Piano Forum

3) In many bars there are ornaments (mordents?). Lets take, for instance, bar 5. You have the ornament above C#. How is this supposed to be played?

The ornaments are not mordents, but trills. But what sort of trill? The truth of the matter is that we do not know. Scarlatti notated trills sparingly either with the letters “tr”, or with the usual wiggly line (as in your score). These symbols are interchangeable and have no independent meaning. So how do you realise them?

This much is well established:

1.   The trill always start on the upper auxiliary note.

2.   The trill always starts on the beat.

This you have to decide:

1.   How many repercussions should the trill have? In other words, how long is the trill? Your chosen tempo usually decides this matter. The faster the passage the shorter the trill. The slower and the more lyrical the passage, the more time you have to add more repercussions. Also consider the different functions of a trill:

a.   Short trills (untied, that is, starting at the upper auxiliary) add brilliance and sparkle to a note.

b.   Short (and long) trills can be part of the melodic line. If so, and if the previous note is the upper auxiliary, you do not really want to repeat the upper auxiliary, so the trill should be tied (see below). Do not play these trills for brilliance, but for expressivity. This basically means stretching time, for instance, lingering on the first note of the trill and then accelerate (but don’t go as fast as you would for a trill whose purpose is to add brilliance).

c.   Long trills are usually used for cadences at the end of phrases.


2.   Do you start a trill by repeating the previous note (in case the previous note happens to be the upper auxiliary note)? Or do you “prepare” the trill by tying the previous note to the first note of the trill? There is enough evidence in the Scarlatti sonatas to show that he used both prepared and unprepared trills equally, the problem is that he did not notate them differently. Sometimes he supplies a grace note before a trill to indicate that you should start on the upper note. But when he does not, this does not necessarily mean that you should tie the trill. He may have forgotten (there is enough evidence of that as well).

There are no easy answers, but the general guideline is that rhythm context is the deciding factor: in a smooth melodic line (like a scale passage), a tied trill will sound better than a repeated note trill. However, if you need to accent the first note of the trill, or to emphasize the dissonance of the upper auxiliary then a repeated note trill must be used. Sometimes both are equally correct but lead to very different musical results, and consequently it is a decision that you must make and take responsibility for.

3.   Do you add a termination to the trill? This is “the” area that Baroque composers were not supposed to intrude. Decisions in regards to termination were traditionally the province of the performer, not of the composer. Some composers did supply terminations (and were resented for that intrusion), most notably J. S. Bach, Handel and Couperin. Scarlatti is completely inconsistent in this regard. A general rule is that long trills should finish with a termination, since the termination points clearly to the ear when you get to the final note.

If you decide to use Sankey’s ornamentation, here is the realisation of the one in bar 5 (the others are similar).



Now you will see that I have provided 15 realisations. The first twelve are all acceptable, and the last 3 (13, 14, 15) are wrong. Can you see why?

The main difference between the odd and even numbers is that the odd numbers the upper auxiliary is repeated while in the even numbers it is a "tied" trill.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.