The Short

460 APPOGGIATURAS, TRILLS, TURNS
that appears for the first time in the fifth edition of Löhlein's Clavier-Schule; having urged composers to indicate the
length of appoggiaturas, the editor, Witthauer concluded: ‘How many pieces would then, at least with respect to the
appoggiaturas, be less badly performed, and how much trouble would be spared to the beginner!’ 846 By the early
decades of the nineteenth century the practice of indicating appoggiaturas in normal notes was increasingly being
adopted, and the use of single-note ornaments became progressively more restricted, so that by the 1830s composers
very rarely employed them except as grace-notes. Carl Czerny's commentary on a section dealing with ornamentation
in his translation of Reicha's Cours de composition is among the latest admonitions on this subject, and his concern seems
primarily to be focused on the confusion that was engendered by these signs in the performance of older music. He
observed that it is much better if the composer ‘writes all embellishments, long appoggiaturas, appoggiaturas etc.
everywhere in a definite manner, where there obtains the slightest doubt over their execution’, adding, ‘Many, often
very unpleasant-sounding, mistakes by the performer (particularly in piano music) are thereby avoided. The former
customary manner of writing the ornament sign for mordents, turns, pralltrills, etc. is all too obviously imprecise,
frequently quite unknown to many players, and often abandons the most beautiful ornaments to tasteless caprice.’ 847
But as earlier comments indicate, uncertainty about the significance of such ornaments was scarcely less widespread
during the period in which this notational practice was current.
Until the habit of notating appoggiaturas with small notes was abandoned, the problem of how to recognize when they
were meant to indicate grace-notes rather than appoggiaturas or anticipatory notes was particularly vexatious.
Nevertheless, there was broad agreement about many of the circumstances in which small notes were unlikely to
indicate anything other than grace-notes. Perhaps the most comprehensive examination of contexts for grace-note
interpretation is Türk's, which seems to have provided the basis for similar accounts by Witthauer, J. F. Schubert, A. E.
Müller, F. J. Fröhlich, and others. Türk considered that this type of performance would almost certainly be appropriate
to small notes:
1) Which stand before a note … that is repeated several times: [Ex. 13.3(a)]
2) Before a note (particularly a short one) after which several of like duration follow one another: [Ex. 13.3(b)]
3) Before notes which should be performed short (staccato): [Ex. 13.3(c)]
4) Before leaping intervals: [Ex. 13.3(d)]
5) At the beginning of a movement, or an individual idea and, similarly after a rest: [Ex. 13.3(e)] …
846
p. 25 .
847
Reicha, Cours de composition/VollstÄndiges Lehrbuch, i. 537.