Accidentals and Ornamentation

1 Accidentals and Ornamentation

Before we examine each ornament in detail we should consider an important question. Of which notes
are ornaments generally formed. If, in an eighteenth-century work, a trill mark is placed over, say, an A
and one is to follow the standard eighteenth-century convention of beginning the trill on an auxiliary
one note above the written note, will that initial auxiliary be a B sharp, a B natural or a B flat?

The general rule is that, in the absence of any accidental above or below the ornament sign, all the
auxiliary notes in the ornament should be taken from the major key appropriate to the key signature. So
using the example above, if the key signature of the piece is G major (one sharp), the trill will begin on
an B natural. However, if the key signature of the piece is F major (one flat), the trill will begin on a B
flat.

However, if any of the auxiliary notes in an ornament include accidentals, for example a C sharp in the
key of G major, this will be shown by writing an accidental, in this case a sharp sign, above or below
the ornament sign. In the case of an F natural in the key of G major, the appropriate sign would be a
natural.

The convention is that if the inflection applies to a note lying above the principal note then the
accidental is written above the sign for the ornament, but if the inflected auxiliary note lies below the
principal note, the accidental sign is placed below the sign for the ornament.

Obviously, if the principal note itself is inflected then the accidental is placed to the immediate left of
the principal note head and not with the sign for the ornament.

Note however, that although the inflection persists for any repeat in the ornamental figure of the
principal note, all the other auxiliary note or notes continue to be drawn from the major key of the key
signature unless accidentals are placed above or below the ornament sign.

Grace Notes

1 Grace Notes

petites notes (French), kürzer Vorschläge (German), appoggiature (Italian)

In the seventeenth century the word 'grace' was applied to a number of 'ornaments' including
the appoggiatura (from an Italian word meaning 'to lean') and the acciaccatura (from an Italian
verb acciaccare meaning 'to crush'). The acciaccatura is very short (literally 'crushed'), is
played on the beat together with, or imperceptably before, the principal note before being
released. It is generally, although not always, written as a small quaver (eighth note) with a
stroke through its stem and lies in front of the principal note. The appoggiatura is usually
written without a stroke through the note's stem. In both cases, the notation of the grace note is
symbolic - the grace note (with or without a stroke through its stem) is not included in the time
value count for the bar.

As a form of appoggiatura, the 'grace note' is played either just before the beat resolving speedily to the
principal note which is itself on the beat (indeed, sometime in the nineteenth century, this form was
referred to as a durchgehender Vorschlag), or is played on the beat but resolves speedily to the principal
note which is accented. This is an example of a very short appoggiatura, called in German kurzer
 Vorschlag. In all cases the 'grace note' is short.

We give three examples below.

Some authors include a number of other note patterns under the heading of grace notes; for instance, a
sequence of two or more notes played very quickly as a link from one principal note to the next. Apart
from the requirement to play them as quickly as possible, there was no 'hard and fast' rule as to whether
these 'passing' grace note sequences were to be played on or before the beat. Sometimes composers
make their intentions clear with written instructions or supplementary marks (this is particularly true
once we start looking at music of the twentieth century) but the performer should be aware that in any
area 'taste' is as good a guide as 'evidence'.

Georg Muffat, a German who had been one of Lully's musicians, insisted on the "importance of using
with good judgment of the nice manners and proper grace notes which make the harmony brilliant as so
many precious stones ... (and) that from them depends a peculiar sweetness, vigour and beauty." After
which he tells about the current mistakes, which are the omission, the impropriety, the excess and the
unskillfulness, adding, "for which one ought to be so assiduous in the making of these precious
ornaments of music."

Mozart would often write an acciaccatura when he wanted a normal, as opposed to a very short
appoggiatura.

Before the nineteenth century, there was considerable freedom in how these matters could be notated or,
in practice, how the performer might realise them. Many composers supplemented editions of their
music with a 'table of ornaments' but this might only be applicable to that particular edition. In
eighteenth-century France, the composers were invariably brilliant performers and the pieces were
expected to display this. The decoration that a performer applied freely in performance could be very
difficult to notate accurately on the page.

Appoggiaturas

1 Appoggiaturas

Single appoggiatura

ports de voix or notes d'agrément (French), langer Vorschläge or veränderlicher

Vorschläge (German), appoggiature (Italian), apoyadura or apoyatura (Spanish)

The variable or long appoggiatura was widely used in 'early music'. We have
met the very short form (which can be distinguished by a stroke through the
note's flag) when discussing grace notes above. In this section, we concentrate
on the rules, set out by C.P.E. Bach, which cover the majority of occasions
when the variable or long appoggiatura is required
 the appoggiatura is often written symbolically as a small note (see above);

 when written using a small note, the small note's time value is ignored when summing the time values of the
larger notes in the bar;

 the appoggiatura lies to the left of, and is shown slurred to the principal note;

 the appoggiatura is always played on the beat - the principal note follows;

 the duration of the appoggiatura in performance is determined by the note value of the principal note;

 for an undotted principal note, the appoggiatura, as performed, takes half its value - the principal takes the
remainder;

 for a dotted principal note, the appoggiatura, as performed, takes two thirds its value - the principal takes
the remainder;

 the appoggiatura often formalises the practice of 'freely filling-in thirds' in melodic lines;

 the partition rule for appoggiaturas may occasionally change as rhythmic or harmonic considerations
indicate;

 the appoggiatura may ascend (move from the note below the principal note, as, for example, in the port de
voix) or descend (move from the note above the principal note) depending on the ornamental sign.

We give below two examples of the standard appoggiatura.

It is common to see a small slur linking the appoggiatura symbol to the principal note that follows it.
Whether or not one actually slurs the two notes in performance is determined by the style you want. In
other words, the slur is symbolic and not mandatory.

Double Appoggiatura

apoyatura doble (Spanish), appoggiatura doppia (Italian), appoggiature double (French), doppelter Vorschlag
(German), Doppelvorschlag (German)

the term can have three distinct meanings:

 where two notes of a chord, that are initially dissonant, both resolve by step, in other words, two
simultaneous appoggiaturas. The best example of a double appoggiatura is the cadential six-four.
Unlike accented and unaccented passing notes, the appoggiatura is not approached by step, but by
leap. Although it still resolves by step, the dissonance is more prominent as a result (see example
above);
a coulé, slide or conjunct double appoggiatura, an ornament consisting of two short notes rising by step to the
main note. It may be indicated by a sign or by small notes;

the Anschlag or disjunct double appoggiatura, so-called from the last half of the eighteenth century, C P. E.
Bach's name for a pair of grace notes, the first of which is to be played on the beat and may be any distance
from the principal note but second of which is only one degree removed from it.

2 Appoggiatura of the Nineteenth Century

For a more detailed examination of the notation of the appoggiatura in the nineteenth century, please
refer to the three examples below.

Note that the second example illustrates that the appoggiatura and acciaccatura symbols were often
interchanged in meaning.
Nachslag

1
Nachslag

There is one exception to the rule that the appoggiatura is always placed on
the beat, and that is the passing appoggiatura or Nachslag. When a passage
descending by thirds contains appoggiatura signs (hooks or small notes), the
appoggiaturas may be used to fill in the interval of the third. According to the
context, the appoggiatura may be placed to produce a run of notes of equal
time value, see example (1) below, or kept close to the principal note (that is
played quickly), see example (2) below.

Turns

1 Turns

brisé, groupe, doublé (French), Doppelschlag (German), gruppetto (Italian)

The general shape of the turn is a sequence of four notes, the note above, the note itself, the
note below, then the note itself again.

However, see also accidentals and ornamentation

The two examples below are a good guide to how the turn is normally played. The rhythmic shape of
the sequence, whether all the notes have the same time value or some are extended or shortened, and its
overall duration depends on the context in which the ornament is being used. See various examples
below:
 The second two examples are drawn from ITEA Journal Volume 32 Number 1 Fall 2004, and
particularly an article entitled I.H. Odell’s 1899 The Imperial Method for the Cornet: an Examination in
Regard to Ornamentation Practice of Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Brass Performance
By Dr. Jeffrey Cottrell. Cottrell's comments are particularly useful because they compare and contrast
the notation of ornaments in the late nineteenth century with that several centuries earlier. In particular,
the two examples immediately above are termed 'direct turn' (on the left) and 'full turn' or gruppetto (on
the right) respectively. This terminology is not found earlier than the late nineteenth century.

In his Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Berlin, 1753), C.P.E. Bach spends twelve
pages discussing the turn, and gives seventy examples not included in those twelve pages. Suffice it to
say, this is a 'free' ornament; the shape of the note sequence is followed, but all else is up to the
performer and the occasion.

2 Inverted Turn, Vertical Turn & Half Mordent

Inverted Turn

The turn may be inverted as in the preparation of an ascending trill when the note sequence
becomes the note below, the note itself, the note above, then the note itself again.

However, see also accidentals and ornamentation

Vertical Turn

Bach sometimes wrote his turn signs vertically and this symbol is found in some editions of
his work.
The vertical turn sign appears also in 'I.H. Odell’s 1899 The Imperial Method for the Cornet' (see
reference above) where is it called an 'inverted turn' and is described thus:

Note that this nineteenth-century ornament should not be confused with the inverted turn
described earlier.
Half-mordent

The 'turn-with-a-line-through-it' is a mystery ornament that occurs in Haydn's piano music,

which he called a "half mordent" but for which he offered no explanation as to how it should
 be played. The confusion is made greater by the fact that his use of the symbol was
inconsistent. In similar places he sometimes substitutes the normal turn as a symbol or even
writes the turn out. Today, pianists play a normal turn or a mordent since, in his use of the
ornament, it is generally indistinguishable from a mordent. This strange ornament is
discussed in the preface to the Weiner Urtext Edition of Haydn's Piano Sonatas. Sonja
Gerlach, in the Preface to the Henle edition of the Violoncello Concerto in D major (Hob.
V11b:2), writes "Haydn’s “half mordent” Q should usually be regarded as a quick turn
performed on the beat, though it may also be intended as an inverted mordent.

However, see also accidentals and ornamentation

Reference:

 Ornamentation Practice of Late 19th and Early 20th-Century Brass Performance by Dr. Jeffrey Cottrell
(reference title has been abbreviated)

Trills

1 Trills

tremblement (French), Triller (German), trillo (Italian) , trino (Spanish)

Fewer ornaments give performers more problems than trills.

Maybe this is because there are many different kinds of trill, each right for a
particular situation

A trill may have anything up to three parts: a preparation (sometime called a prefix), a shake and a
termination.

 the preparation may be a long or short appoggiatura which is always played on the beat;

 if the preparation consists of two notes ascending stepwise to the written note, or the trill is
marked with either of the signs shown to the left, the first of the two notes in placed on the
beat, the two notes and those of the trill have the same time value, and the trill is called an
ascending trill;

 if the preparation consists of two notes descending stepwise to the written note, or the trill is
marked with either of the signs shown to the left, the first of the two notes in placed on the
beat, the two notes and those of the trill have the same time value, and the trill is called a
descending trill;

 in early music, the appoggiatura is always the note above the written note (in which case it as called the
auxiliary note);

 in modern music, the appoggiatura is generally the written note (called the principal note);

 a short appoggiatura is as long as the individual notes in the shake, in which case the shake is often said to be
 unprepared;

 a long appoggiatura is one half of an undotted principal, two thirds of a dotted principal, in which case the
shake is often said to be prepared;

 the appoggiatura is slurred to the shake which follows;

 the preparation may be a normal or inverted turn played at the same note speed as those of the shake, for
example, in a descending or ascending trill;

 the shake begins on the note above the written note and finishes on the written note;

 if a , or is placed above the trill symbol, this indicates a chromatic inflection of the auxiliary note

 the notes of a shake should be as short as is comfortable for the player;

 if the termination is a turn, it is slurred to the shake;

 if the termination is a single note, it is separated from the shake;

 cadential trills, those at the end of sections, normally have long appoggiaturas;

 see also accidentals and ornamentation.

In the context of trills, some theory books mention the term after-beat, and define it as being the ending
of a trill which consists of the lower auxiliary and the principal note. In such cases, the discussion is
about a modern trill, one that starts on the principal note and where the auxiliary note is lower than the
principal note.

The trill may be reduced to a shake alone or it may have no termination. We give some examples below.

Very rarely, the appoggiatura of a trill is actually written into the melodic line as a separate note (as, for
example, in the Pralltriller - see section below). This becomes clear when one examines the harmonic
progression in the accompanying parts. If the harmony indicates that the previous note, although the
same pitch as the appoggiatura, is not the appoggiatura of the trill following, then the player has to
repeat the note when playing the appoggiatura to avoid starting the trill on the wrong note. We give such
an example below in which the second line is what is written, the top line is what is understood by what
is written and the third line is what is actually played

The examples discussed above, illustrate a point raised by Tony Pay, performer on early clarinets, who,
writing to The Clarinet BBoard, explains:

... knowing the different possibilities offered by trills/shakes does make a difference; for example,
realising that some trills/shakes are 'prepared' (usually for harmonic reasons) and others
'unprepared' (for usually melodic reasons) is an important musical insight that impacts performance
-- and more importantly, impacts the EFFECTIVENESS of performance.

The relationship between the form of a particular trill and the harmony that supports it is mentioned by
the reviewer of Jerome Carrington's Trills in the Bach Cello Suites published in Early Music Review
No. 130 May 2009. We summarise the reviewer comments:

in most cases, deciding whether a trill starts on the beat or on a note above depends on [the
harmony]. The majority of trills (whether notated or not) are on the first note of a dominant/tonic
cadence. Unless you are playing the bass, adding them (trills) should become second nature ... If, in
the normal 4 3 harmony of the cadence, the 4 is already written out, the trill on the 3 starts on the
beat. If the 4 is not notated, then [the player] has to decide how long the 4 lasts before he trills.

The elaborate systems of ornament signs developed by eighteenth-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
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 [various examples given] is often unclear.

During the nineteenth 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 until 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 Dvorak
(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-eighteenth 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. 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 nineteenth-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 nineteenth-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.

Pralltriller

1 Pralltriller

Also called the 'half trill', the Pralltriller is discussed by C.P.E. Bach, by
J.F. Agricola (one of J.S. Bach's students), and by F.W. Marpurg, in his
book on clavier playing. It may occur only after a descending second.
The note that is ornamented with the trill must be preceded by the
note one diatonic step higher. The Pralltriller is played like an
 extremely rapid trill. It contains only four notes, the first of which is
tied to the preceding note. C.P.E. Bach says that it "joins the preceding
note to the decorated one, and therefore never appears over detached
notes." From the mid eighteenth century, the Schneller, the inverted
mordent, gradually replaced the Pralltriller

Mordents

1 Mordents

mordant, pincé (French), Mordent (German), mordente (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese)

The name mordent is derived from the Latin verb mordere meaning 'to bite'.

The symbol for the shake is sometimes confused with the symbol for the mordent, the latter first
appearing in Chambonnières' "1st Book of Pieces" (1670). It should be pointed out that although some
commentators suggest the ornament is basically a French invention, ornamentation identical to the
mordent is referred to earlier by Playford, Thomas Mace and Christopher Simpson in England and by
Nicolaus Ammerbach, in his "Orgel - oder Instrument - Tablatur" (1571).

In music written before the nineteenth century, the mordent (written as a shake sign crossed by a
vertical line) is a sequence of three notes (the written note, the note below and returning to the written
note). This is sometimes called a 'lower' mordent to distinguish it from the nineteenth-century ornament
(written as a shake sign) called the 'upper' mordent or Schneller, also a sequence of three notes (the
written note, the note above and back to the written note). These are both illustrated below.

The term 'inverted mordent' is one that causes much confusion. Depending on the period when the term
is being used it can mean either of the two mordent forms we have illustrated above. The 'lower'
mordent is the original mordent form and so the term 'inverted' should really be used to describe the
'upper mordent'. Unfortunately, from the nineteenth century, when the 'upper mordent' had become the
more common form, the term 'inverted mordent' was more commonly used to describe the older,
original form.

The long or double mordent was an extended mordent, a sequence of five notes, the written
note, the note below, the written note, the note below and returning to the written note.
Arpeggiation

1 Arpeggiation

arpègement (French), Brechung, Arpeggio (German), arpeggio (Italian)

In a previous lesson we discussed broken and spread chords. Accompanists, whether performing on
keyboard, plucked stringed or certain bowed stringed instruments, would take the formal chord structure
and extemporise series of arpeggios - played in a 'harp-like manner'. This technique later became
common in music written for the piano for which a special symbol was introduced. The chord to be
arpeggiated might lie on one stave or across both staves and occasionally the arpeggiation should be
played from the top of the chord to the bass, in which case a downward pointing arrow would be placed
beside the special symbol, a vertical wavy line. Note, if a single arpeggio sign extends across both
staves then the two hands play successively.

When playing an arpeggio with both hands on a keyboard instrument a distinction is made between
chords where from the bottom of the left hand chord to the top of the right hand chord no note is
missing and those where one or more chord notes are missing.

The first example shows where no note is missing between the two chords, in which case the two chords
is treated as a single arpeggio and both chords are played in sequence.

The second example shows where a number of notes are missing between the two chords, in which case
the two arpeggios are played simultaneously.

We thank Steven Otto for spotting an earlier error which has now been corrected.