(iv) The 17th century: instrumental ornamentation

(a) Ornament tables and signs.

It is unclear whether the proliferation of ornament signs represents an expansion in the number of actual ornament types or merely greater precision in their notation, but there was probably an element of both. Georg Muffat (I1690), for example, used only four signs, all variants of the letter ‘t’, to signify four distinct types of Triller: short, long, with termination and inverted (i.e. a mordent). Already a refinement of the old use of a single ‘t’ (for tremolo), this system was greatly expanded by his son Gottlieb Muffat (1726), whose table shows five signs for different types of trill alone.

Most of the new signs are commonsense extensions of more basic ones. Thus in Bach's system the stroke through the middle of a trill sign converted the latter to a Mordant (ex.68); but the combination Trillo und Mordant produced what we would call a trill with a closing turn or termination (ex.69). Similarly, a straight descending stroke continuing into a trill sign indicated an Accent und Trillo (ex.70). C.P.E. Bach observed in 1753 that most of these signs remained unknown to all but keyboard players. But appoggiaturas indicated by small notes are common in many 18th-century repertories, and the accounts of Georg Muffat (1698), Agricola and others make it clear that instrumentalists and singers used the same ornaments as keyboard players.

Ornaments, §8(v): German baroque: The later 17th and early 18th centuries

(b) Appoggiaturas.

Appoggiaturas accordingly received much attention from late Baroque theorists. Quantz, C.P.E. Bach and Agricola replaced the term accento with Vorschlag and distinguished between two varieties: ‘variable’ (veränderlich) and ‘invariable’ (unveränderlich). Both are slurred to the following main note, thus eliminating the anticipazione della nota and other older types of accento, which, however, continue to occur as written-out figures.

The ‘invariable’ appoggiatura is a short upper or lower auxiliary note, most often attached to relatively brief notes. The name is somewhat misleading, for it might, depending on the tempo and the value of the main note, be either ‘crushed’ against the latter or performed more deliberately. The ‘variable’ appoggiatura precedes a relatively long note, of which it takes half the value (two-thirds if the note is dotted). Despite suggestions by contemporary theorists that composers should notate the precise value of ‘variable’ appoggiaturas, this practice came into widespread use only after 1750; in earlier music the written value of appoggiaturas (when shown as little notes) appears to have no relation to their intended length.

Modern writers have often applied the mid-century rules governing the length of ‘variable’ appoggiaturas to the music of J.S. Bach. A literal reading of his ornament table would indeed give the Accent precisely half the value of the following note, but this is true also of the French models for the table, and other sources suggest that French practice favoured shorter appoggiaturas. Where Bach intended the long ‘variable’ appoggiatura, he appears to have written it as a regular note, distinguishing it from short appoggiaturas indicated by signs or small notes within the same piece, as in the F major prelude from part 2 of the ‘48’ (ex.71).

The ‘variable’ appoggiatura can fall only on the beat, but pre-beat performance of the ‘invariable’ type persisted in some quarters. In a famous disagreement, Quantz insisted on pre-beat performance, whereas C.P.E. Bach described it as odious (‘hässlich’). Their Berlin colleague Agricola, who had studied with both Quantz and J.S. Bach, prescribed on-beat performance for the descending Vorschlag but noted that some famous performers (‘einige berühmte Ausführer’) employed pre-beat performance in the French manner (‘nach Art der Franzosen’) for the first two instances of the ornament shown in ex.72.

Possibly this ‘French’ manner was employed in earlier German music, including works of J.S. Bach. Equivocal passages cannot be firmly settled without recourse to unprovable assumptions. For example, C.P.E. Bach (i.2.2.17) counselled players to avoid ornaments that disturbed the purity of the harmony (‘Reinigkeit der Harmonie’), such as by creating parallel 5ths; one might expect this rule to apply in J.S. Bach's music, dictating pre-beat performance of the appoggiatura in ex.73. Yet Agricola (p.77) noted that it was customary to permit such parallels when they were products of short appoggiaturas and inaudible. On the other hand, it is at least suggestive that the bare octaves produced by on-beat performance of the appoggiaturas in the Augmentation Canon from Bach's Art of Fugue (ex.74) can, as Neumann suggests (p.135), be avoided by the graceful alternative favoured by Quantz (ex.75).