Prall Prall articulation
Hello all,
I'm transcribing a Bach piece from some old piano book I've got. This book gives a detailed note for note explanation of each articulation Bach is supposed to have used for this music. Anyway, in the book, the articulation called "The plain shake" has the same symbol as the "Prall Prall" articulation in MuseScore. Are these both supposed to be the same thing please? I did a test, typing the Bach "plain shake" manually into MuseScore and entering a "Prall Prall" articulation, but they differ quite a bit.
Now my Bach book says the "plain shake" can increase repercussions at discretion, so does anyone know: should I use the "Prall Prall" when transcribing this old music, instead of manually entering "the plain shake"?
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| Plain_Shake.mscz | 4.31 KB |
Comments
What do you mean when you say they "differ"? You mean the playabck? It's important to realzie that there is tremendous variation in how the same ornament is treated by different composers, different editors, different players, different periods of history, etc. So I wouldn't get too hung up about what one book edited by one person about the music of one composer might say - this is not necessarily any more definitive truth than any other interpretation.
What I can tell you is that most composers of Bach's era did not write in many ornaments, neither using the symbols themselves nor actually writing out the notes. They assumed performers would do add their own according to their personal taste and familiarity with the style. Editors then decided to take some of the guesswork away by adding explicit ornament signs when publishing their own editions, and some went so far as to actually write out the notes for the ornaments.
If your goal is to hear playback exactly how the book are you referencing suggests, then by all means write it out manually for that purpose. But if the goal is to create music for others to read, better to stick with either just the ornament if you know Bach wrote it there himself or agree with the editor that some ornamentation is appropriate, or stick with the unornamented version as per Bach's original manuscript and let the performer insert his own ornamentation.
In reply to What do you mean when you… by Marc Sabatella
Thanks, a great answer! Yes, the playback has less repercussions on the MuseScore Prall Prall. I didn't realize there was so much variation possible. Also my version of Bach is an edited one from 1917.
There doesn't appear to be much difference between my examples of standard MuseScore Prall Prall and my manually entered "plain shake" from my Bach book. I'll keep it simple I think and stick with the Prall Prall articulation over manually entering. Will keep in mind they might not be Bach's original ornaments in my edited version, too. Thanks again.