Staccato

Staccato.

Diatonic scale on C, staccato.  Play 

Staccato [stakˈkaːto] (Italian for "detached") is a form of musical articulation. In modern notation it signifies a note of shortened duration,^[1][2] separated from the note that may follow by silence.^[3] It has been described by theorists and appeared in music since at least 1676.^[4]

Notation

In 20th-century music, a dot placed above or below a note indicates that it should be played staccato, and a wedge is used for the more emphatic staccatissimo. However, before 1850, dots, dashes, and wedges were all likely to have the same meaning, even though some theorists from as early as the 1750s distinguished different degrees of staccato through the use of dots and dashes, with the dash indicating a shorter, sharper note, and the dot a longer, lighter one. A number of signs came to be used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to discriminate more subtle nuances of staccato. These signs involve various combinations of dots, vertical and horizontal dashes, vertical and horizontal wedges, and the like, but attempts to standardize these signs have not generally been successful.^[5] This does not, however, alter the rhythm of the music and the remainder of the time allotted for each staccato note is played as rest. The opposite musical articulation of staccato is legato, signifying long and continuous notes.^[6]

The scope of the staccato dot:

In the first measure, the pairs of notes are in the same musical part since they are on a common stem. The staccato applies to both notes of the pairs. In the second measure, the pairs of notes are stemmed separately indicating two different parts, so the staccato applies only to the upper note.

Playing staccato is the opposite of playing legato. A staccato passage for strings is by definition a bowed rather than a pizzicato technique, though pizzicato itself might be thought of as a kind of staccato effect. For example, Leroy Anderson's Jazz Legato/Jazz Pizzicato. There is an intermediate articulation called either mezzo staccato or non-legato.

Audio examples

	Music played without staccato The same music played staccato
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Staccatissimo

In Musical notation, staccatissimo (plural: staccatissimi or the anglicised form staccatissimos) indicates that the notes are to be played extremely separated and distinct, a superlative staccato. This can be notated with little pikes over or under the notes, depending on stem direction, as in this example from Bruckner's Symphony No. 0 in D minor:

Alternatively it can be notated by writing the word "staccatissimo" or the abbreviation "staccatiss." over the staff. A few composers, such as Mozart, have used staccato dots accompanied by a written instruction staccatissimo when they mean the passage to be played staccatissimo.^[7]

See also

• Glissando
• Legato
• Portato
• Slur (music)
• Marcato

References

1. Willi Apel, Harvard Dictionary of Music (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 708.
2. Michael Kennedy, ed., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, third edition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 617.
3. Geoffrey Chew, "Staccato", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
4. Werner Bachmann, Robert E. Seletsky, David D. Boyden, Jaak Liivoja-Lorius, Peter Walls, and Peter Cooke, "Bow", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
5. Geoffrey Chew, "Staccato", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
6. Michael Kennedy and Joyce Bourne, “Staccato”, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
7. Philip Farkas, The Art of French Horn Playing (Evanston: Summy-Birchard Company, 1956): p. 51. ISBN 978-0-87487-021-3.

External links

• Basic Music Theory Neil V. Hawes, organist and choirmaster of St. Mary's Church, Osterley
• Staccato - video example of staccato playing