This Web page is co-authored and prepared by Yuki Horiuchi️ and Akira Takaoka as supplementary reference material for our paper presentation at the 23rd Annual Meeting of The Japan Music Expression Society (日本音楽表現学会 第23回大会) in Sendai, Japan on June 21 and 22, 2025. This page outlines our ongoing joint research into the ornamentation of 18th-century music.
Dr. Yuki Horiuchi️ 堀内由紀️ is a distinguished Baroque violinist and musicologist in Japan:
This joint research is currently funded by the Rohm Music Foundation.
1. Improvised, Free Ornamentation in Violin Music of the 18th Century
Not many notated ornaments of 18th-century violin music have survived to date. Some of the rare exceptions are those written for Corelli's Violin Sonatas, Op. 5, which was published in 1700, reprinted more than fifty times even during Corelli's lifetime, and remained the most influential violin piece of the time. Horiuchi (2018a, 2018b, 2020) examines all the surviving scores and manuscripts of the piece from the 18th century and identifies prototypical ornamentation patterns and the derivation rules with which all the ornaments found in those historical materials can be derived from the prototypical ones.
The following is the first five measures from Corelli's Violin Sonata, Op. 5, V:
Example 1: Mm. 1-5 from Corelli's Violin Sonata, Op. 5, V (Corelli 1700)
The video below (courtesy of Tokyo University of the Arts) shows that Horiuchi improvises her own ornaments for those five measures:
Copyright (C) 2023 Tokyo Geidai (Tokyo University of the Arts)
Example 2: The ornaments for the five measures above played by Horiuchi (2018), transcribed by Takaoka.
The following are those ornaments applied to Corelli's Op. 5, No. 5 m. 1 by Horiuchi (2018a, 2018b) and musicians of the 18th century:
Copyright (C) 2024 Yuki Horiuchi
Example 3: Free ornamentation by Yuki Horiuchi, transcribed by Akira Takaoka, and musicians from the 18th century
It seems that, in this score, all the ornaments in Example 3 notated by musicians listed in columns B to L of the following table can be categorized in 18 patterns listed as P1 to P18 in column A of the table:
Example 4: Ornamentation patterns of the 18th century identified by Horiuchi (2018)
In what follows, P1, P2,..., and P18 shown in Example 4 are used to denote the names of the patterns as well as the rules that govern or generate the patterns. Example 5 below shows some examples of those patterns:
Example 5: A list of the patterns of free ornamentation by performers and composers of the 18th century
Now, it seems that some patterns, P4 and those in rows R and S, namely, P7 to P13, can be derived from {P1, P2, P3} as bsic patterns (BPs) in row P through the following three derivation rules D1, D2, and D3:
D1: Increase in the number of notes, "diminution"
D2: Wider rhythmic variety
D3: Wider registers and intervals
Example 6: Three derivation rules, D1, D2, D3
All the "derivative" ornamentation patterns in rows R and S, P7 to P13, can be derived from BPs and {D1, D2, D3}. For example, P7 and P8 are derived in the following ways:
Example 7: Derivations of the ornaments in rows R and S (P7 and P8)
And P9 to P13:
Example 8: Derivations of the ornaments in rows R and S (P9 to P13)
Some ornaments in Corelli (1710), the Amsterdam edition, and Roman (c. 1715-1721) are derived from the original melody by Corelli (1700) as follows in Examples 9 and 10 below:
Example 9: Ornaments derived from Corelli (1710) and Roman (c. 1715-1721) from the 1st edition of Corelli's Violin Sonata, Op. 5, V (1700)
Example 10: Ornaments derived by Corelli (1710) and Dubourg (c. 1725) from the 1st edition of Corelli's Violin Sonata, Op. 5, V (1700)
The video clip in Example 13 shows Horiuchi playing the last several measures of the first movement from Corelli's Violin Sonata, Op. 5, XI (1700). The ornaments she plays are derived only from a combination of those found in the Amsterdam edition, namely, P1 to P6, as shown in column M in Example 11.
Example 11: Column M: Horiuchi's ornamentation using the only patterns employed in the Amsterdam edition
Example 12 shows the ornaments she plays in the video. Since the ornaments are only those used in the Amsterdam edition (Corelli 1710), they may sound somewhat like Corelli's ornamentation.
Copyright (C) 2024 Yuki Horiuchi
Example 12: The ornaments derived from P1 to P6 (the patterns of the Amsterdam edition) by Yuki Horiuchi (2023)
The following video clip shows Horiuchi's performance of the section shown in Example 12:
Copyright (C) 2024 Yuki Horiuchi
Example 13: Improvised, free ornaments derived from P1 to P6 by Yuki Horiuchi (2023).
Column N of the table in Example 14 shows a combination of patterns Horiuchi chose. Since the combination was never used by any 18th-century musicians, it's expected to sound like some new ornamentation and yet remain in the framework of the style of 18th-century ornamentation.
Example 14: Column N: Horiuchi's ornamentation derived from a new combination of all the patterns except P13, P16, and P18
Copyright (C) 2023 Yuki Horiuchi
Example 15: Ornamentation resulted from the new combination of patterns by Horiuchi shown in Column N of the table above.
Copyright (C) 2024 Yuki Horiuchi
Example 16: Free ornamentation for Corelli's Violin Sonata, Op. 5, No. 11, mm.9-16 played by Yuki Horiuchi (2023)
The following is a set of various ornaments applied to Corelli's Op. 5, XI, mm. 9-16 by musicians of the 18th century and those played by Horiuchi in the video in Example 16.
Copyright (C) 2024 Yuki Horiuchi
Example 17: Free ornamentation for Corelli (1700) by Yuki Horiuchi and others
In this way, we may be able to obtain, examine, choose, and perform a wide variety of ornaments derived through sets of rules {P1, P2,..., P18} and {D1, D2, D3}. That is, we may have access to the entire vocabulary of ornamentation in the style of 18th-century violin music.
2. Computer Simulation of Improvised, Free Ornamentation
Now, we need to test our rule system.
To do that, we have written a computer program in Java, in which the rule system is implemented. The rules implemented in the programs are {P1, P2,..., P18} and {D1, D2, D3}. Some extra values, which are latent in the previous discussion concerning the processes of derivation of ornaments in Examples 12 and 15, need to be supplied to the program. They include the highest and the lowest notes of ornament patterns, the numbers of notes of the patterns, and so on.
What follows is a brief description of the Java code we have written. It automatically generates ornaments in the style of those musicians listed in the table in Example 14 and realizes Basso Continuo parts. The following is the opening five measures from the 1st edition of Corelli's Violin Sonata, Op. 5, V (Corelli 1700) No. 5 (Corelli 1700):
Example 18: Mm. 1-5 from Corelli's Violin Sonata, Op. 5, V (Corelli 1700)
The figured bass is fed into the program in the form of a series of arrays shown in Example 19 below:
Example 19: The figured bass of mm. 1-2 from Corelli's Violin Sonata, Op. 5, V (Corelli 1700) in the form of a series of arrays
The names of ornament patterns and some other parameters such as the highest and lowest notes and the numbers of notes in ornaments are also specified as a series of arrays as follows:
Example 20: The patterns of ornaments in mm. 1-2 from Corelli's Violin Sonata, Op. 5, V (Corelli 1700) in the form of a series of arrays
The program consists of the following Java classes:
Corelli_Op5_5_1.java // Threads of all the instruments
Ornamentation.java // Methods for the patterns of ornamentation
PlayViolin.java // Violin
PlayViol.java // Viol
PlayHarpsichord_R.java // The right hand of the harpsichord
PlayHarpsichord_L.java // The left hand of the harpsichord
SoloAndFBass.java // Data of figured bass
Conversion.java // Data conversion (eg. SPN to MIDI note numbers)
Example 21: The classes of the program
A method in the program that generates ornaments of P1, "Stepwise motion between consecutive two notes," looks like the following:
Example 22: The method that generates ornaments by way of P1: Stepwise motion between consecutive two notes
The synchronization among the three instruments, violin, viol, and harpsichord, is a little tricky because, as you see those ornaments in Examples 3 and 17, many of them are non-metric. In other words, the duration of each beat constantly changes. In this Java program, all the instruments synchronize at the onsets of harmony change. If you feel that all the instruments synchronize well, perhaps human players also try to synchronize that way.
Four separate threads, those of violin, viol, and harpsichord L and R, concurrently run in the program. I have tried a few different ways to synchronize them and so far found that the join() method works best as shown in Example 23.
Example 23: The thread of the violin part
Our program works well in Java. In Python, however, threads do not run concurrently even when the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL) is disabled. We have also tried multiprocessing in Python, but it doesn't work well either.
The following video clip demonstrates that the program automatically generates ornaments and realizes basso continuo using the data sets in Examples 19 and 20:
Example 24: Mm. 1-5 from Corelli's Violin Sonata, Op. 5, V (Corelli 1700) automatically generated by the Java program
This Java program together with a GUI will be available as a Web app soon on this Web page so that any performers and researchers of Baroque music can easily try out their own ornamentation. We also plan to develop this program further so that, based on Meyer's theory of style change (Meyer 1989), it simulates the historical style change in ornamentation. We hope that we can use the program to test how relevant or irrelevant the ornamentation used for Corelli's Op. 5 is to that by, say, Mozart (Levin 1992).
Comments, suggestions, and questions are welcome via e-mail:
akira.takaoka (at) columbia (dot) edu
Yuki Horiuchi and Akira Takaoka
Tokyo, Japan
June, 2025
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Scores:
(* indicates the locations of anonymous manuscript sources.)
Cambridge*. 1730s -1740s. Manuscript copy. Cambridge University Library (GB-Cu), MS. Add. 7059(15) (RISM ID no. 806292092).
Corelli, Arcangelo. 1700. Sonate a Violino e Violone o Cimbalo, Op. 5. 1st ed. Rome: Gasparo Pietra Santa.
_______. 1710. Sonate a Violino e Violone o Cimbalo di Arcangelo Corelli Da Fusignano Opera Quinta Parte Prima Troisième Edition ou l’on a joint les agréemens des Adagio de cet ouvrage, composez par Mr. A. Corelli comme il les joue. Edited by Estienne Roger. Amsterdam. facs. a cura di Marcello Castellani, Firenze, SPES 1979.
_______. 2013. Sonatas for Violin and Basso continuo, With contemporary embellishments, and a keyboard realisation by Antonio Tonelli (1686-1765), 2 vols. Edited by Christopher Hogwood and Ryan Mark. Kassel: Baerenreiter.
Dubourg, Matthew. c.1725. Corelli’s Solos Grac’d by Dobourg, versioni ornate delle Sonate op. 5 di Corelli. ms. del sec. XVIII, collezione privata ignota.
Festing, Michael Christian. c. 1733-36. GB-LbI (The British Library, London), Add. MS 71244.
Galeazzi, Francesco. 1817. Elementi teorico-pratici di musica con un saggio sopra l'arte di suonare il violino analizzata, ed a dimostrabili principi ridotta, 2 vols. Rome, 1791/1796. Enlarged 2nd ed. Ascoli.
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_______. 1771. Traité des Agréments de la musique. Paris. Translated by E. R. Jacobi. Celle and New York: Hermann Moeck Verlag,1961. Regole per arrivare a saper ben suonar il Violino.
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Akira Takaoka
E-mail: akira.takaoka (at) columbia (dot) edu
