Klarinet Archive - Posting 000784.txt from 2001/09
From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay) Subj: Re: [kl] Tenuto as force Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 16:41:11 -0400
On Sun, 23 Sep 2001 18:06:51 -0700 (PDT), Bilwright@-----.net said:
> I feel a bit amateurish having to ask this, but....
It's great to be amateurish about this sort of thing, in my opinion:-)
> ...is it accurate to say:
>
> If a tenuto...
...I'm assuming you mean a line above the note here...
> ...appears in a melody that has no other durational or force marks (no
> accents, no staccatos, etc), then the tenuto is solely a force marking
> with less emphasis than an accent would have in the same situation?
Well, what I'd say is that in general, I'd agree with you.
But...
...it all depends on the style of the music, what the composer used the
mark for in his other music, and so on. And, it depends on what you
mean by 'force'.
In very many early tutors and treatises, attempts have been made to tie
down the meanings of such markings. Often in such treatises, such an
attempt by one notable player will be contradicted by the opinions of
another.
This looks like evidence of a difference of opinion about the meaning of
a particular marking between one player and the other; and even looks as
though one of the two might be 'right' and the other 'wrong'. Depending
on the writer, that might or might not be the case.
However, our attempts nowadays to write tutors and treatises, and the
difficulties we have in doing so, should alert us to an alternative
interpretation: namely, that all such pronouncements merely stand in for
the various different understandings that good musicians of the period
would have all have brought to signs written by good composers of the
period.
It's a difficult subject, and one which needs to be addressed
differently in each particular case. It amounts to the notion that the
interpretation of such marks is context-dependent.
To get back to your question: my own opinion about 'tenuto' is that the
horizontal line has a variety of interpretations. In classical and
classically derived music, it very often has the same meaning as the
vertical dash in Mozart's scores.
I discuss that particular case in:
http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet/Study/Phrasing.html
...under the heading, 'Categories, prototypes, dashes and dots'; but
don't let the heading put you off.
By the way, people sometimes say that I make these sorts of matters too
complicated here. I suspect that such people think would be nice, too,
to simplify mathematics so that we could all easily understand it.
Tony
--
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