Staccato/Staccatissimo markings in the age of Bach

[GaiusRomanus]

I am transcribing a church cantata manuscript by Christoph Graupner (a contemporary of Bach). I noticed that Graupner frequently and consistently used what appear to be staccatissimo marks. I found it odd that there were no regular staccato dots anywhere to contrast with this. I did some research on Wikipedia and found:

"...before 1850, dots, dashes, and wedges were all likely to have the same meaning, even though some theorists from as early as the 1750s distinguished different degrees of staccato through the use of dots and dashes, with the dash indicating a shorter, sharper note, and the dot a longer, lighter one."

The Graupner manuscript is from 1720, around the time Bach was composing his cantatas. Did German composers of the era distinguish between staccato and staccatissimo? I understand what Graupner had in mind (shorter detached notes), but am not sure if he was intending a more intense staccatissimo, or just using a general notation.

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[coulonnus]

According to D.G. Türk, 1789 the dot and the dash have the same meaning, "but some want the dash to mean a shorter touch". According to CPE Bach, 1753 they also have the same meaning but the dash could be misinterpreted as the digit "1".

So if no dots are present in this works always use dots.

[Notenschreiber]

Dashes are more convenient to write with a pinfeather, which wear out by the use of dots. This means that mostly one can replace dashes by dots. Later, in Mozarts time, there may be sometimes different meanings. Dots stand for staccato, where as dashes mean that the notes should be clearly seperated.

[coulonnus]

Read Clementi's method, vol. 1, p.9.

And CPE Bach: a bit less than half value.

[Gordon Willis]

I believe that both Notenschreiber and colonnus are correct, but some synthesis of their remarks would be helpful. Handwriting with quill pens tends to favour a dash rather than a dot, while some theorists, like Türk, would prefer a perfect world in which people could easily make the nicest distinctions. Clementi observes, in his own edition of his sonatinas Op36, that (strictly speaking) dashes ought to mean an articulation shorter than dots, while Christa Landon, the editor of the Wiener Urtext edition of Haydn's piano sonatas, points out that sometimes Haydn uses the dash to imply an accent. There is also the "received" opinion given to all music students that in the 18th century the dash always means a "regular" staccato, not a staccatissimo. This received opinion is a bedrock on which many piano teachers (speaking fromexperience as a piano teacher myself) firmly stand, and even some otherwise sensible editors.

This is really quite confusing. In the matter of the "received" opinion, there is the problem that if a dash means a "regular" staccato (in contrast to a staccatissimo) how does one notate a much shorter one? Surely, if you are given only dashes, you would have to be guided by style and context. I think that the received opinion is an oversimplification, the kind of thing that teachers regrettably come up with when they try to pretend that they know what they are talking about and the composer must be infallible.

I think that an understanding of style and context is the best guide. Clearly, where a composer like Mozart uses dots as well as dashes this must be a clue to the proper interpretation of the passage, but where only dashes appear in a composer's output only an interpretation of style and context will work.

I'm sorry if this is not much help, but interpreting the notation of old music is always challenging, and my advice would be always to be guided by the musical context.

[Gordon Willis]

coulonnus's remarks regarding C P E Bach's statements on the problem need a little elaboration, which I had meant to include with my first paragraph above, and a related remark by Notenschreiber needs correction. What Bach says in his famous Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments is (Chap. 3 para. 17, published 1753) that he avoids strokes in his earlier lessons because they might be mistaken for digits (thinking presumably of printing technology of his time) and that strokes or dots are used to indicate detachment — but this implies that he sees no distinction in the way the notes so marked are to be played. Here is the passage in William J Mitchell's translation:

Attack and touch are one and the same thing. Everything depends on their force and duration. When notes are to be detached from each other strokes or dots are placed above them [example here of two notes first with dashes and then repeated with dots]. The latter indication has been used in the Lessons to avoid a confusion of the strokes with fingering numerals. Notes are detached in relation to: (1) their notated length, that is, a half, quarter, or eighth of a bar; (2) the tempo, fast or slow; and (3) the volume, forte or piano. Such tones are always held for a little less than half of their notated length.

So Bach uses dots in his book because dashes (strokes) might (he thinks) be read as numbers, and therefore he regards strokes and dots as equivalent in musical meaning. As "a little less than half of their notated length" is a little vague, and as he goes on to say that "detached notes appear mostly in leaping passages and rapid tempos", which is simply not true (witness our Graupner example), it is clear that even for so prescriptive an authority as C P E Bach musical interpretation must remain the best guide.