It is hard to understand how something so basic and universally understood was actually debated. But thank you for clearing that up about Neumann. In my opinion, he IS the leading authority on ornamentation, just as your former teachers told you.
In any case, it pretty easy to correct the problem. A squiggle with a line through it is called a mordent. A short squiggle without a line might be called a short trill, a schneller, or a pralltriller.
incidentally, the mordent can also be a longer squiggle with a line, as can the trill. In both cases more alternations are performed, but the basic definitions remain.
I think I hit college at just the right time to be impacted by Neumann. To some extent I think he was writing into a bit of a wild west, where even (as has been mentioned) exam boards took a public school prescriptive approach to ornamentation, and authentic performance practice hadnât hit the big time. Neumann widened the (academic uptake of the) scholarship past the âstyle manualâ. Since then, there is a consensus on a basic approach, as described by John (et al.) above. My (very humble) opinion is that âinverted mordentâ shouldnât be available to confuse another generation of students. Playback is a much more difficult matter⌠even a trill can be different depending on the note before, the tempo, whether its onset is delayed with a tied appogiatura etc. etcâŚ
(donât see my reply made on iPhone) another problem is that the trill sign imported from xml becomes mordent sign, has nothing to do (?) with nomenclature. This problem is neglected here. So people importing their scores from other programs get the ornaments mixed up, quite annoying I would say (as a harpsichord player).
Triller (from Italian trillo)
Mordent (from French mordant)
Pralltriller (German)
Please note, the ornaments are written with a capital first letter in German.
I have never heard of a âschnellerâ. It means âfasterâ in German language.
[edit] the verb âschnellenâ means something like (may be) âwhippingâ
During translation, languages quite often get mixed up, example: coleslaw, supposedly from German - is actually from Dutch kool sla (cabbage salad)
Selecting ornaments by what they look like is surely the best solution. I do this in Sibelius. We agree that different people have different names for them, but presumably they know what they want them to sound like.
There is, of course, the fact that different composers want one to interpret the symbols differently. And this is not going to change. That being the case, if it is desired to make these ornaments play back accurately, it needs to be made possible for the user to choose which sound to associate with which ornament.
Sorry folks, but the water has already been muddied pretty thoroughly over the centuries, that trying to come up with a Dorico standard would be to add yet another layer of mud!
We need some names for the popover for the most used ornaments, perhaps even with possibility to be asigned by the user! I cannot stand when I have to type mordent to get a short trill. I think short trill, long trill, normal tr (extended trill), turned trill and mordent might be enough. The rest to be selected from the shapes. Playback is another story and not so important for me at least. Better no playback than clumsy playback. MuseScore option for default or baroque playback (trills starting with upper note) works quite well.
Well, itâs not going to change until either someone unearths a new collection of manuscripts that use a different notation from the existing ones, or somebody finds a new contemporary explanation of how to play them, but either of those might happen.
There have been plenty of changes to the general consensus about performance practice over the last century or so, and I think it would be optimistic to assume we now know âeverything worth knowingâ about the subject.
Iâm old enough to remember when in the UK the âbest wayâ to perform Handelâs âMessiahâ was with an orchestra of 100 and a chorus of about 500 - ignoring the fact that the first performance directed by the composer had an orchestra of about 15 and a choir of about 12, including the soloists who also sang everything, not just the solos!
In Dutch, we call the ornament with the vertical line also a mordent, signifying one or more fast alternations with the lower note. The one without the line we simply call a âtrillerâ, or we may use the German words Pralltriller or Praller.
When I imported a Schubert piano piece (XML produced by Sib7), containing many of these short trills, I also ended up seeing mordents (i.e. with vertical line) everywhere.
As I couldnât imagine Dorico being wrong here , I thought it had to be Sibeliusâs fault. I inspected the XML file, and found the ornaments were called âinverted-mordentâ, which I definitely think is a weird name, and an extra reason to blame Product A.
On a sidenote, I must say I was really impressed with how Dorico interpreted the rest of the XML. It looks good right away.
As a workaround, I replaced âinverted-mordentâ with âmordentâ in the XML file, after which I got the correct (looking) ornament in Dorico. If Dorico would eventually correct this misnomer, Iâll happily re-import Schubert without having to tweak the intermediate XML. Until Dorico supports first/second endings, this particular Schubert piece will have to wait anyway for the arrangement I had in mindâŚIâll be patient and do it in Sibelius in the meantime, no problem.
Keep up the good work, have a good and well-deserved vacation everyone.
Peter Bouma, Amsterdam
I agree in finding playback unimportant, but I realise that we are swimming against the tide as far as that is concerned. However, a global setting for beginning trills on the upper or the main note is no good either, as there are cases in baroque pieces when they begin on the main note, and cases when they being on the upper note. Thus one needs two different playbacks for the same picture!
Ah, but if Handel could have booked 100 players and 500 singers, would he have done so?
There is no sentiment more historically informed than: âThis is all I could get for the moneyâ.
He wasnât afraid of big ensembles. Have you ever heard the Royal Fireworks music performed with the specified forces - 24 oboes, 12 bassoons, 9 trumpets, 9 horns, 6 timps, etc ?
I havenât, but if you know of a good recording with the original forces, Iâd love to know. The best I have is a re-orchestration by Edward Elgar (which is nice, but not what Handel specified.)
