Used properly, a slur means to connect the notes over or under which it appears. In music in which there is great variety of articulation (Baroque, Classical, Jzzz etc.) slurs will generally appear over short groups of notes. In music that is mostly legato (Romantic music ) slurs will appear over long groups of notes which sometimes correspond with entire musical phrases. This confused some Romantic musicians and others into thinking that slurs were “phrase marks”.
Since in a lot of music the musical phrases are obvious, composers of that type of music use only legato slurs (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, etc. as it appears in their manuscripts and authentic editions) never phrase marks since they avoided superfluous notation. However in music in which the musical phrases are not obvious, composers may feel the need for a something to show the phrasing, I think that small L and inverted L-shaped brackets are a better choice than cluttering the music with superimposed or dashed slurs. Perhaps in Dorico these may be placed as Playing Techniques.
I’m starting to notate some pieces for strings so this thread is very timely! I can see already that there are different possible approaches in relation to indicating bowing for groups of notes with slurs and phrasing with phrase marks.
I’d like to follow an approach that is easily understood by the players and fits with contemporary orchestral practice (not specifically film score practice).
If that means slurs = groups of notes bowed together, then I’m going to have to work with an expert to get this right as I don’t have a clue!
Are there any recommended guidebooks for string scoring?
This passage is specifically marked “legato” but AFAIK these slurs are never played in a single bow stroke (Brahms is a good example of this kind of thing).
In my personal opinion, there isn’t (or at least should not be) any difference between slurs and phrase marks in strings. They can be as long as the music requires (Rachmaninov, Mahler, etc). Short slurs are bound to be understood by the player to imply a caesura.
The confusion comes from the assumption that there can be no bow changes in legato. For sample libraries and playback in generally, perhaps it might make more sense to indicate bow changes (and hide them as necessary).
Never mark long phrase slurs in string parts. Such slurs only confuse the performer. The only slurs that should be used are the ones that designate the notes to be performed on one bow (legato).
The slurs in the Brahms example are definitely not phrase marks since a single “phrase mark” would have encompassed the entire 8 measures and ended on the first beat of measure 9. to show the one long legato phrase that starts the symphony. Such phrase marks were avoided by composers like Brahms because the musical phrases in his music are obvious to every musical person.
The slurs in the example are “legato marks”, marks of articulation, whether or not violinists choose to follow Brahms’ bowing.
The problem is that we tend to use the term “phrasing” too loosely to mean articulation, when it really should be limited to what we do to show the musical phrases, the complete musical sentences that make up the piece–not the shorter structures that make up the phrases and are brought out by means of articulation.
When teaching, I make great effort to stop myself from using the term “phrasing” when I mean articulation, because it is so confusing.
Thanks Derrek making it look right can nearly always be done in Dorico. Question however how it was meant by J.W. and if it is possible to reproduce this using a sample library.
Nice to see clarity for those classical composers. What about the John Williams signature editions?. There are many longer slurs for nearly all instruments and also bowing marks. A good example of several slur lengths are the violins of the famous Hedwig’s Theme as from bar 35. legato or phrasing? I have always considered them legato.
There are also textual Legato indications in these scores often with further refinement like broadly legato or legato tongue which are often not cancelled by a natural or other articulations.
“The” music notation book is of course Behind Bars by Elaine Gould.
AFAIK, Brahms did not indicate any bowings for this passage in the autograph. The single downbow articulation in the earlier example was added by the editors; it is not present in the first edition nor in the Urtext.
What’s more, the passage is marked forte - it is physically impossible to play the entire passage forte in a single bow. If one agrees with the Adler’s quote above, this alone would make the meaning of the Brahms’ slur confusing.
But that’s not all - Brahms also specifically wrote out the word legato - in addition to the slur. This combination is never again repeated in the entire movement. Why would he indicate legato twice?
So, it’s not so unreasonable for someone to think that he might have intended to indicate something more than the standard legato here and to read the long slur as phrasing. That reading would resolve the ambiguities and actually make the passage more meaningful. To my ears, that’s the way it’s performed, too.
Btw, here are the actual marks of articulation used by the concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony, with many more bow changes than my earlier example:
To me the slurs in the Brahms represent five linked legato groups (the fifth group is also linked to the previous one on the tied note B-flat in the first edition) followed by three detached entities: a single note, a trilled note and the final chord, all of which together constitutes the first phrase. How one shapes this first phrase, and how it interacts with the phrases following, I would call “phrasing.”
The slurs are directions for bowing in the sense that the bowing should give the effect of five distinct yet linked legato groups, no matter how this is actually achieved by the player. If one wants to call the showing of small legato groups “phrasing”, so be it, but I think that it creates confusion. I would rather reserve the term “phrasing” for complete phrases and their interaction.
If by linked, you mean that the last note of each phrase is also the first note of the following phrase, then I agree. And Brahms’ notation is precise.
Bowing is the source of much debate and contention between players, and consequently appears to be a mystic art for non string players. Elgar (a decent violinist himself) would fret over alternative bowings with his friend WH Reed (Leader of the LSO) and AFAIK never included phrase marks in his string parts, although he did write them in his piano parts. Brahms (a pianist) on the other hand is more ambiguous in his string writing.
Thanks, Janus. But again I myself would avoid saying that Brahms wrote “phrase marks” in his music but that he used slurs and other articulations in accordance with the musical structure and left the actual realization in the hands of the player.
Here is an example of violin slurs in Boris Godunov Act III:
Here’s how this passage is usually played:
Wouldn’t we would use the first one to look for composer’s phrasing intent (in the sense of shaping a motive or a phrase, not “phrase” in the analytical sense); and consider the second one to be a way a performer might articulate that intent on a given instrument.
If yes, than the slurs in this passage would mean cantilena with as many bow changes as needed, and not a single-bowlegato in the way an authority like Adler advocates.
