On Sunday, May 23, 2004, at 16:30 America/Vancouver, musighi wrote:
Dear Mark, Thanks for the response, but what you described is in fact a simple grace note, where the grace note is played before the main note. However, acciaccatura is played differently: Let's say you have C & D. they are played at the same time. D is released immediately while C is held for the duration of the note. This way, you clearly hear the dissonance of the interval of a 2nd. Gardner Read explains it this way: "The acciaccatura is no ornament at all, but a manner of playing, then releasing part of, a chord in keyboard music. It has, then, no real connection with the ornament (appoggiatura and grace note) under consideration." This technic is used widely in Persian classical music on the piano, but it has never been written, always improvised. There are several weird things we do while we try to imitate the sound of the ornaments played on ethnic instruments, such as Tar, Setar and Santur. There are standards of notating for these instruments. But they would mean nothing if written for piano. I have found that one of the ornaments fits exactly Read's explanation of acciaccatura. I just have to find a way to notate it so that it would make sense to a Western trained pianist.
[EMAIL PROTECTED],
I tend to agree with Mark but one doesn't have to look very far to find other interpretations. If one were to have grown up in Quebec and looked at both the English schoolboy's music handbook and his convent-going French girlfriend's "Theorie de la Musique", you'll find different explications. For instance, the French describes appogiaturia categories as simple, short, long, and double and says that a short appogiaturia is also called an acciaccatura, makes no reference to the dissonant note being held, and doesn't encounter the possibility that it will be played before the beat. I don't agree with the nuns on that point.
For acciaccatura what I've arrived at is:
* Slashed. Tiny eighth notes slurred to the principal note.
* Depending on the period, admonished to be played either before or on the beat. But really we're talking interpretation by the performer as limited by their skills. In my opinion, players with developed rhythm consistently flam before the beat and release the dissonant tone on the beat. And that certainly distinguishes it as a category differing from appogiature. For example, look at Chopin: Grand Valse Brillante in Eb, Opus 18, Bb minor section where he's hopping about the f note on the top of the treble staff in the first two measures. I'd say those are acciaccature being notated and to strike them before the beat. Would anyone play those as on-the-beat appogiature? Consider that there's a Ped. at the beginning of most of those measures.
Then: * Grace note before the beat is not slashed, not slurred. * Appogiature are not slashed, but slurred.
Philip
Does anyone know how you notate an Acciaccatura? Gardner Read in his Manual of Modern Practice (page 241) describes the way you play it, but he does not include an example of the notation. I have searched and searched and have not found the answer in other reference books. I hope some of you notation experts can guide me. I appreciate your input.
Unless you're talking about something more complicated that I don't know about, an acciaccatura is simply written as a grace note with a slash through it.
Philip Aker http://www.aker.ca
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