Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 4.djvu/209

TURN.

All chromatic alterations in a turn can be indicated by means of accidentals placed above or below the sign, although they frequently have to be made without any such indication. An accidental above the sign refers to the upper auxiliary note, and one underneath it to the lower, as in the following examples from Haydn:—

When the note which bears a turn is dotted, and is followed by a note of half its own length, the last note of the turn falls in the place of the dot, the other three notes being either quick or slow, according to the character of the movement (Ex. 14). When however the dotted note is followed by two short notes (Ex. 15), or when it represents a full bar of 3-4 or a half-bar of 6-8 or 6-4 time (Ex. 16), the rule does not apply, and the note is treated simply as a long note. A turn on a note followed by two dots is played so that the last note falls in the place of the first dot (Ex. 17).

The turn on the dotted note was frequently written by Mozart in a somewhat ambiguous fashion, by means of four small notes (Ex. 18), the fourth of which has in performance to be made longer than the other three, although written of the same length, in order that it may represent the dot, according to rule.

An apparent exception to the rule that a turn is played during some portion of the value of its written note occurs when the sign is placed over the second of two notes of the same name, whether connected by a tie or not (Ex. 19).

In this case the turn is played before the note over which the sign stands, so that the written note forms the last note of the turn. This apparently exceptional rendering may be explained by the assumption that the second of the two notes stands in the place of a dot to the first, and this is supported by the fact that any such example might be written without the second note, but with a dot in its stead, as in Ex. 20, when the rendering would be precisely the same. If, however, the first of two notes of the same name is already dotted, the second cannot be said to bear to it the relation of a dot, and accordingly a turn in such a case would be treated simply as a turn over the note (Ex. 21).