The Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music

Volume 22 (2016) No. 1

Published 2017

More on the Rotated tremblement appuyé: A Response to David Ledbetter

From C. David Harris*

1. The problem

2. Ornament signs in D’Anglebert’s manuscript compared with those in his print

3. Ledbetter’s perspective

4. Ornament signs in context

Figures

References

1. The problem

1.1 In correspondence with David Ledbetter following his review of my D’Anglebert edition,^[1] he suggested that I expand my argument for the rotated tremblement appuyé sign in a communication to this Journal. What follows thus extends my edition’s discussion of the sign in vol. 2, pp. 121–23, where I accept Douglas Maple’s interpretation that performance of the rotated version of the sign may be the opposite of performance of the sign’s upright form, realized in D’Anglebert’s table of ornaments.^[2] Both the rotated and the upright forms of the sign are reproduced in Example 1 of Ledbetter’s review (Figure 1). The rotated form does not appear in D’Anglebert’s table of ornaments for his Pieces de clavecin (Figure 2).^[3]

1.2 Maple asserts that rather than a trill beginning with a prolonged upper note, indicated by the ascender on the left in the tremblement appuyé sign, the rotation of the sign with a descender on the right instead could indicate that the last note of a trill should be prolonged, shortening the trill (as, for example, in François Couperin’s point d’arèst, illustrated in his L’Art de toucher le clavecin, Figure 3).^[4] As Ledbetter notes, Kenneth Gilbert, in his 1976 D’Anglebert edition, silently changed all instances of the rotated sign to the upright form of the sign.^[5]

2. Ornament signs in D’Anglebert’s manuscript compared with those in his print

2.1 There are two other signs for ornaments that D’Anglebert did not include in his table: a compound sign that appears in his first fugue for organ (Figure 4)—a combination of the fourth sign in his ornament table, labeled autre [cadence] (Figure 5), with a separate stroke added on the right representing the pincé (Figure 6); and a trill sign ending with a long convex upward stroke to the right that appears only in his autograph manuscript, F-Pn Rés. 89ter, and there in just one piece, D’Anglebert’s Double for “Allemande Couperin” (Figure 7).^[6]

2.2 The ornamentation in D’Anglebert’s print (1689) is far more varied than in his autograph manuscript (1675–1680?). Where works are transmitted in both sources, the manuscript lacks the variety of signs for trills that subsequently appeared in the print. In the manuscript, probably a repertory book for D’Anglebert’s own use, he typically inscribed a minimal trill sign comprising just three short diagonal strokes left to right: down, up, down, in other words just one and one-half chevrons (Ledbetter’s “waves”) (Figure 8). In his edition, Kenneth Gilbert regularized this sign to resemble the simple trill sign in D’Anglebert’s print. The minimal sign is ubiquitous in D’Anglebert’s manuscript. Its brevity allowed him to inscribe it above a note head without crossing the note’s stem when the ornamented note is stemmed up and there is another note below it on the staff; the longer trill signs in his print frequently cross note stems in similar situations. Besides the sign unique to the Double for the “Allemande Couperin” described above, the only other trill signs in D’Anglebert’s manuscript are those for the tremblement et pincé (Figure 9) and the autre [cadence] begun with a turn from below; the sign for the latter (Figure 10) begins with an upward diagonal straight line left to right more often than with the curved ascender that was exclusively adopted in his print (Figure 5). Apparently, both forms of the sign were to be performed in the same way: in two instances the sign with a diagonal ascender in the manuscript becomes one with a curved ascender in the print.^[7] The manuscript’s other instances of the sign with a diagonal ascender occur in pieces excluded from the print. In the relatively few instances where the sign beginning with a curve appears above the note in D’Anglebert’s manuscript, the curve is not always wrapped around the note head as it usually is in the print; see Ledbetter’s Example 2, taken from the print. In the manuscript, either form of the sign can appear above or below the note, opposite the stem’s direction—the form with curved ascender usually below the note and the form with a diagonal ascender almost always above the note. In the manuscript, when D’Anglebert wanted a cadence (beginning with a turn from above), he wrote out the turn, as in the “Sarabande Richard.”^[8] Unfortunately, D’Anglebert’s manuscript does not shed light on the principal topic to be discussed here, the tremblement appuyé sign in its upright and rotated forms, since he did not use either form in his manuscript.

3. Ledbetter’s perspective

3.1 At this point it needs to be stated that Ledbetter may not have known that several editorial procedures to which he objects are stipulated in The Broude Trust’s editorial guidelines for The Art of the Keyboard series, where my D’Anglebert edition is published. With regard to the rotated tremblement appuyé sign, its appearance in my edition follows this series guideline: “All ornaments will be represented by the symbols employed in the source.” As Ledbetter notes, however, I regularized simple trill signs; this includes regularizing the minimal trill sign found in D’Anglebert’s manuscript to conform to the sign for the simple trill in his print. In this, The Broude Trust’s engravers of my edition succeeded in precisely matching the print’s sign. Another guideline specifies, “Where there is no ambiguity about the note to which the ornament applies, the ornament should be placed above the staff.” Similarly, footnotes on the music pages and the enclosing of cautionary accidentals and editorial dots within parentheses (Ledbetter: “round brackets”) are mandated by the guidelines.

3.2 On the basis of the 1689 print, Ledbetter suggests that D’Anglebert preferred that signs for ornaments, including the rotated form of the tremblement appuyé sign, be located close to the note head, a principle not always followed for the signs in his autograph manuscript. There, for example, D’Anglebert’s minimal trill sign was occasionally inscribed some distance from the note head. Ledbetter also suggests that the sign for the tremblement appuyé was rotated by the print’s engraver so that the ascender would not collide with the note head. Ascribing this rotation to the engraver’s initiative is to me problematic: given the engraver’s precise fidelity to D’Anglebert’s ornamentation in general, it seems more likely that the engraver was copying exactly what D’Anglebert presented to him.^[9] As Ledbetter observes, the rotated form of the sign for the tremblement appuyé always appears below a note. In all instances, however, the ornamented note is alone on the staff at that point, and there is ample space above the note for the upright form of the sign—more space than at times in the preludes where, in the print, the upright sign may be squeezed into a narrow space between adjacent notes with the ascender nearly touching the upward stem of the preceding note.

3.3 Ledbetter apparently believes that the rotated sign remains the equivalent of the upright sign in performance. However, if the upright and rotated forms of the sign are actually equivalent it would not have been strictly necessary to rotate the sign just to retain proximity to the note head: often when another note is inscribed below the ornamented note, the upright sign for the tremblement appuyé appears somewhat above but still close to the upper note’s note head, its ascender on the left parallel to the note’s stem and its chevrons crossing the stem (Figure 11). There are over one hundred instances of this in D’Anglebert’s print. At times the sign was engraved above the staff when necessary.

4. Ornament signs in context

4.1 In his table of ornaments, D’Anglebert’s realizations occur in isolation, not in context. Since context varies, interpretation in performance may need to be adjusted accordingly. For example, D’Anglebert’s realization of the tremblement appuyé sign in his table fills the entire time of a dotted quarter note. In his music, however, a dotted quarter note thus ornamented is often followed by an eighth note that is usually an anticipation of the following pitch. That eighth note may need space before it to make its proper effect, but a literal performance of D’Anglebert’s realization of the sign would have the trill running right up to it. While performance of the upright form of the sign might conceivably allow this, the rotated version of the tremblement appuyé sign could ensure that the trill stops well before the following short note.

4.2 It is another matter, however, when, instead of a single note, a pair of short notes follows a dotted note bearing the tremblement appuyé sign in rotated form. Typically, but not always, these short notes are the lower neighbor and a return to the main note, which could represent a turned ending for a continuous trill with a melodic pattern like that of D’Anglebert’s realization of the tremblement et pincé sign in his table of ornaments (Figure 9). However, if the rotated version of the tremblement appuyé sign indeed signifies an early stop on the main note, this would prevent the trill from continuing up to the pair of short notes following a dot. As Maple has noted,^[10] support for this interpretation can be found in André Raison’s realizations of ornaments published in Paris in 1688, the year before D’Anglebert’s own print was published there.^[11]  In three different examples, all realizing trill signs for a dotted quarter note followed by a pair of sixteenth notes in the turned ending pattern, Raison substitutes an eighth rest for the dot, interrupting the trill and separating it from the following pair of sixteenth notes rather than joining the trill to them (see Figure 12 for one example). Instead of completing the trill and forming a liaison with what follows, the pair of sixteenth notes thus becomes a pickup to the following beat. D’Anglebert’s trills on dotted quarter notes followed by short notes other than the turned ending pattern, such as a rising pair of thirty-second notes plus a sixteenth note, as in a slide, likewise suggest that such groupings of short notes after the dot belong with what follows rather than to the trill. Raison’s three examples of trills on dotted quarter notes in varying contexts suggest that, for him at least, introducing a rest in place of the dot was the only way to perform trills on dotted quarter notes followed by two sixteenth notes. It also indicates that this practice must have been known in Paris at D’Anglebert’s time. While there is no evidence that D’Anglebert ever substituted a rest for the dot in performing such trills, the rotated form of D’Anglebert’s tremblement appuyé might indicate simply holding the last note of the trill and then performing the short notes of the turned ending, separating them from the trill as in Raison’s realizations of trill signs.

4.3 Notably, in the preludes the choice of which form of the tremblement appuyé sign to inscribe, upright or rotated, was not affected by another simultaneous note on the staff, by stem direction, or even by the ornamented note’s position on the staff, for here both forms of the ornament are assigned exclusively to sole notes without stems, and both forms can appear for notes anywhere on the staff. It seems that other considerations must be at work here, though what these might be resists analysis, for there are just three rotated signs in the preludes, each in a different context. Nevertheless, a case could be made for an attenuated trill in each instance. There are more upright tremblement appuyé signs in the preludes. These are divided almost equally into two different contexts: in one the ornamented note is followed by a pair of sixteenth notes as in a trill’s turned ending; in the other the ornamented note is followed by an eighth-note passing tone.

4.4 My edition discusses potential implications when the upright tremblement appuyé sign and its rotated form alternate in a pattern, as in the D-minor Allemande (Figure 13).^[12] In this imitative passage, where the alto and soprano voices overlap in presenting a melodic phrase, the alto’s two statements have the rotated form of the sign for a dotted eighth note followed by two thirty-second notes in the turned ending pattern. Twice the soprano voice responds with its version, containing the upright form of the sign for a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth-note anticipation of the next pitch. It may be that here D’Anglebert intended trills of the same length throughout the imitative series, whether the ornamented note is followed by the turned ending pattern or by an anticipation of the next melodic note.

4.5 The discussion in my edition also points to the accenting of hemiola patterns where the first two of the emphasized beats, dotted quarter notes, are marked with the rotated sign, possibly to cut their trills short, followed by a slide motive of two thirty-second notes and a sixteenth. The third accented beat, also a dotted quarter note, has either the upright form of the tremblement appuyé sign followed by a turned ending in sixteenths (Figure 14) or a simple trill sign followed by an eighth-note anticipation of the following note.^[13]

4.6 In situations such as these, as well as others where the rotated form of the sign is introduced for similar figures, it seems important not to preclude any possible considerations for performance of the rotated sign by routinely substituting the upright sign for it. We read text, including signs for ornaments, from left to right, not right to left and inverted, as readers of D’Anglebert’s print would need to do if the rotated tremblement appuyé sign were deemed equivalent to the sign’s upright form. Preservation of the rotated sign in my edition allows readers the freedom to do likewise if they wish; but to mandate equivalence by editorially changing all of the rotated signs to upright ones would conceal the possibility that D’Anglebert may indeed have intended the rotated form of the sign to mean the opposite of the sign’s upright form.

Figures

Figure 1. D’Anglebert 1689: rotated and upright versions of the tremblement appuyé sign

Figure 2. D’Anglebert 1689: Ornament Table

Figure 3. François Couperin, L’Art de toucher le clavecin (1717), p. 24

Figure 4. D’Anglebert 1689, p. 111: unnamed compound ornament

Figure 5. D’Anglebert 1689: autre [cadence]

Figure 6. D’Anglebert 1689: pincé

Figure 7. F-Pn Rés. 89ter, f. 69v: trill sign with upward stroke

Figure 8. F-Pn Rés. 89ter, f. 70r: typical trill signs

Figure 9. D’Anglebert 1689: tremblement et pincé

Figure 10. F-Pn Rés. 89ter, f. 4r: typical autre [cadence] sign

Figure 11. D’Anglebert 1689, p. 7: tremblement apuyé sign crossing stem

Figure 12. André Raison, Livre d’orgue, 1688, “Demonstration des cadences” under “Au Lecteur,” p. [2]: rest substituting for a dot

Figure 13. D’Anglebert 1689, p. 72: upright and rotated tremblement appuyé signs in alternation

Figure 14. D’Anglebert 1689, p. 41: hemiola figure