The Short

516 APPOGGIATURAS, TRILLS, TURNS
which his instructions were interpreted by leading contemporaries, nicely illustrate the flexibility which persisted even
in that period of ever-increasing prescriptiveness in notation. In his operas up to Lohengrin Wagner used a variety of
conventional ornament signs; in the later operas, with very few exceptions other than trills (which according to
Dannreuther were normally meant to start on the main note 948 ), he dispensed with signs, and either indicated his
ornaments with small notes or incorporated them into the musical text in normal-size notes. In the overture to
Raupach's König Enzio of 1832 Wagner employed the turn sign ?. In Rienzi, Der fliegende HollÄnder, and TannhÄuser he
regularly used the sign ? for turns. He does not seem to have employed a different sign to indicate an inverted turn, but
in his later works, where the turns are written out, some begin from above and others from below. The Vorspiel to
GötterdÄmmerung, for instance, has inverted turns and direct turns closely juxtaposed. A written-out inverted turn also
occurs in the 1855 version of his Faust overture; this example is particularly interesting, since in the 1844 version of the
overture the turns are indicated by Wagner's usual turn sign. Whether Wagner originally envisaged an inverted turn in
the Faust overture is open to question.
How Wagner wished the turn signs in earlier operas to be interpreted was by no means clear even during his own
lifetime. In Liszt's piano versions of the Prayer from Rienzi and the March from TannhÄuser (Act II, Scene iv), the turn
signs are realized as direct turns. Hans von Bülow, however, apparently without any authority from the composer,
insisted for a while on his Meiningen orchestra performing many of the turns in Rienzi and others of Wagner's earlier
operas as inverted turns. This was the subject of considerable controversy in the late nineteenth century, but though
Bülow later changed his mind, other conductors adopted the habit. Dannreuther reported that at Munich in the 1890s,
for instance, the inverted turn was routinely used in Rienzi; 949 this practice was perpetuated by Karl Klindworth's vocal
score, in which the signs are realized as inverted turns. Wagner himself seems to have added to the confusion over the
meaning of his turn signs, for when present at rehearsals of TannhÄuser in Vienna in 1875, he asked the conductor,
Hans Richter, to take the turns (marked by the sign for a normal turn) that follow the words ‘So stehet auf!’ in Act II,
Scene ii as inverted turns. In the revised vocal score of TannhÄuser (1876), prepared by Joseph Rubinstein under
Wagner's direct supervision, however, these turns were written out as normal turns, and they also appear thus in
Klindworth's vocal score.
948 Musical Ornamentation, ii. 172.
949 Ibid. 174.