The Short

When a perfect shake is obtained there are many very elegant additions, as the preparing note and the closing
ornament, but this I leave to the taste of the Master, as there are too many for imitation in a work founded upon
brevity. Also it would appear presumptuous, were I to dictate which was most graceful as that is all matter of
opinion. 910
Scholarship has produced an impressive body of evidence and argument to support the view that there was far greater
diversity of practice than the most frequently cited sources might suggest, and that the supposed hegemony of the
‘appoggiatura trill’ in the late eighteenth century is a fiction. Further examples (if such are needed) of late eighteenthcentury
sources which demonstrate theoretical support for main-note starts, and are not cited by Neumann or others,
can be found in English instruction books. The anonymous Instructions for the Violin by an Eminent Master shows the trill
beginning on the main note. 911 J. Mc Kerrell's A Familiar Introduction to the First Principles of Music gives further examples
of trills starting on the note 912 (Ex. 13.50.) During the nineteenth century an increasing number of musicians, including
composers of importance such as Hummel and Spohr, stated that trills would normally begin with the main note and
that composers who required an alternative beginning should indicate this. But there is no good reason to imagine that
experienced musicians would have felt themselves inhibited from varying their trill beginnings (or endings), nor that
composers would have wished to interdict a reasonable degree of licence in the matter.
Whatever may have been the views and practices of individual composers, it seems certain that the majority of
performers employed trills beginning from the note above, the main note, or the note below, as it suited their musical
purpose. Despite the apparently prescriptive teaching of some theorists, there are abundant indications in others of an
acceptance that the execution of trills, like other ornaments, would be left to the taste of the performer, especially since
few composers took the trouble to spell out their requirements clearly. In 1770 John Holden, for instance, whose
musical examples show trills beginning on the main note, some with and some without a concluding turn, remarked:
Ex. 13.50. Mc Kerrell, A Familiar Introduction, 3
910
The Delivery of Vocal Music (London, 1823), 5.
911
p. 17 .
912
(London, [c. 1800]), 3.
APPOGGIATURAS AND GRACE-NOTES 493