Mordent Clarification - Getting in a pickle! Options

[Outspan]

Can some one please clarify for me an upper and lower mordent? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blush.gif)

Having looked at various musical dictionaries an upper mordent is the shake playing the principal note with a note above, and the lower mordent is the shake symbol but with a line through it to signify playing the principal note and the note below it.(returning to the principal note on each occasion)

However, in the Grade 2 exam pieces A1 and A3 show the mordent laid out as what appears to be a lower mordent. The only explanation I can find is that during the baroque period the mordents were the other way round....

Also, the Grade 2 mordent shows a different rhythm to the researched examples.

[andante_in_c]

I haven't got copies of the pieces in question, but I suspect that it looks the 'wrong' way round because the mordent would start with the upper note in the baroque period much as trills do. So, for example, an upper mordent written over an A in a piece in the key of C major would be played as BABA rather than just as ABA.

Hope this helps. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[VH2]

Can some one please clarify for me an upper and lower mordent? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/blush.gif)

It looks to me that you already understand and don't really need clarification!!

Having looked at various musical dictionaries an upper mordent is the shake playing the principal note with a note above, and the lower mordent is the shake symbol but with a line through it to signify playing the principal note and the note below it.(returning to the principal note on each occasion)

That is correct from some point in the early Classical period, up to the present day.

However, in the Grade 2 exam pieces A1 and A3 show the mordent laid out as what appears to be a lower mordent. The only explanation I can find is that during the baroque period the mordents were the other way round....

That is the correct explanation. ALthough the reality is more complicated. There were also different interpretations of the same symbols by different composers and there were some composers that used different symbols to most of their contemporaries (e.g. Couperin)

Also, the Grade 2 mordent shows a different rhythm to the researched examples.

The appropriate rhythm is not fixed but can be varied according to the style of a piece and the tempo.

There is a very good short article on mordents on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordent).

If you want more detail then the place to look is Howard Ferguson's "Keyboard Interpretation From the 14th to the 19th Century" is the first place to look.

For a fuller historical understanding the section on ornaments in CPE Bach's "On the true art of playing keyboard instruments" .

[Tenor Viol]

This is a minefield area and you can earn Ph.Ds studying it. Baroque ornamentation differs from Classical onwards. There is no definite standard in the Baroque era, wioth composers usually setting out their definitions, e.g. Bach. French / German / Italian tend to have different rules.