The Short

APPOGGIATURAS AND GRACE-NOTES 485
‘should be performed as lightly as is possible without losing their clarity’; but no doubt was entertained about their
placement on the beat, for it continued: ‘All appoggiaturas, without exception, fall in the time of their main note.’ 897
The concept of an extremely light and rapid performance of grace-notes is, in fact, implicit in the vast majority of
instructions for their execution throughout the Classical and Romantic periods. Reichardt referred to ‘Very short
appoggiaturas’ which are performed so that the main notes ‘do not seem to lose any of their value’. 898 Koch similarly
observed that such notes are ‘slurred so fast to the main note that the latter seems to lose nothing of its value’. 899 Both
these writers specified performance on the beat. Baillot, apparently envisaging prebeat performance, characterized the
grace-note (which he called the appoggiature rhythmique) as being played ‘briskly and almost on the main note’, adding ‘in
animated movements one naturally makes it faster than in slow movements: however, it always retains a certain speed
which distinguishes it from melodic small notes’. 900 Spohr, writing two years earlier and requiring on-beat performance,
instructed in the typical German way that it ‘deprives the note before which it stands of scarcely any of its value. With
this note it is quickly and lightly connected in one bow.’ 901 Moser, too, emphasized the light, fleeting nature of this
ornament, saying that since it has ‘an extremely short, often immeasurable duration, it cannot have any good claim to
special accentuation’. 902
The impression gained from these and numerous other eighteenth- and nineteenth-century descriptions is that,
regardless of whether the writers thought they were performing grace-notes on or before the beat, they were very
closely in agreement about their effect. This being so, a good criterion for the stylish performance of single grace-notes
in most instances might be that the listener should not be conscious of whether the note occurs on the beat or
anticipates it slightly. In the long run, it seems far more important that grace-notes fulfil their intended musical
function than that, in a mathematically exact sense, they actually occur on the beat. As implied earlier, the minute
deviations of rhythm and tempo that are a quintessential element of sensitive performance will, in any case, frequently
make it impossible to detect the precise placement of an effectively executed grace-note.
Arguments for real anticipation of the grace-note, on the grounds that the principal notes of a chord should be
sounded together on the beat, also reflect a misconception of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century attitudes; in a period
which favoured three- and four-part chords in orchestral string writing (usually executed divisi today, but certainly
intended at the time to be ‘broken’) and when frequent unnotated arpeggiando effects were recommended and
employed by keyboard players, it seems highly improbable that the very
897 Art.‘Vorschlag’.
898
Ueber die Pflichten, 41.
899
Musikalisches Lexikon, art. ‘Vorschlag’.
900
L'Art du violon, 75.
901
Violin School, 159.
902
Joachim and Moser, Violinschule, iii. 29.