Staccato

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with a dotted note.
For other uses, see Staccato (disambiguation).
{ \override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f \relative c'' { a4-. b-. c2-. } }
Three notes with staccato dots

Staccato ([stakˈkaːto]; Italian for "detached") is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation, it signifies a note of shortened duration,[1][2] separated from the note that may follow by silence.[3] It has been described by theorists and has appeared in music since at least 1676.[4]

Notation

Music played without staccato
The same music played with staccato
Bassoon articulations
A bassoon played staccato, legato, legato + vibrato, and slurred.
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In 20th-century music, a dot placed above or below a note indicates that it should be played staccato, and a wedge is used for the more emphatic

staccatissimo
. However, before 1850, dots, dashes, and wedges were all likely to have the same meaning, even though some theorists from as early as the 1750s distinguished different degrees of staccato through the use of dots and dashes, with the dash indicating a shorter, sharper note, and the dot a longer, lighter one.

A number of signs came to be used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to discriminate more subtle nuances of staccato. These signs involve various combinations of dots, vertical and horizontal dashes, vertical and horizontal wedges, and the like, but attempts to standardize these signs have not generally been successful.[5]

The example below illustrates the scope of the staccato dot:

{ \override Score.TimeSignature #'stencil = ##f << \clef treble \relative c' { \stemNeutral <e c'>-. <g d'>-. <g e'>-. <c, c'>-. \stemUp a'-. c-. c-. d-. } \\ { s1 f'4 f' g' g' } >> }

In the first measure, the pairs of notes are in the same musical part (or voice) since they are on a common stem. The staccato applies to both notes of the pairs. In the second measure, the pairs of notes are stemmed separately indicating two different parts, so the staccato applies only to the upper note.

The opposite musical articulation of staccato is

non legato
.

By default, in the music notation program

Sibelius, "staccatos shorten a note by 50%."[7]

Staccatissimo

In

Symphony No. 0 in D minor
:

\new Score { \new Staff { \relative c' { \time 3/4 \key d \minor \clef treble d8->(\ff cis d2~ d4) a'-! d-! es-! e-! f-! fis-! g-! gis-! a8(-> gis a4) } } }

Alternatively, it can be notated by writing the word "staccatissimo" or the abbreviation "staccatiss." over the staff. A few composers, such as

Mozart, have used staccato dots accompanied by a written instruction staccatissimo when they mean the passage to be played staccatissimo.[8]

See also

References

  1. ^ Willi Apel, Harvard Dictionary of Music (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 708.
  2. ISBN 978-0-19-957810-8
    .
  3. John Tyrrell
    (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
  4. David D. Boyden, Jaak Liivoja-Lorius, Peter Walls, and Peter Cooke, "Bow", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell
    (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
  5. John Tyrrell
    (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
  6. ISBN 978-0-19-957810-8
    .
  7. ^ Daniel Spreadbury, Michael Eastwood, Ben Finn, and Jonathan Finn, "Sibelius 5 Reference", edition 5.2 (March 2008), p. 284.
  8. ISBN 978-0-87487-021-3
    .

External links

Look up staccato in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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