Freaky symbol

In this piece of organ music that I'm trying to learn (Joseph est Bien Marie, by Balbastre), there are many places where a plus sign (+) is above a note. My teacher was playing the piece to demonstrate it for me, and I know it's some kind of trill. Does anybody know anything more specific, or an online resource that could clarify this for me? Thanks.

Fuz

Has the horizontal bit got a little wiggle in it?

Might be an inverted mordant. Like, over a G (say), it would be a rapid gfg.

Baroque organ composers liked them, like the one at the beginning of Bach's Toccata and Fudge in Dminor.

Can you scan it to show us all?

I never saw a plus sign other than of the Brass writing. I would also be glad to learn if it is also some kind of trill.

Here's an image which might help explain.

http://www.guitarpeople.com/classical/standardnotation11.gif

No, I know what a mordant is. What I'm talking about is a simple plus sign. +

This is new to me, too, and I thought I knew theory! :P Oh well. You learn about something new every day...

For strings, if it's a pizzicato passage, then + means with left hand.

For horns, it means to play with a mute.

For chords, it means augmented chords...

If you're sure that it is scored for organ it would be indeed a trill (but I don't know which kind)

I have never seen a piece of organ music that has used a plus sign... There are some symbols that the pedals have marked occasionally, referring to toe-heel placement, but they look more like the up-bow and down-bow symbols in string music. Lemme check my big book of Bach organ music...

Oh oh oh! I know what you're talking about! I have only ever seen this symbol used in Handel's Messiah. I was working on a couple of the Bass arias for a while, and I used a plus-sign notation a couple of times, mainly during the recitatives. A plus sign above a note, aside from brass and string writing, and usually only in baroque pieces, is used to indicate that the note is to be preceded with a note a step away. What I was instructed to do in the arias I was working on was: If there was an A written, with a plus sign above it, and it was notated as a half note, I would play, as 2 quarters: B, A, in the half-note time that was originally alloted for the A. This served to add an illegal passing tone, or, a tone which would be usually out of place in the chord at that moment, to the front of the correct note. Think of a suspension that resolves a little bit after the chord itself does.

egypt final0001MUS.MID

Hi there ! Here is the answers. It depends upon the composer. You have to give me his name to be sure. Here are the possibilities :

It can be

I've seen them used, most frequently, to notate suspensions.

So what does the plus sign indicate in brass writing?

JohnGalt :

Hmmm... do you have composers in mind ? I've never seen that use among the 31 composers' ornements list that I have at home. ;)

JohnGalt :

Hmmm... do you have composers in mind ? I've never seen that use among the 31 composers' ornements list that I have at home. ;)

Never by a composer, always added by the arranger.

Ok, then it's not authentic. The signs I'm talking about where authentically written down and specified by the composers (Rameau, Bach, Couperin, etc.).

Ok, then it's not authentic. The signs I'm talking about where authentically written down and specified by the composers (Rameau, Bach, Couperin, etc.).

Duh?

I would have to say it's probably acting as a mordent.

Ok... maybe I wasn't clear... I mean that I cannot find among the 30 composers lists of ornements the sign (+) used as a sustained note. And saying that it is a mordent means that it can be :

De Mars, Dornel and Foucquet for the french baroque ones. But of course it can mean a mordent for some german, spanish, italian or english composer also. That's why I asked the composer... because as I told the way to play the ornement varies from one composer to the other and also the way to play it varies if the note is tied to the precedent note or not. (but I'm sorry to repeat myself here).

Unless I missed it, we haven't seen the sources to be able to answer to the topic question.

Plus signs are not uncommon in (particularly, but not exclusively, French) Baroque keyboard music. In some cases composers have probably assigned specific meanings to it (I don't know what Balbastre in particular might have meant by it, though), in others it might be a carelessly written mordent, but to my knowledge it can generally be interpreted as a general sign for some ornament, without further specification. Unless Balbastre follows Couperin's example in wanting you to play the ornaments exactly as he wrote them, it's not unreasonable to assume that it's just a request for you to ornament the note however you like, without further specification. The only truly "incorrect" thing to do is probably to leave the note unornamented. Follow your sense, taste and musicianship.

Unless Balbastre follows Couperin's example in wanting you to play the ornaments exactly as he wrote them, it's not unreasonable to assume that it's just a request for you to ornament the note however you like, without further specification.

At least, I hope no composers here will write signs as approximate as the one described here ! :sadtears: I don't know any composer writing sign just to say 'do an ornement here' but I don't know the music of every composers... so... can't prove this wrong. But if it's Balbastre we are talking about... here is the only ornements that I found that are defined in my books. Sorry for the bad quality... I got to buy a scanner. eheh

well... if I had been a composer at that period and asked for a specific thing... it would be to have no taste to do something else than what I meant. Of course, most of the situations can be handled quiet easily I agree.

At least, I hope no composers here will write signs as approximate as the one described here ! :P I don't know any composer writing sign just to say 'do an ornement here'...

I see no reason not to be vague and ask a performer to interpret the piece accordingly.

If this were the general spirit in the period we're talking about, we wouldn't have tons of slow movements written in minims alone, where it is understood (as we can easily infer from plenty contemporary example "realizations" of slow movements for didactic purposes) that the performer should play all sorts of ornaments, runs and passages wherever he feels like. We wouldn't have cadential trills and recitativo appogiaturas left for the performer--who would certainly have been familiar with the conventions of the time--to infer himself. In writing a plus sign, even if its meaning is as vague as I have implied it might be, the composer still out-specifies the vast number of composers who just assumed that the performer would understand what he wanted even without any sign.

Of course, there were composers (such as F. Couperin) who really, really wanted people to play what was written, no more and no less, but these were by no means a majority, on the whole. A Baroque score can frequently be seen as a mere framework, within which the performer is trusted to make tasteful realizations of all those things implied by the style itself, with which people of the time were quite accustomed. Jazz fakebooks come to mind, and it might not be a bad comparison.

Yeah... sorry... you're totally right. But that's the reason I asked for the composer's name since the start... this information makes all the difference.