The Short

INDICATIONS OF ACCENT 31
already begun to use this symbol in a number of quite different ways during the second half of the eighteenth century. 62
Authors of eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century treatises were broadly agreed about the execution of
slurred groups, but individual treatments of the matter reveal some interesting differences of detail. Leopold Mozart
taught that ‘if in a musical composition two, three, four, and even more notes be bound together by the half-circle
[slur] … the first of such united notes must be somewhat more strongly stressed, but the remainder slurred on to it
quite smoothly and more and more quietly’. 63 The musical examples which precede this statement consist of a four-bar
passage repeated thirty-four times with different patterns of slurred and separate notes, and with slurs beginning
frequently on metrically weak beats. He later insisted that a degree of lengthening was integral to this accentuation. 64 In
Löhlein's 1774Anweisung zum Violinspielen, the first explanation of the slur says simply that the notes so marked must be
‘performed in one bowstroke and softly connected to each other’. 65 But when explaining patterns of stress in a melody,
by means of an underlaid text, he observed: ‘when two notes come on one syllable … both notes will be played in one
bowstroke, but the first receives a special pressure, because the syllable will be enunciated on it, and the other, as it
were, melts into it [die andere gleichsam obenein gehet].’ 66
Many writers, especially in the earlier part of the period (when very long slurs were extremely rare), considered this type
of accented and nuanced execution appropriate to slurred groups of any length. The Löhlein-Witthauer Clavier-Schule,
for instance, referred without reservation to slurred groups ‘of which the first note always receives a somewhat
stronger pressure’; 67 and Türk gave examples of up to eight notes in a slur for which he instructed that ‘the note over
which the slur begins, will be very lightly (hardly noticeably) accented’. 68 Those Classical writers who made a distinction
based on the length of the slurred group, generally taught that, as a rule, groups of up to three or four notes should
certainly be treated in this manner whereas longer slurred groups might not be. Asioli merely instructed that in groups
of three or four slurred notes: ‘The accent is given to the first; the others are played with an equal degree of force.’ 69 In
keyboard playing Frédéric Kalkbrenner, like Hummel, Czerny, and Moscheles, similarly taught that ‘Three or four
slurred notes can only be performed on the Piano by leaning on the first and
62
For more extensive and general discussion of the range of meanings of slurs, see Ch. 6.
63
Versuch, VII, 1, §20.
64
See below, ‘Agogic Accent’.
65
p. 32 .
66
p. 53 .
67
Löhlein, Clavier-Schule, oder kurze und gründliche Anweisung zur Melodie und Harmonie (Leipzig and Züllichau, 1765), 5th edn., ed. Johann Georg Witthauer (Leipzig, 1791), 18.
68
Klavierschule, VI, §38. Türk's instruction was repeated verbatim thirty years later in Friedrich Starke's Wiener Pianoforte-Schule (Vienna, 1819), i. 13.
69 Bonifazio Asioli, Principj elementari di musica (Milan, 1809), trans. and ed. John Jousse (London, [1825]), 108.