Trills in Bach

June 16, 2008 at 11:21 PM · Hi Ruth. I am currently finishing off the D minor Partita (with baroque bow and normal violin) and this is one thing I have discussed with my violin teacher - we both reckon that at that time it was customary to add a trill at major cadences, so I've been adding a few here and there when I feel it appropriate - the relevant spots seem to be quite obvious when you really start to analyse the music. I certainly don't see anything wrong with doing so, or indeed in not doing so - I guess it is all down to your own interpretation of the music - goodness knows there are so many different ways to approach this amazing music.

June 16, 2008 at 11:36 PM · Hi Ruth,

My impression agrees with what you stated, the notion of the "cadential trill".

I also might like to add that frequently in keyboard music of Bach, lots of extra mordents are suggested by the editors, and performers, probably going along with performance habits of the time. I've wondered why this is absent in the solo violin music though.

June 17, 2008 at 12:30 AM · Ruth,

My two cents after researching the same question. Here is what I found out. Back in the day, trills were added to keyboard pieces to extend a note as there was no sustain pedal, as there is today, on many early keyboards. So every note had the same duration and the trill was a technique to extend the duration of the note. That is why they mark if you start above or below on these original arrangements. They are indicating what note to extend. This was explained to me by some art history folks and it makes a lot of sense if you have ever tried to play an early keyboard. Many historically accurate/authentic arrangements use trills extensively for this reason, more as note extensions than ornaments. So the style was to some degree dictated by what the instruments could do. We consider them ornaments now but they served a function due to the physical design limitations of the instruments that were used at the time. Fiocco and a few other composers, for instance, wrote pieces for keyboard or strings and keyboard, which where later transcribed for strings. The trills moved over with them even though now they don't serve the same function they did back then. I will watch to see if anyone else has ever heard this explanation. As Bach wrote extensively for keyboards this could help explain how all these ornaments showed up. Many contemporary arrangements drop the majority of them out. The explanation I received was very technical but I hope I communicated the basic idea.

June 17, 2008 at 01:30 AM · What you're saying about the sustained notes makes great sense, I can think of one or two examples in music I've played on piano myself actually.

As a side note, I'm still curious as why the editors suggest sometimes mordents on sixteenth notes at fast tempos. Why do we never see this in the solo violin music?

June 17, 2008 at 03:16 AM · Yes, I agree I have encountered this on piano as well.

I can't offer any suggestions to answer your question, but I was digging around in my pile of music and notice more historical (period) arrangements that include clavicord and a string instrument have far more trills where as solo pieces or string only pieces have far fewer. The string parts reflect these trills in coordination with the keyboard part and when there is no keyboard they are not there by comparison. I guess the question becomes which pieces were written originally for violin versus transcriptions from other arrangements.

A piece that comes to mind re: trills is La Folia. I have heard so many arrangements with trills, no trills, 16 notes and all of the above that it is a dramatically different piece on every recording. I seems that coordinating multiple string players all playing a trill would be very difficult. It seems a different notation would allow for more precision but that is just a guess.

June 17, 2008 at 12:46 PM · What has been said is very interesting. My impression is that during the baroque period, the performer was expected to engage in a certain amount of improvised embellishment of the music using ornaments such as trills. There may have been rules for choosing at what points that was appropriate, e.g., when necessary to sustain a note. Some book on baroque practice would probably illuminate this fully.