Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

(vii) Dynamics.

Indications of dynamics are rare before 1600. The rubric ‘tocca pian piano’ occurs in Vincenzo Capirola’s lutebook (c1517; fig.120), but seems to be an isolated example until the polychoral and echo effects of the late 16th and early 17th centuries suggested the exploitation of dynamics; specific indications occur in the Sonata pian e forte (1597) by Giovanni Gabrieli and other works of the period. Mazzocchi (Madrigali, 1638) used abbreviations for forte, piano and so on and for crescendo and diminuendo effects; otherwise diminuendo effects in the 17th and early 18th centuries are generally indicated by a series of dynamic markings (e.g. ‘lowd–soft–softer’ in Matthew Locke’s music for The Tempest, 1674; and ‘forte–piano–pianissimo’ in the pastorale from Corelli’s Christmas Concerto op.6 no.8, posthumously published in 1714). Later in the 18th century these were supplemented with the modern ‘hairpin’ symbols for crescendos and diminuendos (Geminiani, Prime sonate, 1739, a revision of his op.1, 1716). These ‘hairpins’ are in early 19th-century music often combined into a characteristic lozenge shape (fig.121), indicating a crescendo immediately followed by a diminuendo, but this sign is invariably divided into two separate signs in modern editions. (It should also be noted that it is frequently difficult to distinguish between diminuendo signs and wedge-shaped accents in the notation of such composers as Berlioz and Schubert.)

In 19th-century practice the superlatives of loudness and softness (fff, ppp) were extended, with composers prescribing down to pppppp and up to ffff (Verdi, Tchaikovsky), and a scale of 12 or more imprecise degrees of loudness was constructed. These degrees were specified with great care in some early 20th-century works, where almost every note has its own dynamic marking; in some later 20th-century practice, dynamic markings were graded numerically for greater precision. Other 20th-century devices to make dynamic indications more precise or to give them greater visual impact include the use of progressively fuller note heads on a scale where a void note is inaudible and a full note fff (Schäffer), the use of signs (unfortunately resembling accents) to represent various increases in loudness (Stockhausen, Klavierstück XI), and the relative size of note heads (see Risatti, 1975, pp.29ff); the last device was proposed in 1903 by Abdy Williams (p.212).

See also Tempo and expression marks.

Notation, §III, 4: Mensural notation from 1500

(viii) Scores; harmonic and descriptive notations.

Although score notation had been abandoned in polyphony with the adoption of Franconian notation in the 13th century, it lingered in certain peripheral areas of medieval notation until the 15th and 16th centuries (see §3 above). Instrumental notation may be considered a particular case of score notation, in both its tablature form and its purely mensural score form, such as the Faenza Codex (see Sources of keyboard music to 1660, §2(i)). Instrumental notation of the late Middle Ages, like later scores, frequently includes the visual separation of ‘bars’ or other metric units by bar-lines or spaces.

Early 16th-century score notation, apart from that in tablatures, some keyboard music (e.g. Cavazzoni, Attaingnant) and surviving medieval repertories in Bohemia, is mostly didactic and intended for inexperienced musicians, as in Agricola’s Musica instrumentalis deudsch (1529), which illustrates how to put music into tablature. From this period to the second half of the 18th century at least, there is evidence of the use of the tabula compositoria, a device with staff-lines and vertical bar-lines, on which polyphony could be written in score to facilitate copying or composition and then erased to permit re-use. Bermudo (1555) claimed that organists played, according to their ability, in descending order of competence, from choirbooks, tablatures and scores.

The first complete surviving scores proper are the Musica de diversi autori … partite in caselle (2/1577¹¹) and Tutti i madrigali di Cipriano di Rore a 4 voci (1577); printed scores are attested not much later outside Italy (M. Gomołka, Melodie na psalterz polski uczynione, Kraków, 1580, in score without bar-lines, fig.122; Balet comique de la Royne, Paris, 1582). Some of these were intended for keyboard and other instrumental performance, and were compiled after the parts had been completed. The same is true of less comprehensive organ parts, supporting the lowest-sounding voice throughout vocal and instrumental pieces, which are attested from 1587, in a 40-part motet by Alessandro Striggio (i). Such an organ part was often termed a Partitura (or spartitura), another respect in which it resembles a score.

In the early 17th century Thoroughbass notation developed from these organ parts and it too was early associated with the score. It became almost universal in every type of polyphony except that for solo instruments in the 17th and early 18th centuries, whether in score or parts, after which time it declined in secular polyphony. In essence it represents an abbreviated notation for chords, associated with a single bass line in ordinary mensural notation. The symbols used, as with those of musica ficta, are often warnings against adopting a particular course of action. The abbreviations are in the form of numerals representing the intervals to be played above the bass line, often supplemented with accidentals. Such accidentals are occasionally found in a partitura comprising the outer voices, as in Banchieri’s Concerti ecclesiastici (1595) where, as in later practice, they distinguish major and minor chords; numerals as well as accidentals appeared around 1600 in the thoroughbasses of the earliest operas, which were printed in score (Peri, Caccini: see fig.70). Unlike later thoroughbass notation, the early operas often contain numerals in excess of 9, and they thus specify the octave for the elaboration of the bass (in Caccini the numerals extend to 15 and in Cavalieri even beyond that; see fig.109). Not all early thoroughbass sources include numerals and accidentals, partly because of the difficulties of setting them in type.

The placing of the accidentals in early thoroughbass notation is not always consistent; they may appear in almost any position fairly near to the numerals they qualify. As in the ordinary staff notation of the period, sharps and flats refer respectively to any raising or lowering of a note. A stroke through the numeral 6 instead of a sharp next to it, signifying that it is to be raised a semitone, was introduced by Scheidt (1622) but not generally adopted until the second half of the 17th century (e.g. by Rosenmüller, 1652), when it was supplemented by a 6 with a flat sign through it as a direction to lower the 6th by a semitone. This practice was extended to other numerals (4, 5 etc.) in some of Roger’s editions of Corelli, and became general in Italian and Italian-derived practice of the 18th century (fig.123). In the second half of the 18th century a diagonal stroke was introduced (Kirnberger, 1781, p.74, referring to Graun’s practice; this sign is also cited by C.P.E. Bach, together with alternatives, Versuch, ii, 1762, Eng. trans., 1949, p.196) to be placed under appoggiaturas in the bass to signify that the following bass note was to be harmonized in advance; but this practice is not often attested. For tasto solo (i.e. a direction to leave the bass line unharmonized), practice varied in 18th-century thoroughbass notation: some notators used a verbal direction, some staccato dashes (perhaps equivalent to the figure 1), some the figure 0 and so on.

Thoroughbass was popularized in Germany especially through the diffusion of Viadana’s Centum concerti ecclesiastici (first published 1602); in England the practice appeared in publications from the 1630s and in France from the 1650s. French thoroughbass used horizontal lines at an early date to indicate the retention of previous harmony, a device used internationally in the 18th century. By the end of the 17th century French thoroughbass notation had developed a good number of distinctive and inconsistent traits, such as inconsistent notation of sharps or the use of strokes through numerals to signify, variously, both diminished and augmented intervals. Many of these traits were tabulated by Rameau (Dissertation sur les différentes méthodes d’accompagnement pour le clavecin, ou pour l’orgue, 1732). Some French notational characteristics are occasionally found in German figured basses from about 1750.

While thoroughbass was still mainly a practical, rather than a didactic or theoretical, device, occasional abortive attempts were made to reform its notation. Rameau (1732) proposed a system based on his harmonic theories (see Wolf, ii, 327) but later dropped it; Telemann (preface to Musicalisches Lob Gottes, 1744) proposed a system of numerals supplemented with horizontal, diagonal and curved strokes, in order to achieve a ‘happy mean’ between basses with too few figures and those ‘resembling an arithmetic book’.

During the 17th century, score notation was used in other areas of the polyphonic repertory, such as solo songs and cantatas. Some of these scores were intended to facilitate conducting, though until the 19th century (and in some areas later) conducting scores might contain little more than a first violin part, or a figured bass supplemented with cues, recitatives in full and so on; the latter type, when intended for a conductor, might be labelled ‘M[aestro] D[i] C[appella]’. The keyboard score also spread beyond Italy in the 17th century (M. Rodrigues Coelho, Flores de musica, 1620; Scheidt, Tabulatura nova, 1624). In 17th-century scores, bar-lines became usual, though not always consistent, at a relatively early date. In early scores they extend only through a single staff; they were extended throughout each system by Bach and others in the 18th century, but the practice was not standardized until the 19th. Similarly, the order in which the parts are set out varies until well into the 19th century (see Score). For clef reform in score notation, see §(v) above.

Keyboard score notation developed characteristics of its own, some deriving from tablature, from the 17th century onwards. As early as the 17th century some notators avoided pedantic accuracy in the notation of polyphonic textures, omitting rests and simplifying note lengths especially in inner parts, but Bach sometimes maintained the older practice of using precise note lengths even within a complex polyphonic texture. A thorough-going adoption of the simpler practice is found in Liszt’s notation, with the abandonment of rests or precise note values where these were unnecessary to the performer. Other devices used by Liszt to clarify complex textures include the broken subsidiary beaming of short note values (see §(iv) above), and the use of the direction of note stems to distinguish strands of the texture or the notes to be played by the right or left hands (see fig.124, from his Rhapsodie espagnole). Other composers used comparable devices such as the extensive use of small notes (see §(ii) above).

The use of more than two staves in keyboard scores other than partituras, again in the interests of clarity in complex textures, is occasional before the 19th century, usually to distinguish lines for separate manuals, separate instruments or (for the organ) pedals. One of the earliest examples of modern keyboard notation in which three staves are intended to be played by a single performer on a single manual of a keyboard instrument is found in G.J. Vogler’s ‘Marlborough’ variations (fig.125: the clef forms are typical of Austrian and south German usage at this period). This practice too was adopted and extended by Liszt, with piano music written on three or four staves, and appears in the piano notation of Debussy and Rachmaninoff.

The specialization of keyboard score notation is reflected also in the adoption of fingering indications, found regularly from the 19th century but quite often before that, especially in tablatures; it is also occasionally found from the 16th century in other instrumental music. 19th-century piano music had two distinct fingering conventions: the ‘continental’, with numerals from 1 to 5 for the thumb and fingers; and the ‘English’, with a ‘+’ sign for the thumb and numerals from 1 to 4 for the fingers. The latter system, now superseded by the former, was still used well into the 20th century. Pedalling has been shown in piano music since the early 19th century by a number of special signs. Comparable instructions for physical actions, to produce special effects of many kinds, have multiplied since the 19th century in instrumental music: these include signs for playing harmonics and for special methods of attack in string and harp music, bowing in string music and percussive key-clicks in woodwind music (see Karkoschka, Schriftbild, 1966; Read, 1964, 2/1969; and Risatti, 1975).

Specialist notations of other kinds have been used in scores to assist the abstract study of music. Descriptive notation for analytical purposes had been part of the European tradition since the Renaissance but had not required material modifications to normal notation: thus Kircher presented a (spurious) ‘Pindaric’ melody in normal notation (fig.126, from Musurgia universalis, 1650) and Hebrew melodies, in which he had been preceded by Johannes Reuchlin (De accentibus et orthographia linguae hebraicae, 1518) among others. The great increase from the second half of the 18th century in historical and analytical musicology, and the broadening interests of scholars, prompted notational modifications. Early examples of specialized descriptive notations and formats include the miniature score (an early example is a 19th-century edition of Haydn quartets by Pleyel). Both performing and study scores came to be provided with bar numbers or letters for easy reference, though the numbering of bars, every 50, is found as early as 1688 (William Nott, A Collection of Simphonies).

Specialist score notations for presenting the results of analysis were also developed from the early years of the 19th century (e.g. Momigny, 1803–6). In the 20th century, analytical notation was developed into systems of great subtlety, for example by Schenker (see Analysis, §II, 4). Non-Western music was presented for European readers in a kind of score comprising the original notation in parallel with a transcription by F.J. Sulzer (fig.127, from Geschichte des transalpinen Daciens, 1781–3); this represents one of the earliest ethnomusicological notations. The preparation in the 19th and 20th centuries of the great historical editions of early music (see Editions, historical) has made standard many novel practices, such as the use of a squared slur to link notes joined in ligatures in the original, or the use of small notes or parentheses to distinguish editorial additions. Ethnomusicological notation has adopted many novel signs to express, for example, intervals outside the European system. For attempts to devise machines to notate melodies, and the notations adapted to them, see §6(i) below.

In the 19th century thoroughbass notation lent itself to adaptation for analytical and other didactic purposes: by this time it was no longer extensively used in practical music-making. The modifications made to it in the 19th century tended mainly to improve it as a theoretical harmonic notation; Honoré Langlé, for instance, proposed a system of nomenclature that would be primarily chordal rather than intervallic; major, minor, diminished and augmented chords, and the various 7th chords, were consistently distinguished, and the relationships between inversions and root positions were shown, with a modified thoroughbass notation including symbols such as ‘+’, ‘−’, ‘=’, circumflexes, inverted circumflexes and dots (Nouvelle méthode pour chiffrer les accords, 1801). The figured bass survived in its older traditional form well into the 20th century, however, both as a shorthand harmonic notation and (as in Prout, Harmony: its Theory and Practice, 1889 and later editions) as a device for teaching harmony by the advance identification of chords in harmony exercises (see fig.128, from an Oxford DMus examination paper of the early 20th century).

Other types of chordal notation, using letters or numerals for the chords and supplementary symbols to distinguish different types of chord, developed from the early 19th century. The degrees of the scale and the chords based on them were denoted by Roman numerals as early as 1800 (G.J. Vogler, Choral-System); H.C. Koch (Musikalisches Lexikon, 1802, ‘Klangstufe’) wrote of indicating ‘each note of those of a key, arranged in a scale, by means of a number associated with it’. In Versuch einer geordneten Theorie der Tonsetzkunst (1817, 3/1830–32), Gottfried Weber distinguished major and minor chords and keys by the use of upper- and lower-case letters (i.e. as in modern German practice) with superscript numerals to denote diminished chords, 7ths and so on. His proposals were widely adopted and extended (e.g. with the symbol ‘+’ to distinguish an augmented triad, and with distinctions drawn between the inversions of chords, by E.F.E. Richter, Lehrbuch der Harmonie, 1853, and Otto Tiersch, Kurze praktische Generalbass-, Harmonie- und Modulationslehre, 1876). In accordance with Moritz Hauptmann’s view of minor chords as inversions of major chords (see Harmony, §4), Arthur von Oettingen used letters of the alphabet with a superscript ‘+’ sign for major chords and a superscript zero for minor chords; in minor chords the ‘root’ is reckoned as the top note of the triad (e.g. G in a C minor triad) (Harmoniesystem in dualer Entwickelung, 1866). Hauptmann and Oettingen also distinguished between notes (for acoustical reasons, depending on the way they were theoretically generated) by using upper- and lower-case letters.

Later in the century Hugo Riemann invented a system of chordal notation which he termed ‘Klangschlüssel’ (Skizze einer neuen Methode der Harmonielehre, 1880; Musik-Lexikon, 1882, ‘Klangschlüssel’). Intervals were shown by numerals, those of major chords by Arabic ones, as in thoroughbass but always reckoned from the root of the chord upwards, and those of minor chords by Roman, reckoned from the root (in Hauptmann’s and Oettingen’s sense) downwards. The roots of the chords were identified alphabetically. Intervals shown by simple numerals were perfect or major, except for the minor 7th; major and minor triads were distinguished, when necessary, with Oettingen’s symbols. Horizontal strokes above and below the numerals denoted that the note in question was in the bass or in an upper part; the notation, unlike thoroughbass, was in principle independent of a mensurally notated bass line. The sharpening or flattening of notes was shown by wedge shapes, resembling accents in ordinary mensural notation, either in normal form or reversed. In later works Riemann went on to develop a system of ‘functional notation’ or ‘Funktionsbezeichnung’ (Vereinfachte Harmonielehre, 1893), where he abandoned letters representing pitches in favour of the letters T, D and S, representing tonic, dominant and subdominant functions, qualified as Tp, Dp or Sp as necessary, the p (Parallelklang) indicating that the 5th above or below the root of the chord had been replaced by a 6th.

Similar systems have been the stock-in-trade of most harmony textbooks since the late 19th century; some of the more influential ones were those of Sechter, Grabner, Prout, Macpherson and Schoenberg. Possibly through their influence some popular music of the 20th century also adopted chordal notations for guitar, keyboard and other ‘continuo’ instruments, which generally resemble Gottfried Weber’s system. This notation has yet to be studied historically. Chords are commonly identified by a letter for the root, qualified with ‘mi’ for a minor chord or a superscript zero or ‘+’ sign for a diminished or augmented chord; the letter alone represents a major chord. Superscript numerals and accidentals are used as in thoroughbass notation (i.e. the numerals are reckoned as diatonic intervals from the note named, and qualified by accidentals) and, also as in thoroughbass notation, the rhythmic realization is left to the performer to supply from his knowledge of the appropriate style. Common alternatives for accidentals are ‘+’ and ‘−’ signs, used in the same way as sharp and flat signs in the 17th century – to signify any raising or lowering. A tabulation of various types of sign, made in an attempt to introduce uniformity of practice among professional copyists, may be found in Roemer (1973, p.137; see also Read, 1964, 2/1969, pp.410–11, and Brandt and Roemer, 1975). For an example of simple chordal notation of this type, see fig.129. For the notation of pitch (including distinctions between different octave repetitions of the same pitch) seePitch nomenclature.

For bibliography see end of §6.

Notation, §III: History of Western notation