Musical questions and answers thread

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

vibrato And where - to further complicate matters, I'm afraid - does tremolando come into all this?

If you're a string player - wobble the Left Hand for Vibrato; wobble the Right for Tremolando.


(pace the "Left-Handed Instrumentalist" Thread, where, presumably, versa your choice of vice.)

[EdgeleyRob]

Blimey,not sure what I've started here.
Many thanks as always folks for the fascinating replies.,never fails this forum.
I asked the question because I thought I'd seen,in all the Bach stuff I've been reading lately,that mordents are sometimes played as trills,especailly in Baroque music.
Not sure if this is improvisation on the part of the musician or HIPP

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wonder (I really don't know this) if this comes from close examination of the composer's manuscripts, Edgey - looking at the symbols for a trill and for a mordent in merc's link (#615) the mordent is just a wiggle longer than the trill (perhaps, too, why composers later added the tr at the beginning). Perhaps somebody has discovered/suggested that Bach's handwriting is ambiguous (just as Schubert's short hairpin diminuendo symbols were actually accent markings).

[EdgeleyRob]

I wonder (I really don't know this) if this comes from close examination of the composer's manuscripts, Edgey - looking at the symbols for a trill and for a mordent in merc's link (#615) the mordent is just a wiggle longer than the trill (perhaps, too, why composers later added the tr at the beginning). Perhaps somebody has discovered/suggested that Bach's handwriting is ambiguous (just as Schubert's short hairpin diminuendo symbols were actually accent markings).

Fascinating,Ferney thanks again for taking the time and trouble to post,appreciated

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

that particular single-note vocal ornamentation used in Monteverdi (and others?) I wouldn't call vibrato at all - its a bit of a definition minefield isn't it [replying to SA]

It always reminds me of a woodpecker.

[Dave2002]

If you're a string player - wobble the Left Hand for Vibrato; wobble the Right for Tremolando.


(pace the "Left-Handed Instrumentalist" Thread, where, presumably, versa your choice of vice.)

Clavichord players can throw bebung into the mix - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebung

Apparently there wasn't a widespread use of a notation for this, but there is a notation sometimes used, as mentioned in the link.

I don't know whether any other keyboard type instruments have/had any form of vibrato like this.

[MrGongGong]

Clavichord players can throw bebung into the mix - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebung

Apparently there wasn't a widespread use of a notation for this, but there is a notation sometimes used, as mentioned in the link.

I don't know whether any other keyboard type instruments have/had any form of vibrato like this.

The Ondes Martenot has a mobile keyboard which produces vibrato by pitch shifting
and there are other electronic instruments that have similar things

This had a lit of publicity recently

https://roli.com/products/seaboard-grand

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Clavichord players can throw bebung into the mix - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bebung
Apparently there wasn't a widespread use of a notation for this, but there is a notation sometimes used, as mentioned in the link.

Blimey! I hadn't heard of this!

[Richard Barrett]

mordents are sometimes played as trills,especailly in Baroque music.
Not sure if this is improvisation on the part of the musician or HIPP

Back in the mid-20th century it wasn't part of musicians' lives and training to be able to ornament early music spontaneously, but nowadays many conservatoires (like the one I work in) contain entire departments of early music so that such ideas are part of many musicians' lives and training from an early age, and this training is the result of teaching based on a still-growing body of knowledge of documentation, treatises, manuscripts, letters etc. etc. rather than (as in earlier generations) the result of what individual research could garner. Therefore HIPP is often improvisation, since it's assumed that notated ornaments, like the rest of the notated text in earlier music, are a starting point rather than, as later, a goal to aim at.

So, it isn't surprising these days to come across a notated mordent becoming a trill in performance, or a mordent appearing where no ornament was notated (Reinhard Goebel used to do this very often), or a trill beginning slowly and getting faster (one of Ton Koopman's mannerisms), or improvised embellishments based on the kind of written-out examples thereof which appeared for example in various versions of Corelli's op.5 sonatas. Here for example is the beginning of his op.5 no.9 in his original version plus three others, to show how very different from Corelli and from one another they could be.

[Dave2002]

Blimey! I hadn't heard of this!

This was mentioned in the Penguin book which I think I had in the 1960s - hopefully I've not lost my copy, though I'm not sure. It was called something like "History of musical instruments", and I can't remember the author(s). Can anyone - I think it had flashes of orange?

The clavichord is such a quiet instrument, apparently often used for practice purposes, and the bebung technique would not really carry over to other larger and louder instruments, so I wonder why they bothered. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clavichord

However this "problem" was reportedly solved with the invention/production of the clavinet - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clavinet in the 20th Century.

[EdgeleyRob]

Me again with what is probably a silly question for you music theory experts to sleep on.

Rinforzando and Sforzando,I get they both mean a sort of emphasis or accent.

What's the difference if any ?

[Pabmusic]

Me again with what is probably a silly question for you music theory experts to sleep on.

Rinforzando and Sforzando,I get they both mean a sort of emphasis or accent.

What's the difference if any ?

In practical terms, none at all. One means 'reinforced', the other means 'forced' (well, sort of). I see no difference.

Now, I suppose it's possible that a composer has used both in the same work, in which case it is possible that to that composer they meant different things. So the performer will have to figure out whether the composer really meant different things, and if so what, or whether they were just slapdash about it. The latter is perfectly possible.

An obvious example: if there's several sfs and just one rinf., then the composer might want a little more emphasis on the latter. But this is by no means definite and is certainly not implied by the markings per se.

[jean]

Don't think I've ever seen rinf. on any music I've ever sung. Lots of sfs, though.

[Daniel]

Me again with what is probably a silly question for you music theory experts to sleep on.

Rinforzando and Sforzando,I get they both mean a sort of emphasis or accent.

What's the difference if any ?

In my experience the meaning of some musical indications can be rather variable, depending on who wrote it/when it was written etc, and I think one sometimes needs to make a judgement based on the musical context.

FWIW I've generally understood rinforzando to have a greater duration than sf, so over a passage of music, rather than a single chord or note as in the example of sf. But there are certainly cases where rinf will apply to one chord also and, as I say, I think that context can help elucidate which meaning might be intended by the composer.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

In my experience the meaning of some musical indications can be rather variable, depending on who wrote it/when it was written etc, and I think one sometimes needs to make a judgement based on the musical context.

FWIW I've generally understood rinforzando to have a greater duration than sf, so over a passage of music, rather than a single chord or note as in the example of sf. But there are certainly cases where rinf will apply to one chord also and, as I say, I think that context can help elucidate which meaning might be intended by the composer.

Yes, this is what I was taught, too - useful, too, for a sort of equivalent of Schönberg's H and N markings in polyphonic writing, to point out the most important line in the texture.

But composers being composers, some of them use them as another addition to the fz, sfz and Sffz family - not always making it clear whether it's louder or not quite as loud as fz.