Hi all, I'm working on the C minor Prelude from book two of the "48" on trumpet. I have been looking through the piano part and noticed that there are mordents that are not in my trumpet edition, I have penciled them in, but I have no idea what notes I use, do baroque mordents vary from those of other genres?

Many thanks,
Jonscott14

Okay, I suspect there'll be two types of mordents in your edition: a squiggle, and a squiggle with a vertical line through it. Squiggles go between the written note and the one above it; squiggles with vertical lines go between the written note and the one beneath it.

How exactly to realise them is up to you, but loosely one could play a squiggle C as CDC or DCDC; or could play a squiggle with a vertical line C as a CBC (I don't think BCBC would be valid).

Thankyou, thats what I thought, Its just squigles, without the line, i think i'll go for the DCDC bit, sounds more fun!

Remember that the ornament should start on the beat rather than before it also.

One other point, I forgot to mention earlier, is that if an upper mordent is preceded from the upper note, start it on the written note. For example, play:

E D C-squiggle

as:

E D CDC

Never play it as:

E D DCDC.

Another of my favourite P & F's !
In my AB Piano copy (Notes at end of book), the one (with line through) in bar 7 is just A flat -G - Aflat

In bar 14 there are two alternatives but I prefer c-d-c, then the semiquaver b. Same for all the subsequent ones.