More from the A's
Appoggiatura
I learned a lot from this entry (not the least of which was the fact that an appoggiatura is not quite what I thought it was)
#1- I always thought that my college piano teacher called grace notes "verschlags," and every time I tried to look it up, I could never find the definition. Clearly I was doing something wrong, which isn't surprising since ornaments confuse me to no end. But now I know that she was saying "VORschlag." Which makes a whole lot more sense. I've also learned that there's more "-schlags" out there. I initially assumed "schlag" meant note but I cheated and looked ahead... it means "beat," which also makes more sense especially since I know enough about German prepositions to know the following translations:
-vorschlag: before the beat
-anschlag: on the beat
-zwischenschlag: with (another note on) the beat
-nachschlag: after the beat
#2- There's no clear right definition for an appoggiatura. Apparently I'm not the only one totally confused when it comes to ornaments. Seems like everyone is. Not only do they change throughout time, but different countries, different composers used them differently even if they used similar notations. And at one point they didn't even notate ornaments at all, they were either implied so that a knowledgeable musician just knew when and how to use them, or they were improvised. But I'm very grateful when piano music has little footnotes that write out the ornaments note by note, so I stand a chance of doing things right.
#3- Ornaments for vocal music are even more confusing.
I learned a lot from this entry (not the least of which was the fact that an appoggiatura is not quite what I thought it was)
#1- I always thought that my college piano teacher called grace notes "verschlags," and every time I tried to look it up, I could never find the definition. Clearly I was doing something wrong, which isn't surprising since ornaments confuse me to no end. But now I know that she was saying "VORschlag." Which makes a whole lot more sense. I've also learned that there's more "-schlags" out there. I initially assumed "schlag" meant note but I cheated and looked ahead... it means "beat," which also makes more sense especially since I know enough about German prepositions to know the following translations:
-vorschlag: before the beat
-anschlag: on the beat
-zwischenschlag: with (another note on) the beat
-nachschlag: after the beat
#2- There's no clear right definition for an appoggiatura. Apparently I'm not the only one totally confused when it comes to ornaments. Seems like everyone is. Not only do they change throughout time, but different countries, different composers used them differently even if they used similar notations. And at one point they didn't even notate ornaments at all, they were either implied so that a knowledgeable musician just knew when and how to use them, or they were improvised. But I'm very grateful when piano music has little footnotes that write out the ornaments note by note, so I stand a chance of doing things right.
#3- Ornaments for vocal music are even more confusing.
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