How does modern notational practice regard trills versus tremolos? Does Gould address this?
The reason I ask is that I just learned I can input a trill of any interval I want using a popover such as
Shift+O tr -M7
to get what is marked as a trill but with the auxiliary note a major 7th below the primary. That strikes me as a bit weird because I’ve never seen it, but it also seems like a good way to save some space given that the object in either case is simply to alternate rapidly between the two notes. Obviously, for piano, harp, and other multi-note instruments a trill would still need to be written.
I’ve been away from professional music for a long time. Things have changed.
(Just because someone can do something…)
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I’d suggest that the manner of alternation differs between a trill and a tremolo.
The issue of "just because someone can gets to questions of musical philosophy, which may be out of scope, at least for this thread. But a lot of the greatest music was written just because someone could.
I don’t believe if I opted to write an oddball trill that I would try to pass it off as a drop-in substitute for a tremolo. There’s too much history there.
As for whether the manner of alternation differs between a trill and a tremolo, I wouldn’t claim that’s true but only because I’ve been around all kinds of great music my whole life since the day I was born, I’m 82 now, and I don’t recall ever hearing anyone saying that or writing about it. If someone has I’d love to hear about it.
We’re talking about 20th and 21st century music here, not traditional practice where there was a great variety of ornamentation.
Because of the history I cite above, I’m planning on leaving all the trills as trills and tremolos as tremolos in the piece I wrote in 1966. (I’ve already got all the basics typed in, so to do otherwise would require large scale revisions.)
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Trills and tremolos may have some similar applications, but their scope is quite different.
A trill is an extension of vibrato, and as such refers to non-metric alternation. A trill doesn’t include repetitions of the same note. It belongs to the ornamentation group, with mordents, turns, grace notes etc.
A tremolo comes from a shorthand notation of repeating notes, either the same pitch or alternating. Initially it was a fully metric notation. A later development was using unmeasured tremolo, as a textural technique. Mostly applied to repetitions of the same note.
The one historical case, where a trill was often used incorrectly was unmeasured repetitions on a single Timpani, which technically should be notated as tremolo, unless a real trill on two kettles is intended.
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