The Short

THE FERMATA 591
note of fermatas with arbitrary embellishments, or to make a transition from the fermata to the following phrase.’ 1136
And J. F. Schubert admitted a portamento alone as a substitute for the usual type of embellishment in certain cases (see
Ex. 15.15.)
Domenico Corri, to judge by the examples included in his Select Collection, evidently felt that some degree of
embellishment was necessary and offered his reader choices at these points in the music. The examples in his
publications provide many interesting and useful models of appropriate embellishment. All of them conform to the
often stated rule that embellished fermatas in arias should not exceed what is possible in a single breath. A couple of
typical examples appear in Ex. 12.7. Very occasionally he seems to have felt that the context called for something more
elaborate, as in the case of arias by Giordani and Sacchini (Ex. 16.4.)
The Paris Conservatoire's Principes élémentaires de musique gave a particularly succinct account of how to recognize
whether a fermata should be elongated or embellished or, in some cases, whether it implied neither type of treatment:
If the fermata is placed on a note, as in the following examples [Ex. 16.5(a)] it indicates that one should stop on this
note and that one may pause there for as long as desired, but with-out introducing any embellishment or ornament.
In this case the fermata is called a pause [Point de Repos]. One also calls it a pause when one employs the following
style [Ex. 16.5(b)] In this case one may add some embellishments to the note on which the pause is placed. The
fermata used in the following example is called a stopping point or suspending point [point d'ArrÊt, ou de suspension]
[Ex. 16.5(c)] In this circumstance one should certainly not prolong the note on which the fermata occurs, rather one
should quit it crisply as soon as it is attacked. 1137
How widely this convention of the point d'arrÊt ou de suspension was recognized by composers of the period is unclear,
but it is certainly true to say that most modern performers in these circumstances would sustain the final note with the
fermata rather than quitting it crisply. The Principes concluded by identifying the circumstances, recognizable by the
harmonic context and the final trill, in which a fermata was used to indicate full cadenzas.
These instructions, which are almost certainly a good guide for early nineteenth-century French usage, may also be
relevant to late eighteenth-century German usage. Haydn in op. 64 no. 2 uses what to all intents looks like a point
d'arrÊt, except that he includes the word ‘tenuto’, perhaps to counter a natural instinct of the players to quit the note
too quickly (Ex. 16.6.) On the other hand the addition of ‘tenuto’ might have been meant to warn the players not to
make any embellishment. In op. 77 no. 1 there are two fermatas that may also be of this kind. In the case of the one at
bar 42 of the Adagio, elongation certainly
1136
Musikalisches Lexikon, art. ‘Fermate’.
1137
Gossec et al., Principes, i. 45.