The Short

574 PORTAMENTO
This ornament is effected by gradually drawing or sliding the fingers off the holes, instead of raising them in the
usual manner; by this means is obtained, all the shades of sound between the notes, so that the performer may pass
from one note to another, as it were, imperceptibly; it produces a pleasing effect when sparingly used….Thefingers
must be drawn off the holes in a line towards the palm of the hand; the employment of the crescendo with the glide,
heightens the effect; it may as well be observed, that this ornament is impracticable when the next note is made by
opening a key, as from D♮ to Eb G♮ to Ab &.
He then proceeded to give a table of ‘the most effective glides and the best mode of fingering them’. The majority
show the glide between semitones, some are between tones, and a small number are between larger intervals (Ex.
15.16.) 1122
Portamento in String Playing
The various types of portamento employed by string players closely reflected the singer's portamento, though the
nature of the instrument necessitated some differences. Dotzauer's Méthode de violoncelle of about 1825 gives a full
description of the two basic methods of producing portamento between slurred notes on string instruments, in terms
very similar to those used in many later methods. He gave the examples shown in Ex. 15.17. The first, involving a slide
with a single finger to produce a continuous glide between two notes, is self-explanatory; of the others, he explained:
In example 2.1, the portamento [Ziehen] is introduced four times with different fingers. From B to G the first finger
remains firmly down on the string during the slide approximately until E, and since the slide cannot continue from
the E to the G the fourth finger must come down on the G so much the faster after this E. It is the same with the
following C to G and C sharp to G; however, with the D to B one substitutes the third finger for the second during
the slide: and it is the same with the next example from B to F. In examples 3 and 4 the rules already given are to be
used. In the fourth example the third finger substitutes for the fourth and goes onto the A, and in the second bar
the first finger slides from E downwards to B. 1123
In this type of portamento the aim seems to have been to give the impression that the glide continued all the way
between the two notes. Spohr explained it thus in his 1832 Violinschule, in the context of one of the exercises, stressing
that the prescribed method would prevent this sort of portamento from degenerating into ‘a disagreeable whining’:
in the 9th bar of the exercise, the first finger is moved upwards from E to B [Ex. 15.18(a)] and the fourth finger
then falls at once on the second E: similarly in the nth bar, the second finger is moved from E to B [Ex. 15.18(b)] at
which instant the little finger falls on the upper B.This shifting, however, must be done so quickly, that the chasm or
interstice between the small note and the highest (in the first example, a fourth, in the second an octave) shall be
1122 A School or Practical Instruction Book, 73.
1123 Méthode de violoncelle, 46–7.