Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

(iv) The joining and separation of notes.

15th-century ligature theory was fully expounded by Morley (1597), and still appears in 17th-century didactic material; but it was not always thoroughly understood, even by theorists, and the only ligature to remain in fairly common use was that ‘with opposite propriety’ signifying two semibreves. Even this ligature was confined mostly to music in the stile antico. The ligature system was unsuited to printing by movable type, and since it applied only to long note values it was relatively useless after the minim had become the basic beat in polyphony. The two-semibreve ligature survived in Austria as late as the first half of the 18th century (Fux).

Ligatures had always been relatively uncommon in keyboard and other instrumental notation, but a comparable device had been the beam, found in some but not all early keyboard sources to join together groups of small note values (e.g. in the Buxheimer Orgelbuch, D-Mbs Cim.352b; see fig.130 below) and in some sources to join groups of rhythm signs together in a characteristic grid pattern. In these sources the primary sense of the beam is rhythmic, since the first of any group of notes joined together is stressed; this continued to be the meaning of the beam in instrumental music even after it had been transferred to vocal music. Another device comparable to the ligature was the slur or tie; the latter occurs in 16th-century keyboard sources such as Cavazzoni’s Recerchari, motetti, canzoni (1523) and Buus’s Intabolatura d’organo (1549; fig.96). Both the beam and the slur came to be used in vocal music for a purpose originally served by the ligature: to join together the notes to be sung to a single syllable, the slur for long note values, and both the beam and the slur for short ones. Praetorius (Syntagma musicum, iii, 2/1619) recommended the slur in place of all ligatures save that ‘with opposite propriety’; both the slur and the beam are used to join notes to be sung to a single syllable in Gabriel Bataille’s Airs de différents autheurs (1608; fig.97), and occur generally, though not always consistently, in 17th-century printed collections and manuscripts of vocal music from Italy and southern Germany. They occur for a similar purpose in English printed music first in the Vinculum societatis of J. Carr (1687; see fig.75 above); it is not clear which (perhaps both) of these notational innovations is intended by the ‘vinculum’ of the title.

This 17th-century convention still survives in most vocal music, though some notators have begun to adopt a notation more closely resembling instrumental notation, since syllabic vocal music is often difficult to read if small note values are at all numerous. 20th-century additions to it in scholarly editions of old music included square slurs to represent notes originally grouped as ligatures, and dotted, hairline or slashed slurs to differentiate editorial from original ones. Even Lussy in the 19th century, despite his concern to use the beam in the service of rhythmic theory, made a specific exception in favour of traditional vocal notation (Eng. trans., p.29).

In instrumental music the beam continued to be used for joining together small notes, in groups generally corresponding to a single beat or to simple multiples and submultiples of beats. An extension of its use occurred in the breaking of secondary beams (generally all but the first beam) within a group to clarify the subdivisions of the group, a practice not apparently found in Beethoven but attested at least as early as Liszt (fig.98, from his Fantaisie romantique sur deux mélodies suisses, 1837 edn) and adopted by many later notators, including Reger. This notation was recommended by Lussy since it clarified accentuation within groups, and is now part of standard notational practice (Read, 1964, 2/1969, pp.83–4).

Certain simple standard formulae involving syncopation had been notated since the Middle Ages contrary to the principle that a note or rest symbol should always occur on each beat, the note being tied to the last note of the previous beat if necessary. The chief examples of these exceptions were patterns involving a note value between two of the next shorter note value (e.g. quaver-crotchet-quaver) and dotted notes; and until the 18th century at least, it was possible to write a void note with a bar-line passing through it, or a note in one bar and its dot in the next (the latter device occurs occasionally even in Brahms’s practice). Other unorthodox groupings of notes, uncommon up to the 18th century, were used more frequently from the early 19th; they were condemned in terms of later 19th-century rhythmic theory.

Some 19th-century unorthodox rhythmic groupings of notes were undertaken purely for considerations of simplicity, for example Clementi’s use in Gradus ad Parnassum of a minim (meaning a dotted crotchet tied to a quaver) in 9/8 time (fig.99). Some, however, represent the first examples of beaming across beats and across bar-lines in order to clarify cross-rhythms. This latter practice, whose introduction is often erroneously attributed to early 20th-century composers, is found occasionally in Beethoven’s notation, notably in the Rondo of his Piano Sonata op.10 no.3, 1793 (fig.100), though it is exceptional as early as this. It occurs in Schumann’s notation of his characteristic staggered rhythmic groups as early as his ‘Abegg’ Variations op.1 (1830) and more extensively in later works such as Carnaval (1834–5: fig.101). The practice is important in the notation of 20th-century composers such as Stravinsky, Bartók and Prokofiev. Some 19th-century notators, including Brahms, sometimes used slurs across bar-lines to achieve the same effect. The use of beams over rests, again in the interest of clarifying rhythm, is also attested in the first half of the 19th century though it is often attributed to 20th-century notators.

Further 20th-century developments involving beams included beams broken by notes or rests but visually continuing through them (Debussy, as in fig.102, from Danseuses de Delphes, from Préludes, i, 1910, and later composers), rests connected to beams with stems (Stockhausen, as in fig.103, from Klavierstück IV; any distinctions intended by the various ways of connecting the rests and beams seem obscure), and notes written as single notes (with flags) but joined together with beams (Boulez, Le marteau sans maître, 1953–5 (fig.104) and others; this symbol has been used in conflicting senses). (For the use of beams to group together relatively fast notes of imprecise value, and to indicate duration in other ways, see Risatti, 1975, pp.7ff.)

Since the 16th century, slurs have come to be used for various other purposes; all of these imply joining together two or more notes. For example, slurs in instrumental music might by the 17th century refer to bowing, breathing or tonguing units (see fig.105) and hence, sometimes, phrasing (see Donington, Interpretation, 3/1974, pp.473–4), sometimes denoting that the first note under the slur was to be accented, or, with quavers slurred in pairs in the French Baroque style, that a rhythmic inequality was intended (see Notes inégales). (For further details on early conventions for notating bowing, see Wolf, 1919, 240–41; for further on phrasing slurs, see below.) In keyboard music, from the 18th century at the latest, rapid slurred white-note scales implied a glissando, single or double, as in Bach’s Concerto in C for two harpsichordsbwv1061, and Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C op.53, last movement; the glissando (here termed ‘sdrucciolato’) and other special effects are illustrated in a didactic ‘Lesson … of Different Touches’ in Pasquali’s Art of Fingering (?1760; fig.106). Vertical slurs beside chords in 18th- and 19th-century keyboard music indicated, like the short angled line through the chord, and wavy lines (at first an alternative form) that have now superseded both, that the chords were to be broken or ‘sprinkled’.

Despite the early use of the slur for phrasing, consistency in the use of the legato slur was apparently not generally achieved until the middle of the 19th century. Slurs imply in a general way that the music is to be performed legato, and the notes at the beginnings and ends of the slurs are usually not intended to be given any special treatment (for Berlioz’s practice, which may not have been peculiar to him, see Temperley, ‘Berlioz and the Slur’, ML, 1, 1969, p.388–92). The desire of notators to represent phrasing more precisely seems likely to have developed from the rhythmic theory of the second half of the 19th century. Lussy deplored the lax practice of earlier notators (Eng. trans., p.44) and proposed that in keyboard notation the slur should represent phrasing by being equated with physical action: ‘All the notes … covered by a slur … should be played … with a single movement of the wrist for the first note, and the other notes must be articulated by the fingers alone, the hand merely gliding to right or left without any further movement of the wrist’. (The practice of placing a dot under the last note of a slurred group at this period, presumably indicating staccato detachment of that note, was deplored by Lussy on the grounds that it misled performers into accenting these notes.) Later writers who distinguished between traditional notation and accurate phrasing notation include Tobias Matthay (The Slur or Couplet of Notes, London, 1928) and Stewart Macpherson, who devoted considerable space to an attack on traditional notation and an exposition of the ‘correct uses of notational signs’ (Studies in Phrasing and Form, rev. 1932, pt.i), requiring editors to adopt consistent phrasing notation rather than reproduce the original ‘with an almost touching fidelity’. Riemann (Musik-Lexikon, 1882) sought still further precision, because of the ambiguity of the slur: he proposed the use of squared slurs or commas in order to avoid confusion with the legato slur, but from 1900 used both squared and conventional slurs for phrasing. For an example of the complexity of Riemann’s phrasing notation as evolved for his special ‘phrasing editions’ of various classical works, see fig.107. The comma was frequently used in 20th-century notation, as in Riemann’s, in order to notate articulation in a melody (see also Rhythm).

Debussy seems to have broken new ground with ties and slurs, particularly in indicating their beginnings and endings separately (La fille aux cheveux de lin), and, later, in notating chords sustained over two or more bars by a series of small ties across the bar-line, without repetition of the chords themselves. He also used ties to indicate, without theoretical accuracy, that notes within a broken chord were to be sustained until, and beyond, the end of a bar (fig.108, from Les fées sont d’exquises danseuses, from Préludes, ii, 1913).

Signs indicating the separation of notes, motifs and phrases rather than their conjunction are found in the early 17th century: Cavalieri used a signum at the ends of lines of text in vocal parts, perhaps, as Schering suggested, indicating breathing marks (fig.109, from Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo, 1600: GMB, p.183; see Signum concordantiae and Fermata). This usage may be seen in chorales of Bach’s time and Bach himself used a fermata on the last note of the phrase of a cantus firmus in chorale preludes, even though the accompanying figuration allows no pause. Staccato signs (dots or vertical dashes) are found in the Baroque period; for the sake of illustration Pasquali (1758; fig.106) distinguished several different degrees of articulation, but distinctions between dots, dashes and other symbols became generally consistent only in the 19th century. Some of these symbols, including dots, seem also to have meant accents; it is not always clear in Chopin’s music, for example, whether bass notes with dots over or under them are to be detached or accented. In the late 19th and the 20th centuries, notably in the music of Reger, Debussy and Schoenberg, an elaborate hierarchy of some dozen different combinations of signs has sometimes been used to cover the range from strong accents to lightly detached notes, and numerals have sometimes been substituted for these (e.g. Read, 1964, chap.15). Many new symbols were introduced in the 20th century to denote related matters such as attack and playing technique on specific instruments.

Notation, §III, 4: Mensural notation from 1500