OK, this sent me scrambling to the "ornaments"
article in New Grove, where I found, as I
expected to, that the terminology is anything but
cut and dried!
"Ornaments, III: Shakes, 2. The Vibrato (Fr.
plainte, flattement, langueur, aspiration,
tremblement mineur, tremblement sans appuyer,
pincé, battement, Ger. Bebung, Schwebung, It.
vibrato. This Embellishment, also called the
close shake or sting, consists of a more or less
noticeable fluctuation of pitch through all or
part of the duration of a note."
OK, so far all that means is the pincé can mean a
kind of vibrato. If it were just that simple!
"On string instruments two techniques for vibrato
were recommended by later Baroque authorities.
The first, that of rocking a single finger,
produces the normal modern vibrato, which may
vary in rapidity or intensity from a scarcely
perceptible enlivening of the tone to a
distressing exaggeration. The other Baroque
technique, that of rocking one finger while
allowing a second finger to beat lightly upon the
string as nearby as possible, usually produces a
prominent effect and is capable of still more
extreme exaggeration. Simpson (1659, p. 11)
describe the two-finger vibrato under the name
'close-shake'."
That's the ornament I'm talking about all right,
but it isn't associated with the term pincé.
However:
"Marais (Pieces de violes, 1696) gave 'Pincé ou
flattement' for the two-finger vibrato and
'Plainte' for the one-finger vibrato. In his
music the former is frequently indicated by a
thin, horizontal wavy line and the latter by a
vertical wavy line; but the player may of course
also use his own initiative. Jean Rousseau
(1687, pp. 101-2) used 'plainte' for a portamento
and 'langueur' and 'batement' for both the one-
and two-finger vibrato."
OK, that gives us an authoritative use of pincé
as a 2-finger vibrato. The problem is that later
in the article:
"In effect the difference between an inverted
mordent and a trill is sometimes merely one of
degree (hence one French term for trill: pincé
renversé--inverted mordent."
This must be the usage you are used to.
Expecting original sources to agree on ANYTHING
is wishful thinking, even without the various
language differences!
John
At 9:33 PM -0500 12/21/05, David W. Fenton wrote:
On 21 Dec 2005 at 17:32, John Howell wrote:
At 4:33 PM -0500 12/21/05, David W. Fenton wrote:
>On 21 Dec 2005 at 12:51, John Howell wrote:
>
>> (Another ornament
>> no longer used is the "pincée, a kind of vibrato
>> trill, which had its own sign.)
>
>I've never heard of pincé being considered a form of vibrato -- it's
>a form of ornament, similar to what we'd call an inverted mordant in
>Bach's keyboard music.
As I understand it, on the viol it is a vibrato
action involving two fingers, one firmly behind
the fret, the other pressed tightly against it
and striking the string on or just above the
fret. . . .
That's not a pincé. I forget what it's called, though.
It's certainly not a pincé, though.
. . . Thus it is both a kind of vibrato and a
kind of trill, and if short enough could be taken
as an inverted mordant. It has no analog in
keyboard music that I can think of.
A pincé is something else entirely. The two-finger vibrato is
something that I don't know that occurs in any other repertory. It
has a very weird sound, but I love it -- it's quite useful
expressively.
The analog in woodwind music, however, is the
flatement. It is different in that it lowers the
pitch while the pincé raises it, but both are
essentially trills on the same pitch and not
between two different pitches.
"Pincé" is simply the wrong term.
What I discovered is that the pincé can easily be
duplicated on violin without the fret to work
across, making it a legitimate ornament for
baroque music although not for modern.
I've never heard of it discussed for any instrument but solo viola da
gamba, but, then again, that's the only stringed instrument I play.
--
David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com
David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/
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