Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

(vi) Accidentals, key signatures.

The sharp and flat signs, inherited from medieval notation, were supplemented from the late 15th century by the natural sign; this had at an earlier period been an alternative form of b quadratum and like the sharp and flat was derived from a version of the letter ‘b’. In medieval notation, as still during and perhaps after the 16th century (particularly in vocal music), these signs signified that the notes to which they applied were to be solmized using the syllable fa (for the flat) or mi (for the sharp). Some of these accidentals are ‘cautionary signs’, warnings that a rule of musica ficta was for the occasion to be suspended. When a distinction was drawn between sharp and natural and three signs were used, however, there may have been a change in the significance of the accidental: it then came to signify the raising or lowering of pitch (see Musica ficta, §2(iv)). The use of all three signs did not become general until the 18th century. Any lowering of pitch was generally indicated by a flat and any raising by a sharp; the notator’s intention was usually clear (at least to contemporaries) until remote chromatic chords became part of the normal musical language and until ‘orthography’ in accidentals became a concern (see below). The older notation lacking the natural may be found until the end of the Baroque period and, in isolated cases (e.g. fig.114, dating from c1841) even later; it survives strongly in a modified form (the sharp and flat being replaced by ‘+’ and ‘−’ signs respectively) in 20th-century jazz and popular music notation (see §(viii) below).

For a similar reason, and because bar-lines were not used in the modern way until a late date, absolute consistency in the notation of accidentals – with a rule that accidentals are required only as shown, and that they hold good until the end of the bar – is not generally found before the 18th century or even the 19th. An accidental before the late 18th century generally applies only to the note next to which it is written or to notes in its immediate vicinity (see Donington, Interpretation, 3/1974, pp.131ff). Even as late as the early 19th century, for example in keyboard music printed in London, accidentals may be provided for only one note of an octave, with the performer expected to supply the second. Here as in other aspects of the notation simplicity was thought more desirable than precision.

Initial flat signatures (indicating transposition down a 5th once with one flat and twice with two) had been usual in the Middle Ages; signatures with sharps appeared (apart from isolated examples as early as the Middle Ages) in the 17th century, and like flat signatures at this date are to be regarded as key signatures in the strict sense. Nevertheless, Baroque composers often wrote the accidentals of key signatures in more than one octave, contrary to modern practice: this may represent an archaism (medieval signatures may be presumed to refer only to notes at the pitch specified, with octave transpositions remaining unaffected in the absence of any indication to the contrary). Baroque key signatures often contain one flat or (more rarely) sharp fewer than would be included in modern practice, particularly in minor keys, perhaps (as Donington suggested) because G minor, for example, was thought of as the Dorian mode in which the E was theoretically natural, or perhaps because a piece in G minor might have E naturals at least as often as E flats.

The double sharp and double flat, like sharp key signatures, were mainly products of the tonal system in the 17th century. Donington provides tables showing different forms used for writing the natural, sharp, flat, double sharp and double flat in the 17th and 18th centuries (3/1974, p.127). Since that time, there has never been total consistency about the method of cancelling double accidentals: a natural alone, a sharp or flat alone, or (most commonly) a natural with a sharp or flat have all been used.

From the Middle Ages various signs were invented for representing intervals supposed to be those of the enharmonic and chromatic genera of the ancient Greeks. Besides those of Marchetto da Padova, the use by Nicola Vicentino (L’antica musica ridotta alla moderna prattica, 1555) of dots over notes to raise them by a diesis (see Diesis (ii)) and the special signs (see fig.115) of Lusitano (Introdutione facilissima, 1553, 2/1558) may be mentioned. Microtonal intervals have also been represented with special signs (see below).

Until the 19th century accidentals were often notated without theoretical accuracy, for the sake of convenience: for example, in the Buxheimer Orgelbuch, where E is notated as the form for Dis (D), A analogously as G etc., regardless of the incongruity of the notation from a theoretical point of view. Similar considerations, no doubt, led some 17th- and 18th-century notators to write enharmonic equivalents of double sharps or double flats (e.g. G for F double sharp), and sharps for ascending chromatic semitones and flats for descending, as a rule of thumb not based on theoretical considerations. With the appearance in the 19th century of theories of harmony supposedly based scientifically on acoustical laws, ‘orthography’ – the notation of accidentals according to harmonic grammar – seemed important enough to some to outweigh considerations of practical convenience. According to Lussy, for example, ‘every chromatic note, or note foreign to the key or mode in which a melody is constructed, is accented’ in certain circumstances (Eng. trans., p.142), and thus the presence of an accidental has rhythmic and accentual implications. Accordingly, the traditional lax notation was misleading for expressive purposes; Lussy (p.151) criticized Beethoven’s notation in op.26 (fig.116), submitting that B should be substituted for C in the first chord of the example. (For a more detailed investigation of Beethoven’s ‘unorthographic’ notation in his piano sonatas and string quartets, see Van der Linde, ‘Die unorthographische Notation in Beethovens Klaviersonaten und Streichquartetten’, Beethoven-Studien: Festgabe, ed. E. Schenk, Vienna, 1970, pp.271–325.)

For a similar reason Lussy called for ‘correctness’ of notation in key signatures, since an incorrect key signature would misrepresent the accentuation:

In the overture to ‘Zampa’, which starts in D with two sharps, the Prayer is introduced in the key of B. The composer, by retaining the signature of D for these sixteen bars, is forced to use about a hundred flats and naturals … In such cases as this the chords preceded by accidentals do not require forcing.

Despite the general avoidance since the late 19th century of gross incongruity in the notation of accidentals, ‘convenience’ notation of accidentals, primarily according to the manner of playing the notes, is still required in special notations (such as that of harp music, because the instrument, with a natural scale in C, is easier to play in flat keys: in fig.117 the harp and piano parts largely correspond, but the notation of accidentals is different).

Since the late 19th century notational practice with accidentals has changed chiefly in music where conventional major-minor tonality has been weakened or jettisoned. The simultaneous use of different key signatures is occasionally found, as in Bartók’s Mikrokosmos or Britten’s Peter Grimes. Sharps and flats in signatures may be placed at unconventional pitches, indicating a return to the medieval conception of the signature affecting only one pitch, not octave transpositions (for example in Mikrokosmos). In works not in the major-minor or any other diatonic system, where key signatures have naturally been abandoned, it has often been found convenient to return to the convention that an accidental applies only to the note to which it is joined; this renders the natural sign redundant, as is stipulated in Busoni’s Sonatina seconda, 1912: ‘die Versetzungszeichen gelten nur für die Note, vor der sie stehen, sodass Auflösungszeichen nicht zur Anwendung kommen’. In some music of the 1960s and 70s, every note is preceded by a sharp, flat or natural sign.

Microtonal intervals have been the subject of speculation in European music for centuries (see Microtone). For much of the 20th century, composers concentrated on divisions of the equal-tempered semitone, with such intervals as the quarter-tone and the sixth-tone being notated by various altered forms of the sharp and flat signs (see Read, 1964, 2/1969, p.145, and Risatti, 1975, pp.16–17). Fig.118, an example from Hába, one of the earliest 20th-century experimenters, illustrates one such system. With later work on divisions of the octave in which the notes do not always coincide with the 12-note scale (the 20- and 31-note scales, which fall into this category, are both in use, as are many others), this type of notation is not always convenient. Some composers have used up- and down-arrows and/or ‘+’ and ‘−’ in conjunction with signs based on the sharp and flat; such symbols are also found in transcriptions by ethnomusicologists. An alternative is to use a numerical system, in which fractions or cent values make obvious series within the octave; and some composers have used a mixture of numerical and symbolic signs, the latter still based on the sharp and flat (see Darreg, 1975, and 1979; Blackwood, 1991).

Notation of accidentals with signs other than the traditional medieval ones still in normal use is occasionally encountered in keyboard mensural notation, or the mensurally notated sections of Old German organ tablature. In the Buxheimer Orgelbuch, for example, downward stems from notes are to be understood as accidentals rather than indications that notes are lengthened. In some early 16th-century keyboard sources, dots above or below notes are also used for this purpose: examples are Cavazzoni, Recerchari, motetti, canzoni (1523), the volumes of keyboard music printed by Attaingnant, and the anonymous Intabolatura nova di varie sorte de balli da sonare (1551; fig.119; this volume uses both this notation and conventional accidentals).

See alsoAccidental

Notation, §III, 4: Mensural notation from 1500