A New Look at Bach's Ornamentation, II Author(s): Frederick Neumann Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Apr.

, 1965), pp. 126-133 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/732623 . Accessed: 31/05/2011 13:35
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A NEW LOOK AT BACH'S ORNAMENTATION

BY FREDERICK NEUMANN

II
IN contrast to the unobtrusive grace note, the appoggiatura is very conspicuous indeed and makes its presence far more strongly felt than the former. Placed in the rhythmical spotlight of the measure it displaces a melody note for a varying length of time and thereby actually changes the contour of the melody itself; it implies a harmonic accent, stressing the dissonance, and carries strong expressive emphasis, and when too short to do so, carries a strong rhythmical stress. In other words, it is a powerful ingredient. Because of this it stands to reason that its use requires far greater circumspection than that of the grace note, which can hardly do any damage even if improperly applied. On the other hand, the strong flavour of the appoggiatura can, in a favourite simile of the period, easily spoil the broth by too much seasoning. The over-use of its long variety will first saturate, then irritate: the over-use of the short variety will make for ruggedness where smoothness would have been the wiser and more artistic choice. In other words, the appoggiatura must never be used as a matter of routine, but only in those instances where the very kind of emphasis it imparts is called for by the context. They are the places where a sensitive performer of the period would have added one of his own, had it not been indicated. Once we realize that Bach's little notes did not invariably stand for appoggiaturas, we shall find many places where their interpretation as appoggiaturas simply does not fit. Apart from the forbidden parallels already mentioned, the most obvious case is one where the Vorschlag precedes a long appoggiatura that, as usual, is written out Bach. by Nothing could be more incongruous than to top one appoggiatura with another one, since the second would, like a parasite, drain from the first the very essence of the melodic, rhythmic and harmonic emphasis which it was meant to convey. Quantz points to written before another one this instance and tells us that a Vorschlag that is spelled out has to be played before the beat-in other words, as a grace note.1 His example:

X II ^r
1

- J

I26

Xffr IjL

'Versuch einer Anweisung die Flote Traversiere zu spielen', Chap. 8, para. 6.

Agricola makes a similar statement vetoing the cumulation of two appoggiaturas and admits only rare exceptions, such as a 6 chord which may on occasion be preceded by a descending appoggiatura. For an ascending appoggiatura he admits no exceptions. Moreover, he makes the significant statement that an appoggiatura makes no musical sense on top of a melodic dissonance that occurs on the beat.2 Nothing could be more logical. Yet we find the compound appoggiatura interpretation over and over again in books and in performance. Kirkpatrick, for instance, a consistent advocate of the downbeat ornamentation, repeats this pattern of a doubled appoggiatura in many cases in his edition of the Goldberg variations.3 A good example is the thirteenth variation. It so happens, as was pointed out before, that this interpretation leads in no fewer than three cases to forbidden parallels. One is shown here:

e fo Jd

Grace-note treatment is therefore unavoidable in some, and is indicated in a great many other, cases. How should the choice be made ? If any directive can be given it is this, that the decision be based on musical and not dogmatic grounds; that the emphasized downbeat start can be applied only when an appoggiatura is suggested on harmonic, expressive and melodic grounds; that a grace note should be used, not just by default, to avoid forbidden parallels, not as an embarrassed second choice when an appoggiatura obviously makes little sense, but as the first choice whenever melodic smoothness seems the point at issue. To put it simply, it can and should be used whenever it sounds better to a discriminating ear. And this decision can be made without selfconsciousness, since authority for it is plentiful. Moreover, a performer is not forced to choose squarely between one or the other. Grace notes and appoggiaturas are only opposing prototypes and their characteristics can be mixed in an infinite variety of ratios. A Vorschlagcan be played on the beat yet be unaccented and thus give the effect of a grace note with a delayed entrance-the kind of delay that Couperin calls suspension. A Vorschlagcan also straddle the beat in many different rhythmical shapes which in turn can be treated to an imaginative variety of dynamics. The combination of all these possibilities will then provide the very diversity that is the essence of ornamentation. The trill. It is commonly assumed that the trill in Bach should always start with the upper auxiliary and that the latter should enter
2

a Schirmer

Tosi, 'Anleitung zur Singkunst', pp. 75, 78.

(1938).

127

precisely on the beat with an appoggiatura-like emphasis which it retains throughout the repercussions.This rule was derived mainly from Philipp Emanuel Bach and from Marpurg and is generally believed to accord with French practice. The latter is assumed to feature invariably the upper note-on-the-beat start. That this interpretationis far too rigid I have shown in a recent article.4 In it I have, I hope successfully, tried to prove that even in France the trill was accorded far more freedom of manipulation than was hitherto suspected. The particular points were: (i) that the trill did not invariably start with the upper note; (2) that the emphasis could be on the main note instead of the upper one; (3) that the start with the auxiliary often took place, grace-note fashion, before the beat, and finally (4) that whole trills could be anticipated. It was also pointed out that Bach, though he learned from the French, never imitated them slavishly; and that German composers he admired offeredhim models of ornamentationthat deviated from the French. Some of these composers,in mattersof trills, for instance, not only tolerated a main-note start but distinctly favoured it. But quite apart from these considerationsthe thesis that Bach's trills should be accorded a far wider freedom than commonly assumed is a logical consequence of the following reasoning. If an appoggiatura-likeemphasis on the auxiliary is built into the trill by definition, then the trill is simply a sub-form, an ornamented variety of an appoggiatura. This is how Marpurg explains the trill and this is what many modern scholars such as Kirkpatrick, Bodky and Aldrich consider to be its essential nature. If we accept this premise, does it not stand to reason that the trill could be used only where an appoggiatura on the same note would make musical sense? If trills should occur only in such instances, it might be difficult to disprove this theory. However, one needs only to open almost at random any of Bach's works to find trills in places where an appoggiatura would be inappropriate.And of course where an appoggiaturais out of place an appoggiatura-trillis ipsofacto also impossible. Here too there is an opposition between the two extremes of an impossible appoggiatura-trill on the one side and a near-required one on the other. On the negative side there are first of all the instances of offensive parallels, such as:
(a) InventionNo.15 (b) WTC I, Fugue 6

twe to find tistrils in p

sw

e an a

gia a is msi

Next to this we find trills in places where an appoggiaturais musically senseless (among these ranks high the above-mentioned case of one
4 'Misconceptions about the French Trill in the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries', Musical Quarterly, 1 (1964), pp. 188-206.

128

appoggiatura on top of another), or, in the sense of Agricola, a downbeat trill whose main note is dissonant with the bass (Ex. (a)):
(a) WTC II, PreludeNo. 12

}bbb ; '~(b) 2nd OrganSonata

6b

i' rl Ifr

Other cases are trill chains, especially when they ascend chromatically like those in the second organ sonata (Ex. (b) above) (since nobody would think of saddling chromatic sequences with appoggiaturas) and trills on organ points or other longheld notes (tremblementcontinu)which serve the purpose of sustaining the sound of that note. Next in line are cases where, if a trill had not been written, an enlightened performer would not conceive of adding an appoggiatura as an improvised ornament. Next will be cases where the alternative between yes and no hangs in the balance; after that we arrive finally at those instances where an appoggiatura is well-nigh required, as in most cadential trills. How then should Bach's trills be performed? Considering the various types that are available one could simply say that the one should be chosen that in a given situation makes the best musical sense. For more specific directives it may be practical to divide Bach's simple trills into four main categories and call them: The appoggiatura trill, whose emphasized auxiliary may or may (I) not be extended in an appui:
or. rr r rr! roro! r! mr
a m

(2) The grace-note trill, starting with the unaccented auxiliary before the beat and stressing the main note:
SSiti^STor

(3)

The main-note trill, which may or may not start with an appui:
or

(4) The anticipatedtrill:

or _

To find out which of these types is the best choice in a particular case, it is suggested at first to leave out the trill, then to consider
I29

which of the other possibilities listed below in the left column would have been a likely choice for improvised ornamentation. The second column indicates on the same line the type of trill that is likely to fit best for this particular instance: appoggiatura trill with appui unprepared appoggiatura trill grace-note trill main-note trill, sometimes anticipated trill trills. The ornament which Bach called a DoppeltThe compound cadenceis explained in his table in conformity with d'Anglebert: (a) (b) (c) (d) long appoggiatura short appoggiatura grace note none of these ornaments

It has been taken for granted that in this type of trill, which starts with a turn or an inverted turn, the first note has to coincide with the beat. However, except for the evidence of the metrical patterns in the tables, which is very thin indeed,5 there does not seem to be any convincing documentary confirmation from the first part of the eighteenth century that a downbeat start was obligatory. Again the rule was made retroactive and deserves all the scepticism of the analogous rules about the appoggiatura and the simple trill. Couperin, for instance, does not use d'Anglebert's symbol. Instead he writes out the turn preceding the trill in little notes, which through their spacing in print and their musical context suggest anticipation. This can be shown for instance in the sarabande 'La Majestueuse' from the first ordreof harpsichord pieces. A petite repriseat the end of the piece is followed by another petite reprisewhich is more ornamented. A simple trill in the former (a) is changed into a compound trill in the latter (b) by the insertion of a turn whose anticipatory nature would be hard to deny:
(a)
4W

(b)
4W

1r

1r

'tr

In the gigue from the eighth ordrebar 37, a compound trill is written out in regular notes:

xi

. en metricl s not

In Walther's 'Lexicon', Table V, fig. 2, the pattern is not even metrical.

130

In the second Air of the twenty-second ordre, bars I7-I9, three compound trills follow each other in sequence. In the first of these a change from F to F# in the left hand makes sense only if the turn anticipates the beat:

,s

f nrr-1

b{-^

Since Bach wrote the symbol only for keyboard instruments and not for strings or wind, it is instructive to look for written-out patterns in non-keyboard works. In the G minor prelude for violin alone we find two such patterns in the first bars. They are written as in (i), whereas in a keyboard version they would most likely have
been notated as in (2):

(2) ,31>

If we can only free ourselves from the downbeat complex which has fenced in Bach ornamentation for so long, we can see how one can assume a great variety single ornament like the Doppelt-cadence of shapes by combining the anticipation of any number of notes-one, two, three, four or five-with occasional rhythmic variants like the one in Ex. (I) above. For instance, the compound trill in the third bar of the Goldberg aria is shown here in its original notation and in Kirkpatrick's transcription:
6

Kirkpatrickir|

,
(4

Bach

This version seems particularly ill-chosen. The repeat of the two crotchets is a key motive throughout the aria, but Kirkpatrick's interpretation obscures this motive because it deprives the second note of its identity by the double device of downbeat start of the turn and appoggiatura-trill. I submit the following interpretation, which permits the ornament to display all its elegance and at the same time helps to underline the crucial melodic idea instead of nearly destroying it: I3I

~,,iiiii
-m -' ?

l[I

:/

l--

_ (repercussions
approximate)

J'-~ ,d-~' ~' ~' ~' ~ ' ~

The slide. We need touch only briefly on the matter of the slide
for which Bach uses sometimes the symbol: , sometimes two

- . Similar considerationsapply here too. The ornalittle notes: ment was occasionallyplayed on the beat, in which case the first note . On other occasions it was played was usually lengthened: ''^ before the beat, and on still others it may well have been done in a mixed manner, straddling the beat, so to speak. As usual, the accepted version is the downbeat interpretation. The French called it port de voix double and seemed to have preferred its upbeat start. In L'Affilardwe find the following example :6
doublePortde voixdouble r

Fifty years later the same pattern is shown in the illustration from in which the two little notes Villeneuve which was presentedearlier,7 in front of a downbeat note are placed to the left of the bar-line. That Couperin used anticipatory slides can be deduced from examples like the following:
(a) ler Ordre,Allemande: ler Ordre,Rondeau: Sylvains',bars 12-13 2 (b) 'L'Auguste',bar -, ,

. F Ic t

# !Y

In the case of (a) where the lower note of the slide is tied over into the chord, a downbeat start would have undoubtedly been notated like
this:
..

In the case of (b) a downbeat start would produce ugly

octaves in the outer voices. As to the Germans, Walther in his 'Pracepta' of I708 shows both ascending and descending slides as anticipating the beat.8 Agricola distinguishes two kinds of slides the fast and even ones, and the slow and dotted ones. The (Schleifer): he fast ones says are sometimes written out by the composer .,~. in a manner belonging to the Lombard taste, whereby the short notes are strongly accented. Then he adds: "In contrast thereto a
6 Michel L'Affilard, 'Principes tr&sfaciles pour bien apprendre la Musique', 6th ed. 1705), pp. 26-7. (Paris, 7 Music & Letters,January 1965, p. I3. 8 J. G. Walther, 'Praecepta der musikalischen Composition' (I708, first published
Leipzig, 1955), p. 37.

I32

slide which fills in a leap and belongs properly to the weak part of the bar must be played more discreetly".9 These documents give added significance to the fact that several slides in Bach produce forbidden parallels if played on the beat. The following is an example of fifths in bar 23 of the sarabandefrom
the sixth Partita:10

6y' J

Off

In the 'Aria variata alla maniera italiana', bar 2, a slide occurs which precedesa little note that could stand for either a grace note or an appoggiatura. In either case the slide has to be anticipatory:

In the violin obbligato to 'Erbarme dich' from the St. Matthew Passion an upbeat interpretation of the slides is suggested by the following considerations. The start of the melody which carries the slide in the violin part is unadorned at the entrance of the voice:
Violin Solo Er - bar me dich

The anticipation of the slide in the violin would closely parallel the with which the singer is likely to bridge the interval portamento and smoothly expressively. On the other hand, an accented downbeat start of the slide with its intrusion into the domain of the melodic keynote would alter the contour of the melody to a point where its identity with the vocal line would be strongly blurred. Also, the anticipation gives far more unity to the phrase, which contains several more upbeat slides which are written out and give the phrase its pleading, submissive character. To sum up, it may be said that it is necessary to take a new look at the many restrictive rules and taboos which surround so much current thought on Bach ornamentation. If we subject all these rules to a thorough scrutiny of their legitimacy in terms of the soundness of their logical foundation, in terms of their compatibility with what we know about the vast licence accorded to the performer of the time, with what we know about the essential freedom of ornamentation as such, and above all, in terms of their compatibility with internal evidence from Bach's own works, we can be sure that many of these rules will stand revealed to be without foundation.
of the aria 'Komm, siisses Kreuz' and of voice and viola in bars I6 and I8 of the aria 'Mache dich, mein Herze' both from the St. Matthew Passion; and highly improbable unisons in the tenor aria from Cantata 62 in bars 28, 53, 6I, 115and octaves in bar 33.
9 Op. cit., p. 88. 10 Other instances are objectionable unisons of voice and viola da gamba in bar 46

I33