Pictured below is an excerpt from Sibelius’s Tapiola, (Bar 460):
It looks to me like a trill/mordent on its side, to fit into the condensed score. But is it?
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13Extreme gladness that people have taken the time to be helpful without making any attempt to make me feel stupid. More power to their elbows!– iainHCommented Aug 26, 2021 at 18:05
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2 Answers
It's not an ornament; it's a quarter rest. The Violins I are divided, and the upper half play rest + quarter note while the lower half play half notes.
answered Aug 25, 2021 at 11:34
It's rests for separate voices. If you got a "div." for the passage at some place before, the violin I section is divided into two groups playing two voices.
If not, you start playing an E5 on the A string on beat 1, then tilt the bow on beat 2 to play the same note on the E string as well. Rinse, repeat. Two voices on a single instrument. The second bar, however, makes this interpretation rather unlikely since it would require distributing the voices across D and A string in a manner and positions that are unlikely to sound good in an orchestral setting.
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