The Short

90 NOTATION OF ACCENTS AND DYNAMICS
middle years of the nineteenth century that this was not how composers actually used it. Schilling's EncyclopÄdie, in the
1830s, having defined ‘rinforzando’ as literally meaning crescendo, followed Koch in stating that it required ‘only a
gentle pressure or accent of the note’, while sfcalled for ‘a very strong’ one; 171 but elsewhere in the EncyclopÄdie it is
asserted that rf was often used as synonymous with sf, and that ‘in recent time rinforzando is used almost more than
sforzando for this short forte’. 172 At about the same time, Karl Gollmick acknowledged that opinion was divided,
commenting: ‘rinforzando, rinforzato, rf, rinf … Over the significance of rinf there hangs the greatest doubt’, but cited
Milchmeyer's much earlier definition in support of the explanation: ‘continuously lively, strong, as it were holding a
lively conversation—for which we still have no suitable sign—corresponds most nearly with it.’ 173
An English writer, J. F. Danneley, attempted in 1825 to make a distinction between ‘rinforzando’ and ‘rinforzato’. He
regarded the former as indicating ‘strengthening of sound’ and remarked of the latter: ‘strengthened; it is thus
abbreviated R.F. and is placed over such notes as should be forcibly accented’. 174 Curious though it may seem, Hugo
Riemann, who is hardly likely to have known Danneley's Dictionary, echoed this distinction more than half a century
later, defining rinforzando as a strong crescendo and rinforzato as ‘strengthened’, further observing that it was ‘almost
identical with forte assai, an energetic forte’. 175 But since composers rarely provided more than rf or rinf, these distinctions
remain in the realm of pure theory; to have determined which of them might most closely suit the passage in question,
performers would have had to rely on knowledge of the composer's practice or, failing that, on the context and their
own instincts. What these efforts to refine the terminology may indicate, however, is an attempt to reconcile the
evidently conflicting usages of rf throughout the nineteenth century.
A few examples may illustrate composers' employment of this term. The definition supported by Knecht, Milchmeyer,
Gollmick, and others (Riemann's rinforzato) as indicating a forceful delivery of a group of notes, but not necessarily a
progressive crescendo on those notes, seems to fit many examples in Haydn and Beethoven. In Haydn's String Quartet
op.71no.2rf is used apparently to emphasize the function of the last two notes as an upbeat to the returning theme
(Ex. 3.38.) In Beethoven it often seems to be used to counteract the performer's natural tendency to diminuendo in
what would otherwise be weak parts of the phrase, or it may, perhaps, be seen as an instruction to emphasize or
strongly crescendo the phrase in question: the marking often comes just before an abrupt piano (Ex. 3.39.) Sometimes,
however, particularly in his late music, Beethoven used rfas an accent on a single note (Ex. 3.40(a),)
171
Vol. vi. 362.
172
Vol. vi. 8.
173
Kritische Terminologie, 3.
174
Dictionary of Music (London, 1825).
175
Musik-Lexikon (Leipzig, 1882), 772.