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Symbols appended to musical notation which indicate to the performer the manner in which particular notes and phrases should be played.

Until the late 18th century the only signs commonly used to indicate distinctions of articulation were the slur and the staccato mark (a dot, a vertical stroke, or a wedge) placed above or below the note head. In the 19th century composers became concerned to specify their requirements with ever greater precision, and other forms of articulation mark were introduced, though only a few of these were widely adopted. The principal meaning of the slur has remained relatively constant, though the manner of its employment has varied greatly over the centuries. Except where slurs are written over a succession of notes on the same pitch to indicate portato, they specify that notes of different pitches should be performed without separation, that is, legato. There is, strictly speaking, no greater or lesser degree of connectedness; terms such as ...

The Fingering of keyboard music with figures 1 to 5 for each hand, 1 standing for the thumb, a system in general use throughout the world today. The term was used in Britain in the 19th century in contrast to so-called English fingering (not, however, exclusively English), which provided for four fingers (marked 1 to 4) and a thumb (marked +)....

Rhythms in which long notes alternate with one or more short notes, so called because the long notes are usually written with the aid of the dot of addition (see Note values). Dotted rhythms are found in mensurally notated music of all periods; this article, however, deals mainly with music of the 17th and 18th centuries, in which it was customary to alter certain sorts of written rhythmic values in performance (see also Notes inégales; for notational meanings of the dot before 1600 see Notation, §III). The principal issue is the degree to which such rhythms sounded uneven, rather than the specific manner of their notation (e.g. the dot may be replaced by a rest or tie).

Dozens of contemporary theoretical and pedagogical sources indicate that the dot was ordinarily equal to one half the value of the note or rest preceding it, just as it is today. But the treatises also present various exceptions. The dot could stand for a tie (...

The intensity of volume with which notes and sounds are expressed. In the 20th century dynamics came to be seen as one of the fundamental parameters of composition which function interdependently to create musical meaning and structure.

Dynamic variation is so natural to the performance of almost all styles of music that its presence can normally be assumed even when indications for it are mainly or even entirely absent from the notation. That dynamic transitions occurred in the music of ancient Greece is suggested by Plutarch’s accounts, and it is likely that the monophonic hymns of the 1st century ce displayed nuances of volume illustrating their meaning or imitating the tone of speech. Medieval musicians had no word for ‘dynamics’ per se, but it is implicit in the concepts of structura and processus. By the early Renaissance period dynamic values were reflected in changes in the number of voices and their registers. In Josquin’s ...

The Fingering of keyboard music with figures 1 to 4 representing four fingers, and + the thumb, of each hand, a system used in England and elsewhere in the 19th century and now obsolete. The term contrasted with Continental fingering, which provides the figures 1 to 5 for each hand, 1 standing for the thumb, a system in general use throughout the world today....

(It.: ‘division’)

A term used fairly frequently in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to denote exercises in figured-bass playing, not so much as accompaniments to a solo instrument as self-contained pieces. Composers using this term were very often Neapolitan or Milanese, though the significance of this is unknown. The word may or may not refer to the 17th century practice of divisions, i.e. performing variations on a repeating (figured) bass; more likely it reflects the common Italian practice c 1700 of writing bass lines for keyboard players to work into fully-fledged pieces. The definition is attested to as early as 1634 by G.F. Cavalliere in Il scolaro principiante di musica (Naples). Examples are common in MSS, e.g. the ‘Arpeggi per cembalo’ exercises in GB-Lbl Add.14244 (?A. Scarlatti), the organ ‘Versetti … per rispondere al coro’ in Lbl Add.31501 (?B. Pasquini), and the complete solo and even duet figured-bass sonatas for harpsichord by Pasquini in ...

A quasi-Latin term derived from pedalis (a part ‘for the feet’) to indicate that a piece of organ music so labelled is played by both hands and feet. The word appears to have arisen as an antithesis to Manualiter and was so used by Schlick (1511). Although it does not indicate a piece played by pedals alone, it does in practice imply one with a developed pedal part. Sometimes composers used it to suggest a large-scale work in several ‘voices’ (e.g. Scheidt's ‘Benedicamus à 6 voc. pleno organo pedaliter’, 1624). However, in the third section of his Clavier-Übung Bach seems to have contrasted manualiter with a phrase such as ‘canto fermo in basso’; but pedaliter itself also appeared in music from his circle, chiefly outside the context of organ chorales and pedal melodies, as for example in the autograph manuscript of bwv535a, and in Buxtehude's C major Praeludium in the ‘Johann Andreas Bach Buch’....

(It from strecciate: ‘divide’, ‘untwist’)

A direction placed by Vivaldi (rv 163) above a group of unslurred repeated demisemiquavers in allegro where he wanted ‘divided’ notes – presumably rapidly played in a measured tremolo (see Bow, §II, 2(vi). (In the same work, Vivaldi twice uses the direction battute for slower repeated notes.) The effect resembles ...

(Ger.: ‘stroke’, ‘line’)

In bowing, Aufstrich is up-bow, Niederstrich or Abstrich is down-bow. But a Taktstrich is a bar-line. The Mensurstrich, a line drawn between and not through the staves, has been used in many modern editions of medieval and Renaissance music, beginning with those made by Heinrich Besseler in the 1920s; it was invented to minimize interruptions to the rhythmic flow and to avoid ties for syncopated notes. Most editors prefer to use ordinary bar-lines, but the Mensurstrich continues to find favour with some. Medieval manuscrsipts written in modal notation sometimes include vertical strokes to call the singer's attention to a change of syllable in the text; these are called Silbenstriche. (See F. Ludwig: Repertorium organorum recentioris et motetorum vetustissimi stili, i, Halle, 1910, p.49.) Strich, in the context of ‘Punkt und Strich’ (‘dot and dash’), refers to the Dash used as an articulation mark or accent in music notation.

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(It.: ‘single key’)

A phrase used by composers to instruct the keyboard player of a continuo part to play the bass note(s) alone, without chords above. The phrase seems to occur in music (e.g. Corelli op.5) before it is described in theory books (Heinichen, 1728, Pasquali, Albrechtsberger), where the player is directed to play only those notes, singly (Heinichen) or with their octave (Adlung) or (if long) restruck (C.P.E. Bach etc.). C.P.E. Bach noted that the Italians did not in practice ever play tasto solo. Many composers also gave figures for passages marked tasto solo and in this case the figures may merely indicate the harmony implied or stated above by other instruments; these are either for the continuo player to fill in if necessary or, as in the case of Bach’s cantata bass parts, for the sake of the copyist writing out a part from the full score. To distinguish single notes from those doubled at the octave above or below, C.P.E. Bach applied the phrases ...