The Short

STACCATO, LEGATO, AND NON-LEGATO 175
were widely perceived distinctions between what was appropriate in orchestral playing or accompaniment and what
was allowable or desirable in solo performance. Quantz's comments on the salient characteristics of French and Italian
violinists reveal both types of difference. He observed of accompaniment: ‘In general it is to be noted that in the
accompaniment, particularly in lively pieces, a short and articulated bowstroke, wielded in the French manner,
produces a much better effect than a long and dragging Italian stroke.’ 324 And he later commented:
You also find that almost all modern Italian violinists play in the same style, and that as a result they do not show up
to the best advantage in comparison with their predecessors. For them the bowstroke, which, like the tongue-stroke
on wind instruments, is the basis for lively musical articulation, often serves, like the wind-bag of a bagpipe, only to
make the instrument sound like a hurdy-gurdy… In the Allegro they consider the sawing out of a multitude of
notes in a single bowstroke to be some special achievement. 325
Quantz particularly referred to the influence of Tartini on Italian violin playing, and it is evident from many other
accounts that Tartini and his disciples were specially noted not only for their use of slurring, but also for their broad
and singing bowstroke, even in fast-moving notes played with separate bows. 326 Joseph Riepel's mid-eighteenth-century
descriptions of a variety of separate bowstrokes, where he linked ‘long and powerful strokes of the bow’ to the
performance of staccato notes in concertos, 327 also indicate that broader bowing was regarded as one of the
characteristics of solo playing, while, as Quantz suggested, a more articulated stroke was considered appropriate to
accompaniment and ensemble playing.
In singing, where the supremacy of the Italian style was unquestioned, Quantz evidently approved of a smooth and
connected manner of performing relatively rapid unmarked notes. In a comment on choral singers in northern
Germany he deprecated the detached manner of singing passagework that was prevalent among them, observing:
Their disagreeable, forced, and exceedingly noisy chest attacks, in which they make vigorous use of the faculty for
producing the h, singing ha-ha-ha-ha for each note, make all the passagework sound hacked up, and are far
removed from the Italian manner of executing passagework with the chest voice. They do not tie the parts of the
plain air to one another sufficiently, or join them together with retarding notes [appoggiaturas] ; in consequence,
their execution sounds very dry and plain. 328
There is little to suggest that this type of singing was regarded as stylish. Quantz put it down to the deficient knowledge
and taste of the majority of provincial German cantors. In general, the Italian school of singing seems to have
324
Versuch, XVII,2, §26.
325
Ibid. XVIII, §61.
326
For further details on the relationship between articulation, notation, and bowing styles see below.
327
See Ch. 6.
328
Versuch, XVIII, §80 n.