Dear all,

In the ABRSM/Peters Edition at bars 103-04 I have a dilemma. In the LH there is a crotchet C natural over which is a 'tr' sign. What are the pitches for this trill - C natural - D natural or D sharp as the key signature suggests? In bar 104 is the trill on B - C sharp or C natural?

They are marked trill but given the tempo is a upper mordent acceptable please?

My thanks in advance,

CCH

Why wait till bar 103 to solve it? It first appears in bars 54-58!

It is also marked as a trill in the Schirmer edition and in an old facsimile of the original Longo collection.

General opinion is that in that period trills began on the note above. So in bar 103, as there is no reason not to play the D sharp of the key signature, the correct interpretation is D sharp C natural D sharp C natural - that is, 4 semiquavers, on the beat, leading naturally to to B and A. .. and similarly in the following bars. It makes more musical sense than mordent as the dissonance on the beat creates an emphasis.

However - I've been listening to some recordings and no-one does this. Most cheat with a simple triplet starting on the principal. It sounds OK - but it is obviously not what what Scarlatti wanted. He wrote a trill. If he had wanted a mordent or a triplet he was quite capable of writing those instead.

Tom, I tend to agree with that. If you listen to different performances of the same Scarlatti Sonata, you usually get all sorts of interpretations of the ornamentation. I play Scarlatti quite a bit, and often am unsure just how I should realise an ornament.

I'm not professing to be an expert on baroque ornamentation, but I do know there is often more than one way to realise an ornament, so I'm surprised to see people being so dogmatic. And I've also come across plenty of examples of composers not writing exactly what they mean - for example expressing the same musical intention in two different ways within one piece.

Secondly, trilling from C-D# gives you an augmented second. I don't have the score of this piece, but that seems rather unlikely to me - although I'm prepared to be proved wrong!

Thought the same thing myself...

So I'm not going mad, then... Well at least, not in this instance! I'm also slightly puzzled as to why it's C natural if there's a D# in the key signature. Presumably there is an accidental. So is it an A minor chord with E having altered to become the dominant, rather than the original tonic (if that makes sense)?

Sorry if I seemed dogmatic - I did not mean to be. It is a problem of writing instead of speaking - when you are not a professional writer with the skill to anticipate these things.

It is amazing how something so simple can be so difficult to decide! If only composers would write these things out in full! I agree that an augmented second is an odd interval for a trill, when usually it is just a semitone or a tone. The real test is to try out the different variants and apply an aesthetic judgement about which sounds best. I still think it should be four notes, starting on the upper note - the question is which four!

That's quite all right!

I think the reason composers didn't write out ornaments was that it was expected that the soloist would add them as part and parcel of his performance. (I have a sneaky suspicion you may have already known that, but if not...)

Many thanks for all your comments and suggestions; they are as I had thought myself. My only dilemma now is to assess how flexible an examiner might be in his/her interpretation of these ornaments.

CCH