsata, aleado, mordente, extrasino, temblor, arpeado. Organists called the redoble a glosa, a term also employed by Ortiz; for Nassarre, however, glosa was a generic term embracing such ornaments as the trino and aleado (mordent, although the term seems to have had a wider sense when applied to string instruments). Torres y Martínez Bravo employed glosas or figuras disminuidas as a general term for ornaments in his treatise on basso continuo (Reglas generales de acompañar, 1702, 2/1736).
From the first these musicians distinguished between ornamentation on an upper or lower neighbour note and ornamentation on a disjunct interval, or division. Santa María was the first to make systematic use of both division – a subject discussed and in part rejected by Bermudo – and ornamentation; the latter (ex.2) was restricted to the quiebro (mordent) and redoble, each of which comprised a number of forms (quiebro antiguo or nuevo reyterado, senzillo or de minimas, redoble antiguo or nuevo). His terminology thus distinguished between old practices and innovations in which the ornament typically began on an anacrusis. Correa de Arauxo applied this typology to new forms, while recognizing the use of quiebro by singers as synonymous with redoble; he himself used the term as a synonym for trinado and trino (ex.3). At the beginning of the 17th century players of plucked string instruments were more concerned to describe and codify the new rasgueado techniques of the Baroque guitar than to specify signs for ornaments; it was left to Sanz, in his Instrucción de música sobre la guitarra sobre la guitarra española (3/1674), to define and codify them according to a new system of nomenclature.
Oblique strokes indicating embellishment were introduced in England in the early 16th century. The most common symbol is the double stroke, which appears in virtually every source of English keyboard music in the period c1530–c1650. The single stroke occurs with much less frequency, and the triple stroke is confined to a small number of sources; a quadruple stroke is rare. Additional signs and what appear to be qualifying signs are given in a few sources. Sweelinck adopted the English usage of the double stroke and transmitted it to the north German school; the symbol is mentioned by Reincken in his Hortus musicus (1687). The signs are not discussed by any English theorist of the 16th or 17th century; their meanings must therefore be deduced largely from their application in the sources.
In the earliest surviving sources of English keyboard music (GB-Lbl Roy.App.56 and 58, both c1530), the application of single- and double-stroke signs is not related to embellishment. The single stroke is used in one of two ways: as a visual aid to clarify the movement of an inner part, or as a correction sign indicating that a note value has been given at a level too low. In these contexts the sign tends to be drawn horizontally rather than obliquely. The double stroke is used to effect cancellation. Signs consisting of two to four oblique strokes are used in the Mulliner Book (GB-Lbl Add.30513) to clarify part-writing when the parts cross. Furthermore, they are used to identify the merging of two voices in the Mulliner Book and in the 16th-century sections of GB-Lbl Add.29996. There is evidence that signs continued to be used occasionally as visual aids, sometimes to highlight particular rhythmic activity or to draw attention to an imitative entry. Cosyn's habit of drawing a single oblique stroke through the note head of each semibreve in a cantus firmus is simply a means of highlighting the line.
The earliest source in which single and double strokes appear to be associated with embellishment is the Matthew Bible of 1537 (Almonry Museum, Evesham). Both signs are used in music entered on three pages of the bible around 1540, possibly as an abbreviation for a division; the double stroke substitutes for an oscillation or a form of shake. Signs also appear to function occasionally as abbreviations for various divisions in the early sections of GB-Lbl Add.29996.
In the pieces added to the Mulliner Book around 1570 the single stroke is used as a grace sign but only in combination, either with two other single-stroke signs or with one single stroke and one double stroke. Clearly, single strokes in combination avoid confusion with correction. A parallel can be drawn with application in the Dublin Virginal Manuscript (c1570; EIRE-Dtc 410/2); in this source the single stroke is also used only in combination. In the Mulliner Book the combined signs grace triads and suggest some form of elaborate spread, possibly involving an element of oscillation. In the Dublin Virginal Manuscript pairs of single strokes grace notated 3rds, 5ths and 6ths; some form of oscillation seems to be the most likely meaning. The pairs of double strokes which also feature in this source suggest that a more rapid variety of oscillation is required. Active oscillating patterns are notated occasionally in keyboard music by Redford, Tallis and Blitheman. Double-stroke pairs, gracing mainly right-hand 3rds, are given in later sources, notably Clement Matchett's Book (1612, GB-En 9448). Triad gracing also occurs in later sources. This may involve one sign, occasionally two, exceptionally three; it tends to occur at the beginning or end of a strain, the probable implication being elaborate arpeggiation of the triad.
Throughout the virginalist era (c1570–c1650) a convention was observed with regard to the positioning of grace signs: the strokes are drawn through or placed at the ends of stems of minims and shorter note values; signs gracing semibreves and breves are normally placed above the note if it is in the higher or highest part on the staff, or below the note if it is in the lower or lowest part; however, some copyists drew the strokes through the note heads. Positioning at variance with this convention can often be attributed to careless copying or lack of space. Sometimes, however, it is applied in a way or with a degree of consistency which suggests that some special meaning may attach to it. In My Ladye Nevells Booke (1591), for instance, there is unusual positioning of several single- and double-stroke signs in The Carman's Whistle: the signs are drawn below blackened semibreves where one would expect superscript positioning (ex.4). A form of lower-note embellishment would seem to be implied, the subscript positioning indicating that the grace should begin on a note below the graced note. This application is of considerable interest in view of the fact that correction of the manuscript may have been undertaken by the composer of the pieces, Byrd, who tended to express improvised embellishment by using mainly the all-purpose double-stroke sign.
A written-out shake provided in one source for a given piece may be replaced by a double stroke in another; and it is clear that the sign and the notated division were considered analogous. Furthermore, some analogy existed between the signs: in Duncan Burnett's Book (c1600, GB-En 9447), for instance, the single stroke is often given in contexts in which realization as a shake seems to be required, the single stroke probably implying an upper-note start. An additional sign is used in this source (a slur-like curve directly under or over the note), possibly to distinguish a specific grace (perhaps a mordent).
Fingering indications are provided in a number of sources, and where these are given on graced notes they offer some help in determining appropriate realization of the implied graces. Such fingering usually confirms that improvised embellishment implied by grace signs would normally be accommodated within the line (as described by Santa María and Ammerbach). Other symbols which qualify the meaning of grace signs occur in the Weelkes Manuscript (GB-Lbl Add.30485). In this source, in pieces by Byrd, there are a number of instances in which a double stroke is accompanied by either a semiquaver or a sign which bears some resemblance to that used for the beat in the later decades of the 17th century (ex.5). The semiquaver seems to relate to speed of execution, the beat-like sign to shape and duration. In each context a cadential shake would be appropriate. If this is the meaning of the combined signs it suggests that the double stroke on its own normally implies a shorter grace. Indeed, on occasions both the single stroke and the double stroke appear to indicate very short, crisp graces. Furthermore, notational restrictions may affect the form or duration of realization; in ex.6, for instance, any form of lower-note realization of the single stroke is ruled out by the high tenor part. In the often cited table attributed to Edward Bevin (ex.7) the single stroke is expressed as a slide, and indeed realization as a lower-note grace is occasionally suggested by fingering indications; support for Bevin's interpretation is provided in Prendcourt's treatise on harpsichord playing and thoroughbass (c1700), transcribed by Roger North (GB-Lbl Add.32531). Although Bevin and Prendcourt may have identified one meaning of the single stroke, it is clear that the sign was also associated with upper-note realization.
The triple stroke functions as a grace sign in the Mulliner Book but only in one piece, a setting of Gloria tibi Trinitas by Blitheman. In this context the application seems to imply a short, crisp grace. There is some evidence in a later source connecting the strokes with speed of execution: in A Ground by Tomkins, recorded in the 17th-century section of GB-Lbl Add.29996, double-, triple- and quadruple-stroke signs occur in quick succession, and it would seem logical to realize the implied embellishments in a way that provides increased activity through this passage (ex.8). Triple-stroke signs are given in other 17th-century sources, in particular those associated with Cosyn. The sign appears to have more than one meaning. One interpretation is that it is a compound of a single stroke and a double stroke, and as such is possibly an ancestor of Locke's forefall and shake (Melothesia, 1673; see §6 below).
In summary, when oblique strokes were associated with embellishment they were probably used initially as abbreviations for various divisions. From about 1550 the signs seem to have acquired a freer association with embellishment. Only from the second half of the 17th century is there any real evidence of grace signs being associated with specific formulae. Nevertheless, it seems likely that by the mid-16th century the double-stroke sign in particular had developed an association with a form of shake.
Ornamentation in early Baroque Italian music was inseparable from expression in general. Above all, singing and playing had to be accomplished with grace, an aesthetic concept so closely linked to ornamentation that the plural form grazie was applied generically to all the small-scale ornaments that came into vogue around 1600. These new ornaments (also called accenti, affetti or maniere) co-existed with the more elaborate passaggi or diminutions, which were remnants of Renaissance practice. In 1600 Pietro della Valle heard Cavalieri's Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo in Rome. He later observed that this performance marked a watershed in Italian vocal style, introducing dynamic and dramatic effects and affetti, whereas previously singers had used only passaggi and trilli (Dickey, E1997, pp.245–6).
Singers were expected to perform passaggi with disposizione di voce (disposition of the voice). The latter term has aesthetic connotations but refers also to glottal articulation, which allows for precise definition of rapid streams of notes (Greenlee, E1987) and demands both speed and relatively low breath pressure (Sanford, A1997). Rognoni (E1620) related this vocal technique to the reversed tonguing (‘le-re-le-re’) of the cornett.
Most of the diminution manuals that serve as primary sources for passaggi follow a similar plan, presenting various patterns for embellishing simple intervals, cadential figures and stock phrases; some include fully ornamented pieces as well. The ten rules in Virgiliano's Dolcimelo (c1600; translated in Dickey, E1997, pp.248–9) provide a cogent summary of diminution practices. Ornamental patterns for a specific interval typically begin and end with the first note of that interval, before proceeding to the second skeletal note; Virgiliano advised placing this note in the middle of the pattern as well. If the pattern does not end with the initial note of the interval, it should nonetheless approach the second note from the same direction. Melodic motion is predominantly conjunct. By way of illustration, nine variations on the ascending 5th by Rognoni are shown in ex.9. Motion in quavers predominates in earlier manuals, but later books show more variation in rhythmic values and greater reliance on dotted notes. Another innovation in the later manuals is that small-scale ornaments are sometimes incorporated into passaggi. Ex.10 illustrates why so many observers of the time complained that over-elaborate passaggi could make a sad piece sound happy. (Rognoni's ornamental pattern has more beats than the original – a fairly common feature of his diminutions.) Frescobaldi added the rubric ‘come sta’ (as it stands) to some of his canzonas, probably as an admonition to forgo passaggi (but not affetti). Caccini (E1601/2) complained that singers too often used them indiscriminately on short rather than long syllables, thereby obscuring the text, though he occasionally admitted them on short syllables for decoration. He further professed his desire to make passaggi serve the meaning of the text.
In considering small-scale ornaments, one must approach the terminology with a certain scepticism. One author's trillo is another's tremolo, and a given term is sometimes used both generically and specifically in the same treatise. A further consideration is the difficulty of representing ornaments in notation. Trillo was perhaps the most ubiquitous term for a small-scale ornament in early Baroque Italy, and its abbreviation, ‘t’ or ‘tr’, was the only widely used ornament symbol. For Cavalieri (E1600) this ornament was the alternation of a note with its upper auxiliary (ex.11); Diruta (E1593) and Praetorius (PraetoriusSM) called the same effect ‘tremolo’. More often trillo refers to the rapid reiteration of a single note, a hallmark of early Baroque Italian vocal style (ex.12). Caccini said that the trillo was beaten with the throat. Glottal articulation for this ornament is confirmed in Monteverdi's Ritorno d'Ulisse in patria, where the composer has written above a notated trillo, ‘qui cade in riso naturale’ (here one falls into natural laughter; ex.13).
The two commonly recognized models for the early Baroque trillo – alternating notes and repeated notes – oversimplify the problem (Carter, E1990). Caccini's preface contains additional illustrations of the trillo that differ significantly from the design in ex.12 – brief, often non-cadential patterns that include auxiliary notes as well as repeated notes (ex.14). Such designs often comprise only a pair of repeated notes, which probably can be multiplied at the performer's discretion, following the advice of Durante (E1608). Quite possibly this alternative species of trillo also requires a subtler articulation. Notari (E1613) described the trillo as ‘a kinde of sweetness in your voice’, and Herbst (I1642, 3/1658) called it a ‘charming buzz’ (‘liebliches sausen’). Thus articulation of the trillo may have ranged from the sharp repercussions of a belly laugh to a subtle vibrato.
The gruppo (also groppo; ‘cluster’) is similar to a modern trill with a turned ending (ex.15). Rognoni compared it to the trillo: both are cadential ornaments, and both require glottal articulation. The cascata (ex.16) is simply a fall; all Caccini's illustrations of this ornament involve a characteristic rhythmic alteration that enhances the effect of the cascade. As its name suggests, the ribattuta di gola (restriking of the throat), which sometimes introduces a trillo, requires glottal articulation (ex.17). The intonazione (ex.18), though disparaged by Caccini, was recommended by Rognoni as a means of giving grace to the beginning of a note. The accento is an ornament used to connect two longer notes; it is not easily defined but often includes dotted rhythms (Dickey, B1991). Rognoni said it was most properly used in descending (ex.19) rather than ascending. According to Zacconi, accenti were particularly useful where passaggi might be inappropriate: on highly affective words, for example, or at the opening of a piece in imitative style where a voice sings by itself (Dickey, E1997, pp.256–7).
Some small-scale ornaments combine melodic and dynamic effects. Rognoni's portar la voce (‘carriage of the voice’) is made by ‘reinforcing the voice on the first note little by little, and then making a tremolo on the black [note, i.e. crotchet]’ (ex.20). For Doni (E1635) this reinforcing associated with the portar la voce (and the related strascino) also involved a gradual rise in pitch from the lower to the higher. Doni said that these effects were useful for mournful texts and were more suitable for female voices or castratos than for ordinary male voices. Mazzocchi's messa di voce similarly involves both a rise in pitch and an increase in dynamic level. Dynamic effects were also addressed by Caccini, who recommended the crescere e scemare di voce (increase and decrease of the voice, hence related to the messa di voce) for the beginning of a phrase. But he preferred above all the opposite effect, the esclamazione (ex.21), which he called a strengthening of the relaxed voice. Rognoni advised adding a tremolino (short repeated-note ornament) to the short note following the dotted note in this pattern.
Instrumentalists strove mightily to imitate the human voice, employing passaggi as well as small-scale ornaments and ideally adapting their ornaments to the character of the music. Farina (Capriccio stravagante, 1627) mentioned a special type of tremolo for string instruments that was done with a pulsating of the hand holding the bow, imitating the organ Tremulant. It received occasional use throughout the 17th century, often in affective slow movements (ex.22; see Carter, E1991). While the repeated-note trillo was occasionally employed in music for instruments as diverse as keyboard (ex.23) and trumpet (ex.24), a unique type of trillo was applied to the guitar in rasgueado style: the performer makes a rapid series of up- and down-strokes, touching all the strings. According to Foscarini (c1630; cited in Tyler, A1980, pp.83–4) it was done with a downward stroke with the thumb and then an up-stroke (with the thumb) and similarly with the middle finger. A similar rasgueado ornament is the repicco, which is more complex than the trillo and uses a variety of finger patterns. Like the trillo it generally covers all the strings, and often doubles, triples or even quadruples the number of written strokes.
In spite of Italian leadership in the development of Baroque ornamentation, native writers were curiously reticent on the subject after the early 1600s. Rognoni's Selva di varii passaggi (E1620) was the last comprehensive theoretical source on ornamentation to appear in Italy before the end of the century, and apart from a few scattered references one must look to German treatises for advice at mid-century. Following the lead of Praetorius's Syntagma musicum (1614–19), many of these Germans – including Bernhard (Ic1649), Herbst (I1642) and Crüger (E1630, E1660) – were enthusiastic advocates of the Italian style, though their knowledge of its ornamentation practices may have been largely second-hand (see §8 below).
(ii) Ornamentation in vocal music.
(iii) Ornamentation in the continuo.
Ornaments, §5: Italy, 1650–1750
Few ornament symbols were used in Italian music in the period 1650–1750, and of those that do appear, roughly half are associated with Geminiani or Pasquali, both of whom spent their musical careers in the British Isles. Insofar as there was an internationally understood set of symbols for ‘essential’ ornaments in the late Baroque period, it was predominantly French or German. J.J. Quantz (Versuch einer Anweisung, die Flöte traversiere zu spielen, I1752) observed, ‘In the Italian style in former times no embellishments at all were set down, and everything was left to the caprice of the performer’ (although he added that ‘for some time … those who follow the Italian manner have also begun to indicate the most necessary embellishments’). Thus, for example, the first edition of Corelli's Sonate a violino e violone o cimbalo op.5 (1700) lacks not only the celebrated free ornamentation of the 1710 Estienne Roger edition, but any ornament signs whatsoever – not even cadential trills are indicated. Even when Quantz explained that an Italian adagio required both free embellishment and the use of essential ornaments, he identified the latter with a French patrimony and implied that the Italian style subsumed the French: ‘In the second manner, that is, the Italian, extensive artificial graces that accord with the harmony are introduced in the adagio in addition to the little French embellishments’.
Nicola Matteis, in his Le false consonanze della musica (Gc1680), after advising guitarists to develop a ‘clever shake sweet and quick’, insisted that, ‘To set your tune off the better, you must make severall sorts of Graces of your one Genius, it being very troublesome for the Composer to mark them’. Roger North, writing in 1728, put the reticence of ‘the elder Italians’ down to an unwillingness to patronize competent musicians: ‘in their finest cantatas [they] have exprest no graces, as much as to say, Whoever is fitt to sing this, knows the comon decorums’. P.F. Tosi (Opinioni de' cantori antichi, e moderni, G1723) seems to confirm this view:
If the Scholar be well instructed in this, the Appoggiatura's will become so familiar to him by continual Practice, that by the Time he is come out of his first Lessons, he will laugh at those Composers that mark them, with a Design either to be thought Modern, or to shew that they understand the Art of singing better than the Singers. If they have this Superiority over them, why do they not write down even the Graces, which are more difficult and more essential than the Appoggiatura's?
Tosi dismissed as a ‘foreign infantile practice’ the tendency to indicate ornamentation in scores, a barb which struck home with his German translator, J.F. Agricola, who inserted a slightly aggrieved justification for being explicit about both appoggiaturas and free ornamentation (Anleitung zur Singekunst, I1757).
Not only are ornament signs few and far between in Italian scores, but there is little comment on the subject in Italian music treatises. As Frederick Neumann observed (I1978), ‘about 1620, a long silence, which lasted more than one hundred years, settled on Italian ornamentation theory’. A number of figured-bass manuals make passing mention of ornaments, especially cadential trills. The most informative of these is Gasparini's L'armonico pratico al cimbalo (F1708) where three chapters cover the use of acciaccaturas, mordents and embellishment in figured-bass accompaniments. Tosi has a fairly lengthy discussion of ornamentation from a singer's point of view. Tartini's Traité des agréments de la musique, probably written about the middle of the century and eventually published in a French translation by Pierre Denis (F1771), deals extensively with ornamentation. Geminiani's later scores are laden with ornament and dynamic indications; but by 1739, when the revised edition of his op.1 violin sonatas (‘con le grazie agli adagi’) appeared, his eclectic style, influenced by his fascination with French music, had become so idiosyncratic that he could no longer be regarded as a spokesperson for Italian performance. This was recognized by various 18th-century commentators and stated most forcefully by John Hawkins in 1776: ‘It is much to be doubted whether the talents of Geminiani were of such a kind as qualified him to give a direction to the national taste’.
Italian writers are not our only source of information about Italian ornamentation practices in this period. The widely held view that Italy and France had, in Quantz's phrasing, set themselves up as the sovereign judges and legislators in matters of taste meant that there was intense interest in the Italian style in other parts of Europe. Christoph Bernhard, in his succinct treatise on ornamentation Von der Singe-Kunst oder Maniera (Ic1649), used Italian terminology and treated the entire subject as if it were an Italian concern, discussing the differences between the Roman style (cantar sodo) and the more florid Neapolitan approach (cantar d'affetto or cantar passaggiato). His snapshot of mid-17th-century practice shows, for example, that the trillo as a repeated-note ornament was still in vogue. (G.A. Pandolfi wrote out trilli of this kind in several of his 1660 Sonate a violino solo.) Bernhard's small ornaments are limited to the trill, the accent and various types of portamento. Muffat's essay on playing in the Italian style (the preface to Ausserlesene Instrumentalmusik, 1701) made only passing and oblique mention of ornamentation (in sharp contrast to his equivalent essay on the French style), and this was to condemn players who ruined the music by an excess of ill-considered invention. (This was quite a common complaint; it is made, for example, by Giovanni Bononcini in the preface to his Sonate da chiesa p.6, F1672.) Quantz's systematic treatment of the subject in his Versuch and Agricola's expansive commentary on Tosi are among the important non-Italian sources from the mid-18th century.
Ornaments, §5: Italy, 1650–1750
In recitative certain appoggiaturas were a matter of conventional syntax rather than an optional embellishment. A pair of repeated notes, especially at cadence points, implied the use of an appoggiatura on the first (always an accented penultimate syllable). Ex.25, from Vivaldi's La Griselda (1735), illustrates two standard instances of this. Alessandro Scarlatti normally wrote out the notes as sung where the falling 4th was involved (indicated by † in ex.26), but left the appoggiatura by step to the singer's understanding of the convention (* in ex.26). Scarlatti does not appear to introduce an appoggiatura where the vocal line rises (rather than falls) by a 4th (‡ in ex.26) nor, for that matter, does Agricola in his music examples relating to the use of appoggiaturas in recitative.
By the late 17th century, the da capo aria was the dominant solo vocal form. The repeat of the A section provided an opportunity for elaborate free embellishment (while singers were encouraged to restrict the first two parts of the aria to much more modest decoration). Tosi observed that reputations were made or lost on the ability of individual singers to do this well; but he stressed that the embellishments had to be well judged for the character and emotional content of a particular aria and that, above all, they had to appear spontaneous:
To the acquiring of this valuable Art, a few verbal Lessons cannot suffice; nor would it be of any great Profit to the Scholar, to have a great Number of Airs, in which a Thousand of the most exquisite Passages of different Sorts were written down: For they would not serve for all purposes, and there would always be wanting that Spirit which accompanies extempore Performances, and is preferable to all servile Imitations.
Da capo arias generally allow for a cadenza before the final cadence (on the repeat of the A section). Some singers introduced cadenzas at this point the first time through the A section and at the end of the B section, but the practice was frowned on by Tosi, Quantz and others. Cadenzas (literally ‘cadences’, though the word was transferred in this period to the ornamental elaboration of cadential formulae) nearly always conclude with a trill. Tosi noted that ‘Whoever has a fine Shake, tho' wanting in every other Grace, always enjoys the Advantage of conducting himself without giving Distaste to the End or Cadence, where for the most part it is very essential’.
Ornaments, §5: Italy, 1650–1750
For continuo players ornamentation has a primarily harmonic function. Gasparini explained the etymology of ‘mordent’ (in this context, touching fleetingly on the semitone underneath the upper octave in an arpeggiated chord) by ‘its resemblance to the bite of a small animal that releases its hold as soon as it bites, and so does no harm’. He viewed acciaccaturas and similar dissonances as helping the singer being accompanied to be expressive. His chapter on ‘Diminution, Embellishment, and Adornment’ consisted essentially of music examples illustrating how the right hand can create diminutions above a left hand which provides for the bass line and its basic realization (‘the necessary consonances’). Finally, and with a warning that it was often not appropriate, he demonstrated ways in which diminution may be introduced into a bass line moving in steady crotchets.
One of Gasparini's examples illustrates that where (as was usual in dramatic, as distinct from sacred, recitative) the penultimate vocal note in a cadential formula seems to clash with the bass line, the continuo player can soften the dissonance with an appoggiatura which creates a 4–3 suspension (figures have been added to the continuo part in ex.25 to show how this principle applies to this extract, assuming that the singer follows the appoggiatura convention on the falling 4th; see §(ii) above).
Ornaments, §5: Italy, 1650–1750
Quantz's advice undoubtedly applies to Italian music: ‘In the allegro, as in the adagio, the plain air must be embellished and made more agreeable by appoggiaturas, and by the other little essential graces, as the passion of the moment demands’. Writers who discussed the ‘essential graces’ often took a wide view of the concept, embracing dynamic effects (piano and forte contrasts, the messa di voce) and other matters that are now regarded as types of articulation (e.g. staccato) rather than ornaments. Tartini discussed only four essential ornaments: the trill, appoggiatura, turn and mordent. He emphasized that the pace of a trill needed to be adjusted to the character of the movement. He also gave a range of ways for starting and quitting a trill (ex.27). While most of the written-out examples in the Traité des agréments de la musique show the upper-note start as the norm, the model for developing a secure and flexible trilling technique included in Tartini's Lettera alla signora Maddalena Lombardini implies a main-note start (and, moreover, an open-string main note).
Tartini reiterated the standard rules for the length of ‘long’ appoggiaturas – that they should fall on the beat and occupy half the value of the main note, or two-thirds of the value where they are attached to a dotted note. But he allowed for a de-emphasized appoggiatura where the context (a passage descending in 3rds) required it to be short and passing in character. In a case such as ex.28 the grace notes should be as short as possible and the accent should fall on the main notes. He acknowledged the possibility of rising appoggiaturas, but was uncomfortable about using them except in combination with other grace notes that provided an acceptable resolution of the dissonance (ex.29).
For Tartini the turn (and the inverted or lower turn which, like rising appoggiaturas, he found less useful) involved taking as little length and emphasis away from the main note as possible. This produces a rather different-sounding ornament from the evenly measured note groupings described in French and German sources. (Although Tartini did not specify that the three initial notes of the turn should come before the beat, it is difficult to follow his instructions without that being the effect.)
Tartini's coverage suggests that Italian practice in the application of these graces did not always conform to the rules enunciated elsewhere in Europe. Neumann argued from a large number of music examples that it is impossible to be dogmatic about the length and placing of small ornaments (i.e. whether they occur on or before the beat and how much, if any, of the value of the principal note they account for).
Tartini was not alone in discussing vibrato as an ornament alongside the four standard graces considered above. Agricola, in his commentary on Tosi, dealt with vibrato at the end of a chapter on trills, mordents and turns. These and other writers emphasized the importance of adjusting the speed and intensity of vibrato to its context. Geminiani included his famous description of the close shake (see §6) at the end of his discussion of ornaments in A Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Musick (G1749), which then became example XVIII of The Art of Playing on the Violin (G1751). His encouragement to use this device ‘as often as possible’ needs to be read alongside his advice that the plain shake ‘may be made upon any Note’ and that the appoggiatura ‘will always have a pleasing Effect, and … may be added to any Note’. (Amusingly, Bernhard, Ic1649, included among his ornaments fermo, i.e. without vibrato, noting that it could ‘be regarded as a refinement mainly because the tremulo is a defect’.)
There was general agreement throughout Europe that the attitude towards slow movements – as melodic outlines needing embellishment – was one of the most distinctive and fascinating aspects of the Italian style in the late Baroque period (see Improvisation, §3(iv)). The vogue as it emerged in the later 17th century resembles a resurgence of diminution practices; but whereas diminution typically involved an arithmetical division of long notes into clearly articulated short notes, the most characteristic gestures of late 17th- or early 18th-century embellishment were slurred and asymmetrical, or at least not conspicuously measured, as if unpremeditated and driven by a spontaneous outpouring of emotion. The most famous – and controversial – model for this was the set of graces for the adagios purportedly by Corelli which Roger included in his 1710 edition of the op.5 sonatas. These were not the first such examples for this set of sonatas, and they were far from being the last (though most subsequent sets of graces concentrated on the slow movements from the second part, the sonate da camera). The most systematic instruction in embellishing italianate adagios came from Quantz who, stressing the need for an understanding of harmony, progressed from a demonstration of extempore variation of simple intervals to a consideration of entire movements.
This development parallels the expectations for free embellishment in da capo arias, though the decoration of instrumental movements was not necessarily reserved for repeats. In fact, of all the slow movements in the first part of Corelli's op.5, only the opening binary Adagio of Sonata no.5 in G minor makes any provision for repeats. A related development, which corresponds quite closely to vocal practice, is the use of florid decoration at cadence points. According to Quantz, cadenzas had become popular with the Italians in the early 18th century and
were subsequently imitated by the Germans and others who devoted themselves to singing and playing in the Italian style. … Perhaps the surest account which can be given of the origin of cadenzas is that several years before the end of the previous century, and in the first ten years of the present one, the close of a concertante part was made with a little passage over a moving bass, to which a good shake was attached; between 1710 and 1716, or thereabouts, the cadenzas customary at present, in which the bass must pause, became the mode.
Tartini distinguished between ‘natural cadences’ in which the decoration does not hold up the movement of the bass line, and ‘artificial cadences’ in which the bass line pauses on the dominant while the melodic instrument indulges in a cadenza above it. Both types of Cadenza conclude with a dominant trill (normally on the 5th of the chord) leading on to the tonic.
All forms of free ornamentation were, strictly speaking, the preserve of solo players, though there is evidence (mostly in the form of injunctions against doing it) that some orchestral players could not always repress the instinct to embellish.
The virginalists' single and double strokes (see §3 above) lingered well into the 18th century before being supplanted by Italian signs. However, between the stroke sigla of the Golden Age and the italianized ornaments of the Hanoverian era, there existed in England an indigenous set of signs, known as ‘graces’, as sophisticated and comprehensive as the French agréments. Mace described these as: ‘Curiosities, and Nicities, in … the Adorning of your Play (for your Foundations being surely Laid, and your building well Rear'd, you may proceed to the Beautifying, and Painting of your Fabrick)’ (G1676, p.102). They had distinctly English names, and encompassed a larger vocabulary of ornamentation than that used in modern practice. They were inconsistently represented, their signs varying depending on instrumental tradition and continental influences.
The earliest published tabulation with written-out realizations of ornaments was for fretted and bowed instruments. Compiled by Charles Coleman, the ‘Table of Graces proper to the Violl or Violin’ appeared in John Playford's Breefe Introduction (G1654) and Christopher Simpson's Division-Violist (G1659); the latter echoed a distinction made by the Downes manuscript (c1615, GB-Lbl Eg.2971), which contrasted four graces ‘with the hand’ – the relish, shake, falle and tast – with three ‘with the bowe’ – the traile, thumpe and shake. Among the hand graces, Simpson differentiated between the smooth and the ‘shaked’: ‘Smooth is, when in rising or falling a Tone or Semitone, we draw … the Sound from one Note to another, in imitation of the Voyce … Shaked Graces we call those that are performed by a Shake or Tremble of a Finger’. There was a further subdivision of the latter into close shake (one-finger vibrato) and open shake, which should ‘exceed not the wideness of two Frets’.
For singers, Playford catered to the prevailing fashion by incorporating a translation of part of Caccini's preface to Le nuove musiche (1601/2) in the 1664 edition of A Breefe Introduction. The currency enjoyed by Caccini's ideas is confirmed in the 1666 edition: ‘Trills, Grups, and Exclamations … have been used to our English Ayres above this 40 years and Taught here in England, by our late Eminent Professors of Musick Mr. Nicholas Laneare, Mr. Henry Lawes, Dr. Wilson, and Dr. Colman’; and a condensed form of Caccini's ornaments appeared in the anonymous Synopsis of Vocal Musick (G1680). Tastes changed, and these ‘Directions for Singing after the Italian Manner’ fell into oblivion after the 12th edition of A Breefe Introduction (1694), which was revised by Henry Purcell. As a boy Purcell had been a chorister in the Chapel Royal under Henry Cooke, who according to Evelyn (diary, 28 October 1654), was ‘esteem'd the best singer after the Italian manner of any in England’. Strong traces of Italian ornamentation are to be found in Purcell's vocal writing, as in English song in general, which became technically more demanding in the wake of the arrival of Italian professional singers in the 1660s. In contrast, Purcell's decorative formulae for keyboard were largely based on those of the clavecinistes, even though very little French keyboard music survives in English sources. His posthumous Choice Collection of Lessons (G1696) contains ‘Rules for Graces’ for keyboards, purportedly ‘taken from his owne Manuscript’. Earlier attempts at tables of interpretation had been ineffectual: most of the signs given were not in normal use (e.g. those in GB-Lbl Add.31403), while others, for example in Locke's Melothesia (G1673), were unexplained. Purcell shared Locke's orthography, however, with the familiar strokes presented in a variety of permutations and projected above notes rather than through the stem.
The ‘most principal Grace in Musick’ (Playford) was the shake, represented in lute sources as in ex.30, and in keyboard sources as in ex.31. It was to be executed ‘sweet and quick’ (Matteis, Gc1680), ‘equal, distinctly mark'd, easy’ (Tosi, G1723), with (according to most 17th- and 18th-century sources) a perceptible acceleration. The initial auxiliary note was to be slightly prolonged, and the main note left sounding: ‘A Shake takes the Grace from the next note above it, which is to be heard a little, & then shaken of[f]; letting the proper note be heard at last’ (Blakeston, 1694, GB-Lbl Add.17853; similar description, Prelleur, G1731). Though all sources show an upper auxiliary start, main-note trills also existed, as in transcriptions of works by Froberger (c1700, by Blow) and Rossi. Usually played on the beat, shakes are also occasionally to be found with an ascendant prefix before the beat (ex.32). However, Playford's ‘Plain Shake’ or ‘Trill’ is the English equivalent of Caccini's reiteration on a single note, the ‘Trillo’.
As the shake involved the upper auxiliary, so the beat used the lower. It started off as an inverted mordent (ex.33a) played ‘into a Half Note beneath’ and continued ‘so long as my Time will allow me’ (Mace, G1676, p.105). However, by the late 17th century, the beat (ex.33b) was a single entity ‘fetcht from the half Note below the Note it stands over’ (Carr, G1684, 2/1686), like the French port de voix (or cheute) with pincé (see §7 below) but without their separate notational identities. Its sign resembles a mordent (the modern mordent was unknown in England before 1749). In the early 18th century the beat underwent a refinement of notation whereby the single stroke (ex.34a) required a diatonic lower auxiliary and the double stroke (ex.5b) a chromatic lower auxiliary (Prendcourt, c1700, GB-Y M.16s). The beat received its most emphatic endorsement from Pasquali. In his Art of Fingering the Harpsichord, published in Edinburgh (G?1760), he appears to have suppressed his native tradition, and printed what must have been the standard English interpretation (ex.35), which is a literal inversion of the shake. Ex.35 (bar 7, beat 1) clearly shows the turn as a standard Baroque device, alternating first with the upper and then with the lower auxiliaries. This grace was, however, different in Purcell's Choice Collection, being a five-note ornament starting with the consonant main note, slightly prolonged not only at the end but also at the beginning. More straightforward were the forefall and the backfall, being short appoggiaturas, respectively ascending and descending, applied on the beat to conjunct notes or notes a 3rd apart. The notation for these graces was replaced by small notes in the 18th century. The forefall was referred to as a ‘beat’ by Playford and a ‘Half-fall’ by Mace. The slur (ex.36a), also called elevation (ex.36b) or wholefall (ex.36c), was played from the 3rd below the main note ‘very swift, or the grace is lost’ (North, c1710; ed. Wilson, G1959, p.62). Comparison with its continental equivalent, the tierce coulée, reveals that the first (lower) note would have been sustained throughout when the harmonic sense allowed it. The less common slide or double backfall descended a 3rd into the main note.
Unaccented notes of decoration, though often written out, were also given grace symbols. The cadent rhythmically anticipated the following note, while the springer, acute or sigh was a changing note nonchalantly inserted between main notes: ‘After you have hit your Note … you must (just as you intend to part with your Note) dab one of your next Fingers lightly upon the same String, a Frett or 2 Fretts below … yet so gently, that you do not cause the String to sound’ (Mace, G1676, p.109). The sting was a vibrato, ‘not modish in these Days’, and executed ‘upon a Long Note, and a Single String … and so soon as It is struck, hold your Finger (but not too hard) stopt upon the Place, (letting your Thumb loose) and wave your Hand … downwards, and upwards several Times, from the Nut to the Bridge’ (ibid.). Coleman's vividly illustrated ‘Close Shake’ was a vibrato requiring another finger: ‘we shake the Finger as close and near the sounding Note as possible may be, touching the String with the shaking Finger so softly and nicely that it make no variation of tone. This may be used where no other Grace is concerned’ (Simpson, G1659, p.11; ex.37). Geminiani's sign for the ‘Close Shake’ (G1749, p.8), based on Mace's sign, resembles an extended trill or mordent, but the ornament was clearly a vibrato: ‘you must press the Finger strongly upon the String of the Instrument, and move the Wrist in and out slowly and equally’. A vibrato not involving pitch alteration was the bow vibrato (‘shake’ or ‘tremble’), likened by Simpson (G1659, p.10) to the Tremulant stop of an organ.
The term ‘roulade’ had two distinct meanings: in the Burwell Lute Tutor (Gc1660–72), the single roulade is equivalent to a backfall and the double roulade to a double backfall or slide, whereas Grassineau (G1740, p.205) defined the roulade as ‘a trilling or quavering’, the latter meaning ‘the act of trilling or shaking, or running a division with a voice’. The tut was a curtailed note in lute music: ‘always performed with the Right Hand … strike your Letter [i.e. note] (which you intend shall be so Grac'd), and immediately clap on your next striking Finger, upon the String which you struck; in which doing, you suddenly take away the Sound of the Letter [i.e. note], which is that, we call Tut’ (Mace, G1676, p.109).
The breaking of a chord was often considered not a grace but a part of rudimentary technique. Mace's ‘Raking Play’ required the lutenist to sound the bass and the top note together and ‘draw all over your Forefinger, very gently, till you have hit the Sixth String, and you will hear a very full Consort of 7 Parts’. In Purcell's ‘Rules’ (G1696), the broken chord, labelled ‘Battery’, is patently a misprint, the intention being an ascending arpeggio. This echoed continental practice; the downward arpeggio, however, is nowhere to be found in English rules for graces. A rhythmicized version, reflecting Italian practice, appears in a York Minster manuscript copied around 1700 by Captain Prendcourt (ex.38).
The ‘single relish’ was variously a turn and a trill, though Mace (G1676, p.107) asserted that the backfall of the latter ‘would always be performed very strongly, and smartly’, implying a perceptible dwelling on the appoggiatura. The ‘double relish’, like any other compound ornament, involved a shake; the term was used by Playford for Caccini's gruppo. The two constituent elements of Locke's ‘Fore-fall & Shake’ were sometimes separated (ex.39), allowing the shake to define the pulse and preventing the bar from going astray rhythmically. These are not to be confused with shakes with an ascending prefix taken before the beat (ex.40) or starting on the beat, the latter unknown in England before about 1725. The ascending prefix must also not be confused with the termination of the ‘Shake Turn'd’, which required a discernible lingering on the final main note (ex.41). Purcell's term ‘Plain Note & Shake’ (renamed ‘backfall-and-shake’ by Howard Ferguson: see Purcell, G1696) makes it clear that the initial note is not to be regarded as a backfall proper, but rather as a standard italianate appoggiatura taking half the value of the note being graced (two-thirds when it is dotted). Any addition of a tie between the plain note and the first note of the shake is unwarranted.
Most typeset music of the 17th century omits grace signs, probably because typography was inadequate. The scarcity of printed indications for graces, especially in English songs before 1700, precludes neither their use nor innovation: ‘to set your tune off better, you must make severall sorts of Graces of your own Genius, it being very troublesome for the Composer to mark them’ (Matteis, Gc1680, p.79). Manuscript versions of music often contain more ornaments than printed music, to which graces were often added by hand (exx.42a and b). Some writers attempted to give general rules to allay uncertainty; the anonymous author of The Synopsis of Musick pointed out that ‘Airy Songs’ did not need to be graced and required ‘only a lively and cheerful kind of Singing carried by the Air itself’, whereas it was in ‘Passionate Musick’ that gracing came into its own.
North ranked embellishing as the apex of musical skills, writing that ‘It is the hardest task that can be, to pen the manner of artificiall Gracing an upper part … the practice of Gracing is the practice of Composition, and without skill in the latter, the other will never succeede’ (c1726; ed. Wilson, G1959, p.149); and that all musicians should ‘informe themselves of the first principles of Harmony, plain and artificiall; for knowing the source whence all the ornaments flow’ (1728; ed. Chan and Kassler, G1990). Tosi (G1723; Eng. trans., 2/1743, p.182) suggested that the musician should ‘make new Graces, from whence … he will chuse the best’, and should use them ‘as long as he thinks them so; but, going on in refining, he will find others more deserving his esteem … he will increase his Store of Embellishments in a Stile which will be entirely his own’.
Graphic elucidations were employed to encourage the proper execution of graces: ‘the triller's aim is to make a strong spring shake, as fast as possible … like a squirrel scratching her ear’ (North, c1726; ed. Wilson, G1959, p.166). But there was an overriding caveat: ‘one great failure [of shaking graces] is the neglect of time, which much deforms them’ (ibid.), for ‘whether they be Beats or Shakes, you must be sure to play 'em in time; otherwise you had better play only the plain Notes’ (Blakeston, 1694, GB-Lbl Add.17853).
Although stenographic symbols for standard decorative formulae existed in early 17th-century France, notably in Vallet's lute publication Secretum musarum (1615–16), they were not codified in any systematic fashion. The absence of a notational convention was commented on by Bacilly (H1668, p.135):The majority of these ornaments are never printed in the music, either because they cannot accurately be reduced to print owing to a lack of appropriate musical symbols, or because it may be thought that a superabundance of markings might hinder and obscure the clarity of an air and thus result in confusion.The remedy came soon after, with the flowering of the harpsichord and viol repertories. Ornamental clichés proliferated in manuscripts of harpsichord (Louis Couperin) and viol (Dubuisson) music, and the ‘Table des agréments’ in Chambonnières' Pièces de clavecin (1670) spawned the inclusion of similar tables in the prefaces of most instrumental publications in France. The most comprehensive and fully developed table was by d'Anglebert (Pièces de clavecin, 1689; see fig.2), whose far-reaching influence was felt in Germany when the table was copied by J.S. Bach between 1709 and 1714. These tables maintained a high degree of consistency in the interpretation of named ornaments into the 19th century; the most important – cadence, port de voix, coulé and accent – were retained by Cartier (H1798, 3/c1803) for the violin, albeit with some alteration to their meaning. Indeed, ornamental nomenclature varied not just from one instrument to another but within an instrumental tradition. Such baffling diversity in marking ornaments was bemoaned by Montéclair and many others. Bérard attempted to rationalize French agréments by inventing new symbols, incorporating Greek and Hebrew letters, thus adding to the confusion.
Many composers, however, were content to use a very limited number of symbols, especially in 17th-century vocal parts, preferring to leave the option of more creative embellishment to the performer. Rameau, in his Code de musique pratique (1760), mentioned the need for variety in the execution of ornaments to prevent their becoming ‘insipid'. Often the choice of symbols was governed by tradition, and different sets of symbols were used in the same piece – for example in Rameau's Pièces de clavecin en concerts (1741), where the wavy line in the clavecin part and the cross in the basse de viole part both indicate a tremblement (ex.43). Loulié differentiated between the sign of a tremblement ‘dans les pièces’ and ‘dans la basse continue’, warning that ‘what I am going to say about the comma for les pièces must be understood for the small cross in the basse continue’. The ornaments in his Eléments ou principes de musique (H1696) were replaced in the Amsterdam edition of 1698; it appears that substitutions were necessary because many characters of type were unavailable in resetting the treatise. For example, the symbol for a trill (‘+’, used consistently in the original edition) is replaced by a ‘t’, even where the text continues to speak of a ‘cross’.
Agréments lie at the heart of what the French considered to be proper execution (propreté) and taste (goût). Bacilly observed: ‘Without any doubt a piece of music can be beautiful but at the same time unpleasant. This is usually a result of the omission of the necessary ornaments’ (H1668, p.135). Corrette wrote that ‘a song without any ornament is like an unpolished diamond’ (H1758, chap.15). In the choice of ornaments, Saint Lambert (H1702, p.42) advised that ‘good taste is the only law that one can follow’. Yet contemporary writers were seemingly unable clearly to define what le bon goût actually was. Hotteterre (H1707, §9.23) wrote that ‘one can scarcely give more certain rules for [the] distribution [of ornaments] … it is taste and practical experience, rather than theory, which can teach their appropriate use’. Others recommended study with a master or critical observation of one at work. Clearly, the use of tasteful ornaments was an integral part not only of a performer's artistry but also of his or her technique (Bacilly, H1668, p.89):
as can be observed among the majority of ill-trained singers, there are certain vocal qualities which will never sound satisfactory in themselves, no matter how well handled in performance. For example, some of these faults are singing through the nose, bad breath support, bad cadences and accents or plaintes, use of inappropriate ornaments at the end of an air or the incorrect placement of ports de voix, making passages with the tongue.
Le Gallois (H1680, pp.76–8) chastised ‘flashy players’ who exhibited poor taste in embellishing:
Their cadences are often played too rapidly, and as a result quite crudely, having been produced with too much energy … one hears nothing but a perpetual cadence, which prevents one from hearing the basic melody clearly. They continually, habitually add passages, especially from one note to its octave, which Chambonnières used to call ‘rattling’ [chaudronnier].
But he had special praise for Chambonnières' ability to improvise new embellishments (ibid., 70):
Each time he played a piece he added new delights with ports de voix, passages and different ornaments, including double cadences. In a word, he so varied them with all these different adornments that he was always able to disclose some new beauty in them.
François Couperin had less confidence in his readers' taste; in the preface to the third book of his Piéces de clavecin (1722), he declared that his ornaments and music were indissolubly linked:
I am always surprised, after the pains I have taken to indicate the agrémens which suit my pieces, and of which I have given separately a quite intelligible explanation in a particular méthode known as L'art de toucher le clavecin, to hear people who have learnt them without following my instructions. This negligence is unpardonable, the more so since it is not at all an arbitrary matter to introduce such ornaments as one wishes. I declare that my pieces must be executed as I have marked them, and that they will never make much of an impression on persons of true taste unless everything I have indicated is observed to the letter, without adding or subtracting anything.
Ornaments served a practical purpose: to provide shape and character to the melody.To sing or play proprement is to execute French melody with the ornaments that suit it. This melody, being nothing by the mere force of the sounds, and not having by the same any character, only receives it [character] by the affective contours that one gives it in executing it. These contours, taught by the masters of goût du chant, make up what one calls the agrémens of French song. (Rousseau, H1768, under ‘Proprement’, p.396)The most important ornaments, such as those with long appoggiaturas, provide melodic dissonance, thereby fulfilling a crucial harmonic role. It was this concept of ‘dissonance as decoration’ which Brossard, in his Dictionaire des termes (H1701, 2/1703), called the supposition and equated with ornement du chant. Masson (H1694, 2/1699, p.59) wrote that dissonance was required ‘for giving beauty to the melody, by adding a note which functions as an ornament … [and] for connecting the intervals, i.e. for rendering the melody smoother and sweeter’. Such ornaments acquire their expressiveness by being sounded against some present or implied consonant chord of resolution while simultaneously being used to ‘suppose’ or substitute for the displaced consonant. The ubiquity of such ornaments, used to enhance almost all cadential points, testifies to the growing notion of harmony, rather than melody, as the essential determinant of musical structure.
The playing of ornaments, whether supplied by the composer or provided by the performer, was never the sole prerogative of the melodist. Though continuo players often encounter bass-line embellishments in the form of divisions, bass-line ornament signs are less common. In the trio sonatas of François Couperin, however, the basse d'archet part surpasses the basse chiffrée in ornamentation, presumably because the latter was prepared first, so that the additional ornaments in the former were a result of afterthought and refinement.
The use of embellishment in orchestral playing was generally censured, although Muffat sanctioned ornaments other than diminutions in his introduction to book 1 of Florilegium (I1695). Lully's obsession with orchestral discipline and uniformity was mentioned by Sénecé (H1688, p.299), Montéclair (H1736, pp.86–7) and Le Cerf de la Viéville (H1705, p.227):[Lully's] instrumentalists did not take it upon themselves to ornament their parts. He would not have allowed them to do this any more than he allowed it with his singers. He did not think it was right when they imagined they knew more than he did and added graces to their parts. When this happened, he grew angry and quickly set them straight. It is a true story that more than once in his life he broke a violin across the back of a musician who was not playing it the way he wanted.As Bourdelot (H1715, pp.297–9) observed:
it is hard for a harpsichord, a viol and a theorbo (to say nothing of the string and wind instruments) all to hit upon just the same ornaments at the same time. One plays one figure, another plays a different one, and the result is such total cacophony that the composer no longer recognizes his own work, which seems completely deformed.
By mid-century, limited use of ornaments seems to have become accepted practice (Rousseau, H1768, p.200, under ‘Ensemble’).
In the following discussion, the ornaments are grouped according to interval: (a) Unison: aspiration, balancement de main, batement, flattement, langueur, liaison, plainte, son coupé, suspension, tenuë, tremblement (these do not involve auxiliaries, though pitch may be affected); (b) Whole tone or semitone: aspiration, cadence, coulé, martellement, pincé, port de voix, tour de chant, tremblement; (c) The 3rd: double cadence, tierce coulé, tour de gosier; (d) Larger intervals: arpégé, compound ornaments, glissando.
Ornaments, §7(ii): French Baroque: The agréments
The expressive use of silence is represented by two ornaments: suspension and aspiration. The suspension is a delay of a note, and was considered particularly affective. The aspiration or son coupé is a shortening of a sound; d'Anglebert called it a détaché and recommended its use ‘avant un tremblement’ or ‘pincé’ (see below).
The prolongation of sound is a more convoluted matter. De Machy's liaison is a tie, joining two notes of the same pitch into a longer note. It is not to be confused with Jean Rousseau's (H1687, pp.103–4) liaison, which is a slur, encompassing several notes (and intervals) within a bowstroke. Rousseau called a tie or hold a tenuë, noting that ‘if one runs out of bow, one should change strokes as discreetly as possible’. The tenuë is usually indicated with long lines, though Marais used square brackets and De Machy sometimes used long notes written as double stops. This is one of the most distinctive technical aspects of the style brisé on the lute, harpsichord or viol, enhancing the sonority of the instrument while underpinning the harmonic progression. De Machy's preference for jeu d'harmonie over jeu de mélodie was attacked by Rousseau (H1687, p.64) because of the way in which the tenuës restricted the melody: ‘quite inappropriately, [De Machy] wishes to … tie us to practising the tenuës. Preferable to this are more important things … [such as] the beauty of the melody and its agréments, which are preferable to all tenuës which might wish to stand in the way’. The curved lines found in harpsichord préludes non mesurés are variously referred to as tenuë or liaison, the latter by the majority of writers. Whatever the terminology, the intended effect is that of ‘digital pedalling’, with the affected note left sounding (i.e. held) throughout the length of the sign or for an indeterminate duration (for examples see Prélude non mesuré).
French writers give detailed descriptions of the vibrato. For wind players the flattement or flaté, as described by Hotteterre (H1707; he also refers to it as tremblement mineur), involves the lowering of the pitch of a main note and has the sole purpose of ‘sweetening’ or ‘softening’ notes. Mahaut (H1759, chap.7) described it as ‘a wavering of the tone which is slower than that of a trill and produces an interval narrower than a semitone’. For string players the same ornament was named pincé by Marais, in common with all 18th-century writers, who described it as a vibrato produced by the rocking motion of two fingers pressed against each other. Variant interpretations confuse the picture. Bacilly evoked the comparison with a bow vibrato when likening the singer's doublement du gosier to the flatté, which is ‘easier to execute with the bow than with the voice’. Corrette's vocal flaté (H1758, chap.15) requires a barely perceptible upper auxiliary inflection of the voice, whereas his flattement for the flute (Hc1740), ‘done to swell and diminish the sound … extremely touching in tender pieces on long notes’, is reminiscent of the Italian Messa di voce (like Corrette's son filé). By contrast, Montéclair's (H1736, p.85) flatté was a vocal ornament produced by several slight, gentle aspirations, which he compared to a vibrato on one string. His other vocal vibrato, executed by making ‘several small aspirations more definite [plus marquées] and slower than those of the flatté’ (ibid.), is called balancement and is equated with the Italian tremolo, producing the effect of an organ Tremulant. This could well be the interpretation of the wavy lines in the ‘Shivering Chorus’ in Lully's Isis (1677; see Sawkins, H1996).
The single-finger vibrato is even more fraught with confusion, being referred to as aspiration by De Machy, balancement de main by Danoville (H1687) and langueur by Rousseau (H1687). The latter regarded it as a poor cousin to the two-finger vibrato, to be used ‘when the batement [Rousseau's and Danoville's term for the two-finger vibrato] is not possible, particularly when it must be a note held by the little finger’. The use of the fourth finger for this ornament was standard for Marais and most 18th-century composers, who, like De Machy, referred to it as the plainte.
Ornaments, §7(ii): French Baroque: The agréments
The bulk of documentary evidence supports the practice of playing ornaments on the beat. However, several modern writers, notably Neumann and Mather, have argued for pre-beat performance, citing as reasons the avoidance of parallels and the subjective experience of the ability of anticipatory ornaments to aid the flow of the melodic line: thus a ‘pre-beat’ ornament is preferable for iambic pairs, while an ‘on-the-beat’ ornament is best applied to trochaic pairs of main notes.
The trill. The most common ornament in this category, the trill, had both melodic and harmonic applications, and was referred to interchangeably as tremblement or cadence. The latter term designated the specific ornament found at a melodic closing, the penultimate note of which was typically ornamented by a trill (though other ornaments are possible; see §(c) below). Loulié explained in Eléments (H1696, pp.83–4, under ‘Tremblement’):
It is customary to give to the tremblement the name of cadence; there is nevertheless a difference. The cadence is a melodic ending. Now, melodies are related to an air [much in the same manner] as periods and other parts [of speech] are to an address. The endings of these melodies, or sections of which an air is composed, are related [in speech] sometimes to periods, sometimes to commas, sometimes to question marks, etc., according to the different manners in which these melodies conclude. The ending or conclusion of each section is called cadence, of which there are many types … Since the tremblement enters into most of these cadences, the name of cadence has been given to the tremblement.
Rousseau (H1768, p.67) added that ‘Cadence is, in terms of the melody, that beating of the throat that the Italians call trillo, which we also call tremblement, and which is usually done on the penultimate note of a musical phrase, from where, without doubt, it has taken the name cadence’.
The anatomy of a trill is best revealed by Couperin (H1716, p.24), who described three components: the appuy, an upper auxiliary preparation; the battements, the oscillation proper; and the point d'arrêt, a termination on to the main note. This analysis, more properly for the tremblement appuyé, however, belies the dazzling variety in which trills can be executed. Most writers apportioned to the appuy half the value of the trilled note, for notes divisible by two, or a third, for those divisible by three (Bérard, H1755; Blanchet, H1756); naturally, the ornament takes on the suffix appuyé or (in the case of Hotteterre) pleine. Despite Couperin's example confirming an earlier example by d'Anglebert, it would seem that this ornament should have a reiterated upper auxiliary. Saint Lambert (H1702, p.47) not only omitted d'Anglebert's tie but also stated quite specifically that, in performing the tremblement appuyé, the ‘borrowed note’ (i.e. the upper auxiliary) should be heard once ‘before starting the tremblement’. This is not to be confused with Couperin's (H1713) tremblement appuyé et lié, in which the appuy is tied to the preceding note.
It is, however, possible that because of its brevity a note cannot accommodate any dwelling on the auxiliary or its point d'arrêt. In the former case, the suffixes non appuyé, sans appuyer, brisé (Hotteterre), détaché (Couperin) or precipitée (Corrette) apply. Sometimes the term simple is used, though this usually applies to a short, as opposed to longer (double) or long (triple), ornament. Mahaut associated such a non-appoggiatura trill with the Italian style, as opposed to the appuyé trill of the French style; Corrette's (H1758) cadence italienne, however, does have an appuyé as well as a two-note termination, and seems to differ from his double cadence (Hc1740) only in that the latter applies to notes in conjunct ascent. Note that De Machy's tremblement sans appuyer for the viol is actually a two-finger vibrato.
Trills are usually portrayed oscillating for the entire duration of the note, despite Couperin's illustration of a point d'arrêt. This feature could, however, be shortened to allow a brief silence, which Couperin called aspiré. A brief silence can also be found in Hotteterre's (2/1715) double cadence coupée, where it occurs between the termination of a trill and the subsequent note. This is unlike Corrette's (H1758) cadence coupée, whereby the point d'arrêt takes half the value of the ornament and has no ‘cut-off’. Often the tremblement runs into a termination, usually written out in small notes; however, d'Anglebert tended to consider this a compound ornament, tremblement et pincé. Couperin called those with a termination resolving upwards tremblement ouvert and those resolving downwards tremblement fermé. His term for a trill which oscillates across a few bars is tremblement continu.
Jacques de Gallot, in the ‘Méthode’ to his Pièces de luth (c1684) recommended the use of ‘rhythmically even trills as often as possible’, while Le Gallois (H1680, p.77) found that ‘there is nothing which makes playing more lovely … than to trill equally and to sustain the trill’. This does not exclude the shaping of the momentum of the ornament; as Couperin (H1716, pp.23–4) succintly put it, ‘a trill of any considerable duration … should begin more slowly than it ends’.
The appoggiatura. The symbol for the port de voix in keyboard music is almost always an inverse comma preceding the main note. (Chambonnières alone used a cross.) The ornament takes up half the value of the ornamented note. The choice of upper or lower auxiliary is guided by the note preceding the ornamented note. As d'Anglebert (1689) pointed out, the cheute en montant ascends to the main note, while the cheute en descendant approaches the main note from above; the falling motion of the latter explains Gallot's use of the term tombé. Couperin (1713) eschewed the symbol, opting for a small note linked by a square bracket and calling the ornament port de voix coulée, while Rameau's coulez is slurred with an overlegato. Other terms for this ornament include accent plaintiff (Mersenne) and coulement (Hotteterre).
A closely related ornament is Loulié's coulé (H1696, under ‘Coulé’), a vocal inflection from a subsidiary or weak note to a lower and stronger one. It is indicated by a comma between the main notes of varying intervals, and functions mainly as a descending anticipatory appoggiatura linking notes a 3rd apart; its descending counterpart is the port de voix, which Loulié indicated (with an oblique stroke) as playable either before or on the beat.
The inverted mordent and other ornaments. The pincé or pincement begins on the main note and involves only the lower auxiliary. For the flute Mahaut called it battement, a term used by Mersenne and adopted by most viol composers, though De Machy and Loulié referred to it as martellement. It is indicated by a comma after the note or by the modern sign for inverted mordent. Played very swiftly, the pincé is often preceded by a port de voix. These two ornaments are so closely associated that they have mutated into another ornament which Mahaut called martellement. Hotteterre's (1715) tour de chant has the appearance, in its explanation, of an inverted mordent, but is actually an extended preparation involving a lower auxiliary of the anticipation.
Rousseau's (H1687, p.90) viol aspiration is played a semitone or a whole tone higher at the very end of a long note; this note must be very short and separated from the main note. A vocal counterpart to this ornament is Bacilly's (H1668, 3/1679, p.189) accent, a passing note nonchalantly inserted between main notes: ‘There is in melody a particular note that is only articulated very lightly by the throat … it is always done on a long syllable, and never on a short one’. This description was echoed for wind instruments by Hotteterre (H1707), who observed that the passing appoggiatura is ‘borrowed' from the end of some notes to give them more expression. The main notes do not have to be conjunct: Corrette (H1758, chap.15) demonstrated how, in bridging a leap, a long note is held until a light upward inflection to the auxiliary precedes the following disjunct main note.
Ornaments, §7(ii): French Baroque: The agréments
The turn. All French Baroque sources use the same sign for a four-note ornament, starting from the upper and involving a lower auxiliary, with the exception of Chambonnières (1670), whose turn involves two lower auxiliaries (but no upper auxiliary) and a point d'arrêt. It is variously called double cadence (Chambonnières), double cadence sans tremblement (d'Anglebert) and doublé (Rameau, 1724); Hotteterre's (2/1715) and Corrette's (H1758) turn, the tour de gosier, is applied after the main note.
The compound trill. A trill involving both upper and lower auxiliaries is called cadence, though the variation in interpretation is great. In d'Anglebert's case the direction from which his cadence is approached is evident from the orthography of the symbols, starting on either the upper or the lower auxiliary. Despite its name Rameau's double cadence does not imply longer repercussions: it is in fact identical with d'Anglebert's tremblement et pincé in being a standard trill terminated by a lower auxiliary turn. Compared to Rameau's, d'Anglebert's double cadence is a complicated affair, comprising both a turn and a compound trill.
Filling in a tierce. Filling in the interval of a 3rd is as inviting as it is convenient. Both outer main notes of the three-note ornament should be held, with a slight dwelling on the first and with the passing note released as soon as possible. Though the coulé is usually marked with a stroke through both notes, d'Anglebert's use of curves reveals a sophisticated approach (see fig.2): the horizontal curve, his coulé sur deux notes de suite, links two consecutive notes a 3rd (or more) apart, while the vertical curve, his coulé sur une tierce, is placed before or after the interval, respectively, for an ascending or descending ornament; the latter corresponds to Rousseau's (H1687, p.95) cheute. Hotteterre's straight line linking two consecutive notes a 3rd apart is the same ornament, but labelled port de voix double. Many composers, however, used notes perdues (small notes) to indicate the ornament. D'Anglebert has a four-note version of the ornament, starting on the lower auxiliary of the upper main note of a 3rd (double cheute sur une tierce) or on a single note (double cheute à une note).
Ornaments, §7(ii): French Baroque: The agréments
D'Anglebert's juxtaposition of a turn with a compound trill (double cadence) involves multiple auxiliaries, resulting in an ornament that spans the interval of a 4th. Consecutive notes of any interval can be joined to make ‘une grande liaison dans le chant’. This involves either a changing note tucked in just before the second main note (see above §(c), ‘The turn’), or some sort of a run, indicated by small notes and called coulade (Loulié, H1696, p.87).
Chords can be rendered more attractive by breaking them or by inserting acciaccaturas. A vertical curve or wavy line beside a chord or a stroke through the stem indicates harpègement or arpégé. D'Anglebert's use of the stroke – an innovation praised by Saint Lambert (H1702, chap.26, p.55) for ‘encumbering the score less’ – encompasses a refinement indicating upward or downward spreads, corresponding to acute or grave sloping strokes. Though agrément tables explain the arpeggio in terms of what appears to be rhythmic subdivision of notes, an ametrical spread is a more likely interpretation. This is corroborated by depictions of chord spreads in unmeasured keyboard preludes and by Saint Lambert's skewed representation of ‘Harpégez simples’ (ex.44), whereby ‘no perceptible interval appears between the notes which could alter or break the rhythm of the piece’. In contrast to the spreading of densely textured chords, Saint Lambert recommended the rhythmicized arpeggiation of a chain of two-note chords, advice reiterated in his later treatise (H1707, p.62) as ‘a kind of pulsation’ (une espèce de battement). This reflects the encroaching influence of Italian galanteries, as seen in the metrical subdivision of a figured bass realization in triplet rhythm in the Addendum (1724) to Delair's Traité (H1690). The dichotomy of harpègement (a spread chord) and arppegio [sic] (rhythmic figurations) in Corrette's ‘Explication des marques’ at the end of his Pièces de clavecin (1734; ex.45) is a succinct reminder of the continuing querelle about the merits of French versus Italian styles. D'Anglebert called the insertion of small notes within a chord cheute, of which there is a large variety. Saint Lambert's (H1702, p.55) term for this is ‘arpégé figuré’, with the acciaccaturas inserted ‘avec discretion’ but imparting no perceptible rhythmic alteration to the arpeggiation.
Ornamentation in German-speaking regions of Europe during the period 1600–1750 encompasses a number of distinct traditions. Modern interest in the subject has focussed on questions arising in the instrumental works of J.S. Bach, and several relatively late theoretical sources (particularly Quantz, I1752, and C.P.E. Bach, I1753–62) have been regarded as authoritative. But a clearer understanding of Bach's ornamentation and that of the German Baroque as a whole emerges through a broader consideration of surviving music and documentation.
Perhaps because the practice was so widespread and so fundamental to good performance, no single word was used throughout the period for what we call ornamentation. Printz (I1689) discussed a number of ornaments as instances of figurae (figures), but by the 18th century the most common term for ornaments was Manieren. Only gradually, however, was the latter identified with specific melodic decorations. For Bernhard (Ic1649) Manier still had the general sense of ‘good style’; he used the term Kunststück for specific ornaments but also for fermatas and dynamics. All were understood, evidently, as ‘ornaments’ in the classical rhetorical sense that they contributed to the perfection of a performance.
(iii) The 17th century: vocal ornamentation.
(iv) The 17th century: instrumental ornamentation.
(v) The later 17th and early 18th centuries.
Ornaments are discussed in theoretical sources that range from pedagogic works (such as Herbst, I1642, 3/1658, and Walther, I1708) to encyclopedic compendia (PraetoriusSM, WaltherML) and comprehensive treatises on specific instruments or the voice (Quantz, I1752; C.P.E. Bach, I1753–62; Agricola, I1757). In addition, ornament tables and verbal explanations of ornament signs are included in many printed and manuscript sources of keyboard music, especially after 1700 (see §(v)(a) below). The music itself frequently provides suggestions for the performance of ornaments and the realization of ornament signs.
The 17th-century theoretical sources are almost exclusively vocal and italianate in orientation, intended to convey to Germany the innovations of Caccini, Monteverdi and other early Baroque Italian musicians. Bernhard and Mylius (I1685) document the continuation of the Italian tradition at, for example, the Dresden court under Bernhard's teacher Schütz. Elements of 17th-century terminology and teaching persist in later treatises, many of which are highly retrospective.
Prefaces and ornament tables accompanying published compositions are the chief sources on instrumental ornamentation until the very end of the period. Important early examples are Georg Muffat's introductions to his publications of music for keyboard (1690) and for instrumental ensemble (1698). Following the practice of Chambonnières and later French composers, J.C.F. Fischer published an ornament table in his 1696 volume of keyboard suites; Bach included a table similarly derived from French models in the manuscript Clavier-Büchlein for his son Wilhelm Friedemann (1720).
Apart from Mattheson (I1739), the major German treatises of the 18th century offer little on ornamentation until shortly after 1750, when the Berlin publications of Quantz (on the flute), C.P.E. Bach (on keyboard instruments) and Agricola (on singing) provided thorough accounts of the execution of various ornaments and the appropriate contexts for each. Leopold Mozart's violin treatise (I1756) agrees with the Berlin treatises on most fundamental points concerning ornamentation. Modern authors have been strongly influenced by these treatises, whose rationalistic accounts appeal to students seeking ‘correct’ realizations of Baroque ornament signs. But the immediate orientation of these writers is mid-century secular music in the galant style, and thus their advice cannot be applied automatically to earlier repertories. Moreover, it is misleading to apply their terminology in older music. For example, 17th-century sources had no single expression for what came to be called the trill, and the latter word had several distinct meanings.
Donington (A1963, 4/1989) presents a coherent interpretation of Baroque ornamentation, derived in part from the late German sources mentioned above. Neumann (I1978) argues for greater diversity of interpretation, based on a systematic study of the available sources. (Donington, pp.620–40, replies to some of Neumann's more controversial conclusions.) Butt (I1994) includes an analysis of German Baroque theory and pedagogy on ornamentation, especially in vocal music.
Broadly speaking, German Baroque ornamentation closely imitated contemporary Italian practices during the earlier part of the period, particularly in vocal music; adopted French practices and ornament signs beginning in the later 17th century, especially in keyboard music; and synthesized these two foreign traditions during the 18th century. German Baroque music followed general European trends in the gradual increase in the number and specificity of written indications for ornaments in musical scores, as well as in a proliferation of distinct ornament types as described in theoretical sources. In addition, there was a shift in the prevailing harmonic function of ornaments: whereas earlier ornamentation consists predominantly of the insertion of passing notes between consonances, later ornaments frequently commence on accented dissonances, used for expressive effect.
17th-century treatises discuss the stylized decoration of individual notes alongside more elaborate types of embellishment derived from the Renaissance practice of diminution. The two types of ornamentation become more distinct in 18th-century sources. Although early composers often failed to notate any ornamentation, the regular presentation of both types in 17th-century treatises implies that they were habitually improvised, at least by soloists.
Virtuosos continued to improvise elaborate embellishments in Italian-style music through the 18th century. Like Printz (I1676–7) and Niedt (I1700), Quantz provided numerous examples of embellishments on simple melodic intervals, and together with C.P.E. Bach and Agricola devoted considerable attention to cadenzas and other forms of improvisation. Music in the French style provided fewer opportunities for elaborate soloistic embellishment, instead favouring ornaments on single notes that could be designated by signs. Georg Muffat and later composers of French-style instrumental music evidently envisaged an approach to ornamentation modelled on Lully’s, in which an entire instrumental ensemble might perform ornaments uniformly, with little or no improvisation. Nevertheless, except in works for solo keyboard, explicit ornament signs remain rare until after 1750, apart from the abbreviation ‘t’ or ‘tr’ and the cross (+) sign. Ensemble musicians were evidently expected to select ornaments on the basis of their understanding of style (or by following a leader's instructions).
J.S. Bach, the Muffats (father and son) and others followed French contemporaries in scrupulously marking ornaments in their printed editions of keyboard music. But manuscripts are often less explicit, suggesting that the addition of ornament signs was a notational refinement, carried out for the benefit of students and the public. Copyists and music engravers often altered signs from those given by the composers, who were themselves not always consistent in their use of ornament signs: some signs given in ornament tables appear rarely in actual scores; occasionally, too, one finds several different signs used for the same effect. Each of these factors creates ambiguity for editors and performers, despite the apparently explicit notation of ornaments in 18th-century keyboard music.
To what degree French ornaments entered German singing is unclear, although the strong French element in many compositions must have had some influence on singers, as in the many arias from Bach's cantatas employing French dance rhythms. The ornaments described by Agricola – whose work is an annotated translation of Tosi's 1723 Italian treatise – are not in fact very distant from François Couperin's, although they are employed in a different stylistic context. But vocal music never became as explicit as instrumental in indicating ornaments. Although some relatively early treatises (e.g. Bernhard and Mylius) used letters and symbols to represent certain vocal ornaments, these never caught on; most singers evidently relied instead on their knowledge of style.
The style of ornamentation established by Italian solo singers around 1600 appears to have been maintained with little fundamental change in Germany through the 17th century; even the German names of these ornaments usually remained Italian (or latinized Italian). The ornaments were rarely notated, and the treatises are sparing in their advice as to where to apply them; modern performers must draw conclusions about the proper context of each ornament from the numerous examples given by Praetorius, Herbst and others. These examples generally give the ornaments in fixed rhythmic values; how literally the latter were meant to be interpreted is unclear, but some degree of rhythmic freedom can be assumed.
The repeated-note trillo was evidently used to the end of the 17th century; Praetorius's 1619 account was repeated practically verbatim by Herbst in 1658, and the ornament was still described by Printz. These writers mentioned first a staccato trillo sung on long notes and – apparently – usually written out, as in the works of Monteverdi (explicitly named by Praetorius). This may be the type of repeated-note figure that Printz (I1689) termed a bombus (ex.46). But Praetorius and Herbst also mentioned a second type indicated by the abbreviation ‘t’, ‘tr’ or ‘tri’. This could fall on short as well as long notes, but in either case both context and abbreviation may suggest a trill to modern performers (ex.47). In fact this latter trillo may have been a type of vibrato. Printz (I1689) seems to have used the term trillo only for this type, although he also described a trilletto that is much softer (‘viel linder’), its repercussions barely articulated (‘fast gar nicht angeschlagen’). Bernhard and Mylius used the term ardire for a similar ornament; Bernhard recommended it particularly in (vocal) bass parts, but Mylius discouraged its use.
Only after 1700 was the term ‘trill’ consistently applied in the modern way to oscillating ornaments. In German writings throughout the 17th century the expression ‘tremolo’ was preferred, referring to ornaments employing lower as well as upper auxiliaries. The tremolo is shown as occurring on notes of relatively long value, beginning on the main note and on the beat (ex.48: bar 1 shows the plain long note, bars 2 and 3 two possible types of tremolo). Praetorius noted that the ornament was more appropriate to instruments than to the voice. Organists, he said, called them ‘mordents’ (Mordanten); only around 1700 did the latter term become restricted to the downward-oscillating ornament.
Praetorius regarded a short version of the tremolo as particularly idiomatic to keyboard playing. Called the tremoletto, this ornament permitted a variety of realizations (ex.49), some of them resembling less trills than the ubiquitous figura corta of German 17th-century instrumental music (ex.49a). In keyboard and instrumental music, most instances of the abbreviation ‘t’ or ‘tr’ must refer to this ornament, not the trillo, although the latter term was being applied to the tremolo and tremoletto by the end of the century.
The groppo (or gruppo) was distinguished from the tremolo by concluding with a turn, which made it particularly suitable for cadential contexts (ex.50). Written-out groppi appear fairly frequently, especially in keyboard music from the first half of the century. But eventually this ornament too came to be understood as a type of trill and thus could be signified by ‘t’ or ‘tr’, although the closing turn often continued to be written out.
A longer oscillating ornament, the ribattuta, mentioned by Herbst and later writers, is already written out in somewhat earlier keyboard works such as Froberger's Toccata no.9 (Libro quarto, 1656, A-Wn; ex.51). Used to intensify an entry on a sustained note, it starts on the main note, slowly and sometimes in dotted rhythm, then accelerates, ending with various terminations. It continued in use through the 18th century.
Accento was the most widely used of several expressions for a large variety of passing-note ornaments. Janovka (I1701) gave the term Einfall as a German equivalent, but the latter seems not to have been much used. Praetorius and other early sources applied the term to various ornaments encompassing from one to several notes, but later writers sometimes restricted the term to particular types of single-note ornament.
One-note accenti appear in most illustrations as short, dissonant auxiliary notes on the weak part of the beat. Text underlay in vocal illustrations suggests that the passing note was always slurred to either the preceding or following main note, as was true of similar 18th-century ornaments. These ornamental notes were sometimes described as being sung gently, in contrast to the accented dissonant passing notes of later practice. When sung to the following syllable, the result was what Bernhard and others called anticipazione della syllaba (ex.52). The effect desired seems to have been that of a quick, smooth glide into the following accented note. A different effect was achieved through the anticipazione della nota, described by Bernhard as an anticipation in the modern sense and sung to the preceding syllable (ex.53).
Other terms for particular types of accenti include cercar la nota and intonazione, both used for figures in which a singer approached a note – especially the initial note of a phrase – from its neighbour, as Bernhard showed (ex.54). Under the heading accentus Praetorius also illustrated slides beginning a 3rd, 4th or more below the main note, in varying rhythms (ex.55).
Another type of accento involved a lightly sung escape note, employed before descending notes, illustrated by Bernhard (ex.56). Adding further ornamental notes produced what Herbst called the exclamatio. The latter term, for Praetorius as for Caccini, had signified merely an expressive swell in volume (‘Erhebung der Stimm’) on a long note. Here it becomes one or more short rising notes at the end of the long note (ex.57).
Herbst's longer exclamationes today would be considered divisions or embellishments rather than simple ornaments. Such figures are frequently written out, like the groppo and ribattuta, in music from throughout the Baroque, as in Schütz's Saul, Saul (ex.58) and J.S. Bach's Cantata 151 (ex.59). The same is true of the tirate (rapid scale figures) and other florid devices or passaggi frequently illustrated in 17th-century treatises. Such figures must have been employed as often by improvising performers as by composers.
Vocal treatises indicate that keyboard and instrumental players employed the same ornaments as singers. But it is rare to find any signs other than ‘t’ or ‘tr’, which can probably stand for any of the trill- and mordent-like figures described above. Thus Froberger, whose autograph manuscripts use only this sign (borrowed from his presumed teacher Frescobaldi), employed it in contexts evidently calling for a descending tremoletto or mordent (ex.60), an ascending tremoletto (ex.61) and a groppo (ex.62). Significantly, these examples are all from a piece in French style (the Allemande of Suite V), but there is no certainty that at this date (1649) the ornaments were receiving the names or realizations applied to them in later French practice.
Later music is often more explicit. Numerous accenti appear as one-stroke signs in the keyboard suites of Kuhnau (I1689) (ex.63; the first one-stroke sign might represent an acciaccatura struck briefly as the chord is broken). A two-stroke sign used by the latter signifies a mordent (also in ex.63), but for Walther (I1708) and others the same symbol indicated a gedoppelter Accent, that is, a descending anticipazione della nota (ex.64). Walther's illustration recalls written-out instances of this ornament in early works of J.S. Bach such as Cantata 106, composed in the older italianate tradition (ex.65). In keyboard music such as Weckmann’s, however, the context for this sign suggests an upward passing note (the French port de voix) or mordent (ex.66).
The vocabulary of ornaments in Germany expanded during this period, while at the same time certain ornaments, such as the repeated-note trillo, fell out of use. Many German musicians evidently retained the old Italian terms for ornaments, which continued to receive discussion by Walther (1732) and Mattheson. But by about 1750 C.P.E. Bach and other German writers were advocating a highly stylized manner of ornamentation reminiscent of contemporary French approaches yet applied in sonatas, arias and other Italian genres, thus reflecting the German synthesis of the two national styles. The discussion below focusses on keyboard sources, since these are the most explicit with regard to ornamentation, but it is clear that other musicians employed most of the same ornaments.
(a) Ornament tables and signs.
Ornaments, §8(v): German baroque: The later 17th and early 18th centuries
The ornament tables that began to appear shortly before 1700 are one sign of an increasing concern for the precise notation and performance of ornaments. Often understood today as instructions for the performance of ornaments, the tables must have served rather to clarify which signs were used within a given work for ornaments whose manner of performance was already understood. For there was no standard system of ornament signs, and the symbols, realizations and names for ornaments that occur in German ornament tables are drawn from various sources. Thus J.S. Bach's table for W.F. Bach employs a sign for the Accent (appoggiatura) shaped like a half-circle or small letter ‘c’, similar to that used by d’Anglebert and Rameau for the port de voix (ex.67). But Bach's sign for the mordent resembles that of François Couperin's pincé, and his table shows several signs that are absent from French sources.
It is unclear whether the proliferation of ornament signs represents an expansion in the number of actual ornament types or merely greater precision in their notation, but there was probably an element of both. Georg Muffat (I1690), for example, used only four signs, all variants of the letter ‘t’, to signify four distinct types of Triller: short, long, with termination and inverted (i.e. a mordent). Already a refinement of the old use of a single ‘t’ (for tremolo), this system was greatly expanded by his son Gottlieb Muffat (1726), whose table shows five signs for different types of trill alone.
Most of the new signs are commonsense extensions of more basic ones. Thus in Bach's system the stroke through the middle of a trill sign converted the latter to a Mordant (ex.68); but the combination Trillo und Mordant produced what we would call a trill with a closing turn or termination (ex.69). Similarly, a straight descending stroke continuing into a trill sign indicated an Accent und Trillo (ex.70). C.P.E. Bach observed in 1753 that most of these signs remained unknown to all but keyboard players. But appoggiaturas indicated by small notes are common in many 18th-century repertories, and the accounts of Georg Muffat (1698), Agricola and others make it clear that instrumentalists and singers used the same ornaments as keyboard players.
Ornaments, §8(v): German baroque: The later 17th and early 18th centuries
Figures such as Bach's Accent und Trillo reflect the growing importance of ornaments that open with an accented dissonance. The result was an increasingly mannered style of ornamentation based on the displacement of consonant notes to weak beats, a trend today particularly associated with mid-century Berlin but widespread elsewhere, particularly in the frequent ‘sigh motifs’ of early 18th-century music.
Appoggiaturas accordingly received much attention from late Baroque theorists. Quantz, C.P.E. Bach and Agricola replaced the term accento with Vorschlag and distinguished between two varieties: ‘variable’ (veränderlich) and ‘invariable’ (unveränderlich). Both are slurred to the following main note, thus eliminating the anticipazione della nota and other older types of accento, which, however, continue to occur as written-out figures.
The ‘invariable’ appoggiatura is a short upper or lower auxiliary note, most often attached to relatively brief notes. The name is somewhat misleading, for it might, depending on the tempo and the value of the main note, be either ‘crushed’ against the latter or performed more deliberately. The ‘variable’ appoggiatura precedes a relatively long note, of which it takes half the value (two-thirds if the note is dotted). Despite suggestions by contemporary theorists that composers should notate the precise value of ‘variable’ appoggiaturas, this practice came into widespread use only after 1750; in earlier music the written value of appoggiaturas (when shown as little notes) appears to have no relation to their intended length.
Modern
writers have often applied the mid-century rules governing the length of
‘variable’ appoggiaturas to the music of J.S. Bach. A literal reading of his
ornament table would indeed give the Accent precisely half the value of
the following note, but this is true also of the French models for the table,
and other sources suggest that French practice favoured shorter appoggiaturas.
Where Bach intended the long ‘variable’ appoggiatura, he appears to have
written it as a regular note, distinguishing it from short appoggiaturas
indicated by signs or small notes within the same piece, as in the F
major prelude from part 2
of the ‘48’ (ex.71).
The ‘variable’ appoggiatura can fall only on the beat, but pre-beat performance of the ‘invariable’ type persisted in some quarters. In a famous disagreement, Quantz insisted on pre-beat performance, whereas C.P.E. Bach described it as odious (‘hässlich’). Their Berlin colleague Agricola, who had studied with both Quantz and J.S. Bach, prescribed on-beat performance for the descending Vorschlag but noted that some famous performers (‘einige berühmte Ausführer’) employed pre-beat performance in the French manner (‘nach Art der Franzosen’) for the first two instances of the ornament shown in ex.72.
Possibly this ‘French’ manner was employed in earlier German music, including works of J.S. Bach. Equivocal passages cannot be firmly settled without recourse to unprovable assumptions. For example, C.P.E. Bach (i.2.2.17) counselled players to avoid ornaments that disturbed the purity of the harmony (‘Reinigkeit der Harmonie’), such as by creating parallel 5ths; one might expect this rule to apply in J.S. Bach's music, dictating pre-beat performance of the appoggiatura in ex.73. Yet Agricola (p.77) noted that it was customary to permit such parallels when they were products of short appoggiaturas and inaudible. On the other hand, it is at least suggestive that the bare octaves produced by on-beat performance of the appoggiaturas in the Augmentation Canon from Bach's Art of Fugue (ex.74) can, as Neumann suggests (p.135), be avoided by the graceful alternative favoured by Quantz (ex.75).
Ornaments, §8(v): German baroque: The later 17th and early 18th centuries
The German term Mordant was not exactly equivalent to either the French pincé or the modern ‘mordent’; thus J.S. Bach used the expression not only for the mordent as such but also for various turning figures, as at the end of a trill (see ex.69). But the familiar French sign normally indicated what we call the mordent in German keyboard music after 1700, including Bach's (see ex.68). The mordent is often specified in other instrumental repertories as well but was never considered very appropriate in singing.
Ornaments, §8(v): German baroque: The later 17th and early 18th centuries
By 1700 the older meaning of trillo as a repercussive or vibrato-like ornament was disappearing, and the German term Triller was understood as the equivalent of the French tremblement. Like Tosi, François Couperin and other Italian and French contemporaries, German sources distinguished various types of trill depending on the duration of the ornament as a whole, the presence or absence of opening ‘preparation’ and closing turn, and whether or not the initial note is ‘tied’. Only in keyboard music were some of these distinctions regularly indicated notationally (beginning with Georg Muffat), but all musicians were expected to be familiar with them. The detailed descriptions of various types of trills by Agricola and C.P.E. Bach at mid-century flesh out distinctions evident in earlier ornament tables.
As early as 1698 Muffat stated quite explicitly that trills in music for instrumental ensemble began on the upper note; the same was indicated in keyboard ornament tables given by J.C.F. Fischer (1696) and most subsequent authors. To be sure, exceptions have been noted in treatises from as late as 1730 (see Neumann, 302–3), suggesting that conservative or provincial musicians retained older approaches; Walther in 1732 still cited Printz for examples of the old tremolo. But the overwhelming evidence is that, except in special cases such as the ribattuta or the Schneller, German trills after 1700 usually began on the upper note.
Short trills generally lacked a closing turn (Nachschlag) and in quick tempos might be reduced to a simple upper appoggiatura. On keyboard instruments certain short trills might be played with a snap of the fingers, producing what was called by 1750 the half-trill (Halbtriller) or Pralltriller. This is probably the type of trill called for in the fugue subject from the Toccata in J.S. Bach's Sixth Partita (ex.76), where the ornament accentuates the upper note of a ‘sigh motif’. The player probably paused on the main note before proceeding to the next, as suggested by the entry for Trillo in Bach's ornament table and other sources (ex.77).
Marpurg (I1755) suggested that quick, snapped trills sometimes started on the main note, producing a true ‘inverted mordent’ (to use a modern term sometimes applied to the short trill). This must indeed have been employed by some players as a simplified form of the short trill, or as a survival of the old tremoletto, but the major 18th-century sources do not recommend it. C.P.E. Bach called it the Schneller, always writing it out in small notes on the rare occasions when his music called for it.
C.P.E. Bach's examples of the Pralltriller are all, in addition, instances of the ‘tied trill’, in which a slur indicates the tying of the initial (upper) note to the previous note (ex.78). The ornament corresponds to the French tremblement appuyé et lié. German composers did not always write the slur; in a passage from the Courante of J.S. Bach's D minor French Suite the slur is nevertheless implied by the appoggiatura function of the note on the downbeat (ex.79; two bars later the same figure appears with a slur over all four quavers).
Already indicated by a special sign in the music of Gottlieb Muffat, the tied trill is a subtle and difficult ornament to perform. Today one often hears the trill anticipating rather than following the beat, defeating the evident purpose of the tie, which is to sustain the preceding note into the time of the following one. There it functions as a momentary suspension before becoming the upper note of the trill. But pre-beat performance (as a form of tremoletto) might have been the intention of some older composers (see ex.61); Gottlieb Muffat's father Georg had no special sign for the tied trill.
Longer trills might be used to sustain a long note and continue it melodically to the following beat, as in the slurred figure on which J.S. Bach built the Sarabande of his sixth French Suite, using what he called a Trillo und Mordant (see ex.69). In ex.80 the closing turn is written out, and in such contexts the trill was often unmarked, its performance being taken for granted.
C.P.E. Bach and Quantz both indicated that long trills normally ended with a turn or Nachschlag, even if the latter was not notated, as in ex.81 (from a trio sonata in Telemann's Essercizi musicali, Hamburg, 1739–40). By this rule it would be wrong to perform instead an anticipation of the final note, which is notated explicitly where desired, as in ex.82 (from J.S. Bach, Cantata 210; the ornament is presumably a short trill without termination). Agricola called for a turn even after each link in an ascending chain of trills (‘Kette von Trillern’), as in another passage from Telemann's Essercizi (ex.83). The turns were apparently omitted in the descending version.
Terminations in the form of turns were expected even on many short trills that pause before proceeding to the next note. Again, Gottlieb Muffat had a sign for such a trill; the ornament is similar to the tremblement et pincé illustrated in a manuscript table of ornaments by Bach's older brother Johann Christoph, copied from Dieupart's Six suittes de clavessin (Amsterdam, c1701) (ex.84). C.P.E. Bach was fond of a later version, the prallender Doppelschlag, which consisted of a Pralltriller followed by a turn or termination; in his illustration (ex.85) the trill is ‘tied’ to a preceding long appoggiatura. C.P.E. Bach indicated this ornament with a compound symbol borrowed from François Couperin; J.S. Bach and others wrote out the closing turn (ex.86; in ex.86b the trill is probably meant to be ‘tied’).
In long as well as short trills one sometimes finds the initial note explicitly indicated by a small note (appoggiatura) or other sign (as in exx.70–71). Included in tables by J.S. Bach and Gottlieb Muffat, this trill corresponds to Tosi's trillo preparato and Couperin's tremblement appuyé. Agricola, translating Tosi, declared that a trill must be prepared (‘vorbereitet’) if it is to be beautiful (‘schön’); nevertheless, the appoggiatura (Vorschlag) need not always be lengthened. This suggests a distinction between ordinary ‘unprepared’ trills and ‘prepared’ ones in which the first note is lengthened, perhaps for heightened accentuation or expressivity. Agricola followed Quantz in identifying the initial note of the trill as an appoggiatura (Vorschlag); although Quantz's examples show the latter as a separate small note, it was nevertheless for him an essential element of every trill.
Modern writers generally assume that this ‘appoggiatura’ always falls on the beat, but the point is rarely made explicit in the treatises, although it is the rule in musical illustrations. Quantz, however, implicitly allows pre-beat performance in some contexts, as when the first note would function as an unaccented passing note or coulé in the French style. Whether J.S. Bach or others employed this practice, as in the Gigue of his second French Suite (ex.87), is impossible to say.
J.S. Bach and Gottlieb Muffat are among those whose keyboard works occasionally use trills prefixed by turns or slides, which C.P.E Bach later described as trills from above and from below (‘von oben’ and ‘von unten’) (ex.88). The prefix, sometimes written out in the form of one or more small notes, may also have been added improvisatorily to many ordinary trills. J.S. Bach's term for the figure was Doppel-Cadenz, an expression sometimes applied by others to the long cadential trill with termination (see ex.69).
Few German composers before 1750 followed Couperin in specifying any chromatic alteration of the auxiliary notes in trills or other ornaments. Georg Muffat (I1690) called for the large half-step (‘grosser Halb-Thon’) in mordents, implying frequent chromatic alteration of the auxiliary to constitute a leading note, so long as it does not displease the ear (‘wofern es nur nicht übel in die Ohren fället’). Modern advice generally follows C.P.E. Bach in drawing auxiliary notes from the scale of the currently tonicized key, but Gottlieb Muffat frequently specified more liberal use of chromatic auxiliaries by setting accidentals beside the ornament signs (ex.89).
18th-century writers sometimes advised against certain obsolete or otherwise irregular types of trill, thus suggesting that they were in fact used by some performers. Quantz (9.2–4), although counselling that the speed of a trill should be appropriate to that of the tempo of a piece in general, condemned very slow trills, which he said were typical of French singing. He also proscribed trills in 3rds ‘except, perhaps, upon the bagpipe’ – an instrument that J.S. Bach imitated in the Musette of his sixth English Suite by writing out such a trill. Trills in 3rds are also occasionally written out in his early toccatas, and in some older 17th-century organ and violin music.
Whatever the type of trill, each note of the ornament was expected to be clearly articulated and in tune. Hence Agricola's detailed comments on appropriate vocal technique; he required that trills be produced from the throat and not merely by ‘bleating’, as in the ‘goat trill’ (Bockstriller) to which Quantz also objected. Quantz showed similar attention to details, providing special fingerings for trills on certain notes where they would otherwise be difficult to produce.
Ornaments, §8(v): German baroque: The later 17th and early 18th centuries
The turn, although similar in shape to the old circolo – a type of division illustrated by Printz (I1689) and Janovka – is closely related to the trill and appoggiatura in its 18th-century German versions. It seems to have been primarily a keyboard ornament, poorly attested in sources for other media. Mattheson referred to it by the old terms groppo and circolo mezzo; J.S. Bach knew it by the French name cadence, and later it was termed the Doppelschlag. It differs from the older French double cadence of, for example, Chambonnières (1670), in beginning on the note above the main note rather than on the latter. Moreover, in slower tempos or on longer notes it might occupy only the beginning of the note's value, as Gottlieb Muffat's table suggests (ex.90). The sign is sometimes displaced to the right, in which case the ornament is delayed, as C.P.E. Bach shows (ex.91; typical here are the positioning of the accidental above the turn sign, the staccato note c'' in the realization of the ornament, and the shortening of the following d'' to half its original value). J.S. Bach and others frequently wrote the sign in upright form, but the spatial orientation of the symbol became significant only with later composers. Thus C.P.E. Bach inverted the usual symbol to indicate an inversion of the ornament, although he considered the latter a form of slide (Schleifer) (ex.92).
Ornaments, §8(v): German baroque: The later 17th and early 18th centuries
The slide, like the turn, resembles an earlier ornament, the intonazione. 18th-century slides were closely related to broken chords that incorporate passing notes (acciaccaturas or coulés), as is clear from the sign employed for this ornament by Gottlieb Muffat (ex.93; cf ex.96). For slides Kuhnau (1689) had already used the name Schleifer, which later became the usual German term; unlike his successors he recognized a descending as well as an ascending form. J.S. Bach adopted Kuhnau's sign for the ascending slide; unfortunately, in Bach's more hastily written manuscripts the sign appears virtually identical with a small note. The resulting copyist errors have been perpetuated in some editions, as in the B minor flute sonata (ex.94). C.P.E. Bach and other late writers are clear about placing the slide on the beat, but this was not always true of earlier forms of the ornament. Georg Muffat (1698) regarded the on-beat slide as a variety of esclamazione, illustrating it alongside a post-beat instance. Both forms of the slide occur as written-out figures in the music of J.S. Bach and his contemporaries.
Further variants of the slide are shown in the treatises of Agricola and C.P.E. Bach together with other varieties of compound appoggiatura. The most important of these is perhaps the double appoggiatura (Anschlag), which became a favourite in the mid-century Berlin style and must have derived from opera seria. It has no special sign but was indicated by small notes (ex.95).
Ornaments, §8(v): German baroque: The later 17th and early 18th centuries
Although the repercussive trillo and trilletto of the earlier Baroque fell out of favour, vibrato was described as an ornament in the 18th century, occasionally under the term ‘tremolo’ (Mattheson, L. Mozart), more often as Bebung. It was probably confined to special contexts, such as the sustained chromatic notes over which J.S. Bach occasionally placed long wavy lines (see Neuman, 519–20). Quantz (14.10) and Agricola (pp.121–2) mentioned its use on certain long notes, implying its absence elsewhere.
German woodwind, string, lute and clavichord players evidently produced a type of Bebung analogous to the French flattement. Unlike the Tremulant of the organ, which produced an intensity vibrato on every note, this was a pitch vibrato produced by rocking the hand or finger, as in a trill, but without actually articulating the adjacent note. The lutenist Ernst Gottlieb Baron (I1727) employed signs for two distinct types of vibrato, used to emphasize certain accented notes. Keyboard music lacks a sign for it before the first (1753) volume of the treatise by C.P.E. Bach, who used it only rarely afterwards.
Among other ornaments arising out of idiomatic vocal and instrumental techniques, the various types of keyboard arpeggiation (Brechung or Harpeggio and the like in German sources) are among the most common. They appear to differ little from their French counterparts. They were apparently not recognized as ornaments until the late 17th century; Kuhnau and Georg Muffat made no mention of them. Inconsistent use of signs occasionally creates ambiguities. For example, a diagonal stroke between note heads sometimes indicates the incorporation of a passing note into an arpeggio, as in J.S. Bach's third English Suite (ex.96); Marpurg and Kirnberger (1771–9) referred to this variety of the French coulé as an accentuirte Brechung. But the same sign could also stand for the simple breaking of a chord, perhaps in measured rhythm as Walther showed in his 1708 treatise (ex.97).
Between the middle of the 18th century and the beginning of the 20th attitudes towards the role, function and usage of ornaments underwent a radical transformation. An aesthetic in which almost all music involved an element of free ornamentation gradually gave way to one in which, for the most part, composers expected ornaments to be introduced only where specifically marked. At the same time, the number of ornament signs in common use declined. Furthermore, 19th-century composers increasingly expected ornament signs to function as shorthand for precise figurations; they were not content, as many of their 18th-century predecessors were, to leave the realization to the performer.
(i) Appoggiaturas, anticipatory notes and grace notes.
(ii) Trills, turns and related ornaments.
Ornaments, §9: Late 18th century and the 19th
Until the early 19th century small notes extra to the value of the bar indicated several quite different things. The meaning of such notation is (and was) often difficult to determine. Late 18th-century and early 19th-century authorities drew attention to the scope for misunderstanding the intended execution of small notes a 2nd above or below the note they precede. These might indicate any of three things: notes taking a substantial portion of the one they precede (hereafter referred to as appoggiaturas); notes tied to the one they precede and executed very quickly on or just before the beat (the term ‘grace note’ is used here with no necessary suggestion of pre-beat performance); or notes tied to and taking time from the one they follow (anticipatory notes), which were common in the late 18th century and throughout the 19th century in the context of trill endings and certain types of portamento.
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries there were particular problems in distinguishing between the appoggiatura, which has an important harmonic function, and the grace note, which, because it is performed so rapidly that neither the preceding nor the following note appears to lose any significant value, has primarily an accentual or ornamental function. Theorists in the second half of the 18th century periodically suggested that small notes indicate the intended value of the appoggiatura. C.P.E. Bach observed in 1753 that ‘people have recently begun to indicate such appoggiaturas according to their true value’; among composers who began to do so during the second half of the century were Gluck (from the time of his Paris operas), Haydn (from about 1762) and Mozart. Many other composers were much more casual, especially Italians, who often did not trouble to indicate appoggiaturas at all in places where the singer or instrumentalist might have been expected to supply them. Confusion over this type of notation remained a serious problem for many at the end of the 18th century. In the fifth edition (1791) of Löhlein's popular Clavier-Schule, for instance, the editor, J.G. Witthauer, having urged composers to indicate the length of appoggiaturas, concluded: ‘How many pieces would then, at least with respect to the appoggiaturas, be less badly performed, and how much trouble would be spared to the beginner!’
Where it was unclear from the notation whether an appoggiatura or a grace note was implied, some theorists, notably Türk, attempted to assist the performer by providing examples of musical contexts indicating grace note treatment. If it was decided that an appoggiatura was intended, and that the given value was not a reliable indication of its intended length, the performer had to determine what value to give it. Many 18th-century writers advanced general guidelines. The assertion that an appoggiatura should normally take half a binary main note and two-thirds of a ternary main note, promulgated in the mid-18th century by, among others, Tartini, Quantz, Leopold Mozart and C.P.E. Bach, was widely repeated by 18th- and 19th-century theorists. Some musicians, including Francesco Galeazzi and Bernhard Romberg, taught that before a ternary note the appoggiatura should take only a third of the value of the main note; others such as Clementi allowed it to take either a third or two-thirds of a dotted note according to context. Many theorists, following Bach, Mozart and Quantz, felt that an appoggiatura before a tied note, or a note followed by a rest, should take the full value of the note before which it stood, though it was admitted that the resolution on to a rest might not always be permitted by the harmony. Indeed many theorists, having articulated their guidelines, cautioned that the length of appoggiaturas, which by their very nature required a rhythmically unconstrained delivery, might often be conditioned by the expression or by the exigencies of the harmony.
By the end of the 18th century Türk and other theorists were arguing that it would be better to incorporate all appoggiaturas into full-size notation, leaving small notes to indicate grace notes. Beethoven's practice illustrates this changing attitude; he very rarely used small notes to indicate appoggiaturas (except in vocal music), reserving them principally for grace notes. Others, however, resisted that approach on the grounds that the notation of appoggiaturas with small notes was the most appropriate way of eliciting the special manner of performance they required, through either accentuation, flexible length or ornamental resolution (or a combination of these). H.C. Koch (‘Vorschlag’, Musikalisches Lexikon, 1802) articulated this clearly when he remarked that the reason for notating appoggiaturas as ornaments
has its origin in the particular and exceptional manner in which the appoggiatura is performed. Namely … one should markedly bring out the appoggiatura itself by means of a particular accent, or sound it with a certain rapid swelling of the strength of the note: and then slur the following melodic main note to it softly or with decreased strength.
A variety of ornamental resolutions is indicated by musicians as different in time and background as Domenico Corri and Baillot (ex.98).
In the case of an appoggiatura on the major or minor 2nd below the main note, some singing tutors, including Corri and Lanza, considered that in contrast to the falling appoggiatura it should be delivered with increasing strength, so that the main note received the greater accent.
When, in late 18th- and early 19th-century scores, an appoggiatura on the 2nd above or below is found before a pair of notes with a strong–weak metrical stress which are of equal length and on the same pitch, it seems clear that the appoggiatura was meant to take the whole length of the note before which it stood. This practice can be found at least as early as the 1760s and as late as the 1820s, but apparently it was not discussed at the time by theorists. In a letter of 1768, however, Haydn specifically stated that in such cases the realization of ex.99a should be as in ex.99b, not as in ex.99c. This treatment can also be found in Corri's realization of J.C. Bach's ‘Nel partir bell’idol mio' in A Select Collection. It was clearly intended, too, in Schubert's operas, as indicated by comparison of the vocal part with the orchestral parts (ex.100). Interestingly, Schubert consistently gave the appoggiatura half the value of its intended realization. A similar usage is found in Weber (perhaps deriving from his lessons with Michael Haydn), for instance in Der Freischütz.
This notation, confined largely to German composers, raises the broader question of how such pairs of notes on the same pitch should be treated when they have no indication for an appoggiatura. Crutchfield (J1989) has argued persuasively that an appoggiatura of some kind is appropriate almost always in recitative and often in arias. The practice was so well known that Italian composers in particular rarely troubled to notate appoggiaturas in such circumstances, and if a composer wanted the music sung as notated he would have to specify it, as Verdi did in Rigoletto (no.13). The preservation of this tradition among 19th-century artists is demonstrated by early recordings. Charles Santley (1834–1922), for instance, added appoggiaturas, as well as other ornamentation, in both recitative and aria in his recording of Mozart's ‘Non più andrai’.
By the second quarter of the 19th century the use of small notes to indicate appoggiaturas of the above types was fast disappearing. Where single small notes were still employed they were intended to be performed very rapidly as grace notes on or just before the beat. A sign of changing practice in this respect is Philip Corri's treatment of the matter in his L'anima di musica (1810), where, reversing Türk's approach, he instructed readers to assume that small notes represented grace notes except in a limited number of circumstances, of which he gave examples. In later treatises discussion of appoggiaturas was largely intended as an aid to the performance of older music, which formed an increasingly large proportion of the contemporary repertory. By the middle of the 19th century the now customary notation of grace notes was widespread.
General rules for an appropriate manner of grace note performance in any given period are impossible to formulate. Practice varied from time to time, place to place and individual to individual. The matter is also complicated by wider questions of historical performing practice in respect of tempo rubato, rhythmic freedom in general and, particularly, the practice in keyboard music of playing the left hand before the right. For such reasons a simplistic rule of on or before the beat, grafted on to an otherwise ‘modern’ style of playing, is essentially meaningless. During the Classical period German authorities generally taught that in most if not all circumstances grace notes should be performed on the beat (i.e. against the bass note that pertained to the main note before which the grace note stood). Milchmeyer's Die wahre Art das Pianoforte zu spielen (1797) was among the few late 18th-century German sources to recommend a pre-beat conception of grace notes as the norm. Pre-beat performance, especially in the context of tierces coulées, was commonly associated with what Türk called the ‘French style or the so called Lombard Taste’. Leopold Mozart recognized the possibility that ex.101a could imply pre-beat performance, but considered that the composer would specify this more clearly by writing it out as in ex.101b. Löhlein's explanation of the similar figure in ex.102a, in his Anweisung zum Violinspielen, as indicating anticipatory notes (ex.102b) was ‘corrected’ to ex.102c in Reichardt's 1797 edition of the treatise. There was always a degree of ambiguity in such circumstances.
Throughout
the 19th century German writers continued predominantly to instruct that grace
notes should be performed on the beat, as did many theorists of other
nationalities. Although there was no unanimity among late 18th-century and
19th-century musicians as to whether the grace note or the main note should
receive the greater accent, the majority – with the notable exception of Hugo
Riemann – seem to have favoured the latter conception. In particular instances
there was always the possibility of disagreement. Edward Dannreuther, for
example, considered that the small note in bar 3 of Schubert's A
Moment musical op.94 ex.103a was ‘meant for a Nachschlag’, and
illustrated it as in ex.103b; while Riemann in his annotated edition of
the work indicated an accented performance on the beat (ex.103c). Among
musicians on whom French influence was strongest, however, a pre-beat
conception not only of grace notes but also of ornaments of two or more notes,
which in the German tradition were still widely regarded as occurring on the
beat, seems to have been the norm. In 1840 Fétis and Moscheles observed in the Méthode
des méthodes pour piano:
Acciaccaturas, slides and groups of two or three notes are placed immediately before the principal note. In the old school it was understood that they should share in the time of the principal note, but they are now to be played quickly and lightly before the time of the large note.
It was not, though, merely a question of nationalities. The German violinist and pedagogue Andreas Moser, writing at the beginning of the 20th century, supported a pre-beat conception in many cases and considered that preference for a pre-beat or on-beat conception of grace notes was largely determined by the nature of different instruments. He observed that even at that time ‘there were the most contradictory opinions among practical musicians’ (Violinschule, iii, 28), noting that keyboard players still tended to favour placing grace notes firmly on the beat while the majority of singers and string players anticipated them, and he suggested that this had been the case continuously since the mid-18th century. Although this view was probably shared by Joseph Joachim, whose direct experience went back to the 1830s, documentary evidence suggests that, in theory at least, the French–German split was as strong among violinists as among keyboard players in the mid-19th century: Spohr explicitly required on-beat performance, while Baillot envisaged the performance of grace notes before the beat.
Nevertheless, in practice this theoretical distinction may have mattered little if the grace note was performed quickly and lightly, as the vast majority of writers said it should be. Where concrete evidence for the performance of grace notes exists, such as barrel organs or, at the end of the 19th century, recordings and piano rolls, it is often difficult to determine whether in particular instances a grace note occurs on or before the beat.
Ornaments, §9: Late 18th century and the 19th
The elaborate systems of ornament signs developed by 18th-century keyboard players was not widely adopted, even in keyboard music, during the Classical period. For other instruments composers rarely employed anything but ‘tr’, the mordent sign and various forms of turn sign, the most common being those shown in fig.3. Only the last four were normally found in printed music. The sign ‘tr’ usually indicated a trill with a number of repetitions of the upper auxiliary, while the mordent sign indicated only one or two repetitions (depending whether it began with the auxiliary); however, each of these signs was sometimes used with the meaning usually applicable to the other. The various forms of turn sign cannot reliably be related to particular melodic and rhythmic patterns; sometimes they too could be synonymous with ‘tr’, and in manuscript sources the distinction between fig.3a and fig.3d or 3e is often unclear.
During the 19th century, as composers became concerned to take greater control of their music, they increasingly wrote out ornaments in full. The progression is neatly illustrated by Wagner's turns: up to Lohengrin he used signs, but in Tristan and his later operas he always incorporated the turns into the notation. Inverted mordents were often indicated either by small notes or in normal notation, and even trills were sometimes fully notated, for instance by Dvořák (op.106) and Tchaikovsky (opp.64 and 74).
Considerable controversy has been generated by the question of how trills in music from the period 1750 to 1900 should begin. Scholarship has clearly shown that, although the upper-note start was never quite as self-evident as advocates such as C.P.E. Bach implied, it was undoubtedly the dominant practice in the mid-18th century. When and where a general preference for a main-note start began to emerge remains uncertain. Moser identified the strongest support for the upper-note start as being in north Germany; he asserted, however, that in Mannheim the trill was to begin from above only if specifically notated, and that C.P.E. Bach's authority was countered by ‘the powerful influences which stemmed from the Viennese masters of instrumental music’ (Violinschule, iii, 19–20). What evidence Moser may have possessed for this statement, other than received tradition by way of Joachim, remains unclear. Certainly, a considerable number of the trills on the musical clocks from the 1790s containing Haydn's Flötenuhrstücke begin on the main note, but there is no consistency and no connection with Haydn's notation. Arguments for and against Mozart's preference have been advanced, and the matter has been exhaustively examined by Neumann (J1986). For Beethoven, too, the evidence is largely circumstantial. In 1828, however, Hummel published his unambiguous opinion that a main-note start should be the norm, and Spohr followed suit a few years later. Baillot offered four different beginnings without recommending the primacy of any. Some 19th-century composers took trouble to indicate the beginnings of trills, particularly to show a start from below, and their manner of doing this was used by Franklin Taylor in 1879 as evidence for their normal practice. It seems probable that among major 19th-century composers Weber, Chopin and Mendelssohn generally favoured an upper-note start. In this as in other aspects of performance, however, dogmatism and rigidity are undoubtedly out of place.
Trill endings were subject to much variation. By far the most usual was the two-note ending; in 1776 Reichardt, for instance, recommended that if no trill ending was marked orchestral players should automatically employ this type of suffix, and many musicians throughout the period considered this the default ending. In solo performance, on the other hand, more elaborate endings might commonly have been expected to be improvised until at least the middle of the 19th century, regardless of what a composer indicated.
The expressive effect of a turn depends on its position in the melody, its rhythmic configuration, its melodic shape and the speed with which it is executed. The relationship between the turn and the trill has always been close. C.P.E. Bach considered that the two ornaments were interchangeable in many instances. Most 18th-century authors stated that turns should be performed quickly, but a variety of speeds, depending on context, would certainly have been employed by musicians throughout the period. In general, turns, along with other short ornaments, would have been added at will by 18th- and early 19th-century performers, and they remain appropriate as improvised embellishment in some later 19th-century repertories, especially Italian vocal music. In the 19th century, just as there was a greater tendency for trills to begin with the principal note, there is evidence that in some circumstances performers may have been increasingly inclined to start turns with the main note. With respect to the positioning of accenting turns on or before the beat, many of the same factors apply as in the case of the grace note; the majority of authorities favoured on-beat performance, but some advocated performance before the beat. The turn in ex.104a might have been executed in any of the ways shown in ex.104b–f. The form of turn for which Leopold Mozart used the conventional German term Doppelschlag (he used Mordent for the accenting turn) was clearly considered by him as a connecting ornament, its principal use, both in its direct and inverted forms, being as an extempore embellishment to an appoggiatura (ex.105); the same usage was still illustrated in the 19th century by Campagnoli. In the revised 1787 edition of his treatise Mozart also showed it as a simple connection between two conjunct or leaping notes (ex.106).
These patterns were standard, varying slightly from author to author in their exact rhythmic configuration and placement. In the 18th century it seems to have been generally accepted that the connecting turn, like the accenting turn, would be performed rapidly, and this remained true for many 19th-century musicians. There was, however, a growing tendency towards the middle of the century to execute some turns in a more leisurely manner. In the 1830s A.B. Marx thought that the turn should be ‘performed in moderately fast or even fast tempo’. Near the end of the century Dannreuther recorded:
The turn in Bellini's cantilena, both andantino and largo, was sung in a very broad way, so the notes formed part of the principal phrase, just as it is now to be found written out and incorporated in Wagner's Tristan. The ornamental notes, resembling a turn at the end of a long breath, were always given piano, diminuendo, leggiero as in Chopin (ex.107).
A number of 19th-century authorities, including Romberg and Marx, mentioned the possibility that a direct turn sign might equally well invite an inverted turn, depending on the musical context. Uncertainty about the implications of turn signs even extended to Wagner's music, and on various occasions in Rienzi and Tannhäuser (in the latter case at the composer's instigation in 1875) direct turn signs were interpreted as inverted turns.
In addition to the major classes of notated ornaments (which throughout much of the period might well have been introduced where they were not written) there were others that were only occasionally notated, though very frequently employed. Chief among these were vibrato, portamento and arpeggiando. A few composers marked vibrato with dots under a slur or by various accent signs under slurs (which in string playing probably indicated an unmeasured bow vibrato or portato), as well as with a wavy line (ex.108a–c). The crescendo–diminuendo sign, in connection with a single note of shorter value was also used by many composers to invite, if not to instruct, string players to make an ornamental vibrato, as explained in the Joachim and Moser Violinschule. Portamento was sometimes called for by a verbal instruction, but 19th-century composers often implied its use either by fingerings (in string playing), by grace notes that were separated from their main notes by more than a tone, or by slurs (this may sometimes be the meaning of slurs between syllables in vocal music). Arpeggiando was frequently marked in keyboard music by the conventional signs, though many 19th-century composers indicated it in small notation. Arpeggiando signs or notation were probably intended to prevent its omission in places where it was vital to the expression; however, players throughout the period would have been expected to use it ad libitum in a range of contexts that were explained by many theorists.
The study of ornaments and their manner of execution since the beginning of the 20th century has been predominantly a matter of charting different responses to the challenge of performing a historical repertory. The conditions of this study are fundamentally different from those of previous centuries, for although mechanical instruments preserve aspects of earlier practice the development of recording allows us to hear precisely how ornaments were applied and executed by individual performers. The continuing trend towards a literal interpretation of the composer's notation, which began during the 19th century, has sometimes led to profoundly unhistorical approaches to older repertory. In the first decades of the century a tradition of extensive improvised ornamentation in certain types of vocal music continued. Recordings of Rossini's ‘Una voce poco fa’ by such singers as Marcella Sembrich, Amelita Galli-Curci and Luisa Tetrazzini, for instance, involve much additional ornamentation, most of which is individual to the singer concerned. By the second half of the century such practices were regarded as unwarrantable liberties, and in Teresa Berganza's 1972 recording, for example, the aria is sung with virtually no modification of Rossini's text. The obsession with fidelity to the notation even led, in the middle decades of the century, to a widespread abandonment of the prosodic appoggiaturas that had earlier been taken for granted in vocal music. With the growing interest in historical performance during the later decades of the century, performers began to reintroduce these appoggiaturas, though they are still not employed as widely as they would have been at the beginning of the 20th century. As late as 1986 Neumann argued for the literal performance of many passages in Mozart, where the composer would almost certainly have expected his singers to employ appoggiaturas. The interpolated portamentos, involving the insertion of grace notes, that were still considered a mark of fine singing in the late 19th century, and can be heard on early recordings, disappeared during the early decades of the century and were not revived. In mid-20th-century string playing and singing portamento was used ever more sparingly and discreetly, and came in due course to be regarded as thoroughly tasteless. Little attempt was made to reintroduce portamento as an aspect of historical performance, despite abundant evidence for its integral role in many repertories. It is otherwise with vibrato. Although the notion of vibrato as an ornament can still be found in Leopold Auer's Violin Playing as I Teach it (1921) and Henry Wood's The Gentle Art of Singing (1927), the concept of continuous vibrato as an essential aspect of tone production had, in practice, made that notion largely irrelevant by the time Siegfried Eberhardt advocated continuous vibrato as the secret of a fine tone in Der beseelte Violin-Ton in 1910. Styles of continuous vibrato changed considerably during the 20th century, and it remains a standard aspect of most modern performance. Despite the untenable claims of Donington and others that continuous vibrato has always been an integral aspect of tone production in singing and string playing, many early music performers in the late 20th century revived an ornamental approach to vibrato within a basically vibrato-less tone, and their example influenced modern performances of repertory from the 18th century. But there is still a widespread fallacy among performers that from Beethoven onwards a full-blooded continuous vibrato is stylistically appropriate.
The 20th century produced many studies of historical performing practice. In the first half of the century these had relatively little influence on the practices of professional musicians. In the second half of the century there was growing interest in traditions with which performing musicians have entirely lost contact; but it is an intrinsically hazardous business to try to unravel the relationship between written texts and aural phenomena, and scholarly studies of ornamentation have tended to breed controversy. The third quarter of the 20th century saw particularly passionate debate about such issues as when trills ought to start with the upper note and whether grace notes should precede or coincide with the beat, and the influence of personal taste on all sides of the argument has sometimes been stronger than scholarly detachment. However, recent studies of historical recordings (now more widely available, in transfers to CD, than before) have spread awareness of the mutability of musical taste, the diversity of practice and the scope for alternative aesthetics of performance. In the light of such experience there seems to be a growing appreciation that by their very nature ornaments are flexible, and that seeking hard and fast solutions in particular cases is often not only unrealistic but unhistorical.
The numbers are those of the sections above in which the ornaments are discussed.
Accent: (springer), 7; (appoggiatura), 8
Accent und Trillo (prepared trill), 8
Accento, 1, 4, 8
Accentuirte Brechung (broken chord with passing note), 8
Acciaccatura, 5, 8, 9
Acute (springer), 6
Aleado (mordent), 2
Anschlag (double appoggiatura), 8
Anticipazione della nota (passing note), 8
Anticipazione della syllaba (passing note), 8
Apoyamento (appoggiatura), 2
Appoggiatura, 5, 9, 10
Appuy (appoggiatura), 7
Ardire (?vibrato), 8
Arpeado, 2
Arpégé, 7
Arpeggiando, 9
Aspiration: (curtailed note), 7; (springer), 7; (vibrato),
7Backfall: (descending appoggiatura), 6; backfall and shake, 6; double backfall
(slide), 6
Balancement: (tremolo), 7; balancement de main (vibrato), 7
Batement: (vibrato), 7; battement (mordent), 7; battements
(trill), 7
Battery (broken chord), 6
Beat, 6
Bebung (vibrato), 8
Bombus (repeated note), 8
Brechung (broken chord), 8Cadence: (trill), 7; (turn), 8
Cadence coupée, 7
Cadent (note of anticipation), 6
Cadenza, 5
Cascata, 4
Cercar la nota (passing note), 8
Cheute (appoggiatura), 7
Circolo, circolo mezzo (turn), 8
Clamatione (portamento), 1
Coulé: (appoggiatura), 7; (slide), 7
Coulement (appoggiatura), 7
Crescere e scemare di voce, 4 Détaché (curtailed note), 7
Diminution, disminucion (ornamental division), 2, 5
Doppel-Cadenz (trill commencing with turn, or trill with
turned ending), 8
Doppelschlag (turn), 8, 9
Doublé (turn), 7
Double cadence: (turn), 7; (compound trill), 7
Double cadence coupée, 7
Double cadence sans tremblement (turn), 7
Doublement du gosier, 7
Double relish, 6
Duplex longa florata, 1 Einfall (appoggiatura or passing
note), 8
Elevation (slur), 6
Esclamazione: (strengthening of the relaxed voice), 4;
(ascending passing note at end of main note), 8
Esmorsata, 2
Exclamatio, 8
Extrasino (vihuela portamento), 2Fermo, 5
Flaté, flatté, flattement (vibrato), 7
Florificatio vocis (trill), 1
Flos harmonicus (trill), 1
Forefall: 3, 6; forefall and shake, 6 Gedoppelter Accent, 8
Glosa, 2
Groppo, grup, gruppo (trill, often with turn), 1, 4, 6,
8Halbtriller (short, snapped trill), 8
Half-fall (appoggiatura), 6
Harpègement, 7
Harpeggio, 8 Intonazione, 4, 8Kette von Trillern (chain of
trills), 8Langueur (vibrato), 7
Liaison: (tie), 7; (slur), 7
Longa florata, 1Martellement (mordent), 7
Messa di voce, 4, 5
Mordent, Mordant, mordente, 2, 5, 8, 9 Nachschlag, 8, 9
Nota procellaris (?vibrato), 1 Pasaje (ornamental divisions),
2
Passaggio (ornamental division), 1, 4, 8
Pincé: (vibrato), 7; (mordent), 7
Pincement (mordent), 7
Plainte (vibrato), 7
Portamento, 5, 9, 10
Portar la voce, 4
Port de voix (appoggiatura), 7
Port de voix coulée, 7
Prallender Doppelschlag (trilled turn), 8
Pralltriller (short, snapped trill), 8 Quiebro: (trill), 2;
(mordent), 2 Raking play (form of lutenists’ broken chord), 6
Redoble: (ornamental division), 2; (trill), 2
Relish: single relish (variously a turn and a trill), 6;
double relish, 6
Repicco, 4
Reverberatio (appoggiatura), 1
Ribattuta, 4, 8
Roulade: (appoggiatura), 6; (‘trilling’ or ‘quavering’), 6;
single roulade (backfall), 6; double roulade (double backfall or slide),
6Schleifer (slide), 8
Schneller (inverted single mordent), 8
Shake: 3, 5, 6; close shake (vibrato), 6; open shake, 6; plain
note and shake, 6; plain shake (reiterated note), 6; shake turned, 6
Sigh (springer), 6
Single relish, 6
Slide, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9
Slur, 6
Son coupé (curtailed note), 7
Son filé, 7
Springer, 6
Sting (vibrato), 6
Strascino, 4
Stroke, 3
Supposition, 7
Suspension (truncated note), 7Temblor, 2
Tenuë (tie), 7
Tierce coulé, 7, 9
Tirata (scale-like embellishment), 8
Tombé (descending appoggiatura), 7
Tour de chant (inverted mordent), 7
Tour de gosier (turn), 7
Tremble (bow vibrato), 6
Tremblement: (trill), 7; tremblement mineur (vibrato), 7;
tremblement sans appuyer (De Machy; vibrato), 7; tremblement et pincé (trill
with turned ending), 7; tremblement ouvert (trill resolving upwards), 7;
tremblement fermé (trill resolving downwards), 7; tremblement continu
(oscillates for a few bars), 7
Tremoletto: (trill), 8; (mordent), 8
Tremolino (repeated note), 4
Tremolo: (mordent), 1, 8; (repeated note), 4; (trill), 1, 4,
8; (vibrato), 8
Tremolo d’un tasto solo (mordent), 1
Trill, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Triller: (trill), 8
Trilletto (vibrato), 8
Trillo: (trill), 4, 8; (repeated note), 4, 5, 8; (vibrato), 8;
Trillo und Mordant (trill with turned ending), 8
Trinado, trino (trill), 2
Turn, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Tut (curtailed note), 6 Vibrato (as ornament), 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,
10
Vorschlag: (appoggiatura or passing note), 8; unveränderlicher
Vorschlag (invariable or short appoggiatura), 8; veränderlicher Vorschlag
(variable or long appoggiatura), 8Wholefall (slur), 6
A General. B Middle Ages and Renaissance. C Spain, 1500–1800. D English virginalists. E Italy, 1600–50. F Italian late Baroque. G English Baroque. H French Baroque. I German Baroque. J After 1750.
b: middle ages and renaissance
MGG1 (‘Diminution’; H. Engel)
MGG2 (‘Verzierungen’; D. Gutknecht)
H. Goldschmidt: Die Lehre von der vokalen Ornamentik (Charlottenburg, 1907/R)
A. Beyschlag: Die Ornamentik der Musik (Leipzig, 1908/R)
A. Dolmetsch: The Interpretation of the Music of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries Revealed by Contemporary Evidence (London, 1915, 2/1946/R)
R. Haas: Aufführungspraxis der Musik (Potsdam, 1931/R)
A. Schering: Aufführungspraxis alter Musik (Leipzig, 1931)
P.C. Aldrich: The Principal Agréments of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: a Study of Musical Ornamentation (diss., Harvard U., 1942)
T. Dart: The Interpretation of Music (London, 1954, 4/1967/R)
E.T. Ferand: Die Improvisation in Beispielen aus neun Jahrhunderten abendländischer Musik, Mw, xii (1956, 2/1961; Eng. trans., 1961)
W. Georgii: Die Verzierungen in der Musik: Theorie und Praxis (Zürich and Freiburg, 1957)
R. Donington: The Interpretation of Early Music (London, 1963, 4/1989)
G. Frotscher: Aufführungspraxis alter Musik (Wilhelmshaven, 1963, 8/1997; Eng. trans., 1981)
K. Wichmann: Vom Vortrag des Recitativs und seiner Erscheinungsformen: ein Beitrag zur Gesangspädagogik (Leipzig, 1965)
K. Wichmann: Der Ziergesang und die Ausführung der Appoggiatura: ein Beitrag zur Gesangspädagogik (Leipzig, 1966)
P.F. Williams: ‘The Harpsichord Acciaccatura: Theory and Practice in Harmony, 1650–1750’, MQ, liv (1968), 503–23
R. Donington: A Performer's Guide to Baroque Music (London, 1973)
H. Ferguson: Keyboard Interpretation from the 14th to the 19th Century (London, 1975/R)
B.B. Mather and D. Lasocki: Free Ornamentation in Woodwind Music, 1700–1775 (New York, 1976)
S.A. Sanford: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Vocal Style and Technique (DMA diss., Stanford U., 1979)
J. Tyler: The Early Guitar: a History and Handbook (London, 1980)
H. Krones and R. Schollum: Vokale und allgemeine Aufführungspraxis (Vienna, 1983)
R. Troeger: Technique and Interpretation on the Harpsichord and Clavichord (Bloomington, IN, 1987)
R. Jackson: Performance Practice, Medieval to Contemporary: a Bibliographic Guide (New York and London, 1988)
G. Moens-Haenen: Das Vibrato in der Musik des Barock: ein Handbuch zur Aufführungspraxis für Vokalisten und Instrumentalisten (Graz, 1988)
D. Gutknecht: Studien zur Geschichte der Aufführungspraxis alter Musik (Cologne, 1993)
S.A. Sanford: ‘A Comparison of French and Italian Singing in the Seventeenth Century’, Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, i/1 (1995) 〈www.sscm.harvard.edu/jscm〉
S. Sanford: ‘Solo Singing, I’, A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth-Century Music, ed. S. Carter (New York, 1997), 3–29
P. Aaron : Thoscanello de la musica (Venice, 1523/R, rev. with suppl. as Toscanello in musica, 4/1562; Eng. trans. collating all edns, 1970)
M. Agricola: Musica instrumentalis deudsch (Wittenberg, 1529/R, enlarged 5/1545); Eng trans. by W. Hettrick (Cambridge, 1994)
S. di Ganassi dal Fontego: Opera intitulata Fontegara (Venice, 1535/R1969 in BMB, section 2, xviii; Eng. trans., 1959); ed. L. de Paolis (Rome, 1991)
S. di Ganassi dal Fontego: Regola rubertina (Venice, 1542/R); ed. W. Eggers (Kassel, 1974); Eng. trans. in JVdGSA, xviii (1981), 13–66
D. Ortiz: Trattado de glosas sobre clausulas y otros generos de puntos en la musica de violone (Rome, 1553); ed. Max Schneider (Berlin, 1913, 3/1961)
E.N. Ammerbach: Orgel oder Instrument Tabulatur (Leipzig, 1571, 2/1583); ed. C. Jacobs (Oxford, 1984)
G. Dalla Casa: Il vero modo di diminuir (Venice, 1584/R; Eng. trans. in HBSJ, i, 1989, pp.109–14)
G. Bassano: Ricercate, passaggi et cadentie (Venice, 1585); ed. R. Erig (Zürich, 1976)
I. Horsley: ‘Improvised Embellishment in the Performance of Renaissance Polyphonic Music’, JAMS, iv (1951), 3–19
W.H. Rubsamen: ‘The Justiniane or Viniziane of the 15th Century’, AcM, xxix (1957), 172–84
I. Horsley: ‘The Solo Ricercar in Diminution Manuals: New Light on Early Wind and String Techniques’, AcM, xxxiii (1961), 29–40
W. Dürr and U. Siegele: ‘Cantar d'affetto: zum Vortrag monodischer Musik’, GfMKB: Leipzig 1966, 208–15
E.T. Ferand: ‘Didactic Embellishment Literature in the Late Renaissance: a Survey of Sources’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. J. LaRue and others (New York, 1966/R), 154–72
D. Poulton: ‘Graces of Play in Renaissance Lute Music’, EMc, iii (1975), 107–14
H.M. Brown: Embellishing Sixteenth-Century Music (London, 1976)
R. Erig and V. Gutmann: Italienische Diminutionen: die zwischen 1553 und 1638 mehrmals bearbeiten Sätze/Italian Diminutions: the Pieces with More than One Diminution from 1553–1638 (Zürich, 1979)
L. Brunner: ‘The Performance of Plainchant: Some Preliminary Observations of the New Era’, EMc, x (1982), 317–28
C. Page: ‘The Performance of Ars Antiqua Motets’, EMc, xvi (1988), 147–64
H.M. Brown and S. Sadie, eds.: Performance Practice: Music before 1600 (London, 1989)
D. Fallows: ‘Embellishment and Urtext in the Fifteenth-Century Song Repertories’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis, xiv (1990), 59–85
B. Dickey: ‘L'accento: in Search of a Forgotten Ornament’, HBSJ, iii (1991), 98–121
C. Jacobs: ‘Ornamentation in Spanish Renaissance Vocal Music’, Performance Practice Review, iv (1991), 116–85
B. Thomas: ‘Divisions in Renaissance Music’, Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music, ed. T. Knighton and D. Fallows (London, 1992), 345–53
B. Toliver: ‘Improvisation in the Madrigals of the Rossi Codex’, AcM, lxiv (1992), 165–76
A. Haug: ‘Zur Interpretation der Liqueszenzneumen’, AMw, l (1993), 85–100
M.C. Bradshaw: ‘Giovanni Luca Conforti and Vocal Embellishment: from Formula to Artful Improvisation’, Performance Practice Review, viii (1995), 5–27
T.J. McGee: ‘“Ornamental” Neumes and Early Notation’, Performance Practice Review, ix (1996), 39–65
R. Strizich: ‘Ornamentation in Spanish Baroque Guitar Music’, JLSA, v (1972), 18–39
D. Preciado: Quiebros y redobles en F. Correa de Araujo (1575/77–1654): estudio sobre los adornos de la música de tecla española de principios del s. XVI (Madrid, 1973)
F. Cook: ‘Les batteries à la guitare baroque espagnole d'après Marin Mersenne’, Musique ancienne, vii (1979), 22–7
N.D. Pennington: The Spanish Baroque Guitar, with a Transcription of De Murcia's Passacalles y obras (Ann Arbor, 1981)
see also G: English Baroque
D. Stevens : The Mulliner Book: a Commentary (London, 1952)
E.P. Schwandt: The Ornamented Clausula diminuta in the ‘Fitzwilliam Virginal Book’ (diss., Stanford U., 1967)
J. Caldwell: English Keyboard Music before the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1973)
A. Brown: ‘Parthenia: Some Aspects of Notation and Performance’, The Consort, no.32 (1976), 176–82
P. le Huray: ‘English Keyboard Fingering in the 16th and Early 17th Centuries’, Source Materials and the Interpretation of Music: a Memorial Volume to Thurston Dart, ed. I. Bent (London, 1981), 227–57
D. Wulstan: Tudor Music (London, 1985)
B.A.R. Cooper: English Solo Keyboard Music of the Middle and Late Baroque (New York, 1989)
D. Hunter: The Application of Grace Signs in the Sources of English Keyboard Music, c.1530–c.1650 (diss., National U. of Ireland, 1989)
D. Hunter: ‘The Function of Strokes in Sixteenth-Century Sources of English Keyboard Music’, Musicology in Ireland, ed. G. Gillen and H.M. White (Dublin, 1990), 131–49
D. Hunter: ‘My Ladye Nevells Booke and the Art of Gracing’, Byrd Studies, ed. A. Brown and R. Turbet (Cambridge, 1992), 174–92
J. Harley: British Harpsichord Music (Aldershot, 1992–4)
A. Brown: ‘England’, Keyboard Music before 1700, ed. A. Silbiger (New York, 1995), 23–89
R. Rognoni: Passaggi per potersi essercitare (Venice, 1592)
L. Zacconi: Prattica di musica (Venice, 1592/R)
G.L. Conforti: Breve et facile maniera d'essercitarsi (Rome, 1593/R; Eng. trans., 1989, as The Joy of Ornamentation)
G. Diruta: Il transilvano (Venice, 1593/R); ed. M.C. Bradshaw and E.J. Soehnlen (Henryville, PA, 1984)
G.B. Bovicelli: Regole, passaggi di musica (Venice, 1594/R); ed. in DM, 1st ser., Druckschriften-Faksimiles, xii (1957)
E. de' Cavalieri: Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo (Rome, 1600/R); ed. in CMI, xxxv–xxxvi (Milan, 1919)
A. Virgiliano: Il dolcimelo (MS, c1600/R)
A. Banchieri: Cartella, overo Regole utilissime à quelli che desiderano imparare il canto figurato (Venice, 1601, 3/1614 as Cartella musicale; Eng. trans., 1981; 4/1615 as La cartellina musicale; 5/1623 as La banchierina, overo Cartella piccola del canto figurato)
G. Caccini: Le nuove musiche (Florence, 1601/2/R); ed. in RRMBE, ix (1970)
G.L. Conforti: Salmi passaggiati (Venice, 1601–3, 2/1618 as Passaggi sopra tutti li salmi); ed. M.C. Bradshaw (Neuhausen-Stuttgart, 1985)
A. Agazzari: Del sonare sopra 'l basso con tutti li stromenti e dell'uso loro nel conserto (Siena, 1607/R, 2/1608 in Sacrarum cantionum … liber II; Eng. trans. in StrunkSR1); ed. V. Gibelli (Milan, 1979)
O. Durante: Arie devote (Rome, 1608)
G.G. [J.H.] Kapsberger: Libro primo di arie passeggiate (Rome, 1612)
G.G. [J.H.] Kapsberger: Libro primo di mottetti passeggiate (Rome, 1612)
A. Notari: Prime musiche nove (London, 1613)
A. Brunelli: Varii esercitii (Florence, 1614); ed. R. Erig (Zürich, 1977)
G. Frescobaldi: Toccate e partite d'intavolatura di cimbalo et organo … libro primo (Rome, 1615, 4/1628); prefaces in SartoriB; Eng. trans. in Dolmetsch, A1915
F. Rognoni: Selva di varii passaggi (Milan, 1620/R)
G.P. Foscarini: Il primo, secondo, e terzo libro della chitarra spagnola (n.p., n.d. [after 1628])
J. Crüger: Synopsis musica (Berlin, 1630, enlarged 2/1654)
G.B. Doni: Trattato primo sopra il genere enarmonico (MS, 1635); ed. in A.F. Gori and G.B. Passeri: Lyra Barberina amphichordos, i (Florence, 1763/R)
G. Frescobaldi: Fiori musicali (Venice, 1635)
D. Mazzocchi: Madrigali (Rome, 1638)
P. della Valle: Discorso della musica dell'età nostra (MS, 1640); ed. in A.F. Gori and G.B. Passeri: G.B. Doni: Lyra Barberina amphichordos, ii (Florence, 1763/R)
J. Crüger: Musica praticae praecepta brevia (Berlin, 1660)
G. Rose: ‘Agazzari and the Improvising Orchestra’, JAMS, xviii (1965), 382–93
H.W. Hitchcock: ‘Vocal Ornamentation in Caccini's Nuove musiche’, MQ, lvi (1970), 389–404
R. Greenlee: ‘Dispositione di voce: Passage to Florid Singing’, EMc, xv (1987), 47–55
S. Carter: ‘Francesco Rognoni's Selva di varii passaggi (1620): Fresh Details Concerning Early Baroque Vocal Ornamentation’, Performance Practice Review, ii (1989), 5–33
S. Carter: ‘On the Shape of the Early Baroque Trill’, Historical Performance, iii/1 (1990), 9–17
S. Carter: ‘The String Tremolo in the 17th Century’, EMc, xix (1991), 49–60
B. Dickey: ‘Ornamentation in Early Seventeenth-Century Italian Music’, A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth-Century Music, ed. S. Carter (New York, 1997), 245–68
G.M. Bononcini: Sonate da chiesa, op.6 (Venice, 1672/R)
F. Gasparini: L'armonico pratico al cimbalo (Venice, 1708/R; Eng. trans., 1963, as The Practical Harmonist at the Harpsichord)
G. Tartini : Traité des agréments de la musique (Paris, 1771); ed. E.R. Jacobi (Celle, 1961) [incl. Eng. and Ger. trans. and facs. of orig. It. MS, I-Vc]
W. Dean: ‘Vocal Embellishment in a Handel Aria’, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Music: a Tribute to Karl Geiringer, ed. H.C.R. Landon and R.E. Chapman (London, 1970), 151–9; repr. in W. Dean: Essays on Opera (Oxford, 1990), 22–9
R. Freeman: ‘Farinello and his Repertory’, Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Music in Honor of Arthur Mendel, ed. R.L. Marshall (Kassel and Hackensack, NJ, 1974), 301–30
W. Dean: ‘The Performance of Recitative in Late Baroque Opera’, ML, lviii (1977), 389–402
J.E. Smiles: ‘Directions for Improvised Ornamentation in Italian Method Books of the Late Eighteenth Century’, JAMS, xxxi (1978), 495–509
H.M. Brown: ‘Embellishing Eighteenth-Century Arias: on Cadenzas’, Opera & Vivaldi: Dallas 1980, 258–76
D.R. Fuller: ‘Ornamentation’, Companion to Baroque Music, ed. J.A. Sadie (London, 1990), 417–34
E. Gatti: ‘Nel solco della tradizione italiana: “Les adagios brodés” di Pietro Nardini’, Pietro Nardini: Livorno 1994, 53–84
N. Zaslaw: ‘Ornaments for Corelli's Violin Sonatas, op.5’, EMc, xxiv (1996), 95–118
J. Playford : A Breefe Introduction to the Skill of Musick for Song and Violl (London, 1654, rev. 12/1694/R by H. Purcell)
C. Simpson: The Division-Violist, or An Introduction to Playing upon a Ground (London, 1659, 2/1667/R as Chelys: minuritionum artificio exornata/The Division-Viol, 3/1712)
The Burwell Lute Tutor (MS, c1660–72/R)
M. Locke: Melothesia, or Certain General Rules for Playing upon a Continued-Bass (London, 1673/R); ed. C. Hogwood (Oxford, 1987)
T. Mace: Musick's Monument (London, 1676/R)
P. Reggio: The Art of Singing, or A Treatise wherein is Shewn how to Sing Well Any Song Whatsoever, and also how to Apply the Best Graces, with a Collection of Cadences Plain, and then Graced (Oxford, 1677)
The Synopsis of Vocal Musick (London, 1680)
N. Matteis: Le false consonanse della musica (London, c1680; Eng. trans., 1682/R)
H. Salter: The General Companion: being Exact Directions for the Recorder (London, 1683)
R. Carr: The Delightful Companion, or Choice New Lessons for the Recorder or Flute (London, 1684, 2/1686)
A New and Easie Method to Learn to Sing by Book (London, 1686)
H. Purcell: A Choice Collection of Lessons for the Harpsichord or Spinet (London, 1696, 3/1699); ed. H. Ferguson (London, 1964, 2/1968)
The Compleat Musick-Master (London, 1704, 3/1722)
The Bird Fancyer's Delight (London, 1717); ed. S. Godman (London, 1954)
The Harpsichord Master Improved (London, 1718)
P.F. Tosi: Opinioni de' cantori antichi e moderni (Bologna, 1723/R; Eng. trans., ed. J.E. Galliard, 1742, 2/1743/R as Observations on the Florid Song)
W. Babell: XII Solos … with Proper Graces Adapted to Each Adagio (London, c1725)
P. Prelleur: The Modern Musick-Master, or The Universal Musician (London, 1731/R, 4/1738)
J. Grassineau: A Musical Dictionary (London, 1740/R, rev., enlarged 2/1796 by J. Robson, rev. 3/1784 by J.C. Heck)
F. Geminiani: A Treatise of Good Taste in the Art of Musick (London, 1749/R1969 with introduction by R. Donington)
F. Geminiani: The Art of Playing the Violin (London, 1751/R1952 with introduction by D.D. Boyden)
N. Pasquali: The Art of Fingering the Harpsichord (Edinburgh, ?1760)
C. Zuccari: The True Method of Playing an Adagio Made Easy by 12 Examples (London, c1760)
J. Hook: Guida di musica, Being a Complete Book of Instructions for Beginners on the Harpsichord or Piano Forte (London, c1785)
R. Beer: ‘Ornaments in Old Keyboard Music’, MR, xiii (1952), 3–13
V. Duckles: ‘Florid Embellishment in English Song of the Late 16th and Early 17th Centuries’, AnnM, v (1957), 329–45
M.V. Hall: ‘Handel's Graces’, HJb 1957, 25–43
J. Wilson, ed.: Roger North on Music (London, 1959)
T. Dart: ‘Ornament Signs in Jacobean Music for Lute and Viol’, GSJ, xiv (1961), 30–33
H. Ferguson: ‘Purcell's Harpsichord Music: Lecture-Recital’, PRMA, xci (1964–5), 1–9
J. Harley: ‘Ornaments in English Keyboard Music of the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries’, MR, xxxi (1970), 177–200
M. Cyr: ‘A Seventeenth-Century Source of Ornamentation for Voice and Viol: British Museum MS. Egerton 2971’, RMARC, no.9 (1971), 53–72
M. Tilmouth: ‘York Minster MS. M.16(s) and Captain Prendcourt’, ML, liv (1973), 302–7
B. Cooper: ‘New Light on John Stanley's Organ Music’, PRMA, ci (1974–5), 101–6
D.H. Till: English Vocal Ornamentation, 1600–1660 (diss., U. of Oxford, 1975)
P.L. Furnas: The Manchester Gamba Book: a Primary Source of Ornaments for the Lyra Viol (diss., Stanford U., 1978)
M. Boxall: ‘The Harpsichord Master of 1697 and its Relationship to Contemporary Instruction and Playing’, English Harpsichord Magazine, ii (1981), 178–83
G. Cox: Organ Music in Restoration England: a Study of Sources, Styles, and Influences (New York, 1989)
M. Chan and J.C. Kassler, eds.: Roger North: ‘The Musicall Grammarian’ (Cambridge, 1990)
H.D. Johnstone: ‘The English Beat’, Aspects of Keyboard Music: Essays in Honour of Susi Jeans, ed. R. Judd (Oxford, 1992), 34–44
I. Spink, ed.: The Blackwell History of Music in Britain, iii: The Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1992) [incl. I. Spink: ‘Vocal Music II: from 1660’, 175–96; B. Cooper: ‘Keyboard Music’, 341–66; M. Spring: ‘Solo Music for Tablature Instruments’, 367–405]
C. Price: ‘Newly Discovered Autograph Keyboard Music of Purcell and Draghi’, JRMA, cxx (1995), 77–111
H.D. Johnstone: ‘Ornamentation in the Keyboard Music of Henry Purcell and his Contemporaries’, Performing the Music of Henry Purcell, ed. M. Burden (Oxford, 1996), 82–104
M. Shepherd: ‘The Interpretation of Signs for Graces in English Lute Music’, The Lute, xxxvi (1996), 37–84
R. Spencer: ‘Singing Purcell's Songs: 17th Century Evidence, with Suggestions for Singers Today’, Singing (1996–7), 31–3
M. Cyr: ‘Ornamentation in English Lyra Viol Music, I: Slurs, Juts, Thumps, and Other “Graces” for the Bow’, JVdGSA, xxxiv (1997), 48–66
M. Cyr: ‘Ornamentation in English Lyra Viol Music, II: Shakes, Relishes, Falls, and Other “Graces” for the Left Hand’, JVdGSA, xxxv (1998), 16–34
AnthonyFB
MersenneHU
N. Vallet: Secretum musarum/Secret des muses (Amsterdam, 1615–16, 2/1618–19); ed. A Souris (Paris, 1970, 2/1989)
P. Trichet: Traité des instruments de musique (MS, 1630s, F-Psg 1070); ed. F. Lesure, AnnM, iii (1955), 283–387; iv (1956), 175–248; edn pubd. separately (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1957/R; Eng. trans., 1973)
J. Denis: Traité de l'accord de l'espinette (Paris, 1643, 2/1650/R; Eng. trans., 1987)
J. Millet: La belle méthode, ou L'art de bien chanter (Lyons, 1666/R)
B. de Bacilly: Remarques curieuses sur l'art de bien chanter (Paris, 1668, 3/1679/R; Eng. trans., 1968)
J. de la Barre: Airs à deux parties avec les seconds couplets en diminution (Paris, 1669/R)
J. Rousseau: Méthode claire, certaine et facile, pour apprendre à chanter la musique (Paris, 1678, 5/c1710/R)
J. Le Gallois: Lettre de Mr Le Gallois à Mademoiselle Regnault de Solier touchant la musique (Paris, 1680); partial Eng. trans. in D. Fuller: ‘French Harpsichord Playing in the 17th Century: after Le Gallois’, EMc, iv (1976), 22–6
Danoville: L'art de toucher le dessus et basse de viole (Paris, 1687/R)
J. Rousseau: Traité de la viole (Paris, 1687/R)
A. Bauderon de Sénecé: Lettre de Clément Marot … à l'arrivée de J.-B. de Lully aux Champs-Elysées (Cologne, 1668); repr. in Echo musical (5 Feb, 5 March and 5 April 1913)
E.D. Delair: Traité d'accompagnement pour le théorbe et le clavessin (Paris, 1690, 2/1724)
M. L'Affilard: Principes très-faciles pour bien apprendre la musique (Paris, 1694, 5/1705/R)
C. Masson: Nouveau traité des règles pour la composition de la musique (Paris, 1694)
E. Loulié: Eléments ou principes de musique (Paris, 1696/R, 2/1698; Eng. trans., 1965)
S. de Brossard: Dictionaire des termes grecs, latins et italiens (Paris, 1701, enlarged 2/1703/R as Dictionaire de musique, 3/1705/R); Eng. trans., ed. A. Gruber (Henryville, PA, 1982)
M. de Saint Lambert: Les principes du clavecin (Paris, 1702/R); ed. R. Harris-Warrick with Eng. trans. (Cambridge, 1984)
J.L. Le Cerf de la Viéville: Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique françoise (Brussels, 1705–6/R)
J.M. Hotteterre: Principes de la flûte traversière, ou flûte d'Allemagne, de la flûte à bec, ou flûte douce, et du haut-bois, diviséz par traitéz (Paris, 1707/R, 7/1741; Eng. trans., 1968, 2/1983)
M. de Saint Lambert: Nouveau traité de l'accompagnement du clavecin, de l'orgue et des autres instruments (Paris, 1707/R; Eng. trans., 1991)
P. Bourdelot and P. Bonnet-Bourdelot: Histoire de la musique et de ses effets, ed. J. Bonnet (Paris, 1715/R, 7/1743)
F. Couperin: L'art de toucher le clavecin (Paris, 1716, 2/1717/R); ed. M. Halford with Eng. trans. (New York, 1974)
A. de Villeneuve: Nouvelle méthode … pour apprendre la musique et les agréments du chant (Paris, 1733)
M.P. de Montéclair: Principes de musique (Paris, 1736/R)
J.M. Hotteterre: Méthode pour la musette (Paris, 1737/R)
M. Corrette: Méthode pour apprendre aisément à jouer de la flûte traversière (Paris, c1740/R; Eng. trans., 1970, as Michel Corrette and Flute-Playing in the Eighteenth Century)
J.-A. Bérard: L'art du chant (Paris, 1755)
J. Blanchet: L'art ou les principes philosophiques du chant (Paris, 1756)
M. Corrette: Le parfait maître à chanter (Paris, 1758, enlarged 2/1782)
A. Mahaut: Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre en peu de tems à jouer de la flûte traversière (Paris, 1759/R; Eng. trans., 1989)
J.-J. Rousseau: Dictionnaire de musique (Paris, 1768/R; Eng. trans., 1771, 2/1779/R)
J.-B. Cartier: L'art du violon (Paris, 1798, enlarged 3/c1803/R)
J. Arger: ‘Le role expressif des agréments dans l'école vocale française de 1680 à 1760’, RdM, i (1917–19), 215–26
P. Brunold: Traité des signes et agréments employés par les clavecinistes français des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Lyons, 1925/R)
H. Prunières: ‘De l'interprétation des agréments du chant aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’, ReM, nos.122–6 (1932), 329–44
F. Neumann: ‘Misconceptions about the French Trill in the 17th and 18th Centuries’, MQ, l (1964), 188–206
A. Caswell: ‘Remarques curieuses sur l'art de bien chanter’, JAMS, xx (1967), 116–20
L'interprétation de la musique française aux XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles: Paris 1969 [incl. A. Souris: ‘Apport du répertoire du luth à l'étude des problèmes d'interprétation’, 107–19; A. Geoffroy-Dechaume: ‘Du problème actuel de l'appoggiature ancienne’, 87–105; F. Cossart-Cotte: ‘Documents sonores de la fin du XVIIIe siècle: leurs enseignements pour l'interprétation’, 139–52; X. Darasse: ‘Les enseignements d'André Raison’, 182–95]
A. Cohen: ‘L'art de bien chanter (1666) of Jean Millet’, MQ, lv (1969), 170–79
F. Neumann: ‘Couperin and the Downbeat Doctrine for Appoggiaturas’, AcM, xli (1969), 71–85; repr. in Essays in Performance Practice (Ann Arbor, 1982), 227–41
B. Schwendowius: Die solistische Gambenmusik in Frankreich von 1650 bis 1740 (Regensburg, 1970)
K. Gilbert: Foreword to François Couperin: Pièces de clavecin (Paris, 1972)
M.B. Collins: ‘In Defense of the French Trill’, JAMS, xxvi (1973), 405–39
R.A. Green: ‘Jean Rousseau and Ornamentation in French Viol Music’, JVdGSA, xiv (1977), 4–41
C. Pond: ‘Ornamental Style and the Virtuoso: Solo Bass Viol Music in France c.1680–1740’, EMc, vi (1978), 512–18
W. Hancock: ‘The Frequency and Positioning of Ornaments in French Viol Music’, Chelys, viii (1978–9), 38–50
D. Fuller: ‘An Unknown French Ornament Table from 1699’, EMc, ix (1981), 55–61
C. Horrix: Studien zur französischen Lautenmusik im 17. Jahrhundert (diss., U. of Tübingen, 1981)
J. Hsu: A Handbook of French Viol Technique (New York, 1981)
N. McGegan and G. Spagnoli: ‘Singing Style at the Opéra in the Rameau Period’, Jean-Philippe Rameau: Dijon 1983, 209–26
B.B. Mather: ‘The Performance of Trills in French Baroque Dance Music’, Concerning the Flute, ed. R. De Reede (Amsterdam, 1984), 55–64
Zur vokalen und instrumentalen Ornamentik in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts: Blankenburg, Harz, 1986 [incl. F. Wesolowski: ‘Französische Vokalornamentik in der ersten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts’, 13–22; M. Rônez-Kubitschek: ‘Die französischen Manieren des 18. Jahrhunderts in den Quellen der Violinmusik’, 23–33]
E. Kooiman: ‘Verzierungen in der klassischen französischen Orgelmusik’, Zur Interpretation der französischen Orgelmusik, ed. H.J. Busch (Berlin, 1986), 65–77
B. Scheibert: Jean-Henry D'Anglebert and the Seventeenth-Century Clavecin School (Bloomington, IN, 1986)
J. Spitzer and N. Zaslaw: ‘Improvised Ornamentation in Eighteenth-Century Orchestras’, JAMS, xxxix (1986), 524–77
D. Ledbetter: Harpsichord and Lute Music in 17th-Century France (London, 1987)
J. Spitzer: ‘A Grammar of Improvised Ornamentation: Jean Rousseau's Viol Treatise of 1687’, JMT, xxxiii (1989), 299–332
P. le Huray: ‘Couperin's Huitième Ordre’, Authenticity in Performance: Eighteenth-Century Case Studies (Cambridge, 1990), 42–69
B. Scheibert: ‘New Information about Performing “Small Notes”’, The Harpsichord and its Repertoire: Utrecht 1990, 92–118
L.E. Peterman: ‘Michel Blavet's Breathing Marks: a Rare Source for Musical Phrasing in Eighteenth-Century France’, Performance Practice Review, iv (1991), 186–98
T. Christensen: Rameau and Musical Thought in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1993)
M. Seares: ‘Mersenne on Vocal Diminutions’, Performance Practice Review, vi (1993), 141–5
L. Sawkins: ‘Trembleurs and Cold People: How Should they Shiver?’, Performing the Music of Henry Purcell, ed. M. Burden (Oxford, 1996), 234–64
D. Tunley: The Eighteenth-Century French Cantata (Oxford, 2/1997)
K. and E. Ott: Handbuch der Verzierungskunst in der Musik (forthcoming)
PraetoriusSM, iii
WaltherML
J.A. Herbst: Musica practica (Nuremberg, 1642, 2/1653 as Musica moderna prattica, 3/1658)
C. Bernhard: Von der Singe-Kunst oder Maniera (MS, c1649); ed. in J. Müller-Blattau: Die Kompositionslehre Heinrich Schützens in der Fassung seines Schülers Christoph Bernhard (Kassel, 1926, 2/1963); Eng. trans. in W. Hilse: ‘The Treatises of Christoph Bernhard’, Music Forum, iii (1973), 1–196, esp. 13–29
C. Bernhard: Tractatus compositionis augmentatus (MS, c1657); ed. in J. Müller-Blattau: Die Kompositionslehre Heinrich Schützens in der Fassung seines Schülers Christoph Bernhard (Kassel, 1926, 2/1963); Eng. trans. in W. Hilse: ‘The Treatises of Christoph Bernhard’, Music Forum, iii (1973), 1–196, esp. 31–196
W.C. Printz: Phrynis Mitilenaeus, oder Satyrischer Componist, i–ii (Quedlinburg, 1676–7, 2/1696); iii (Dresden and Leipzig, 1696)
W.M. Mylius: Rudimenta musices, das ist Eine kurtze und grund-richtige Anweisung zur Singe-Kunst (Mühlhausen, 1685)
J. Kuhnau: Neuer Clavier-Übung erster Theil (Leipzig, 1689); ed. in DDT, iv (1901/R)
W.C. Printz: Compendium musicae signatoriae et modulatoriae vocalis (Dresden, 1689/R, 2/1714)
G. Muffat: Apparatus musico-organisticus (Salzburg, 1690/R); ed. M. Radulescu (Vienna, 1982)
G. Muffat: Suavioris harmoniae instrumentalis hyporchematicae florilegium primum (Augsburg, 1695); ed. H. Rietsch, DTÖ, ii, Jg.i/2 (1894/R); Eng. trans. in StrunkSR1
F.E. Niedt: Musicalische Handleitung (Hamburg, 1700–17, 2/1721/R; Eng. trans., 1989)
T.B. Janovka: Clavis ad thesaurum magnae artis musicae (Prague, 1701/R, 2/1715/R as Clavis ad musicam)
J.G. Walther: Praecepta der musicalischen Composition (MS, 1708, D-WRtl); ed. P. Benary (Leipzig, 1955)
E.G. Baron: Historisch-theoretisch und practische Untersuchung des Instruments der Lauten (Nuremberg, 1727/R; Eng. trans., 1976, as Study of the Lute)
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