The Short

large number of works where the absence of signs makes an appeal to their intelligence which is bound to turn out
to their advantage if they will only take the trouble to deepen their studies. 154
Italian Terms and Abbreviations as Accents
The following discussion of individual terms and signs looks at theoretical explanations and at different ways in which
they were used in the music of the period. A cross section of examples is cited, illustrating differences in usage, but
there is no attempt at a comprehensive examination of the practices of individual composers.
Forte (f, for; ff, etc.)
NOTATION OF ACCENTS AND DYNAMICS 63
Although f was most commonly used to indicate an absolute dynamic level, applying not just to single notes but to a
whole passage, it was often used during the second half of the eighteenth century to identify notes that required a
particular accent. The implications of this marking must, at first, have been wider than they later became, when other
instructions for accent had come into use. Where, as was often the case in the mid-eighteenth century,fwas the only
accent instruction employed by the composer, it would have had to be deduced from the musical context whether it
implied a sharp, heavy, moderate, light, rapidly decaying, or more sustained accent. In scores where other accent
indications do not occur, f may well have been used to designate the kind of accent that would later have been
indicated by sf.This is suggested by the two versions of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. In the 1762 version the overture has
f on the first beats of bars 6–10, while at the same place in the 1773 version the marking is sf. A third alternative is
found in Rellstab's contemporary piano score of the work, which has rfhere (Ex. 3.3.)
Where it was used in conjunction with other accent markings, f may be presumed generally to have had a more specific
meaning. Sf,fz,rf,mfp,fp,and ffp,as well as several graphic signs, were increasingly employed to indicate accents
that might once have been implied by f. Sometimes, as in Salieri's Der Rauchfangkehrer, f f might even be used as an
accent within a forte dynamic (Ex. 3.4.) Where a composer used a range of accent markings, f alone, in a forte context,
may have implied a weighty but not sharp execution, though there does not seem to be explicit theoretical support for
such an assumption. Some composers may also have used f,instead of sf,when the forte was meant to continue
beyond the initial rapid attack, especially those who employed sf in piano passages without any implication of a forte
continuation. 155
154
L'Art du violon, 162.
155
See p. 75 below, ‘Sforzando’.