I’m stumped. Surely there is the simple breath mark that looks like a comma amongst all the articulations.
Apparently I’m brane-dead and need articulation resuscitation.
William Zeitler
Since when has a breath mark been an articulation?
pianoleo, it is in Finale 
(As more or less everything else is as well LOL)
For the records: a breath mark is in the “holds and pauses” category and easily entered with the keyboard: type Shift-H and then “,” (comma character). There is also a list of all popover commands (state of the document: November 2018).
Old thread, I know, but was looking for a breath mark as well. I also understand breath marks as articulations. Not just in vocal or choral music, where they can indicate how we “articulate” a vocal phrase; but also in organ music. It’s like speaking…how we enunciate or deliver the words. A singer can obviously breathe where they need to and the text allows, but sometimes, we want to indicate exactly where they should breathe, regardless of punctuation…and a breath mark is (as I know) the common articulation mark for that.
It’s classified as a “hold or pause” in Dorico. An articulation is defined as something you do to a note (at least as far as Dorico’s concerned, and sure, a hold or pause may also apply to a note).
1 Like
Typing “breath mark” into the Help pages will, at the very least, show you that it’s in the Hold and Pause category, as the very first result lists all the breath marks, and then goes on to talk about how Holds and Pauses work.
1 Like
You guys made me curious. 
Reading Groves, it looks like articulation and phrasing as being two separate things is a comparatively modern idea - if you consider 1737 to be modern I guess.
Anyway, comma/breath marks and holds etc would indeed seem integral to phrasing rather than individual articulation. There is a history where fermata were once referred to as articulations, and I guess it took until the middle 1800’s where methods of notating expression got an overhaul in an attempt to capture what in the classical era had been only oral tradition. Is that sorta right?
1 Like
From the Harvard Dictionary of Music (my very old 3rd printing, 1970):
“Articulation. A term used to denote (or demand) clarity and distinct rendition in musical performance, whether vocal or instrumental. Correct breathing, phrasing, attack, legato, and staccato are some of the aspects involved. See Phrasing and articulation.”
Further…
"Phrasing and articulation. Terms used to describe clear and meaningful rendition of music (chiefly of melodies), comparable to an intelligent reading of poetry. The main (though not the only) means of achieving this goal is the separation of the continuous melodic line into smaller units of varying length from a group of measures to single notes. Properly speaking, phrasing refers to the separation of a melody into its constituent phrases, whereas articulation refers to the subdivision of a phrase into smaller units. Often, however, it is difficult to distinguish between the two, partly owing to the vagueness of the term “phrase.” Moreover, in practice the term “phrasing” is often applied to what is properly termed “articulation.”
The entry continues later…
“Couperin…used a comma in order to indicate what…he called “la terminaison des Chants ou de nos Phrases harmoiques.” In some cases the comma serves as a sign of articulation rather than phrasing.”
This is an old book, and of course there are many more sources referenced in the entry on Phrasing. I think that among my take aways is that, indeed, a breath mark (in the common form of a comma) is really an articulation; and it made a lot of sense for it to be under “articulations” in Finale. In Dorico, it probably makes sense to include it (also?..perhaps?) in “playing techniques”, where a lot of things we think of as articulations reside. It’s not a pause or a hold, because the practically speaking, a breath is not really intended to ever interrupt the rhythmic pulse…only to articulate the phrase. You can breathe as late as possible, but you must never come in late.
I think that in the Dorico environment there are many things that are treated as “something done to a note”, when in actual practice things are done to more intangible aspects of the music. Fermatas are a perfect example…applying something to a note that is rightly applied to the underlying beat or rhythmic pulse. Hence when we add a fermata, it appears in several different horizontal positions in the music and we have to go back and gather them all up like so many wayward chicks. This specific place in the music is where the music holds…not a measure back where that other tied note started, not one place in the sopranos and one place in the tenors.
But I digress. 
Thanks Jay.
The situation is made more confusing by sample libraries using ‘articulation’ to mean what Dorico calls a playing technique (e.g. pizzicato, arco, sul tasto).
In the mixing world, something similar has happened with the word ‘stem’. Stems used to be renders of a number of tracks into one audio file, such as all the drum tracks into a drums stem. But now, it’s come to mean (for some people) ‘track’. So if someone uses ‘stem’ I have no idea what they mean, but I can make a good guess if I know how old they are!
Personally I like my fermatas to appear in different horizontal positions!
I disagree. For good or bad, Dorico splits ornaments, articulations, playing techniques and holds and pauses into different groups.
How the program handles each category is different:
- most ornaments do not play;
- articulations change the playback of individual notes;
- playing techniques may change either individual notes or a sequence of notes;
- holds and pauses affect the overall timeline of all instruments.
Since commas affect the timeline, they belong with holds and pauses.
3 Likes
Yes, that’s right. Comma breath marks usually indicate that extra time is taken to breathe, affecting the tempo, whereas tick breath marks indicate that the time is taken out of the note.
OMG…how horrifying! 
(jk) I have no experience with tick marks. I’ve only encountered comma breath marks (but I’m an old). And I really don’t think that when an editor puts a breath mark in a vocal line…say in a chorus in messiah…in the tenor voice…the tempo should change, so that the other three voices interrupt their lines to wait for the tenors to breathe. A break is however permissible, and desirable to shape the individual vocal line. Likewise in an operatic aria or art song (generally speaking, of course) a breath mark indicates a break (for a needed breath or to articulate the phrase)…but the accompaniment is usually going to keep going. The tempo doesn’t change.
Not always, but quite often! The modern convention has not always been observed.
Here’s Elaine Gould from ‘Behind Bars’:
A breathing point may either be written into the music as rests, or a breath mark indicated independently. In the latter case, place a tick or comma above each vocal stave, just before a subsequent note or barline. When the time taken to breathe is subtracted from the previous note, mark in a tick. Placed in brackets, the tick indicates an optional breath (). When the note should be sung for its full duration, with extra time for the breath, add a comma above the stave – this adds a short pause to the bar in which it occurs.
Ugh! Do I need to buy her book so I can feel disagreeable towards the source? I’m not really a composer. I just write music (something I wish more composers would do 
) and am a singer and pianist.
Dorico does seem to be informed by “composers”, and as I’m figuring out the software, it strikes me that there may be little input from practitioners of the vocal arts. “Voice” seems to be subsumed under “choral” as if the trained soloist doesn’t exist. At my university the instrumentalists were rumored to refer to us derogatorily as “throats” though fortunately I never had to encounter them often. (I also heard rumors of composers, but I never saw them.)
My point is…singers are trained to breathe quickly (instantly) and silently…or expressively and musically…and they are trained to avoid interrupting the rhythm at almost all costs. The exception is when everyone agrees that something different is going to happen. And through all my training, I never encountered this new-fangled tick mark, or the unusual (to say the least) idea that the accompaniment should make way for a breath. And I appreciate that Elaine Gould has provided this valuable instruction, but did anyone tell the singers and voice teachers?
Ah well, I’m taking it on myself to learn Dorico after 30 years of Finale, so I suppose I can make some room for this other stuff too (but I’m gonna be just as cranky about it).
You make many different disparate points. None seems to be related to your initial question.
Well, that’s allowed, isn’t it?
Well, apart from the fact that Daniel Spreadbury (marketing mgr for Dorico) has been involved in vocal music for many years:
Daniel Spreadbury has been the Musical Director of the Cantilena Singers since 2000. Daniel graduated from University College, Oxford in 1998 with an honours degree in Music. A keen singer himself, he studied under Alastair Thompson, one of the founder members of the King’s Singers, and during his time at Oxford performed not only with the chapel choir of his own college, but also with the choirs of Magdalen and New College. He also directed the Univ Chorus, the university’s largest non-auditioning mixed voice choir, during his time at Oxford.
Leaving aside Lillie Harris, of course. And others…
2 Likes
Hmmm…suspicious, but I’ll grant it. I mean we’re all imposters really. I’m nobody…but…(nope! I won’t say it. Zipp it Jay!!!) As i always said: singers are nasty people …and I’m one of them. HOW DARE YOU ROPE IN AN ACTUAL VOCALIST. Look. I already bought the stupid book (from the UK no less) when it gets here in September or so I will be judging Gould on every page. Now that I know the breath mark is in the “PAusES aNd HolDz” palette in Dorico I’ll have no trouble finding it when i use it to indicate where singers should break the nearly impossibly long musical line but not change the accelerando before they sing the next 27-seconds of lung crushing climax. 
1 Like
And I will continue to respect the comprehensive research, scholarship, clarity, pragmatism, and no doubt long suffering of those responsible for that publication. I understand they are investigating the possibility of miracle in Brazil where everyone in one small town agrees on chord symbols! There could be an icon in her future…
3 Likes