Bach music ornaments

[stardust1611]

Hello everyone! Is there available somewhere on the internet a table of Bach music note ornaments. It's perplexing to see same symbol written in different ways from different publishers. Sometimes thrill and forward mordent are hard to distinguish, or are they?

[j_menz]

Attached is the one I mostly check against.

[brianvds]

And another question: did Bach (and his contemporaries) use these symbols himself, or were keyboard players expected to use their taste and common sense to ornament music? Which would imply that most of the ornaments we see in sheet music were put there by editors rather than Bach himself? I seem to remember having seen different editions of the same work with completely different ornaments, or the same ornamentation symbols, but footnotes that explain different ways of playing them.

I am generally a bit confused about ornaments. I must confess, I don't really like them much; they seem to interfere with the music itself, especially if a piece is heavily ornamented. For an amateurish player like myself it is of course also easier to simply omit them... :-)

[stardust1611]

Thank you j_menz. It seems you found that table on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornament_(music). There is another version of this table and can be found on this page: https://www.dolmetsch.com/musicalsymbols.htm. The symbols look a little bit altered, don't they? You see, same ornaments, but the symbols don't look quite the same, and the table even seems to be from the same source. I actually had this table already, but I need more comprehensive table or guide, that would have all versions of the same symbol depicted and explained. Does anyone have this?

[stardust1611]

I just found a much better source: https://pianosociety.com/cms/index.php?section=1469. Everything seems to be there.

[chopantasy]

Thank you j_menz. It seems you found that table on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornament_(music).

The table j_menz posted is Bach's own, written out for his eldest son WF.

[nystul]

And another question: did Bach (and his contemporaries) use these symbols himself, or were keyboard players expected to use their taste and common sense to ornament music?

Both.

[j_menz]

Both.

Agreed.

Not all composers used the same symbols. I have a collection of Couperin and he uses a completely different notation for his ornaments.