tenuto staccato on a tie

Hi there,
Curious is there a workaround for this, so the tenuto is on the first note and the staccato is on the second?
dorico_articulation.jpg
thank you!

No: you’ll need to add either the tenuto or the staccato as a Shift+X text object. You can get the appropriate glyph from here.

thanks! is this on the list for a future fix?

No, it’s not: I’d be interested to know more about the requirement, though.

Alternatively you could untie the note, apply the articulations as you see fit and then slur the notes together.

is this kind of notation really uncommon? I’d think, especially in jazz notation (think swing), the note before the tie gets a tenuto, and the note following the tie gets a dot. I can think of scores where I’ve seen this, for sure. Certainly it makes little sense to have the tenuto on the note following the tie as that would rearticulate it. I’ll follow Pianoleo’s suggestion though it’s not ideal.

alternatively I suppose it’s plausible to use an accent, which sometimes implies a staccato - but it’s not entirely the same idea.

Fwiw, I ran into a situation where I needed this just earlier today. The tenutos were acting as articulations of stress and the staccatos were shortening the note values that they were tied to.

+1 for this being common. IME the tenuto is used far more often for stress or hesitation than it is for lengthening a note. Even used agogically it matters greatly which note of a tie chain it applies to.

On a side note: Can anybody explain to me how the example in the very first post is meant to be played? The notes are all the same pitch, there is a legato line over them, and they have staccato as well as tenuto markings. headexplodes

It’s a French horn part - four notes on one breath, gently separated. Similar to the phrase “Lord, hear our prayer”.

I think it might be necessary to explain that to the player in a footnote! :slight_smile:

David

David, actually no. This is not how musiscians work. They do by themselves find an inherent meaning of what they see. A musician does not think or work like a computer (and that is, why a notation program needs to also be able to consider this).
You will probably like to read this: http://www.debreved.com/

I had already typed a snarky remark along the lines of what David wrote, but I did not send it since I do neither know the music nor the ensemble or the grade of professionalism these musicians are used to. I suspect this is written for a ensemble that is used to seeing such symbols.

(My community band would stop at this point, ask me how they should play it, and would then mumble something about “crazy composers”. But we don’t play the type of music you would typically find such articulations in :wink: And I for myself would not see that as the composer asking for “gently separated” notes. But I would ask him.)

I confess to having spent about an hour trying to research this type of notation in the library, and finding no classical example of this kind of tenuto-staccato tie as I have required – though I’ve found a few examples of an accent-staccato tie, and I note that it is possible natively in Dorico. My device with the tenuto is similar - except not as severe as using an accent.

Anyway, I’ve simplified my notation just to use tenuto markings instead of tenuto/dots.

thanks!

Ah! Thank you for the explanation. Many musicians may not be familiar with the BCP.

David, my reply came over quite harsh, it was not intentional from my side, sorry!
I myself are not familiar with the BCP (I don’t know what this means)…

I used to play violin and this all makes complete sense to me.

1 tenuto, I would have interpreted this as stress unless told otherwise, a little more pressure put on the bow to bring out those notes;

2 a tenuto on the first note (of the tie) would make sense as it tells you how to approach (play) the very beginning of the note (not much use on the second note of the tie in this case, as the stress is applied at the first note);

3 also we are seeing these articulations in isolation. Sometimes it depends on what comes before (context) as to what might be intended (differentiation);

4 full value? (or intention thereof), yes this makes sense too with the staccato meaning to separate the notes as others have said because the slur shows to play the complete phrase in one bow length (equivalent to French horn, one breath) for that group of notes, stopping the bow momentarily (separation, staccato) to create each note sound.
You get a different sound if you play them with alternating bows (up, down, up, down) (also it can be visually disturbing … I know, let’s not go there!!)

5 slightly unrelated, if there was an accent instead of a tenuto, it would be interpreted differently, more pressure and quicker on the bow at the start of the note.


If there are any string players out there, feel free to disagree with me; it has been a while…!

Unrelated to the tie, the staccato-tenuto-slur is shown in Gould, p401.

BTW, I also used to play clarinet and its the same as for French horn, one breath, separate the notes so you can hear each, but stress and/or full value (depending on what is required). With this instrument, the tip of the tongue is moved onto the reed to momentarily stop the sounding of the note, with the breath continuing throughout (or intention of it doing so).
I’m just mentioning clarinet as well, so anyone wanting context can look up other instrumental parts.

Slightly unrelated (again) for (traditional) church organ there is no key velocity sensitivity for volume, so I was taught tenuto/accents are to be played with a slight gap from the preceding note and this could be indicated with a tenuto-staccato (no slur necessarily, although it presumably would indicate phrasing if it were there) and been understandable (although staccato unnecessary unless for some reason).

No explanation would be necessary as a footnote :slight_smile: as it’s quite normal and understandable.

arco, you put it into words in a wonderful way, thank you :pray:t2:

Thanks for this detailed explanation, arco!

I have to admit that to my windband-trained eye, the words “separate the notes” and “full value” don’t go together. To me it’s either-or. If I am to separate notes, I can’t play their full value - or else there will be no space between them that would separate them. (And I am a programmer, so please forgive me for having a more technical approach here…)

As a side note, it’s great (and very appreciated) to learn what the same musical symbols mean to players of other instruments :slight_smile: