The Short

170 ARTICULATION AND EXPRESSION
In some instances it may seem fairly obvious that previous slurring or staccato is meant to continue, or that marking
that occurs in one part should also apply to similar figures in another. But in situations where this is not clear, the
question arises whether or not unslurred notes that the composer has left without articulation marks would have been
played any differently if they did have these markings: whether, in fact, a distinct non-legato or ‘non-staccato’
execution, associated with the absence of slurs or articulation marks, existed in the period under consideration and, if it
did, where it is intended and what effect may have been envisaged. The most difficult matter may often, in fact, be to
decide whether a staccato mark really indicates a staccato execution, merely warns against slurring, or has some other
more specialized meaning (as discussed below). Here as elsewhere, contradictions abound, making it difficult to
identify any general ruling principles and adding weight to the suggestion that a knowledge of the performing practices
of the period, or those associated with particular composers, is often more important than the actual notation, since
much that the composer regarded as obvious to the performer was not written down, even by many later nineteenthcentury
composers.
Theoretical discussion of the type of performance appropriate to notes without either staccato marks or slurs occurs in
a significant number of eighteenthcentury German sources. In keyboard playing C. P. E. Bach observed:
Notes that are neither detached, slurred nor fully held are sounded for half their value, unless the abbreviation Ten.
[ Tenuto] (held) is written over them, in which case they must be held fully. Crotchets and quavers in moderate and
slow tempos are usually performed in this manner, and they must not be played weakly, but with fire and a very
slight accentuation. 306
Two years later Marpurg similarly advised the keyboard player to employ a non-legato touch unless slurring or staccato
were indicated, though he seems to have regarded this touch as less detached than Bach did, for he instructed that ‘one
raises the finger from the previous key very rapidly shortly before one touches the following note. This normal
procedure, since it is always presumed, is never indicated.’ 307
Türk, too, considered a somewhat detached style of playing to be the normal one, remarking: ‘In the case of notes that
should be played in the normal way, i.e. neither staccato nor slurred, one lifts the finger from the key a little earlier than
the length of the note requires.’ And he repeated Bach's comment that Ten. would be written over them if a full-length
performance were required. However, he questioned Bach's prescription of halving the note value on the grounds that
there would not then be any appreciable difference between this
306 Versuch, i. III, §22.
307 Anleitung zum Clavierspielen der schönen Ausübung der heutigen Zeit gemÄss (Berlin, 1755), 29.