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On Teaching

January 29, 2010
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Gavin Black is the Director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached at [email protected].

Some thoughts on ornaments I
The playing of ornaments is one of those areas that many—maybe most—students find intimidating. This is only partly because it can be genuinely difficult. It certainly can be difficult, although, like most physical tasks, it can be made much less so through the right kind of technical preparation and through an adequate amount of well-targeted practice. The intimidation factor with ornamentation comes, I believe, mostly from a fear of getting it wrong. There seems to be so much data about how this kind of trill was played in Italy in 1620 or how that kind of appoggiatura was played in Austria in the early nineteenth century that it can seem impossible to keep up with it all. One well-known book on ornamentation is nearly 600 pages long, and that is just one book of very many. Also, impeccably credentialed experts on the subject can disagree. It is easy, looking at a piece of music, to know what the “regular” notes are, though of course it may not be easy to play them. But it is not necessarily easy, or even possible, to know for sure what the notes of ornaments are or what the exact rhythmic shape of a given ornament should be. It is also a common experience for even very talented and “advanced” students to feel that they have learned to play certain ornaments, but that those ornaments just don’t sound very good. This is always frustrating, and extraordinarily so when it happens more or less all the time.
I believe that part of this frustration comes from, or is made worse by, a confusion among some of these issues. That is, students often assume that their ornaments sound bad because they don’t know what the notes of those ornaments should be, or they have gotten something else wrong in the realm of the historical or the musicological, when in fact they sound bad because the execution is awkward or the preparation before the ornament itself is wrong. It may be important to know whether a given trill should start on the main note or the upper note, or how long or how fast it should be, or whether a certain appoggiatura should be long or short. However, any of the above should be able to sound good—natural, fluid, graceful—whether or not it is the correct interpretation of the composer’s intent. It is important to sort these different aspects of playing ornaments out from one another in order to be able to work effectively on learning to play ornaments well.

So, let us consider several issues.
First of all, what is an ornament? On one level an ornament is a note pattern indicated by a sign, rather than by notes as such. If, for example, the three notes c–b–c are indicated by ordinary notes, they amount to an ordinary bit of music, a phrase or perhaps part of one. If those same notes are indicated—as they could be—by a mordent sign on the note c, then that entity is an ornament. Likewise, the three notes c–d–e could be indicated by three ordinary notes or by the note e with the sign for a slide, or the notes d–c–d–c–d–c by six notes or by a trill sign over the note c. This is basic and well known. So, what is the difference between notes indicated by an ornament sign and the same notes written out? Sometimes there might be little or no difference. In fact, there are plenty of pieces in the repertoire with parallel passages in which the same notes are one time written out and another time marked by ornament signs, with no reason to believe that they should be different one time from the other. (This may make it appear that our distinction between ornaments and other notes is at least sometimes arbitrary. This is true, and actually can be helpful in teaching students to play ornaments well and to be comfortable playing them. A significant part of the fear of ornaments comes specifically from identifying them as ornaments, as something other than just some notes to play.) However, when there is a difference, it is likely to be that notes indicated by ornament signs are meant to be quick and light or to deviate subtly from any rhythm that could be spelled out by notes in our rather simple system of rhythmic notation, or both of these.
In fact, from the point of view of execution or performance, ornaments are simply “quick, light notes” or perhaps the greatest exemplar of that kind of passage. This means that playing ornaments well can be achieved by applying the same kind of light, fluid touch that is in fact best for playing any note patterns on the organ. It also means that working on playing ornaments effectively can be one of the best ways of improving lightness of touch and freedom from tension in all playing.
There is an exercise that I use with students that I refer to as a trill exercise. It is extraordinarily effective at helping a player to develop the right kind of touch for playing trills. However, it is equally useful for teaching a light touch for any kind of fast playing, including both non-trill ornaments and any other kind of rapid passage. (It is in fact the only actual exercise that I normally suggest to students, given that in general I believe that it is best to practice pieces or note patterns drawn from pieces.)

A trill exercise
This exercise is not written in music notation, and, although it involves playing notes at the keyboard, it is really a kind of relaxation/breathing/meditation exercise. It can be carried out at the organ or at the harpsichord. It can also work on the piano, as long as the player remembers not to care about producing a robust or loud sound. It goes like this:
1) Sit at the keyboard, and identify the place on the keyboard where each hand can meet the keys with the arm, wrist, hand, and fingers more or less in a straight line. This is usually at the notes written near the top of the treble clef for the right hand and at the notes near the bottom of the bass clef for the left hand, though it varies a bit from one person to another. It is fine to let the elbows float away from the sides. If you are sitting at an instrument with more than one keyboard, choose the keyboard that it is most natural and comfortable to reach.
2) Pick two adjacent (natural) notes and two fingers. Initially it is a good idea to use adjacent and “good” fingers, perhaps 2–3 or 3–4. Later it is fine to do the exercise with any pair of fingers with which you might ever want to play a trill. The two notes should feel as similar to each other as possible. On many organs this is not an issue, though it is on some. It certainly is an issue on many harpsichords. Choose a quiet registration: a Gedeckt or Dulciana, perhaps, or, on a harpsichord, one 8-foot stop by itself.
3) Play one of the notes lightly and comfortably with the finger assigned to it, and hold the note. While holding this note, let your hand relax as much—as thoroughly—as you possibly can. This can be aided by moving the arm around a bit in the air—still holding the note—or by flexing the wrist a little bit, up and down, or by taking calm deep breaths. When you feel that your hand is fully relaxed:
4) Play the other note and then the first note again, as quickly and as lightly as you can. As you do this, you should have as little as possible of a feeling that your hand is bearing down into the keys. Instead, it should feel as if the hand is almost floating up and away—just failing to do so enough to allow the fingers to play the notes that they are trying to play.
5) After you have played these two rapid notes, you will notice that your hand has lost at least a little bit of its relaxation, that it has picked up a bit of tension or at least a bit more muscle tone than it had just before playing those two notes. So, the next step is, while continuing to hold the note that you are holding, again wait for your hand to become fully relaxed. You should then repeat the process described above, that is, the rapid playing of two notes. It can be repeated several times—four or five, maybe up to a dozen. It should never happen according to a beat or a schedule. Each time, while holding the note chosen as the first note, you must wait until your hand is perfectly relaxed before executing the rapid two-note gesture for the next time.
6) After doing this several times in a row, do the same thing but start with the other note and the other finger.
This exercise should be done with each hand, with various combinations of fingers. It is not a good idea to segue directly from doing this exercise to practicing or playing a trill or any other note pattern. Rather, it should simply be done by itself, perhaps for ten minutes or so at some point—or at two different points—during each practice session. Then, when actually practicing or trying to play a given trill (or other rapid ornament or other rapid passage), the idea is to remember and recapture the feeling in the hand, wrist, arm, shoulders, and body that you experienced during this exercise.
I have never known this exercise to fail to help a student, or any player, beginner or advanced, who spent some time with it. It can be used not just to develop a better feeling for the touch of trills, but also to train recalcitrant fingers to play trills and to play rapidly with control. In particular, it is very fruitful to do this exercise with 4–5, after having first done it with more “normal” trill fingers. Almost everyone I know believes that he or she “can’t” play trills with those fingers. In fact, almost everyone can after having applied this exercise to the task.
(I should mention that the original idea behind this exercise was suggested to me by my friend the late David Margeson in the early 1980s when he was a graduate student in organ at Yale. I have refined the idea and adapted it somewhat to the specifics of organ and harpsichord.)

Fingerings
A real necessity in playing ornaments well is planning good fingerings. This has several elements to it. First, of course, is choosing fingers for the notes of the ornament itself. In spite of the claim I made just above, it is a good idea to use the “best” fingers whenever possible. For most people, these are the middle three fingers, or indeed specifically 2 and 3. It is a good idea to use whatever fingers the player is most comfortable with—why compound difficulty by not doing so?—but it is also important not to be so tied to those fingers that passages before and after an ornament end up suffering from convoluted and unnecessarily difficult fingerings. For example, a player who can only play trills or rapid mordents with 2–3 will frequently get into trouble of this sort. A player who is also comfortable using 3–4 will get into much less trouble. Fingerings such as 4–5, 1–2, 1–3 are also useful, though the actual need for them arises less often. A consideration in choosing fingering for an ornament should always be the effect of that fingering on hand position and, in particular, the ability of the player to keep the fingers from migrating too deeply into the keyboard. So, for example, if one note of an ornament is a raised key and the other a natural, then it is wonderful to end up playing the raised note with 3 and the natural with 2 or 4 as appropriate. Reversing this leads to some kind of awkward hand position, and thus makes it harder to maintain a light, comfortable touch. The logistics of this vary at different points along the compass of the keyboard and also from one player to another depending on the relative lengths of the different fingers. The important thing is to remember to pay attention to the hand position that results from a fingering choice with an ornament.
If the note immediately before an ornament is the same note that actually begins the ornament, it is very important indeed to play the two successive iterations of that note with different fingers. This is an approach that I always prefer with repeated notes (see The Diapason, January 2009), but for preparing ornaments it is especially crucial. This is because, again, a light touch and a relaxed hand are absolutely essential to playing ornaments in a way that feels and sounds good. It is very common for a trill that should begin with the upper note to be preceded by that same note. The best way to work out this fingering is to decide first on the best fingering for the trill, based on the player/student’s preferences and on the logistics of the particular notes, then select a finger to play the preceding (same) note from among the fingers not designated to play the first note of the trill. This choice should be made based on the shape of the passage leading into the trill. If it is impossible to make that passage work without using the same finger for the final note before the trill and for the note that starts the trill itself, then the trill fingering should be changed if at all possible. I have very rarely indeed been unable to devise a good solution in this very common situation—perhaps never. The point for the teacher to make to the student is that it is both fairly easy to work this out and abundantly worth doing so. Awkward starts to trills are usually the result of simply not having thought out the fingering both of the trill itself and (especially) of the notes leading into the trill.
It is also very common for the note before an appoggiatura to be the same as the note of the appoggiatura itself. In this situation, using different fingers for the two iterations of that note will not only make the whole pattern of notes sound more natural and give greater control over timing and articulation, but it will specifically create the right accent relationship amongst the three notes: the note before the appoggiatura, the appoggiatura itself, and the note following it (the “main” note). Trying this example with each of the indicated fingerings (both for the right hand) can make this difference seem clear.
One of my frequent chamber music colleagues recently made the following comment to me about a (non-keyboard) musician with whom we both play a lot: “I’ve figured out why so-and-so’s ornaments always sound so good. He plays them quietly.” The above discussion about fingering and the suggested exercise are essentially aimed at helping students to develop an organ and harpsichord equivalent of playing ornaments quietly. Next month I will deal with the sometimes vexing questions about what the notes and rhythms of ornaments should be—on the beat or before, starting on main or auxiliary notes, and so on. I will also address how to use that information to help students feel freer in their playing of ornaments rather than more constrained, and how to help them approach the subject creatively.

 

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