Ornamentation for the flute

This part is about ornamentation in music, this means anything from notation to musical aspects of ornaments.

Trills

To show those, who have no idea, what a "Cadences" or trill is, the definition might be a movement between two notes in a whole or half tone distance from each other, which is repeated several times. It starts from the upper noten and ends on the lower one. Besides this there is only one articulation, the changes are only done by the fingers.

Jacques Hotteterre in Principes de la Flute (translation by Claudia Haider)

This definition by the old master is about complete. Thus a trill is a change between the written note and the tone, which is in the actual tonality directly above.

This means for a piece of music without any accidentals, that an a with a trill sign above, means a change to the h. But if there is a b put at the start of the line, the trill goes to the h flat instead.

If the composer wants the musician to play another upper tone, the accidental for the above note is written above the trill.

Last updated 29.12.2019