Klarinet Archive - Posting 000210.txt from 2009/03

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Glissando vs. portamento
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:21:46 -0400

Sean Osborn wrote:
> The easy way to remember:
> A Piano can play a glissando, but cannot play a portamento.
>
> A portamento is a slide, and a glissando is notes.

Yes, this is what dictionaries and orchestration books almost always
tell you, in their brook-no-dissent, take-no-prisoners way. :-)

> Unfortunately, MANY composers do not know this and continue to write the
> words incorrectly, and often interchangably. This creates many
> interpretive problems when deciding whether to slide or not.

Which of course begs the point -- why? Why is it that the notational
practise is so overwhelmingly different from these dictionary and
textbook definitions? After all, composers (and players) are not stupid
and value notational precision, yet 'glissando' is used continuously
(pun intended:-) throughout the literature to indicate a continuous
slide -- while portamento is hardly ever used.

And it's not just that contemporary notation uses these terms
differently from the dictionary definition -- the discrepancy exists in
the literature pretty much as long as musicians have been explicitly
notating slide effects. There are 'gliss.' indications to this effect
in Stravinsky, in Berg, in Grofé, Britten and plenty of others. As my
orchestration book puts it, 'the definitions given in the dictionaries
and the day-to-day usage by most musicians no longer agree (AND PERHAPS
THEY NEVER DID).' [My emphasis]

So, it seems to me that it's not very worthwhile to bewail 'incorrect'
uses of musical terminology and a lot more interesting to try to
understand where this discrepancy came from.

There's a base which we can surely agree on, that at some point in
history both 'glissando' and 'portamento' were terms with a much more
specific meaning inasmuch as they were applied to particular musical
effects _on particular instruments_: glissando being a fast sweep across
the strings of a harp or keys of a piano, portamento being a slide used
for legato effect on the violin or voice. Slide effects of any kind on
other instruments just weren't part of the musical language.

Now, the dictionaries have taken those particular performance techniques
and generalised them based on _one_ aspect of the difference between
them -- the different sounds that result, a sweep across multiple
distinct pitches in one case, and a continuous slide in pitch in the
other. But those generalisations ignore other aspects of the musical
context in which these terms are used.

For example, another way of looking at glissando is that the the 'sweep
across distinct pitches' aspect is an unavoidable aspect of its being
performed on a piano or harp. But if you take the musical effect it's
usually used for, it's not merely a fast run of pitches. The _musical
effect_ is very concretely the sensation of a slide -- as the word suggests.

By contrast, with portamento, the musical context is usually that you
have two notes which it is difficult (or impossible) to connect in a
legato fashion _without_ the slide. Historically it's been an idiomatic
technique of violin playing that is usually not explicitly notated, and
although the slide aspect is sometimes emphasised for expressive
purpose, it's usually less about the slide and more about making a
connection between the two notes -- as the name suggests, 'carrying' one
note to another.

Now, if you look at it in this fashion -- glissando being a slide
effect, portamento being a legato effect -- you get a rather different
picture of what term is appropriate where, and a look at various bits
and pieces of literature rather supports the notion that this could be
the origin of the modern notational usage.

For example, Berg calls for portamento explicitly in his Lyric Suite.
The notes concerned are connected, not by the straight line indicating a
slide, but by a legato slur, implying that the slide is a last-minute
event to connect the notes. But in the violin part of his Chamber
Concerto, he has multiple explicitly-written glissandi, and here it's
clear that the slide is desired to start from the beginning of the first
note. And that usage -- a glissando being a slide that starts from the
beginning of the initial note and ends at the start of the terminating
note -- is consistent across plenty of other scores and plenty of
different instruments, from the trombone glissandi in Stravinsky's
Firebird to the violin solo in Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite and indeed to
the Rhapsody itself, with the question of 'continuous or separate
pitches?' being more a matter of idiom -- what the instrument can play
-- and musical context.

Portamento, on the other hand, is hardly ever called for and remains the
idiomatic technique it always was for string instruments and voice -- a
last-minute slide to create a legato connection ('The Contemporary
Violin', by Patricia and Allen Strange, is quite explicit about string
players' interpretation of the term in this way), and a technique which
is fairly un-idiomatic (or even impossible) for most other instruments.
(Though personally I'm now wondering if the jazzy smears in the second
movement of the Bernstein sonata might actually be good to interpret as
'portamenti' in this sense of last-moment legato slides, as opposed to
glissandi that start from the beginning of the note.)

Anyway, as you might have guessed by now, I'm not so bothered whether
there really is a 'correct' description for the opening clarinet solo of
the Rhapsody in Blue. I'd just been reading a book on violin technique
and was intrigued by its take on the difference between glissando and
portamento -- and the Rhapsody provided a nice opportunity to bring it up.

But it _is_ interesting, where dictionary definition and notational
practice diverge so widely, to try and find the reason, and I think this
might just be along the right lines....

-- Joe

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