The Short

132 NOTATION OF ACCENTS AND DYNAMICS
Ex. 3.84. Wagner, Siegfried, Act III, Scene iii
Ex. 3.85. Wagner, Parsifal: (a) rehearsal letter 45; (b) rehearsal letter 48
gehalten], not merely slurred, a true portamento’ (Ex. 3.85(a);) and, at a similar passage, ‘very dragged [sehr gezogen], the
quaver very clear, very distinct, the short note is the main thing’ (Ex. 3.85(b).) 255 Here there are horizontal lines in the
1883 printed edition that are missing from the holograph score. Although they appear under slurs, it seems unlikely
that Wagner intended any separation, as would have been the case with the usual portato.
In the music of many later nineteenth-century composers the horizontal line apparently had the function of indicating
the slightest degree of separation and/or the slightest degree of expressive weight. There are many instances where any
perceptible element of separation seems inappropriate (Ex. 3.86(a).) Elgar evidently considered it to some extent as
indicating a very light accent, as comparison of the opening of variation XI of the Enigma Variations (Ex. 3.86(b)) with
the passage at bar 6 suggests (Ex. 3.86(c).) Its accent function seems often likely, however, to have been relative rather
than absolute and to have been rather to neutralize the metrical hierarchy than to give the note particular prominence.
Tchaikovsky seems sometimes to imply equality of weight together with almost imperceptible articulation (emphasized
by his violin bowing in Ex. 3.87(a);) yet on other occasions the intention appears to be to obtain an absolutely fulllength
note, for in the third bar of Ex. 3.87(b) the violins' phrasing should surely match the flute's slur, and the
separated bowing was
255 Richard Wagner: SÄmtliche Werke, xxx: Dokumente zur Entstehung und ersten Aufführung des Bühnenweihfestspiels Parsifal, ed. Martin Geck and Egon Voss (Mainz, 1970), 174.