| Essay on the True Manner of Playing the Clavier Zweyter Teil | Part II |
Commentary (original text in black)
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| 1. Capitel. Von den Intervallen und den Signaturen | Chapter 1. On intervals and their signatures |
| und die Noten heißt man alsdenn Wechselnoten | ...and bass notes are called changing notes [Wechselnoten] |
| Nowadays Welchselnote refers to a neighbor tone (i.e., non-harmonic tone approached and left by step in opposite directions), rather than an accented passing tone. Here Bach uses Wechselnote as the German translation of nota cambiata, which Angelo Berardi (Miscellanea musicale, 1689) first used to refer to an accented passing tone. After J. J. Fux’s Gradus ad Parnassum (1725), however, nota cambiata came to mean an unaccented non-harmonic tone approached by step and left by leap. See William Drabkin, “Nota cambiata” in Grove Music Online. | |
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Translation © 2024 The Packard Humanities Institute