IV
In a technical work compiled for his son Friedemann, Bach left us an explanation of the signs employed by him to indicate the various ornaments which he calls Manieren. They are thus illustrated:
Trillo. Mordant. Trillo u. Mordant. Cadence. Doppelcadence.
idem. Doppelcadence und Mordant. idem. Accent steigend. (rising.)
Accent fallend. (falling.) Accent u. Mordant. Accent u. Trillo. idem.
The greater number of these ornaments,190 as we see by the table, do not begin upon the given note. However, if a turn occur at the beginning of a piece, or if it ornament a characteristic interval (as, for example, in the fugue in F minor), the essential note should be struck first; even if such a rendering produce a discord with the other parts.
The mordent—it is the pincé simple or the “pluck” of Chambonnières, Couperin, and Le Bègue, who had borrowed it from lute-players191—is generally diatonic, although with this exception: if the note which it affects be marked with an accidental in the same measure, the accidental must be observed in executing the mordent.
These ornaments should be played “with regard for their value and upon the beat”;192 however, an excessive rigor in this respect should not be affected; Bach did not exact such precision, and did not attach to these figures such great importance that he did not feel at liberty to substitute for them, in copies of these same pieces made by himself, other and practically equivalent ones. Certain of them are, moreover, quite rare; for example, the accent. We find it employed, at least in the organ compositions, only in an arrangement of the chorale Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr’ (Gloria in excelsis). No piece could be more elaborated than this one; and in it are introduced a majority of the signs employed by Bach; we borrow from Mr. E. Dannreuther’s interesting work, “Musical Ornamentation,”193 the transcription of the first six measures of this chorale, fully written out. Such an example will be more instructive than all we could say upon this subject, if the reader will take pains to compare this interpretation with the musical text as found in the well-known editions:194
This is evidently a species of appoggiatura, as also in the chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich (Clavierübung, Part III). But in this case, Bach uses a special notation:
In his Method for clavecin Ph. E. Bach, in speaking of a similar figure, thus explains it: “The first note of this figure must not be made too short, if the tempo be slow or moderate; for the second would then be held too long. It should be gently dwelt upon, not suddenly hammered.”
“Play flautato,” says W. Rust195 upon the subject of such a fugue in an orchestral part; one should thus anticipate the beat with the flutist’s stroke of the tongue, according to Quantz (Essai d’une méthode pour apprendre à jouer de la Flûte traversière. Berlin, 1752); that is to say, that the first of the two notes should be considered as written thus:
In a solfeggio lesson by J.G. Walther,196 written in 1708, this indication, called punctus serpens, signifies that the notes are to be slurred; that is, bound together, two by two. This is, undoubtedly, the most correct interpretation, which fairly corresponds to what S. Scheidt calls “imitatio violistica.”
Analogous notations of Frescobaldi197 and Muffat198 indicate a similar manner of execution.