Tremolo
In music, tremolo (Italian pronunciation: [ˈtrɛːmolo]), or tremolando ([tremoˈlando]), is a trembling effect. There are multiple types of tremolo: a rapid repetition of a note, an alternation between two different notes, or a variation in volume.
For other uses, see Tremolo (disambiguation).Tremolos may be either measured, in which the exact rate of repetition or oscillation is specified, or unmeasured, in which it is not (the understanding being in that case that it should be performed as rapidly as possible).
Types of tremolo[edit]
Rapid reiteration or oscillation[edit]
The rapid reiteration of a single note is a characteristic effect of bowed string instruments, obtained by rapidly moving the bow back and forth. However, the technique may be performed on any instrument on which it is practicable. (Indeed, a slow measured tremolo is simply a shorthand notation for an ordinary repetition of notes; thus, tremolo notation may appear in written music for any instrument.)
The notation for this effect consists of one or more strokes drawn through the stem of a note (or, if the note lacks a stem, through the position that a hypothetical stem would occupy); the strokes correspond to the beams that would connect the individual repeated notes if they were to be written out, thereby representing the rate of repetition (i.e. the speed of the tremolo).
History[edit]
Although it had already been employed as early as 1617 by Biagio Marini and again in 1621 by Giovanni Battista Riccio,[6] the bowed tremolo was invented in 1624 by the early 17th-century composer Claudio Monteverdi,[7][8] and, written as repeated semiquavers (sixteenth notes), used for the stile concitato effects in Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. The measured tremolo, presumably played with rhythmic regularity, was invented to add dramatic intensity to string accompaniment and contrast with regular tenuto strokes.[8] However, it was not till the time of Gluck that the real tremolo became an accepted method of tone production.[9] Four other types of historical tremolos include the obsolete undulating tremolo, the bowed tremolo, the fingered tremolo (or slurred tremolo), and the bowed-and-fingered tremolo.[10]
The undulating tremolo was produced through the fingers of the right hand alternately exerting and relaxing pressure upon the bow to create a "very uncertain–undulating effect ... But it must be said that, unless violinists have wholly lost the art of this particular stroke, the result is disappointing and futile in the extreme," though it has been suggested that rather than as a legato stroke it was done as a series of jetés.[8]
There is some speculation that tremolo was employed in medieval Welsh harp music, as indicated in the transcription by Robert ap Huw.[11]
Sources