The Short

interpret), but there appears to be no consequential difference. In Rienzi and Der fliegende HollÄnder, the predominant
form of staccato mark is the dot; strokes are used occasionally, but almost entirely on isolated notes, where they may
have been intended to indicate an accented execution, or may simply have become a writing habit with no implications
for performance. In TannhÄuser, however, Wagner adopted the stroke as his principal staccato mark, and dots became
relatively uncommon. In later works he used dots more frequently, but the stroke remained the predominant staccato
mark for the rest of his life. In the late autographs at least, there is rarely any ambiguity between the two marks, for
while the strokes are clearly vertical lines, the dots tend to be elongated somewhat in a horizontal direction, as do his
dots of prolongation (Ex. 6.5.) In the operas of his middle period contradictions abound; in the lithographed full score
of Lohengrin the copyist frequently wrote strokes where Wagner's autograph contains clear dots (for instance, under the
slur in bar 15 of the introduction to Act III). Wagner seems, however, to have been more careful to ensure that an
accurate differentiation between dots and strokes was made in the printed scores of his later operas.
Only when composers assumed real editorial control over the publication of their work did this problem finally
disappear, in the generation of Elgar and Richard Strauss. But the question of what they meant remains less tractable.
Ex. 6.5. Wagner, Siegfried Idyll
DOTS AND STROKES 207