The Short

Ex. 16.11. (a) Baillot, L'Art du violon, 165; (b) Haydn, String Quartet op. 9/2/iii
THE FERMATA 597
provided a suitably restrained embellishment, presumably bearing in mind the much more florid one written in by the
composer in the ornamented repetition of the melody (Ex. 16.11(b).) His encyclopaedic catalogue of points d'orgue, for
which he provided sixteen pages of music examples, was organized under ten headings, though only the first two
(‘Suspensions or turns on the tonic’ and ‘Slightly extended points d'orgue or turns on the dominant to approach the final
cadence’) dealt with short embellished fermatas; the rest was concerned with more or less fully developed cadenzas. 1140
A. F. HÄser, a slightly younger German contemporary of Baillot, wrote about the treatment of fermatas a few years
later, observing that their decoration in solo playing or singing was frequent, but that they should not be embellished if
they were there to express ‘astonishment, expectation or exhaustion’. In singing he considered that the text should be
the main guide, and that if the vowel were inappropriate for vocalizing, this might determine whether or not to include
an embellishment. 1141 Haydn Corri, however, gave instructions for modifying the vowel in such instances. García, too,
referring both to the ornamentation of fermatas and to virtuoso figuration in general, observed that ‘a singing master
and pupil are at perfect liberty to add,—if the sense allows it,—one or other of the monosyllables, ah, no, si, either to
increase the number of syllables or as a substitute for others’. 1142
HÄser also gave five different ways of nuancing an unembellished fermata (Ex. 16.12.) He commented that
those marked 1 and 2 were rare, that 3 was the most usual and that 4 was also not uncommon, while 5 was at least as
rare as 1
1140 SeeStowell, Violin Technique, 361 ff. for aselection of examples from Baillot's L'Art du violon.
1141 In Schilling, Encyclopédie, art. ‘Fermate’.
1142 New Treatise, 46.