The Short

NOTATION OF ACCENTS AND DYNAMICS 101
mark indicated ‘the real short and sharp staccato’ (das eigentliche kurze und scharfe staccato) while the dot signified ‘a gentler,
rounder, less pointed staccato’ (ein weicheres, runderes, weniger spitzes Abstossen); 198 Mendel and Reissmann, observing that
staccato was indicated by dots or strokes, commented: ‘These latter commonly serve as a sharpening’ (VerschÄrfung); 199
Riemann remarked: ‘When staccato dots are distinguished in two forms, namely · and ?, the ? indicates a sharp, the · a
light staccato.’ 200 In the pedagogic tradition of German violin playing the influential Joachim and Moser Violinschule of
1905 also lent authority to that interpretation. In England this notation was adopted, for instance, by J. M. Fleming in
his Practical Violin School of 1886. 201
In France, however, a rather different view of the two forms of staccato mark became normal during the nineteenth
century despite the treatment of staccato in the 1804 Méthode de violoncelle. From at least Baillot's L'Art du violon (1834)
onwards, the French seem generally to have regarded the stroke (wedge) as not only shorter, but also lighter than the
dot. Such an interpretation is suggested by many mid-nineteenth-century references, for example the definition of
‘Piqué’ in the Dictionnaire de musique endorsed by Halévy in 1854, which commented that such passages were marked
with strokes (point allongé) and that these notes were to be ‘equally marked by dry and detached strokes of the tongue or
bow’. 202 In L'Art du violon Baillot used the dot to indicate sharply accented martelé, where the bow remains in contact
with the string, and strokes (wedges) for light, bouncing bowstrokes. 203 And Emile Sauret, among other French string
players, followed him in associating the dot with martelé. 204 The description of the two marks in the early twentiethcentury
Encyclopédie de la musique et dictionnaire du Conservatoire reflects French use of them (though the association of the
dot with martelé is not explicit), indicating the strength with which a disparity between French and German practice
persisted; there, the stroke (point allongé) was described as betokening that the note ‘ought to be separated, struck very
lightly, almost dryly’ and as ‘depriving the note of three-quarters of its value’; whereas the dot (point rond) meant that
‘these notes ought to be lightly quitted, however, in a less short, less dry manner than with the stroke’. 205
Outside France Baillot's system rather than David's was also adopted by a number of influential pedagogues. The
Viennese violinist Jacob Dont, for instance, used dots to designate a martelé bowstroke (gehÄmmert) and strokes
198
Musikalisches Lexicon, art. ‘Absotssen’.
199
Musikalisches Conversations-Lexicon, i. 608.
200
New Pianoforte School/Neue Klavierschule, 17.
201
The Practical Violin School for Home Students (London, 1886), 249, 251.
202
Escudier (frères), Dictionnaire de musique théorique et historique (Paris, 1854), ii. 127.
203
Esp. pp. 92 ff .
204
Gradus ad Pamassum du violiniste op. 36 (Leipzig, [c. 1890]), 5.
205
Albert Lavignac and Lionel de la Laurencie, Encyclopédie de la musique et dictionnaire du Conservatoire (Paris, 1920–31), pt. 2 ‘Technique-esthetique-pédagogie’, 335.