Name and meaning of "mirrored" accent sign

Question

I'm currently engraving a hand-written SATB piece in LilyPond and encountered some music notation I'm not really sure what to do with. It consists of four consecutive quarter notes with each note having "<" and ">" signs below them (it's in the alto part). The lyrics are in Swedish.

An ASCII art attempt at this looks something like this:

--|--|--|--|--
--o--o--o--o--
  <  >  <  >

My interpretation is that they are intended as single-note crescendos followed by decrescendos. Are there other valid interpretations of this that are specific to choral music?

Also, I still haven't found a way to produce this "decrescendo" sign in LilyPond, at least not in a visually appealing way. Maybe taking an accent sign and mirroring it horizontally could work, but I haven't delved into tweaking LilyPond out that far yet.

I'm now going with the Unicode MUSICAL SYMBOL CRESCENDO (U+1D192) and DECRESCENDO (U+1D193) simply attached as markup strings to the notes in question. For now, that is as close as I can get, semantically and visually. This is the LilyPond output:

The arranger of this piece is Hans Zimmergren (1937-2018), and the music (according to the manuscript) is based on an english traditional melody. The lyrics are an excerpt from Sakarias 9:9 (which is probably Zachary 9:9 in the English-speaking world). It's a single-page manuscript of 16 bars, probably intended as part of service. No tempo indicated, but as it is kind of hymnal it's probably andante at the most.

Answer 1

A simple way to obtain this symbol in LilyPond is to use the rotation property to rotate a normal accent.

\version "2.22.2"

reverseAccent = \tweak rotation #'(180 0 0) \accent

{
  c'-> c'\reverseAccent 
}

See https://lilypond.org/doc/v2.23/Documentation/notation/rotating-objects.html#rotating-layout-objects

Answer 2

The "reverse accent" is a legitimate articulation symbol in Musescore called "Fade in":

Answer 3

The arranger is indicating that the word should be accented against its normal pattern of emphasis.

Ordinarily, the second syllable of "rättfärdig" ("-fär-") receives the emphasis; however, Zimmergren is asking for the first and third to be emphasized on the second and fourth beats of the measure.

There is no standard "anti-accent" symbol, but sometimes a u-shaped arc attached to the note. Lilypond does not have a native symbol for anti-accents.

See also

• Strange "less than" accent or ornament in Sullivan's "The Mikado" score
• What should I do about composing 'soft' accents for piano?
• Soft note marking

Answer 4

They certainly look like accents to me. A crescendo or diminuendo should extend into the space that represents the note's duration, almost to the point underneath the following note. But indeed I suspect that you are correct to suspect that these are not accents.

In applying dynamic markings to a staff containing more than two parts, one generally puts them below the staff only, and the markings apply to both parts. If the parts require different dynamic markings, then the markings for the upper part go below the staff.

In vocal music, however, dynamics usually go above the staff because the lyrics are below the staff. That might suggest that these markings apply only to the alto part. On the other hand, this arranger has written the words farther away from the staff than normal -- on the staff below -- so it's possible that all the dynamics are written below the vocal staff. In that case, these marks would apply to both parts. Some comparison of the arranger's other work might be in order, if possible, to get a better sense of his style.

My best guess, without seeing other manuscripts or indeed the rest of this piece, is that the marks are intended to highlight the melodic contour of the soprano part. Whether this means that the entire choir should do this or only the altos (because the sopranos should do it naturally on account of the melodic contour itself) is probably a matter for debate, but in any event it's clear that the altos should be aware of the sopranos' melodic contour and that they should be supporting it by singing a bit more loudly under the higher notes and more softly under the lower ones. This is especially so because the lower notes are low in the soprano range, so the sopranos won't have as much volume as the altos.

There is a good deal of speculation here, of course. This is the most plausible explanation given the little information in the question, but it could be way off. To reiterate, looking at other work by the arranger could well point in a different direction.

If I were engraving this, I would probably not make these crescendo/decrescendo pairs, because that actually implies that the low note is the loudest point of each swell. Since I think that's the opposite of the intention, I would either change the dynamic markings entirely or reproduce them as written; in both cases I would add a note of explanation.