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As seen in Faber and Faber's Piano Adventures series, book 3B.

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I have always seem trill instructions advising to begin on the primary note. But this (trill on F) says to begin striking G. Is it correct?

For context, it is an arrangement of. Baroque-era piano piece.

Shouldn't the trill begin with F?

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  • Seems to me like it’s not meant to teach actual baroque ornament interpretation and rather to build technique. I don’t personally put a lot of stock in the Faber books
    – Todd Wilcox
    Commented Oct 14 at 21:06
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    As PiedPieper explained a baroque era trill always starts on the secondary note. But still the instruction is not exactly correct, as tradionally a trill would be unmeasured and basically fast and many times. This is more like a reverse mordent with a starting grace note. More traditionally such a suggestion might b notate in 32ths, probably even extending into the second beat. But then, as @ToddWilcox says this is teaching material, intended for basic level students.
    – Lazy
    Commented Oct 14 at 23:43
  • @ToddWilcox that may be true, but this book is certainly certainly right to show the trill beginning on the upper note.
    – phoog
    Commented Oct 15 at 0:20

2 Answers 2

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During the Baroque era and well into the Classical era trills usually started on the upper note.
For a more complete discussion see The Trill in the Classical Period

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This trill should begin on the G. Wikipedia has Bach's famous ornament table -- the one he used to teach his children -- along with an earlier French one in its article on ornaments in music. The only ornament in Bach's table that starts on the written pitch is the mordent. The French table has a few more, but none of them are trills.

Like you, I was somewhat surprised when I learned this. I am struggling to remember precisely when that was; probably in my mid teens, but possibly a few years later. The key to understanding how it works musically was to understand that the initiation on the upper note is akin to the appoggiatura, an extremely common figure in the baroque. While the Faber book doesn't suggest it, it would be more stylistic to perform a similar trill on the D at the end of the first phrase. Another point of style would be to linger somewhat on the first note of the trill.

(The appoggiatura is another point of surprise for people who are unfamiliar with baroque ornamentation. In this instance, if you were to play an appoggiatura instead of a trill, its duration should be as long as a quarter note:

X: 1
M: 4/4
L: 1/8
K: F
D2GFE2F2|(G2F)EF4|]

In my browser this is showing a nonsensical cached rendering; it's supposed to be a G quarter note on the downbeat followed by an F eighth note, the two connected by a slur, instead of the F dotted quarter note.)

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    If I reload the page it flips between the correct rendering and the nonsense one: >80% of the time I get the nonsense one, but the correct one does appear sometimes.
    – psmears
    Commented Oct 15 at 10:34

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