The Short

118 NOTATION OF ACCENTS AND DYNAMICS
instances it appears to be a less powerful accent than >. In Les Huguenots, whereas > is used for sf and sometimes
occurs with the qualification poco sf, ⌃ is, on occasion, combined with the term dolce sf(Ex. 3.70(a).) It is often found,
too, in piano passages where a gentle accent seems to be implied (Ex. 3.70(b).) A particularly revealing instance occurs
when it is used in a vocal part with the additional instruction ‘mark each of the six notes but without force’ 227 (Ex.
3.70(c);) and at a later point in the opera it occurs with the instruction ‘very soft (with plaintive expression)’, being
superseded by > with the advent of a crescendo (Ex. 3.70(d).) Yet elsewhere Meyerbeer used it where a stronger accent
seems called for (in Le Prophète, for instance, where it is found in conjunction with the instruction ‘martelé’ 228 ); and it is
difficult to see what is meant in Les Huguenots when a figure is first given with ⌃ on each note and then with both ⌃ and
> on each note (Ex. 3.70(e).) It may be significant for the type of accent Meyerbeer envisaged that he very often
combined it with the instruction ‘tenuto’, suggesting that the perceptible diminuendo effect associated with > was not,
as the difference in shape implies, required. Like Meyerbeer, Verdi may have regarded ⌃ , which occurs sometimes in
combination with slurs and sometimes alone, especially in his works from the 1860s onwards, primarily as a lighter
accent than >. It seems sometimes to be intended to counter the normal tendency to phrase off the metrically weaker
beats, for instance in some passages in the Requiem (Ex. 3.71(a).) But Verdi does not appear to have considered the
difference in meaning between > and ⌃ to have been very pronounced, and he sometimes mixed the two signs
indiscriminately, as in the ‘Libera me’ from the abortive Messa per Rossini of 1869 (Ex. 3.71(b).)
During the fourth and fifth decades of the nineteenth century ⌃ began to be more widely used. Spohr adopted it in the
additional music that he wrote in 1852 for a revival of his 1813 opera Faust, apparently as a light accent, since it only
occurs in piano and pianissimo contexts. But by that time the significance of the sign was changing; there appears to
have been a growing tendency to see it as a powerful accent. Henri Herz's A New and Complete Pianoforte School of about
1838 had stated that ⌃ ‘indicates, in general a degree of intensity inferior to sf ’, 229 and Karl Gollmick, in his Kritische
Terminologie of 1833, gave a similar definition, observing: ‘The newer sign ⌃ requires a stronger pressure on the
individual note, but less harsh than sf ’, 230 and he further observed that if one took rf as indicating a slighter accent than
sf the sign ⌃ would signify precisely the same thing as rf. However, in his Handlexikon of 1857 Gollmick described ⌃ as
‘the same as sf ’. 231 Carl Czerny, in the 1840s ranked it among the stronger
227
Full score (Paris, Schlesinger, [1836]), 335.
228
Full score (Paris, Brandus and Troupenas, [1849]),739.
229
(London, [c. 1838]), 16. However, in the Italian edition the sign is given as ? not ^.
230
p. 4 .
231
Handlexikon der Tonkunst (Offenbach am Main, 1857), art. ‘Accent’.