The Short

552 VIBRATO
Ex. 14.27.Baillot, L'Art du violon, 138
In nineteenth-century string music particularly the sign , evidently related to the traditional messa di voce which was
normally associated with vibrato, came increasingly to imply a vibrato when placed over a single note. It is present in
Baillot's L'Art du violon, together with the wavy line, in his example from Viotti's Concerto no. 19 (Ex. 14.27.)
Campagnoli, too, specifically linked it with vibrato in his Nouvelle méthode. It is also equated explicitly with vibrato in the
Joachim and Moser Violinschule, where Moser explained: ‘The vibrato, however, is not only employed for the
beautifying of notes of longer duration in slow movements, but also in the fleeting course of passages that are to be
rapidly played. Rode has made a speciality of this, and has indicated its use by the mark in many of his
compositions, even on demisemiquavers and hemidemisemiquavers.’ He followed this with an example of its use on
selected semiquavers in Rode's Third Caprice. 1067 The link from Joachim back to Rode via Boehm is a sufficiently direct
one to instil confidence in the reliability of this interpretation of the sign. The sign is frequent throughout Rode's
caprices and elsewhere in his music, for instance in the Violin Concerto no. 13; it is not widely found in other early
nineteenth-century composers’ music, but it occurs relatively often in the music of Zelter, his pupil Mendelssohn
(whose close friend and violin teacher, Eduard Rietz, was a pupil of Rode), Schumann, and Brahms. In the music of all
these composers, it seems probable that, whatever else it might be intended to convey, the sign generally implied a
vibrato. There are certainly instances where, as in Rode's use of it on very short notes, it could hardly, for technical
reasons, mean anything but vibrato combined with a gentle accent (possibly with an agogic element 1068 ). The use of the
sign in Ex. 14.28 almost certainly invites vibrato as part of the accentuation.
Vibrato in Orchestral and Ensemble Music
Most vibrato techniques were essentially for soloists. It may be legitimate to presume, however, that this did not
necessarily preclude their use in orchestral or ensemble music by instruments that momentarily took on a clearly
soloistic role. Thus in performing string quartets Spohr insisted that only when the player ‘has a decided solo part, and
the other instruments merely an accompaniment,
1067 Vol. iii. 7. See above Ch. 11 and Ex. 11.7 for music example and quotation.
1068 See above, Ch. 3.