The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #37854 Message #896945
Posted By: JohnInKansas
23-Feb-03 - 07:12 PM
Thread Name: Music Annotation Software Question
Subject: RE: Help: Music Annotation Software Question
Good link, Nigel, but one has to question why the grace note is written as a grace note, rather than just as another (in this case) sixteenth note - if it's going to get half the value of the following note.
It's almost impossible to quote general rules about how grace notes and other similar "shorthanded" embellishments are "usually played" without appending "... in this kind of music." since various styles (and various instruments) each have their own practices.
A classic work that discusses "ornaments" in some detail, and that comes close to what seems to be current practice for the "folkish" fiddle players I've listened to, is The Art of the Violin, by Pierre Marie François de Sales Baillot, originally published in 1831 and now availabel in a translation by Louise Goldberg, Northwestern University Press, ISBN 0-8101-0754-6 (paperback) for about $30 (US). I don't think he'd buy the "half the following note" bit.
Tomás Ó Canainn, in his Traditional Music in Ireland (1978, Ossian Press, ISBN 0-946005-73-7) would also disagree. He seems to feel that these ornaments "are too complex to be written" due to the local variations and the distinctive differences applied for different instruments.
Leopold Auer, in his 1921 Violin Playing as I Teach It, (Dover reprint 1980, ISBN 0-486-23917-9) doesn't fully agree with either of the above, although he's closer to Baillot and certainly would reject the "half value" interpretation.
Gardner Read, in Music Notation: A Manual of Modern Practice, 1979, Taplinger Publishing, ISBN 0-8008-5453-5 doesn't take an insistent stance on how they should be played, althugh he gives some variations. He does give a splendid variety of ways you can indicate them on paper - with the warning to the effect of "it's really better to write it out, if it matters."
Printed notation almost never adequately represents what should be played. After all, it's meant to be played by musicians - not robots.
John