Oakeley, Sir Herbert (Stanley)

(d) Trills.

As early as 1698 Muffat stated quite explicitly that trills in music for instrumental ensemble began on the upper note; the same was indicated in keyboard ornament tables given by J.C.F. Fischer (1696) and most subsequent authors. To be sure, exceptions have been noted in treatises from as late as 1730 (see Neumann, 302–3), suggesting that conservative or provincial musicians retained older approaches; Walther in 1732 still cited Printz for examples of the old tremolo. But the overwhelming evidence is that, except in special cases such as the ribattuta or the Schneller, German trills after 1700 usually began on the upper note.

Short trills generally lacked a closing turn (Nachschlag) and in quick tempos might be reduced to a simple upper appoggiatura. On keyboard instruments certain short trills might be played with a snap of the fingers, producing what was called by 1750 the half-trill (Halbtriller) or Pralltriller. This is probably the type of trill called for in the fugue subject from the Toccata in J.S. Bach's Sixth Partita (ex.76), where the ornament accentuates the upper note of a ‘sigh motif’. The player probably paused on the main note before proceeding to the next, as suggested by the entry for Trillo in Bach's ornament table and other sources (ex.77).

Marpurg (I1755) suggested that quick, snapped trills sometimes started on the main note, producing a true ‘inverted mordent’ (to use a modern term sometimes applied to the short trill). This must indeed have been employed by some players as a simplified form of the short trill, or as a survival of the old tremoletto, but the major 18th-century sources do not recommend it. C.P.E. Bach called it the Schneller, always writing it out in small notes on the rare occasions when his music called for it.

C.P.E. Bach's examples of the Pralltriller are all, in addition, instances of the ‘tied trill’, in which a slur indicates the tying of the initial (upper) note to the previous note (ex.78). The ornament corresponds to the French tremblement appuyé et lié. German composers did not always write the slur; in a passage from the Courante of J.S. Bach's D minor French Suite the slur is nevertheless implied by the appoggiatura function of the note on the downbeat (ex.79; two bars later the same figure appears with a slur over all four quavers).

Already indicated by a special sign in the music of Gottlieb Muffat, the tied trill is a subtle and difficult ornament to perform. Today one often hears the trill anticipating rather than following the beat, defeating the evident purpose of the tie, which is to sustain the preceding note into the time of the following one. There it functions as a momentary suspension before becoming the upper note of the trill. But pre-beat performance (as a form of tremoletto) might have been the intention of some older composers (see ex.61); Gottlieb Muffat's father Georg had no special sign for the tied trill.

Longer trills might be used to sustain a long note and continue it melodically to the following beat, as in the slurred figure on which J.S. Bach built the Sarabande of his sixth French Suite, using what he called a Trillo und Mordant (see ex.69). In ex.80 the closing turn is written out, and in such contexts the trill was often unmarked, its performance being taken for granted.

C.P.E. Bach and Quantz both indicated that long trills normally ended with a turn or Nachschlag, even if the latter was not notated, as in ex.81 (from a trio sonata in Telemann's Essercizi musicali, Hamburg, 1739–40). By this rule it would be wrong to perform instead an anticipation of the final note, which is notated explicitly where desired, as in ex.82 (from J.S. Bach, Cantata 210; the ornament is presumably a short trill without termination). Agricola called for a turn even after each link in an ascending chain of trills (‘Kette von Trillern’), as in another passage from Telemann's Essercizi (ex.83). The turns were apparently omitted in the descending version.

Terminations in the form of turns were expected even on many short trills that pause before proceeding to the next note. Again, Gottlieb Muffat had a sign for such a trill; the ornament is similar to the tremblement et pincé illustrated in a manuscript table of ornaments by Bach's older brother Johann Christoph, copied from Dieupart's Six suittes de clavessin (Amsterdam, c1701) (ex.84). C.P.E. Bach was fond of a later version, the prallender Doppelschlag, which consisted of a Pralltriller followed by a turn or termination; in his illustration (ex.85) the trill is ‘tied’ to a preceding long appoggiatura. C.P.E. Bach indicated this ornament with a compound symbol borrowed from François Couperin; J.S. Bach and others wrote out the closing turn (ex.86; in ex.86b the trill is probably meant to be ‘tied’).

In long as well as short trills one sometimes finds the initial note explicitly indicated by a small note (appoggiatura) or other sign (as in exx.70–71). Included in tables by J.S. Bach and Gottlieb Muffat, this trill corresponds to Tosi's trillo preparato and Couperin's tremblement appuyé. Agricola, translating Tosi, declared that a trill must be prepared (‘vorbereitet’) if it is to be beautiful (‘schön’); nevertheless, the appoggiatura (Vorschlag) need not always be lengthened. This suggests a distinction between ordinary ‘unprepared’ trills and ‘prepared’ ones in which the first note is lengthened, perhaps for heightened accentuation or expressivity. Agricola followed Quantz in identifying the initial note of the trill as an appoggiatura (Vorschlag); although Quantz's examples show the latter as a separate small note, it was nevertheless for him an essential element of every trill.

Modern writers generally assume that this ‘appoggiatura’ always falls on the beat, but the point is rarely made explicit in the treatises, although it is the rule in musical illustrations. Quantz, however, implicitly allows pre-beat performance in some contexts, as when the first note would function as an unaccented passing note or coulé in the French style. Whether J.S. Bach or others employed this practice, as in the Gigue of his second French Suite (ex.87), is impossible to say.

J.S. Bach and Gottlieb Muffat are among those whose keyboard works occasionally use trills prefixed by turns or slides, which C.P.E Bach later described as trills from above and from below (‘von oben’ and ‘von unten’) (ex.88). The prefix, sometimes written out in the form of one or more small notes, may also have been added improvisatorily to many ordinary trills. J.S. Bach's term for the figure was Doppel-Cadenz, an expression sometimes applied by others to the long cadential trill with termination (see ex.69).

Few German composers before 1750 followed Couperin in specifying any chromatic alteration of the auxiliary notes in trills or other ornaments. Georg Muffat (I1690) called for the large half-step (‘grosser Halb-Thon’) in mordents, implying frequent chromatic alteration of the auxiliary to constitute a leading note, so long as it does not displease the ear (‘wofern es nur nicht übel in die Ohren fället’). Modern advice generally follows C.P.E. Bach in drawing auxiliary notes from the scale of the currently tonicized key, but Gottlieb Muffat frequently specified more liberal use of chromatic auxiliaries by setting accidentals beside the ornament signs (ex.89).

18th-century writers sometimes advised against certain obsolete or otherwise irregular types of trill, thus suggesting that they were in fact used by some performers. Quantz (9.2–4), although counselling that the speed of a trill should be appropriate to that of the tempo of a piece in general, condemned very slow trills, which he said were typical of French singing. He also proscribed trills in 3rds ‘except, perhaps, upon the bagpipe’ – an instrument that J.S. Bach imitated in the Musette of his sixth English Suite by writing out such a trill. Trills in 3rds are also occasionally written out in his early toccatas, and in some older 17th-century organ and violin music.