The Short

476 APPOGGIATURAS, TRILLS, TURNS
comparison with Türk's discussion of the matter implies. Türk explained that (according to generally accepted theory)
the appoggiatura in figures such as Ex. 13.28(a) required a short (i.e. grace-note) performance; but he felt that in many
cases this was frequently unsatisfactory, remarking:
With these and similar figures almost all music teachers require, indeed, that the appoggiaturas should be short, as
at b) [Ex. 13.28(b)]; and in various cases, if, for example, single figures of this kind occur, as at c) [Ex. 13.28(c)]
below, or when several similar figures follow immediately one after another, as at d) [Ex. 13.28(d)] etc., this
realization may be good and necessary on harmonic grounds. Yet still I cannot convince myself that this rule should
apply so generally and in every instance. If one makes the appoggiatura short in example e) [Ex. 13.28(e)], after the
preceding and following four-note figures, the flow of the melody seems to me to become, at the same time,
limping.
Also, I have heard only few tasteful, practical musicians realize passages like f ) [Ex. 13.28(f)] as at g) [Ex. 13.28(g)],
but many more as at h) [Ex. 13.28(h)].
Although the realization at g) may be commoner than that at h), I desire that the latter should be used in my works,
except where in individual cases other rules are against it. 877
Turk's preferred realization of such figures, with equal notes and an accent, appears to reflect an approach that was
gaining ground in the eighteenth century and which by the time of Philip Corri's treatise of 1810 had become the
standard method. (By that date, too, the use of a small note in notating these figures was becoming increasingly
uncommon.) Interestingly, Philip Corri's approach was somewhat at odds with his father's more varied treatment of
figures of this kind in vocal music. In the aria from J. C. Bach's La clemenza di Scipione cited earlier, for instance, Corri
rendered the notation in two different manners (see Ex. 12.7, bb. 22 and 29).
There were also circumstances in which some musicians, principally singers, seem to have regarded it as stylish to
reverse the usual dynamic pattern for appoggiaturas; this was when they were taken from the semitone below. In 1810
Domenico Corri explained that in such cases, one should ‘Take the Grace softly and force it into the Note’. 878 Some
thirty years earlier he had given similar instructions in the preface to A Select Collection. Corri's extensive annotations to
the pieces in that collection provide some interesting practical illustrations of where this technique might be applied
(Ex. 13.29,) and all of them indicate that despite the reversed dynamic, the second note was still shortened. Gesualdo
Lanza was also quite explicit about performing the rising appoggiatura in this manner. He observed of long
appoggiaturas in general that they ‘should be sung much stronger than the note which follows them’, but his examples
show the realization of a rising appoggiatura with a crescendo to the note of resolution and a shortening of that note
(Ex. 13.30.) 879 Somewhat later he observed: ‘The under appoggiatura generally rises and the upper diminishes
877
Klavierschule, III, §23.
878
The Singer's Preceptor, 32.
879
The Elements of Singing, i. 68.