Week 1 Assignment

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

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. :)

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!

Thank you Albert !  I really appreciate the feedback. What a lot of great information!

I have been reading Richard Troeger's book on "Playing Bach on the Keyboard". It has so much useful information that it's a bit overwhelming for a beginner like me. However, I should have realized that when he didn't mention anything about 'm' and 'n' markings in the discussion of ornaments that there was no difference. 

In any case, I will now keep those 2 rules firmly in mind as I learn more of this mind-blowing composer!

Thank you again for taking the time to give me your feedback.

Michele ok, a few things here.

1. Embrace the point I made that there is no ONE definitive way. There are some wrong ways, but there is no one and only way to do ornaments. The whole development of ornaments was to be exactly that... ornamental! They are embellishments, not a set of rules. Because the music had this element of "structured improvisation," people put all kinds of notation down to get the vibe. In more modern day, I think of how when I read a jazz lead sheet, there are obvious wrong things to play but there are many options of chord substitutions, voicings, that I can do on the same measure.... there is no one single way because the style and history of jazz also incorporates a lot of structured improvisation. 

2. You also have to keep in mind that editors and musicologists will all have different opinions about what was written prior and, often, to be scholarly, will be super nitpicky but almost to a deficit. 

3. The two parts you have circled are interesting. Notation-wise, the first one actually appears to be a upper-mordent (play the note, go above by step, return to the note). The second one (with the longer squiggle) can be seen as a musicologist's attempt to be fancy and show that Bach wasn't clear..... or can be seen as Bach, musically, doing an equivalent passage but being a little sloppy with his quill because he didn't think we would be sitting here in 2025 caring if it was a mordent or a trill. Musically, we can think that we might do something similar, since the notation is similar. 

4. We do want to keep things consistent in structure. For example, if you do a specific figuration with a specific style/articulation, you will want to keep that consistent for the duration of the piece and only do changes where indicated or structurally intended/significant. Lack of consistency in your musical/style choices can lead the piece to lack cohesion and sound amateur, even if you are not an amateur player. Therefore, if you make a specific studied choice about a marking, you will want to stay consistent with it throughout, which can help in your study because one instance may help inform another. 

5. In these circled cases, I want you to get in Bach's shoes. He was not the infamous person he is today when he was writing this. This was just part of his gig. He was notating things down to make music and make $. He knew that, stylistically, people of his time might read the squiggles as indication to ornament and would ornament appropriately. I would read squiggle = ornament, not squiggle = exact # of alterations in a specific metric pattern. Based on this passage, I would change my approach depending on instrument. If I was doing this on organ, I might just do a mordent and then hold the sustained note. If I was doing this on harpsichord, I might do a sustained trill. 

6. I think your concepts about starting on the note/above the note are great! I think the ideas of doing slight holdings, accentations, etc. are too complex for real performance/audience ear. You only need to decide about if you are starting on or above the note, decide how fast you can evenly play the trill (if you decide to do a trill instead of a mordent), and then how to end, which you had some interesting ideas about. 

Let me know if this helps!

Kerstin 

1. With bar 47 try taking out one of the "C-B" and doing just two notes per left hand note. 

2. Bar 48 looks possible and ok!

3. Which trill do you want help with on this cadenza page? 

Dr. Leann Osterkamp He 

On cadenza where left and right hand trill together.

Pat Van Buskirk nice work!

1. Typically, with simple trills, we keep things simple. At the beginning it is safe to just start with the note itself or just the note above. I've noticed that on all of your trills you are doing a double approach note model, where you start on the note above, go to the note, go above the note, and then start the trill. I would say that this is a very fancy vorschlag! We usually only see this when either we are doing very hyper schmaltzy music or when it is written out. I think it could be used in this nocturne but maybe once at a very special moment... it doesn't quite fit the sentiment of this piece or the style in which Chopin would have played. 

2. On m.5, you end by doing a leap followed by steps out of the trill. It is not really common to have leaps... we want to stay with stepwise motion. If you added an additional F# before the final E (making that end thing something like a quintuplet), that could work. Again, the fancy vorschalg makes a reappearance here in the nachschlag! I would keep m. 5 simple... it is the very beginning of the piece and we need to establish the tune before doing fancy things with it. 

3. m. 11 is missing LH notes... so I think that is why you are confused? Can't quite comment on that measure since it is incomplete right now, although the ending is better with the stepwise motion. 

4. I think m. 13 is more on the right track!