Week 1 Assignment

Michelle R how cool! Yes, I'm sorry our paths did not cross. Nice to have you in this intensive!

Dr. Leann Osterkamp He I’m uncertain that I’ve done what you asked, but here’s my best attempt! I chose two trills, measures 5&7 - both are on eighth notes and at the end of their respective measures. I treated them both the same. My choice for beginning on the note above was primarily because I thought it sounded better 🙂, and ending on the note because it sounded more elegant and made for an easy and harmonious transition into the following measure. Not the most technical reasons, but the best I can give right now. 
I hope I notated correctly: my intention is for the trill to sound like triplet 32nd notes into a 16th note. Since the piece is in 3/8 it seemed appropriate for the trill to mirror the feeling of the music surrounding it. 

Michelle R the notation is a little confusing but I understand it :) nice work! I think the elegance of starting on the note above does make a lot of sense stylistically for this piece. I also agree with the reasoning for ending on the primary note. 

Peter Golemme no need to sign up, apparently (see above). I will monitor this forum here, so you can post anytime :) 

Barbara Blakeslee no problem. Let me know if I can help modify the assignment for you in any way. :)

Dominic Cheli Thank you! I have a piece that's approachable and that I'd love to play but there is a two measure trill at the end. That felt like a stake in the heart. Illstart with simpler, shorter ornaments.

Barbara Blakeslee Let me know how I can help your journey. We all have to start from the beginning at some point. Additionally, asking for some basics can be very helpful to EVERYONE because sometimes we don't realize that we never fully absorbed the basics... so I'm sure anything you pick to work on would be beneficial for all of us to study together. 

Dr. Leann Osterkamp He Thank you!

Michele Great work, if you don't mind my saying so! I'm a professional who had the extraordinary fortune of being mentored by the pianist and scholar Paul Badura-Skoda in Vienna for many years. He literally wrote the book on interpreting Bach's keyboard music and I got to study Bach and many other composers with him.

Even given his exhaustive exploration of Baroque sources and comprehensive analyses, he taught me two rules that have helped greatly where it's not always clear how to play a trill:

First, ornaments are meant to connect notes, never to separate them.

Second, always think musically.

You're thinking musically by starting the left hand trill in m. 29 on the main note. The reason in this case, though, has nothing to do with the dissonance in the other voice (normally a consideration, as Dr. Leann Osterkamp He points out), but rather that the main note E is simply the next note of the scale that precedes it.

As for the short vs. long trill, this is surely nothing more than a slight inconsistency in Bach's handwriting in this particular case. Clearly the trills in the right and left hands are musically equivalent, so it would be genuinely pedantic, not to mention rather unmusical, to play them differently based on their number of "squiggles"! Again, you're doing the right thing by thinking musically.

As for which note to start the right hand trill in m. 19 on, that depends on whether or not you want it to be consistent with the later left hand trill, whether or not you wish to emphasize the repeated C's that precede it, and whether or not you're playing a measured trill (i.e., counting and timing the exact number of notes, as you're doing). Any of these considerations might lead you to start this particular trill on the main note or on the upper auxiliary. In any case, this particular trill can be started on either note.

Hope this helps, and best of luck!

Michele Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg's 1755 book Anleitung zum Clavierspielen mentions the interchangeability of the short and long trill symbols:

"To indicate a trill one makes use of either the two letters tr, a simple cross, or an m or
n. The latter, being the most appropriate, are the ones most often used, and it matters little whether m or n is used. That some people indicate a long trill with an m and a short one with an n is simply a subtlety. The length of the trill is determined by the note-value, and the copyist or engraver may place an m for an n or vice versa only if the composer has not already made the difference clear in the original manuscript. So what is the point of it? The length or brevity of a trill is always determined by the value of the note to which it is applied."

(Marpurg uses m and n for the "squiggles.")

Like many symbols in music notation, the various trill symbols are often ambiguous and sometimes interchangeable, plus they changed over time and in different countries for different composers, so it's typically not possible to cite hard and fast rules such as "this means that." (Bach's own intentionally oversimplified table of ornaments written for his young son learning the clavichord I'm afraid may do more harm than good nowadays in that respect, as most piano teachers just assume that's the be all and end all of the discussion!)

We encounter the same ambiguity throughout the Classical and early Romantic eras with many symbols, not just ornaments, and notational practices. For this reason, many ambiguous notations eventually fell out of fashion—thankfully!